The soul of the moving picture

by Walter Julius Bloem

In addition to all of this, there comes that rare and invaluable reciprocal action and reaction between him and his spectator, the force of which lends an inextinguishable and inescapable force to his receptive soul.

There is only one thing that tortures him, and from which there is no possible escape: he sees himself obliged to crawl into a new and strange rôle to-morrow, and into still another new and strange rôle day after to-morrow, and so on throughout his entire career as long as this is in the ascendancy. This being the case, even the greatest creation of the greatest poet is apt, if the danger is not incessantly guarded against, to rattle around in his soul with the emptiness of a hand-organ. But it is right there that we note the real task of the stage actor: he is not supposed to bellow forth scene after scene in uncontrolled eruptions of feelings. On the contrary, he is supposed to study each work of art, rehearse it, say it over, look into it, until he knows it from every angle and in its every aspect. There is only one state of mind that can be sure of success when it is a question of performing a written play on the legitimate stage: the calm, easy, superior assurance that comes from infinite study and practice. “I seize the passions as the pianist seizes the octaves—without seeing what I am doing!” This confession was made by Salvini.

Compared with his colleagues on the legitimate stage, the film actor has in many ways a much more difficult task. The Italian and the Frenchman, both highly gifted in the art of mimicry, are much better adapted to the art of gesticulation than is the stiff northerner, or the snobbish cosmopolite whom the moving picture of all peoples takes such great delight in portraying. But the feverish gestures of the Romance people is beginning to screech and scream, in the moving picture, with the result, rather astonishing in itself, that the undemonstrative northerner is becoming the most gifted film actor.

Now, why have the film actors of the Romance peoples been a failure? It is easy to answer the question: Because the film shows life, while the Romance film, and particularly that of the Italians, has shown theater, and not always good theater at that.

The film actor is split with doubt; he labors under a dual desire: he is supposed to avail himself of all the means of mimic expression which he consciously neglects and oppresses in daily life—and he is supposed consciously to neglect and suppress the linguistic means of expression which he employs in everyday life. The defective mimic ability of the northerner is revealed in the majority of German, Scandinavian, and American films. So soon as the actor becomes aware that his gestures are not putting the picture across, he begins to speak his soundless language.

His gesture is supposed to embrace the content, in the way of feeling, of the entire scene. In this striving, the actor is supported by the peculiarity of the film mechanism, which catches up even the gentlest and most subdued mimicry and holds it up before the spectator.

It would be impossible, especially for a northerner, to play an entire mimic action, in all its shades and nuances, at one time or in one concerted effort. This explains why the pantomime could never rise above the level of a rather crude art form. But the film dissects the action, winnows its parts, and allocates them to various places or dramaturgic localities. Everything that happens in the same place is assembled, while the picture is being taken, and made into a united and single play. This is done, of course, for practical reasons associated with costumes, decorations, and travels. This being the case, the actor does, and has to, concentrate his entire attention, for a very short time, a time that is generally measured in seconds, on the mimic material and means that are naturally placed at his disposal.

This human weakness—which makes a relatively long and at the same time inspired action impossible—has been made the basis of photographic technique by the American. His reasoning and his technique must be commended. Where his European colleagues generally let the apparatus stand during the entire scene and then play a few close-ups later on, the American takes a picture of every individual scene, and from all conceivable angles. His scenario is arranged from the beginning with this end in view. The result is that each scene is wrapped in a spirited, glimmering, glittering unrest which lifts even the most indifferent episode quite up above the shadow of tedium. I am of the opinion that the American film owes a good share of its charm to this distinctly advantageous and manifold dissection of the pictures, just as I believe that the failure of so many German and Swedish films is due to the slowness and tediousness that are familiarly associated with their photographic technique.

Fig. 7. Scene from The Children of Darkness.