Dramatic suspense is not a whip which the poet swings over the heads of his characters. The fact is, one picture should not be made to tumble over another, following the command of “On, on and more of the same kind!” Being driven forward in this fashion can only result in what one instinctively feels is a pursued and persecuted, art, an hysterical art, and in externalities nothing can arise from it but the pouncy art of the criminal film. No, this is not suspense. Suspense is rather the calm, serene hand of the poet that guides the work he is creating. It is this that enables one to feel that the poet is leading his creation along past all potential hindrances straight to a premeditated goal. The man who is unable to cause to arise, through each picture that he presents, the question, what is going to happen next? is doomed to failure from the very outset. Provide him with the most glorious decoration imaginable and all his work will be in vain, and his decorations will vanish as thin air. In the Indisches Grabmal, the Prince led his English guest around for a quarter of an hour on the screen. The splendor of an Oriental temple, the half of a whole army, was conjured up and visualized—but there was no suspense. We smiled at the pomp of it, and remained perfectly cool and calm. If the people en masse cry for a gala scene in every other picture, well and good. Give it to them! It is your duty and your task. But do what lies in your power to animate even these scenes; try to make even these fit into the action, just as a powerful crescendo movement of the orchestra fits into the music that is being played. In the average film every group scene—parades, carnivals, mysteries—is a stop-gap of the action.
Suspense has nothing to do with decoration or scenery. The gigantic raging of gigantic battle scenes is very rarely a source of dramatic suspense. As a matter of fact, strategy is quite rarely effective in a film. Suspense is almost always concentrated in or around just a few individuals.
Fig. 21. Scene from The Nibelungs.
[See p. [91]]
That suspense which is produced through external, unpsychic means is generally pretty cheap. One runs for his life; ten are after him. Will he escape? If he can run faster than the ten, yes. If he can shoot into the whole group of his pursuers and locate his shots with efficiency, yes. But when this sort of means is resorted to, the motion picture degenerates into art, not for the masses, but for the rabble, in whom the basest of instincts are satisfied in the basest way.
The suspense of the motion picture does not wait for words, but for deeds. It depends upon changes that must come about and definitive results that must be achieved. And when such deeds are conditions upon the soul’s being shaken to its very depths, and when the outcome and goal are fixed by the feelings, then such suspense as the motion picture may properly indulge in has been achieved, and achieved in accordance with the laws of motion picture art.
For that species of suspense which proceeds from soul to soul quite without visible effect can hardly be attained by the motion picture. And yet, the tonic power, the ability of the spectator to undergo suspense, and to feel it, can hardly be overestimated. We have already become quite familiar with the mimic situation; we are now able to see and feel in the slightest movement the condition of the actor’s wishes. He lifts an eye, and we know what he wants. In the Bull of Olivera, Jannings played the rôle of a French general who deserts his passionately loved Spanish friend. He stands by the door with his hand already on the knob. His back is turned to the spectator; we can see his body quiver: “Shall I remain? Shall I go?” It was brilliant. And, truth to tell, that kind of brilliancy can be met with more frequently in the motion picture than we would be at first inclined to believe.
There was an altogether captivating moment of suspense in Schloss Vögelöd. It was entitled in the text “A Confession.” We saw a great spacious hall; it was deserted, except for two perfectly motionless human beings who were separated from each other by the width of the hall (Illustration No. 18). But such suspense, in which the most sensitive æsthete might take extreme delight, is not for the masses. For them it has to be laid on thick. The really clever motion picture actor will always make it a point “to bring something to a great many,” to use Goethe’s words. To the few he will offer a tension of refined nature and subtle explanation; to the many he will offer a tension that is sturdy, robust, plain as a pike-staff.
The poet handles his suspense in a calm way. With him, suspense is clarity in spiritual intoxication; it is the sculptor’s chisel marks of complete control. It is from it that force ensues and action acquires its sense of goal. Where there is no suspense there is a chaotic draining off of episodes that sink into the sand without leaving a trace.