M Romains has also a complete understanding of projection. He protests, in a preface, against the monotonous speeding-up of pictures and urges that this one be taken and shown in the rhythm of ordinary life, with a shading toward slow, especially in the scenes “where the only events which pass before us are the thoughts of the characters” (required reading for Mr Griffith and Mr de Mille for one year is in those words). In the scenes which exploit the shares in Donogoo-Tonka we enter into the minds of individuals, of groups, of crowds; at the end the very framework of a building succumbs to the madness of the idea. And then, with a technical mastery not yet put into practise, M Romains directs that the various scenes just projected be shown again, side by side, with a gradually accelerated rhythm. In the scenes of the adventurers we get glimpses at Marseilles, London, Naples, Porto, Singapore, San Francisco; then we see the groups starting out; the lines of their voyage converge. These scenes are projected first in succession and then simultaneously. Each time we see them we recognize some of the individuals we have seen before. “And when by chance the faces are turned towards us, we have a feeling that they, too, recognize us.” The cinema has not yet accomplished that; chiefly, I fancy, because it never has been asked to.
M Romains is the prophet of unanisme, and it would be remarkable if he did not use the moving picture to push his point. The end of Donogoo-Tonka is pure poetry.
The horizon has receded before the Palace and the chief figures look out into a light which has its own laws. Paris appears deep in the background. “But so close, perhaps, that we are troubled to see it and would like to fall back a step.
“As if, yielding to friendly pressure, the world has renounced for one evening its concept of space and all its habits.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe so much to others in connexion with this book that if I were to set down the names and the reasons it would appear, quite properly, that I have done little except collect and theorize about material presented to me; it might also appear that I wish to make others responsible. Virtually everyone I know has contributed something—and in many cases they did so before I had thought of writing this book. I can therefore make only specific acknowledgments. Above all to two managing editors, John Peale Bishop and Edmund Wilson, Jr., of Vanity Fair and to their editor, Frank Crowninshield; they published several essays which later served as the raw material for chapters here, published portions of other chapters written expressly for this book, and otherwise encouraged and prospered me—to such an extent that I owe to them and to my fellow-editors of the Dial the holiday which made it possible for me to write at all. Except as otherwise acknowledged, the illustrations are reproduced with the permission of the artists; in addition, I have to thank the editors of the two journals mentioned for joining their permission in the case of work they originally reproduced, the firm of Albert and Charles Boni for the liberal use of Frueh’s Stage Folk, and H. T. Parker of the Boston Transcript for letting me reprint A Conversation in Old Athens. For technical information and exceptionally painstaking criticism I am indebted to Sara and Gerald Murphy, Martin Brown, Alexander Steinert, Deems Taylor, Lewis Galantière, H. K. Moderwell, and Dorothy Butler; for the material in the appendix to Charles Chaplin, Irving Berlin, Bushnell Dimond, Walter Hoban, and Sophie Wittenberg. My indebtedness to those whom I do not know—those I have written about—is too apparent to need emphasis, and too great to be adequately acknowledged.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Except that supplied by the professional journals—often excellent.
[2] But there is more to say; a little of it occurs on [page 41].