AN ARISTOTELIAN FRAGMENT
In the neighbourhood of Wardour Street, where the princes of the film hold their Court, a legislative code for film-making, a “Poetics” of the film, by somemaestro di color che sanno, has long been yearned for. If only, they say, if only themaestrohimself, the great Aristotle, had been alive to write it! After all, kinematograph is Greek, isn’t it? It seems to cry aloud, somehow, for its code by the great Greek authority. Well, they little knew what luck was in store for them!
To-day comes a startling piece of news from the East. A certain Major Ferdinand M. Pinto, O.B.E., R.E., whether on military duty or on furlough the report does not say, has been sojourning with the monks of Mount Porthos, and, in the most singular manner, has discovered in the possession of his hosts a precious treasure of which they were entirely ignorant. It was a Greek manuscript, and, as the Reverend Prior laughingly observed, it was Greek to them. It seems that—such is the licence of modern manners even in monasteries—the monks have lately taken to smoking, and to using what in lay circles are called “spills.” Now on the spillwhich the Major was lighting for his cigar there suddenly stared him in the face the words
ὥσπερ Ἀγάθων λέγει
ὥσπερ Ἀγάθων λέγει
ὥσπερ Ἀγάθων λέγει
ὥσπερ Ἀγάθων λέγει
and the name Agathon thrilled him with memories of a certain Oxford quad, with dear “old Strachan” annoying the Master by wondering why Agathon should have said anything so obvious as that “it is probable that many things should happen contrary to probability.” To examine the spill, all the spills collected, was the work of a moment. They proved, at a glance, to be an entirely unknown MS. of the “Poetics,” more complete even than the Parisian, and with new readings transcending even the acutest conjectures of Vahlen. But, greatest find of all, there was disclosed—though with unfortunatelacunæcaused by the monks’ cigars—an entirely new chapter inquiring into the structure of the Moving Picture Drama. Through the courtesy of the Pseudo-Hellenic Society I am favoured with a translation of this chapter, and a few passages, which seemed of more general interest, are here extracted.
“As we have said,” the MS. begins, “it is a question whether tragedy is to be judged in itself or in relation also to the audience. But it is another story (ἄλλος λόγος) with the moving pictures. For it is not clear whether they have an ‘itself’ at all, or, if they have, where this self is to be found, whether on the screen, or in the lens of the camera,or in the head of the photographic artist. Whereas there is no doubt (save in very inclement weather) about the audience. They are to be judged, then, solely in relation to the audience. And, for this reason, they do not resemble tragedy, whose action, we said, must be whole, consisting of a beginning, a middle, and an end. For the audience may arrive at the end of a picture play, and though, in due time, the beginning will come round again, the audience may not have the patience to wait for it. Some audiences prefer to arrive in the middle and to proceed to the end, and then to end with the beginning. By this means the general sense of confusion in human affairs is confirmed in the picture theatre, and in this sense, but only in this sense, the picture drama may be said to be, like tragedy, an imitation of life.
“Nor can it be said of picture drama, as it was of tragedy, that the element of plot is more important than the element of character. For here neither element is important. The important element now is motion. Any plot will serve the picture poet’s purpose (indeed most of them take them ready-made from those prose epics known as ‘shockers’), and any characters likewise (it will suffice if these be simplified types or ‘masks’). The essence of the matter is that all should be kept moving. And as moving objects are best seen to be moving when they are moving quickly, the picture poet will contrive that his horses shall always, as Homer says,devour the ground and his motor cars be ‘all out.’... Unity of plot—when there is a plot—does not, as some persons think, consist in the unity of the hero. It consists in the final dwelling together in unity of the hero and his bride. Final must be understood as posterior to the pursuit of the bride by other men, who may be either white or red. Red men are better, as more unbridled in their passions than white. As Æschylus first introduced a second actor in tragedy, so an American poet, whose name is too barbarous to be written in Greek, introduced the red man in picture drama....
“With regard to the hero and his bride, though their characters should, as in tragedy, be morally good (χρηστά), it is chiefly necessary that their persons should be kinematographically good or good on the film. For at every peripety of the action they must become suddenly enlarged by the device of the photographer, so that every furrow of the knitted brow and every twitch of the agitated mouth is shown as large as life, if not larger. It is, in fact, by this photographic enlargement that the critical turns of the action are marked and distinguished, in the absence of the tragic element of diction. Where the tragic actor talks big, the picture player looks big. Nevertheless, the element of diction is not entirely wanting. Sentences (which should comprise as many solecisms as possible) may be shown on the screen, descriptive of what the players are doing or saying. But the more skilfulplayers habitually say something else than what is thus imputed to them, thereby giving the audience the additional interest of conjecturing what they actually do say in place of what they ought to have said.
... “Picture poetry is a more philosophical and liberal thing than history; for history expresses the particular, but picture poetry the not too particular. The particular is, for example, what Alcibiades did or suffered. The not too particular is what Charlie Chaplin did or suffered. But the moving pictures do to some extent show actual happenings, in order to reassure people by nature incredulous. For what has not happened we do not at once feel sure to be possible; but what has happened is manifestly possible; otherwise it would not have happened. On the whole, however, as the tragic poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities, the picture poet should go, as Agathon says, one better, and aim at improbable impossibilities.”...