The man of the moving picture is born upon the same earth upon which all the rest of us live, move, and have our being. The established laws of nature apply to him just as they apply to us. Flying through the air, disappearing into the earth—these are the inartistic little simpletons that belong to the “movie” in its most desperate and degraded age. It is not the degree to which we can imitate that makes art: art is determined by the degree in which figures are fashioned that have souls in them.
The fairy-tale imitation on the part of the motion picture is fearful, at least in those instances in which, in order to carry out the trick, the lion’s share is allotted to the text. The fairy film is a bit of merry nonsense, a charming piece of roguery and skylarking, which takes place here on this earth, and which is not supposed to reflect the profound seriousness of the really poetic world of fairies or other supernatural creatures.
But we are at a loss to know what to do with the fairy film, for the fairy world—in this hard, sober, material, and at times, brutal world of ours—has become about extinct, depopulated, dead. For this reason alone, the fairy film cannot hope to succeed as a business proposition.
Within the last year, the magic tricks that were once so common have almost completely disappeared from the screen. The Swedes—the most artistic of all film peoples—have never found the trick necessary, not even in their fairy films, though the Swedes belong to a race that loves reverie, likes to dream, and enjoys visions.
CHAPTER IV
THE SCENE
Let thought impart fixed content to the forms
That move across the stage in restless search.
—Gœthe.
All that has been said thus far is supposed to serve as an Ariadne thread through the labyrinth of the moving picture. All individual forms should be bound together and be reminded in this way of their common purpose and objective. For it is impossible, if art is to flourish, to permit each individual section of this manifold complex to scream aloud, and that with all its might, in an endeavor to drown out other sections by coercing them into a parrot’s cage, where the most they can do is to observe an obligatory subserviency.
There is no art in which the star system, the mere existence and independent, inconsiderate activity on the part of a few gifted persons, is so nefarious as in the motion picture. This is an art in which there must be an unreserved ensemble of effort, a friendship of minds, a perfect harmony of creative souls. In the orchestra of productive spirits that plays in the motion picture, no man dare be master, no man dare be assistant. The manager himself must be primus inter pares. And neither the author nor the manager is the chief creator of a work: it is created in truth with the idea of equal honor and responsibility for author, manager, actor, operator, and architect. Let each man in this circle of personalities be a professional in his field—and an intelligent person with regard to the fields of each of his colleagues. If anyone fails to perform his full duty, or if anyone pushes his own personality too obtrusively into the foreground, the inherent value of the film is weakened while its eventual success is jeopardized. This is true, for art is weak and but little capable of defending itself against the fatuous doings and dealings of all that is merely dazzling, just as truth is but little minded to take up effective warfare against the hollow phrase.