I am quite mindful of the fact that a purely theoretical discussion has its limitations in value. Every personal opinion is one-sided, and no sooner has the connoisseur found his way than he throws the views of others overboard and proceeds on his course just as if he had never heard of them. Nevertheless, the motion film of all lands, whether it be American or European, makes its appeal to human beings every one of whom has two eyes in his head and a heart in his breast. Nor is this all. Every individual man, wherever he may chance to live or whatever his origin may be, has one fundamental ambition, one basic goal: joy, beauty, adventure. Perhaps I have succeeded in saying a few things regarding the general nature of the motion picture which may be helpful by way of showing how a successful picture is built up and produced. If I may be permitted to do so, I should like to express the hope that I have made a few suggestions of enduring value, even and also to those across the Atlantic. Nor is it judicious to overlook the fact that an idea is by no means worthless when it incites to contradiction or refutal.
The smallest creation is more valuable than the most beautiful book of discussion. It is always permissible, however, to form certain ideas regarding one’s own creations, and to discuss these ideas in a theoretical way. The one point to be kept in mind in this connection is, that we must never regard such discussion as the formulation of definitive and irrefutable opinions; a treatise of this kind dare not lay down an inelastic law for the film of the future. Limitations dare not be placed on the free creative ability of the mind and the soul. A real creator can break the chains of theory easily and without notice. For him there is but one rule that always holds: Do your work well, and then you need not pay the slightest attention to the law as this is handed down.
W. S. B.
Burg Rienick.
In the Summer of 1923.
The Soul of the Moving Picture
CHAPTER I
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
The special characteristic of a fool is that he always tries to do the thing for which he is not qualified. Art likewise commits a grievous folly when it attempts something for which it is not fitted; when it fails to undertake what it alone can accomplish. For this specific accomplishment on its part is, as a matter of necessity, expected of it. Whether this expectation be entertained consciously or instinctively is beside the point.—Walter Harlan.
The moving picture is scarcely twenty-five years old. Born of a matchless technical invention, it demands to-day, with the unrelieved arrogance of the proverbial upstart, complete recognition in the society of the arts There, in the company of the established arts, it finds illustrious companions each of whom looks back upon a proud tradition of hundreds and hundreds of years. The old arts, however, are reluctant about admitting the moving picture to their family. And, truth to tell, the film is bound to admit that its nursery was not as it should have been; for filthy hands taught it to walk.
No man of intelligence refused to pay due honor, indeed to express his vigorous admiration for, the invention of the moving picture and the talking machine. The moment, however, that these two creations of technical science asked to be regarded as means to a new and real art, this honor and this admiration were at once driven from the field by a frigid rejection. The masses, to be sure, sicklied over in no way with a pale cast of thought, conducted themselves differently: they forsook Olympus then and there and rushed with jubilant hearts into the temples of the new “art.”
The film had arrived. The scholar refused to recognize it; he closed his doors against it. It was impossible, however, for him to prevent its spread over the entire earth. Owing to the very fact, that intellect could at first not be persuaded to take a sympathetic interest in the film, the film went on its way and became, quite naturally, the tool of ignorance if not of imbecility. To its initial champions any such concept as cultured civilization was unknown. Their sole objective was to transform the novel device into jingling guineas, and to do it as quickly as possible.