The soul of the moving picture

by Walter Julius Bloem

This is seen first of all in the rehearsal. Such a thing as the learning of a rôle by heart, or the practicing of gestures before the mirror, is unknown to the film actor. With him the rehearsal is rather an experimenting. In America, where the use of the negative plays no rôle, the individual parts of the scenes are turned again and again, until it is possible to establish a “model copy” from which the best parts are chosen. But such a “waste,” which seems to be quite profitable in the end, is unknown in Europe, which, following the lead of its lack of reason, feels that it is too impoverished to indulge in such lavishness. In Europe the apparatus, literally speaking, is turned but once, or, in case the result is wholly unacceptable, it is turned twice, but with a sigh.

The stage actor is a “soul stormer.” But, as contrasted with the film actor, the stage actor can work himself into his rôle gradually and by all manner of psychic cajolery. The film actor is not presented with an entire work of art, but with the merest particle of such a work, and then he is told to put life into it. “Inspire it!” That is the command to which he must be obedient. “That is the trial by fire of the film actor,” says the doughty Danish director, Urban Gad, “when he can poetize himself, so to speak, into the rôle that he is supposed to create, when he can feel the situation in its entirety. Then he is the born film actor. Otherwise he is merely a more or less well trained circus horse.”

The creative work of the film actor is, consequently, not a matter of slow and possibly even tiresome learning in solo and ensemble; it is a matter of ingenious and spontaneous improvisation. The man who has to stand up before a mirror and see whether this gesture is fitting and another permissible is no film actor. And it is from his ability to rise from nothing to an exalted and passionate art-feeling that the pride and joy of the film player owe their origin; and having originated, they cast a beneficent atmosphere over the art that is called into being.

It is not enough to delude oneself regarding an essentially cold heart by the abundant use of gestures that would seem to indicate that the heart is warm. There are actors on the legitimate stage who, by the traditional use of the merest and veriest routine, can carry their publics along with them and raise them to pinnacles of enthusiasm; make them rage with indignation; or petrify them into horror over the deeds done before them. No film actor has ever yet succeeded in doing that. The lines are creations of the mind; they are spoken with shrewd calculation as to the effects they can evoke; they are declaimed with real consideration. The gestures, on the other hand, are truer than the lines; they come direct from the soul. Moreover, the lens of the familiar apparatus is sharper and less indulgent than the human eye. The lens catches everything; nothing escapes it. It makes a living picture of every attempt to deceive and visualizes all that comes before it. No film actor who is not passionately concerned with and about the incident he is to portray will ever bring other people to the point of passion. The inert playing of comedy which infests the legitimate stage with false and idle pathos, with the spirit of repulsive paint and powder, is utterly out of place, and out of the question, in the moving picture. The film actor has got to be what he plays.

Every actor, however, has his own personality; his own world. There is an atmosphere about him that is his. He cannot escape it; it makes itself felt; and it causes him to have a definite, even unique, disposition, temperament, character. Now if the circumference of his soul is very large, the compass of his soul will be equally large—and he will provide us with a wonderful drama—the drama of a man who can create one character to-day, another to-morrow, and in so doing renew himself as a molder of personalities.

The moving picture, with its spontaneous creation, is a high grade and first-class measurer of temperament. The world has a plentiful supply of actors and actresses who can depict robbers and prostitutes of the lowest as well as of the highest classes of society. But the world has only a few, a very few artists, in whom a royal and proud, a fine and demure, a rich and colorful soul plays its part.

The suddenness with which these feelings must be conjured up demands rapidity of inspiration, an ever-ready excitability (the managers are well aware of this!), a pliability of mood, an unrestrained capacity to enter into the spirit of complete renunciation, compared with which the ability on the part of the regular stage actor to feel himself into his rôle is a calm and subdued sauntering about, a mere strolling through the mazes of the human heart. The film actor is not fired on to intense passion by the words of the poet; he has to kindle the potential flame within his heart by the fire that he himself strikes, and with the aid of such fuel as he himself can assemble for the purpose. But in doing all this, his faithful colleague, the manager, stands by his side, and his dare not be an unvibrant soul. The manager is duty bound to find words that will inspire even the most lethargic of film actors. The will power, one might say the will violence, of the best of managers is so strong that, guided by them, the actor plays as in a hypnotic state.

Without inspired and intelligent direction, the actual necessity of ensemble playing, and the necessities imposed by the desire for such playing are easily forgotten, with the result that lack of discipline dissipates the general effect, and such art as might have been revealed goes the way of all weakness. The reason for this safe assertion is patent: in the motion picture, the feelings burst forth from momentarily calm hearts. Unusual diligence must, consequently, be exercised in the working-up of emotions, in the emphasis that is to be laid on significant scenes and on climaxes.

For these nervous and sensitive people, the restraint of feelings is a distinct torture. The endless waiting in the hot and noisy glass house, the disturbing feature of the apparatus while the picture is being taken, the garish light which hurts the eye, the lamp which not infrequently explodes with the subsequent danger to such combustible paraphernalia as ball dress and wig, and the director, this disagreeable person who is always around, watching what is going on, interrupting here with a word of constructive criticism and there with a sentence of plain abuse—these are a few of the things that make the film actor’s life a hard one. And added to them must be the solemn fact that there is no public there to give wings to the actor’s soul. This being the case, an actually mad desire to create a character has got to come over and settle down upon the actor if he is to come into the right frame of mind. That he has got to be a man of perfect self-forgetfulness while surrounded by this hubbub of haste and confusion need not be stated.

The means at the disposal of the film actor is his body, which admits of unmeasured and unaccounted possibilities in the way of expressing emotions. It was only a few years ago that we learned that there is no condition of the soul for which the body does not have its appropriate and interpretative movement; and to-day we hardly have an inkling of the profound depths of the soul for which bodily agitations or affections may be found, and will be found, once the generations that are to come shall have learned the true significance of mimicry. In the future, mimicry must develop into an intimate and familiar language. In the dances of antiquity and in the pantomime of past centuries, the soul wrestled with the body, for it had already sensed its ability to speak through the body. But the spectators sat too far away, the ring of the gesture was drowned out by space, and the bodies had to shriek, as it were, in order to be understood. But a tender feeling can do nothing more than whisper, for it is averse to all that is loud. The soul gave up the struggle as hopeless; pantomime became petrified, or stereotyped, into the conventional ballet which has dragged its weary course through the centuries.