The soul of the moving picture

by Walter Julius Bloem

The settings of the following pictures are of a remarkably impressive and artistic power. They give visual evidence of an elaborate style, the chief concern of which is suitability. It is a style which, thanks to the sketchy means of the wings, reproduces the decisive line without becoming lost in ornamental set-off and too much ramification. Illustration No. 17, a quite unostentatious setting, shows, with unreserved fidelity to life, a house wing of plain compactness, and of an unusually modest atmosphere, which encompasses the action and aids in its effective visualization.

The scenery in Illustration No. 18—the picture is from Vögelöd—is inimitable. The loneliness and desertion of the two people is seemingly in the act of beginning to strike up a deep note, just as if one were to draw the bow across the bass string of a violin.

This is the kind of reserved and unobtrusive clarity of lines that has got to be practiced if we are to solve the problem of film decoration in a successful way. Such practice absorbs and assimilates the fundamental elements of all styles and tones them down into one grandiose picture—such as Illustration No. 19. It leads one out beyond the narrow confines of the atelier and on to piles of human occupancy in the open air, creations of the architect’s mind which make no attempt at a microcosmic delineation of details; it has the whole, the entity, rather tower up before us, in microcosmic fashion, and uses to this end, not the pebbles of excessive embellishment, but the huge square stones of all great buildings. Instances of such are Illustrations Nos. 20 and 21.

It must be conceded that settings, if strenuously composed, as we have indicated, call for a certain simplicity in the matter of photography, a simplicity the strict observance of which necessitates the taking of the photographs at a considerable distance and from obvious points of vantage. For it is clear that it is impossible to get a picture of such objects at any or every angle. Such strong compositions are practicable only in the films that have to do with heroic subjects. We may lay it down as a general rule that a heavy composition, because of its heavy arches, can easily become disadvantageous to the lines. The quiet, peaceful day of rest in Illustration No. 21 is beautiful.

But it is not merely setting that must be made with due regard for the effectiveness of the film for which it is intended; the costume that the actor wears must also be given discriminating attention. We want a replica of reality; this goes without saying. But wherever the reality is unattractive, or characterized, to be specific, by a bewildering fullness of lines, then it is that we need probability—or better still, verisimilitude. To play some great episode in the same costume in which it originally took place is in itself a noble idea. But it means nothing to the film to place the costumes of that time, glittering with color and bedizened with all manner of spangles and buckles, before the, after all, color-blind eye of the camera. The big, balloon-like costumes of the Renaissance, the Italian as well as the German, make a rather poor picture of unknown colors and indifferent lines. To take a picture of this kind and do it effectively requires an artist who is cautious in his exploitation of all things stylistic, modest in his desire to display his inventive power, and trained in the art school of experience. We may say, in general, that there is no single costume of any age or all ages that is entirely effective on the screen. It is a serious fact that cannot be lost sight of that, in this domain of the moving picture, the effects we so ardently strive after depend not so much on genuineness as on the appearance of genuineness. Take the frontispiece. What a splendid clarity and lucidity of line! But the costumes of those times were like the ones that constitute the glory of this picture only in general proportions and outlines.

And thus it comes about—just as in the most exalted works of art of all ages—that each individual part serves the whole, and there is none of that greediness for isolated triumph that results, if unleashed, in a dazzling and distracting display of the arts of the virtuoso.

Our film world is a business affair, but every sane man is willing and eager to let the grand ideas of real art have the fullest possible play—provided these ideas are effective and imbued with sufficient life to work in harmony with our business interests.

The motion picture is art for the masses; there is not a shred of use to try to deny this, or to evade the conditions that this unpliable fact necessitates. Such decoration as it calls to its aid must, consequently, be of such simple, even primitive, impressiveness that its place in the motion picture becomes at once clear even to the untrained and obtuse eye. It is injudicious to launch out on any artistic enterprise which cannot be felt and appreciated by the masses. Such æsthetic hardiness as characterized Dr. Caligari, with its voguish art forms, can never be regarded as more than an unusual attempt which took the masses by surprise. Let that kind of moving picture become the rule rather than the exception, and the people who have hitherto flocked to the motion picture will fail to re-enter it and, bent on entertainment of some kind, they will betake themselves to the kino—to those narrow, moldy pits in which the canvases that are displayed consist of a spiced and peppery potpourri that is especially concocted to seduce the eye—canvases that are born of low but intense avidity, and which are given to such children of men as are most easily moved by the same impulse.

CHAPTER VI
THE POET

I will praise the sons of Atreus,