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Page 9
We may become more strongly conscious of this difference between an
object of our knowledge and an object of our impression, if we remember
a well-known instrument, the stereoscope. The stereoscope, which was
quite familiar to the parlor of a former generation, consists of two
prisms through which the two eyes look toward two photographic views of
a landscape. But the two photographic views are not identical. The
landscape is taken from two different points of view, once from the
right and once from the left. As soon as these two views are put into
the stereoscope the right eye sees through the prism only the view from
the right, the left eye only the view from the left. We know very well
that only two flat pictures are before us; yet we cannot help seeing the
landscape in strongly plastic forms. The two different views are
combined in one presentation of the landscape in which the distant
objects appear much further away from us than the foreground. We feel
immediately the depth of things. It is as if we were looking at a small
plastic model of the landscape and in spite of our objective knowledge
cannot recognize the flat pictures in the solid forms which we perceive.
It cannot be otherwise, because whenever in practical life we see an
object, a vase on our table, as a solid body, we get the impression of
its plastic character first of all by seeing it with our two eyes from
two different points of view. The perspective in which our right eye
sees the things on our table is different from the perspective for the
left eye. Our plastic seeing therefore depends upon this combination of
two different perspective views, and whenever we offer to the two eyes
two such one-sided views, they must be combined into the impression of
the substantial thing. The stereoscope thus illustrates clearly that the
knowledge of the flat character of pictures by no means excludes the
actual perception of depth, and the question arises whether the moving
pictures of the photoplay, in spite of our knowledge concerning the
flatness of the screen, do not give us after all the impression of
actual depth.
It may be said offhand that even the complete appearance of depth such
as the stereoscope offers would be in no way contradictory to the idea
of moving pictures. Then the photoplay would give the same plastic
impression which the real stage offers. All that would be needed is
this. When the actors play the scenes, not a single but a double camera
would have to take the pictures. Such a double camera focuses the scene
from two different points of view, corresponding to the position of the
two eyes. Both films are then to be projected on the screen at the same
time by a double projection apparatus which secures complete
correspondence of the two pictures so that in every instance the left
and the right view are overlapping on the screen. This would give, of
course, a chaotic, blurring image. But if the apparatus which projects
the left side view has a green glass in front of the lens and the one
which projects the right side view a red glass, and every person in the
audience has a pair of spectacles with the left glass green and the
right glass red--a cardboard lorgnette with red and green gelatine paper
would do the same service and costs only a few cents--the left eye would
see only the left view, the right eye only the right view. We could not
see the red lines through the green glass nor the green lines through
the red glass. In the moment the left eye gets the left side view only
and the right eye the right side view, the whole chaos of lines on the
screen is organized and we see the pictured room on the screen with the
same depth as if it were really a solid room set on the stage and as if
the rear wall in the room were actually ten or twenty feet behind the
furniture in the front. The effect is so striking that no one can
overcome the feeling of depth under these conditions.
But while the regular motion pictures certainly do not offer us this
complete plastic impression, it would simply be the usual confusion
between knowledge about the picture and its real appearance if we were
to deny that we get a certain impression of depth. If several persons
move in a room, we gain distinctly the feeling that one moves behind
another in the film picture. They move toward us and from us just as
much as they move to the right and left. We actually perceive the chairs
or the rear wall of the room as further away from us than the persons in
the foreground. This is not surprising if we stop to think how we
perceive the depth, for instance, of a real stage. Let us fancy that we
sit in the orchestra of a real theater and see before us the stage set
as a room with furniture and persons in it. We now see the different
objects on the stage at different distances, some near, some far. One of
the causes was just mentioned. We see everything with our right or our
left eye from different points of view. But if now we close one eye and
look at the stage with the right eye only, the plastic effect does not
disappear. The psychological causes for this perception of depth with
one eye are essentially the differences of apparent size, the
perspective relations, the shadows, and the actions performed in the
space. Now all these factors which help us to grasp the furniture on
the stage as solid and substantial play their r�le no less in the room
which is projected on the screen.
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