The soul of the moving picture

by Walter Julius Bloem

And every film will have this artistic and commercial success which glows with real passion because it has been wrung from powerful feeling. The art, the very soul of the motion picture, cherishes no desire for subtle, intellectual form or forms. It longs, indeed, for a soul form of elementary force.

This is true, for the unique though inexhaustible domain of the motion picture is the eternal feelings of man, the initial and primeval feelings that rise from out of the senses and mount to the soul. Love or hate, and the joy, sorrow, grief, hope, lamentation and good fortune that emanate from these two—it is with these that the film has to do. It has to do with nothing that comes rigidly from the intellect—or exclusively from the soul itself. In the moving picture everything becomes pale and colorless which is not born of the sensual emotions. Every art seeks its way to the soul. Sensuality[1] and soul, that is the moving picture. There is only one eternal, immutable, and never-failing material for the film: it is the passion of the soul.

[1] There is no word that occurs more frequently in this book than sinnlich, or the noun derived from it, Sinnlichkeit. Throughout, the former is rendered by “sensual,” the latter by “sensuality.” Neither of these words has here the connotation that is ordinarily attached to it: “Sensual” means nothing more than relating to the senses; and “Sensuality” is the noun form and means nothing more than the composite result of our being “sensual.” We have, as a matter of fact, five “senses.” The German for “sense” is Sinn. Consequently, sinnlich has reference to our capacity for sensations, our sensibility. The words might have been translated in a variety of ways. I might have commandeered such terms as “sentient,” “sensory,” “susceptible to sense experiences,” and so on. Such variety would have been, probably, in the interest of seeming erudition, which leaves me cold, or in the interest of pedagogy which, so long as I remain normal, no man can ever persuade me to study. —Translator.

Thought and intellect are given an intelligent welcome by but very few people. Were it not for the herd and hypocrisy, poetry would be unread and the stage would be a temple of the lonely and isolated. Is Shakespeare or Goethe really understood by the masses?

The senescent stage is the counterpart of the goal of our civilization, which is the thought that can be felt, the idea that can be filled with soul. It is for this reason that we have to-day, more than ever, the spiritual stage.

Art based on emotions is art for the masses. The youthful motion picture is the counterpart of the origin of our nature, which is the sensuality that can be felt and filled with soul. It is for this reason that we have to-day the sensual, the sensuous, moving picture.

There are limits to feelings. For we live in an age that demands crystal clarity and coy niceness. The limp, flabby and effeminate we dislike. No age was less naïve than ours, and yet none was less sentimental.

The motion picture is art for the masses; it is mass art. Sectarianism, chilly aestheticism, attempts at escape from inadequate culture—these are not known to the motion picture. Art for the masses, art for the money. That is the entire story. But does art for the masses mean art such as the masses themselves would create? Rabble art? The film in which the plebeian soul alone takes interest and from which it derives pleasure is not a good film. Nor is that a good film which is understood only by the aesthetic soul. To be good, satisfactory, excellent, a film must carry along with it and enrapture all, those whose hearts are simple and those whose hearts are intricate, complex, full of intertwined sensations. To do this is hard. If and when done, it is done through the medium of great art.

This book was written by a man who writes scenarios. It is not beyond reason to believe that such a book could have been written only in Germany, where one, in matters of art, not infrequently forgets the action out of an all-absorbing interest in meditation. It arose from an inner desire, from an inner exertion: I wished to become clear, for the benefit of my own manuscripts and using them as a basis, as to how a film should be constructed so that art and profit, which are inseparable in this field, might get along with each other; might endure mutual juxtaposition. And I wished to give other people the benefit of my views.

I have devoted my attention mainly to those motion pictures that have been most readily accessible to my fellow-countrymen and, to me. In other words, I have discussed German films. The time at which my wounded and bleeding country will again take its place among the happy and prosperous nations of the earth is still remote. Moreover, it is only in rare instances that the best films of foreign lands are shown in our theaters. The taste, however, in the matter of the moving picture is virtually the same among white people the world over, and we are all striving, even competing, for the identical goal—to please.