The soul of the moving picture

by Walter Julius Bloem

[See p. [79]]

Long before the moving picture was a reality, there was an art of dumb, mute, moving bodies which achieved its ends through crude and, viewed from the present point of view, distinctly laughable method of procedure. I have reference to the pantomime. We see that such forms as the Pantomime has thus far employed, such devices as it has thus far called to its aid, have by no means exhausted its artistic possibilities. The mimic action, or incident, was laid at such a great distance from the spectator that the finer values of the enterprise failed of their real significance; they could not, in truth, be applied. The pantomimic actor—even much more so than is the case with the actor on the stage of the spoken drama when he is obliged to depend upon gestures for his effects—saw himself forced into an excess of pathos with which it was quite impossible for his soul to keep pace. We felt such acting was affected; we dubbed it “hollow, theatrical pathos.”

In order to make its mimic expression more refined, which means more artistic, pantomime called music to its aid, and music is an art of feeling. It thereby ceased to be real pantomime (that is, a pan or an “all” affair), especially in connection with the accompanying song, the canticum. In other words, the hitherto existing forms of pantomime have proved to be inadequate and unsatisfactory as agents of transmission between the contents of the art they are supposed to represent and the spectators who are supposed to enjoy the representation.

Then came the film. Anything that had previously been lost in the distance, anything in the way of tender emotions and delicate feelings that the spacious room of the theatre had swallowed up, is now caught up by the lens of the film. A symphony of humanity can be made to vibrate in the play of a nervous hand, a chaos of opposing forces can be visualized with an equally small display of effort. What art had ever before been able to do justice to the animated and “living” hand? What other phase of art had been able to catch, hold, and delineate the twitching corners of the mouth?

It was not until the film had been brought to its present state of perfection that there came forth from the pantomime this new and exalted art, the art of expressing feelings through gesticulation. The inexpressible, the unspeakable, that regarding which even poetry itself can do no more than merely touch or indicate, has been taken up by the film and made a reality in the sphere of art. Even years ago, the great German actor Bassermann played, in the moving picture, a scene in which the transition from unmarred joy to unrelieved grief was expressed in his well-nigh immovable face. Where was such an accomplishment possible before the invention of the film? On the legitimate stage? In the pantomime?

The exploitation of the much-abused Grossaufnahme (enlarged photograph or close-up) is, of course, perfectly justified when it is a question of portraying intensified feelings, provided the exposure be taken with becoming caution. But it has meaning—that is, it is to be applied then and only then when feelings are to be expressed which, in actual life, are revealed gently. The close-up is out of place in caricatures and facial distortions; it is intended solely for the more tender emotions; gruff or even indifferent feelings cannot be reproduced with its aid.

It is a matter of congratulation that the tendency in recent years, not merely in Europe but also in America, has been away from the old method of breaking up each individual scene into a half dozen close-ups. There is, moreover, a certain definite standard with regard to this kind of pictures beyond which it is impossible to go with impunity. When, for example, a single head or face is detached from its pictural connection and made to fill the entire surface of the canvas, the effect is disagreeable, the impression unsympathetic.

Thus we see that the pantomimic possibilities are fulfilled, through the aid of the motion picture, up to that very point beyond which these possibilities no longer exist. The significance of this is manifest: it is only with the aid of the motion picture that the very possibilities in the way of the animated, or moving, body can be visualized and exhausted. This in turn proves that the film was necessary—that as a novel and perfect form of expression of the human soul it is to be reckoned as an art of the arts, and among the other arts, without hesitation or mental reservation. The gramophone is also a technical invention; but we shall never be able to list it among the arts because it was not necessary as an aid to music. All that it does is to carry what it receives farther along and in an unchanged condition, just like the waves of the radio station. The gramophone does not bestow a deeper possibility of expression on the sound it reproduces. The motion picture is a qualitative gain for art; the gramophone is merely a quantitative gain.

But, the people say, the film has its weak points: It is colorless; it shows a flat surface and not a well-rounded fullness; it is mute. I detect at once two disadvantages and one advantage.

I am aware of the weakness that arises from the fact that the film reproduces flat surfaces. Life itself is rich and round, bodies move about in pliable fullness, there are such things as propinquity and remoteness; some things are near, others afar off. The film brings out all of this only in an imperfect way; indeed to a certain degree these concepts and realities are distorted by the film. There was a desire to transform this defect into an advantage, and the shadow picture, as well as the etched and colored film, was the result. Each was rather attractive, neat, even winsome; but in the framework of our art they were altogether without real significance. For the strongest impression of the motion picture is and remains the play of real human beings; and we cannot expand or contract our moving picture people just before they begin to play, and just so that they may have the right “size.” Let us rather be content with longing for the inventor who will present us with the plastic film.