The soul of the moving picture

by Walter Julius Bloem

The motion picture actor, who thoroughly understands his business, guarantees to his art the befitting title of “Dramatic.” It is a title of honor, and will be bestowed when won. In the matter of technical composition and artistic development, the stage and the screen follow the identical course. But from the point of view of significance, they are widely divergent arts. The value of each to, and the effect of each on, striving humanity is poles removed, the one from the other.

Let us repeat—the film is not an art of the intellect but of the soul. It does not serve ideas; it serves feelings. The greatness of the stage actor lies in and is measured by the circle of his thoughts. The greatness of the film actor lies in and is measured by the warmth and depth of his heart, and by the gracious power through which he seizes the spectator and convulses his soul.

The stage actor transforms the cool intellect into warmth. He who, in his own world, is a superman of the spiritual soul carries us along with him; we cannot resist him. The film actor transforms close and sultry sensuality into warmth. He who, in his own world, is a superman of the sensual soul finds his way to our hearts; we cannot resist him.

From such glowing action as is incorporated in Madame Recamier, or The Orphan, or Honour Thy Mother! or the Nibelungs, there is but one moral to be drawn, and that is the moral of the feeling that is as strong as the greatest organ of the greatest cathedral and as impressive. From such motion pictures it is quite impossible to concoct a purely intellectual extract. But it may be that the moral of the great soul represents and signifies the highest morality of all art, and that any other or further symbolism is nothing more than a mantle that wraps itself about this kernel.

Many of our modern and contemporary art critics suffer from an overestimation of the value and significance of thought qua thought. But the rigidly intellectual has just as little to do with real art as has the purely sensual, and it is not until both have been baptised, dipped deep indeed, into the warm depths of feeling that arises which we call art. And neither the intellectual nor the sensual can be set up as a standard by which to weigh art and determine its ultimate value. It is the psychic power of expression that passes enduring judgment on the creations of the artist.

Is there not something in music that concerns us all, that is a symbolic incarnation of our life of feeling, but which no thought of ours is strong enough to capture on the wing? All the riddles of our soul—call them Happiness, Heart, Love, God, or what you will, are solved in and through our feelings. It is our feelings that make us familiar with them, and intimate part of ourselves. They mock at the mind; they deride the intellect, which can do nothing more than brood in hopelessness, whereas the soul blindly resigns and thus comes to understand.

Thus it is that music is the eternal soul, the symbol of all souls—of the unthinkable, the indescribable, the unspeakable. From the voices of the violin, the bass viol and the flute there breathes but one thing—the soul.

We do not feel entirely familiar with the figures of the motion picture; the Tua res agitur rings out, as yet, only faintly and rarely reaches our ears. But this whole art is so elementary, and is so capable of reflecting the unthinkable fineness of the feelings, that one thing is certain: the time will come when we will be in appreciative accord with the most perfect figures of the motion picture. The union between them and us will be happy, and it will be perfect.

The legitimate stage represents a defection from sensuality, and a hopeless brooding over the eternal riddles of life. But viewed in the proper light, a defection from sensuality may be a striving after the wish-figures of the motion picture—a home-coming to the soul, a deep baptism in the mysterious fullness of the human breast. Just how high the motion picture will rise, the extent to which it may succeed in going, no man knows. But it will reach the soul. Music originated from sensuality—from a union of rhythm and euphony. Music, too, has a sensual soul the very psychic power of which burns away all sensuality.

To place relative estimates on the value of each of the arts is an irrational undertaking. On the flowery tree of humanity each art has its mysterious meaning—over which we should not brood: cold intellect cannot solve such problems as are associated with this indubitable fact.