The soul of the moving picture

by Walter Julius Bloem

I appreciate the weakness that arises from the colorlessness of the film. Life itself is rich and variegated; it shines forth in colors of a thousand hues. The flowers are beautiful; the blush on the cheek of a lovely young woman is filled with magic charm. We can indeed at this stage only seriously regret that this diverting play of colors has thus far not been a gift out after which the film may reach. The film as we know it is without color.

But Heaven forbid that we should become unmindful of the austere fact that all arts have their weak points alongside of their strong ones. How we should like to hear the angels on the Altar of Ghent sing! How we should like to see the aurora of Michael Angelo broaden out the glorious body! The truth is, however, that the motion picture, even in its present imperfect state, gives us an abundance, indeed enough, of pleasurable sensations. For does it not depict the play of beautiful bodies, the wonders of the storm-tossed sea, of the wind-swept plain? Does it not show us the flying clouds and foaming waves? It does; and we can consequently endure, for the time being, its colorlessness and its imperfections with regard to space, especially since there is well-founded reason to believe that sooner or later the inventor will come forth and eliminate both of these defects.

I am aware of one advantage. The film is mute where life itself is rich and resounding. One would fancy then at first blush that this were a disgraceful weakness on the part of the film, one that must be removed at once if the film is to survive. We, however, detect a distinct advantage in the muteness of the film. Every art must have a basic and fundamental soil, so to speak, in which its particular species of flowers flourish. Poetry has the spoken word, painting has color, music has sounds, the plastic arts the rigid body. It is in these that each seeks and enjoys its originality—and originality is the sole ground on which art of any sort justifies its continued existence. Therefore, grant to the motion picture its mute play of moving bodies, for if you are unwilling to do this, you will doom the film to become merely a hackneyed, parrot-like imitation of the regular stage. But man is so constituted that he makes those inventions which he can make and not others, regardless always as to whether these inventions are beneficial to human kind or not; regardless as to whether they are of a beneficent or a malevolent nature. This proposition must be accepted, or it is impossible to account for the invention of the cannon. And so, in all probability quite soon, the speaking and resounding film will challenge the mute film to the arena. The outcome of the ensuing struggle is hard to predict. It is altogether probable that the film public will suddenly be brought to realize that the silent, speechless motion picture gives it more stimulation and more pleasure than the speaking film, for the latter will have nothing original about it. And it remains a solemn fact that the public always wants to see something original; it wants to be conducted straight to the visionary land of a colorful fancy where such adventures as men have never seen literally grow on the trees before them.

Let us wait then and see how the world receives the speaking film. If it accepts it, one of the most beautiful, and one of the most recent, messengers of peace known to the human family will have been lost. For the film speaks to-day the silent language of the emotions, that language which is understood by all peoples and races wherever they may live; it speaks the reconciliatory language of the human heart. We have all seen and felt Americans, Germans, Frenchmen, Jews, Chinese, and even Negroes play in the motion picture. They all spoke with the voice of brotherhood, and no one hated them.

Fig. 2. Scene from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

[See p. [77]]

The speechless silence of the film, however, is not altogether tolerable. The most taciturn of men speak a word at times, and the film dare not create the impression of total unnaturalness. The film is not pure pantomime. Misguided and obsessed theorists try every now and then to project a pantomime film on the screen, and every now and then these creations enjoy a measure of approbation on the part of the critical public. The characters of these scenarios are doomed men and women whose lips have been sealed. Their playing is often ungraceful and tortured, for there are not a few instances in human fate, as this is delineated on the screen, in which something must be said which cannot be said through the exclusive means of gestures. The subject matter of these pantomimic films has, without exception, been exceedingly primitive thus far. A marked case of such a film was the German picture entitled Scherben which, nota-bene, has also been shown in America. There is nothing left for the spectator to do other than to long in vain for at least a scrap of text which may serve to transform the unnaturalness of it all into a true picture.

It has been felt, indeed, everywhere that the film dare not be wholly speechless. Words there must be. There dare not, at the same time, be anything even approaching a perfect lack of consideration for the art that is being indulged in: we dare not forget that the prime feature of the film is its silence. We are willing to put up with colorlessness and an altogether inadequate depiction of space and perspective, but we become indignant when living and life-sized human beings converse with each other for a long while and in absolute silence. Again and again, and even in the best of motion pictures, we see the “soundless conversation.” It is a mad conception that was unknown until the moving picture was invented. People speak with each other, often in regular word duels, and we have only the vaguest idea as to what they are saying. To be a spectator at such a performance is to receive instruction that leads on to the hazy suspension of reason and to the merciless softening of the mind. With art, or with the “participation of the creative fancy of the spectator” it has nothing whatever to do. No text, and be it endless, can remove the impression that such a procedure is an anomaly.

It is still more dangerous to have people sing in the film. To see such a sweet flower of the human family as Mary Pickford, dressed in white and sitting at a concert piano, is to be sure a rare pleasure; at the sight of her, the eye gladly forgets the impatience of the ear. But there are films in which a tenor sings a wordy song that, in itself, is “linked sweetness long drawn out.” His breast heaves, his mouth opens like a barn door, all in the silence of the tomb! In such instances many a tried and valiant actor has played an involuntary Chapliniad.