The soul of the moving picture

by Walter Julius Bloem

The ease with which the spectator may be inundated with a flood of textual words cajoles some into smuggling the talmy-gold of speech into the moving picture: “I forbid you to leave this house; and if you dare to act contrary to my wish in this matter, you will not receive a single penny from me!” This text occurs in the Indisches Grabmal. Fewer words would be more, that is, more effective. A clear, soulful portrayal as well as a fixed, secure, and successful mounting is made altogether impossible by such an unchastened and miserably affected text as this. The very dignity of the film, in this case, has been abandoned to the caprice of the man who wrote the lines. The author is in a position to do one of two things: he may either cleanse the film to the point of high art by grasping the true significance of such text as is needed, or he may demote the same film with all its art potentialities, to the grade of a mere hawked pamphlet by filling his text with the heavy, plebeian splashings of everyday and everyman conversation.

But never mind! Such texts may be regarded as a failure, but they are by no means equivalent to the transferral of the material to the purely spiritual world (which is closed to the sensuous moving picture because it cannot be disclosed through gestures alone). But wherever we sense an attempt on the part of the text to make even a remote effort at touching on the problems of the intellect or spirit, we notice at once the patchouly stench of botched and bungled art. All those expressions of a well-meant and, in poetry, quite permissible brooding and grieving over the sinister incidents of life, as well as such threadbare philosophizing as goes with this species of mental indulgence—all of these utterances taste like thin lemonade, sweet, flat, and insipid. In them there is not a grain of real film feeling; the art of the great picture they know not. Exalted spirit, how near I feel myself to thee—such is the boast of the moving picture in this instance—that is, when it makes short shift with its fundamental right and privilege, if indeed it does not dispense with it entirely.

The spirit of the film author is not shown by allowing his Pegasus to roam uncurbed over boundless territories, emitting wise sayings as he stamps the ground of his seemingly privileged course. His spirit, the intellect that he may have, is revealed in its true light when he exercises an iron will in his search after the right expression, and makes this expression just as short and just as rare as the exigencies of the occasion permit. As Alfred Kerr has laconically put it: “The goal of your expression? The briefer.” And when this law is laid down and adhered to, the really marvelous begins to take place: these condensed, sober, frigid words actually begin to ring and glow. The best text that has ever been given any motion picture, and the one that lent the scene to which it belonged the most veritable magic, was found in Caligari. At the head of these dark and somber horrors stood the one word, “Night.” This lone monosyllable, which in the rise and swell of poetry might be passed over quite unnoticed, cast a spell over us in the film like the glowing of greenish eyes from the dark.

Such brevity is, of course, not always necessary, nor is it at all times possible, for it would frequently be impossible for the general public to understand it. But a clear, clean primness, one that is just as alien to any imitation of everyday speech as it is to the striving after original, poetic effect, should characterize the style of the text that accompanies the picture.

How could we best define a really adequate motion picture text? By saying that it is a lump of ice in which there is a glowing coal. “Night—” This is obviously the artistic sense of the style we are considering: we are endeavoring to make it possible for the actor to indulge in an unhampered and unhindered mimicry that is poles removed from the gymnastics of the pantomime. Carl Hauptmann said once upon a time: “That will always be a poor motion picture in which a violent effort is made through the overworking of gestures to express an idea which in reality can be expressed only through the medium of words. That, too, will always be regarded as a benevolent inter-pictorial text which holds up to the mind of the spectator, suddenly and without warning, certain necessary words the mission of which will be to impart roundness, fullness, and ultimate clarity to the mental content of the pictures that have been passing before our vision.”

Fig. 4. Scene from The Stone Rider.

[See p. [82]]

The compass of the motion picture were far too limited to merit serious and universal study if the materials that are used by it were confined to such as can be fully and adequately interpreted through gestures alone, and without the use of even the briefest of explanatory text.

The American, who troubles himself but little about theoretical considerations, frequently mounts, in less important films, individual scenes with six or more bits of text arranged in remark and reply. There has been a tendency of late, however, to exercise greater moderation in this, respect. The whole matter can be summed up by saying that with regard to the number of interspersed words, and the length of the explanatory sentences that are used, one’s feelings are the only safe criterion to follow; and they set down this as an infallible guide: A text is good if it is effective. It can be effective only when it harmonizes with the pictures. And if it is to be effective—that is, if it is to find its way to the heart, the very narrowest of limitations are imposed upon it.