INTRODUCTION
Theinfluence of the moving picture on the souls of the various peoples of the earth has become so great that an attitude of indifference toward this marvelous invention is no longer permissible. We see ourselves forced to take a definite stand for it or against it; we are obliged to line up as friend or foe of the film. It is, however, no longer sufficient to oppose the moving picture in a spirit of indulgent contempt or fanatic hostility. All the world knows that there are more bad moving pictures than good ones, and that the moral and aesthetic tendency of a great many films is of a quite negligible nature. But if the moving picture were in reality the offspring of the Devil, as many theologians and academic demi-gods the world over contend, thinking people would be at once confronted with this insoluble problem: How does it come that thousands upon thousands of human beings scattered over the earth are laboring, with intense resignation and passionate zeal, to the end that the film may be made more perfect artistically and cleaner from a purely moral point of view? The strivingafter money has naturally something to do with their efforts. To offer this, however, as a final explanation of this unusual situation would be an idle method of reasoning. You cannot explain the joy these men are taking in their creative efforts in this way, for their souls are in their work.
To many thinking people, the real nature of the moving picture is wrapped in mystery; it is a brilliant and enigmatic riddle to them. They recognize, though they fail to comprehend, the fact that the moving picture, despised without restraint and condemned on general principles only the other day, has won an incomparable victory over the hearts of men—a victory, too, that will be all the greater and more beautiful once the psychic and moral perfection of the moving picture has been accomplished.
The cultured man has an instinctive hatred of forces the significance of which lie beyond his grasp; he makes every conceivable effort to defend himself against them, to ward them off. But the people, the masses, throw themselves into the arms of such forces blindly and without question. The number of cultured men, however, who are going over to the camp of the moving picture—without thereby becoming disloyal to the other arts—is growing daily. Even those sworn andconfirmed skeptics who still look down upon the film from the heights of their intellectual superiority with superciliousness and contempt are bound to admit that there is something between the pictures which has a magic power to draw, which exercises an ineluctable influence in the gaining of recruits.
The moving picture is an art based on feeling, and not on thought. It has to do with the emotions rather than with the intellect. The man who goes to the moving picture wants to experience certain incidents, not by thinking about them, but by feeling them. Just as music arouses the feelings through tones, just so does the moving picture attempt to solve, not the riddle of the human brain, but of the human soul. A moving picture is afeeling expressed through gestures.
There is still much about this youthful art that is altogether misunderstood. Its real sources, the fountains of its life, are suspected, foreboded by only a few; nor are they recognized, when seen, by all. Nearly every visit to a motion picture theatre is a disappointment; the must of the grape is still carrying-on in a really absurd fashion.
The motion picture, however, is marching straight ahead in a course of unmistakable andwonderful development toward the heights of victory. And this development, this evolution, has to do not merely with the perfecting of the art itself, but with the enjoyment that is derivable and derived from the art. Our eyes are becoming keener in the detection of gestures and mimicry; our imaginations are growing sharper, even clairvoyant; they are rapidly becoming able to read the language of pictures and movement. When the motion picture was still in its infancy, its actors assumed and employed the shrill and tinny pathos of the pantomime. At that time, and it was not long ago, the lovely and mutely passionate world of gesture was unknown to us. We saw it, to be sure, in the dance, but we were still incapable of interpreting it. To-day we feel, detect, see some sort of inner vibration behind the slightest movement.
In the other arts, in the old and tried arts, those that have already been developed to a high stage of perfection, if not actually over-developed, progress, if made at all, must be made with the expenditure of tremendous effort; it must be wrung from the depths, as it were. In the moving picture, on the other hand, a thousand possibilities still lie quite on the surface, ready, indeed longing, for fulfilment. The great creator can think, feel, and dream new and novel featureswithout falling into despair at the thought of what has already been done. Becoming mindful of the past is not a painful occupation for him. Indeed, the motion picture may be compared to a starry heaven that stretches out before our upturned eyes, awaiting the creative ken of the celestial investigator.
Every attempt, however, of the exuberant creator, filled with the urge for deeds, to perform aesthetic experiments on the motion picture avenges itself; such experiments cannot be carried out with impunity. For the applause of a small circle of the elect is not going to prevent bankruptcy on the part of the film company that supports these experiments. Film art without economic success is quite unthinkable.
Germany, the land of theory, experienced a short while ago a veritable flood of aesthetic experiments in the domain of the moving picture. Of these, there was but one,The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which provided its creators with the satisfaction that comes from a pronounced success in foreign countries. And even in this case the success was due to the peculiarity of certain means that had heretofore never been seen on the screen. The American has too much appreciation of this world, and too little sense for the world beyond,to grow enthusiastic about phantoms or nebulous adventures. Nor is he weighed down with the traditions that reach back through centuries of time and constitute so much impedimenta on the part of European artists. And the Swede is too intimately associated with the mother-earth of his home ever to undertake a flight to the clouds through the medium of the motion picture. But the Swede and the German reached the point where they saw that you have got to speak a language, in the film, which can be understood by men wherever they chance to live.
A work, let it be ever so artistic and valuable in itself, which brings economic distress to the film company that produces it, harms indirectly the entire film business as an art. That film artist attains to the complete realization of his desires whose creations put money into the purse of the company; the one who does not do this fails in the end. The task of the film artist is always and ever: To effect a happy union between art and business. Moreover, this union must be brought about in such a way that both—art and business—flourish. The man who cannot do this merely drives the film companies on to the production of cheap and cheapening pictures which draw the masses and pay a reasonable dividend, but nothing more. For the film companies of thisearth are and remain, first of all, business concerns that must pay. Film art is expensive, and no gratuitous distributor of private funds is going to give one penny which will not bear him interest. If there be anyone so blind as not to be able to grasp this simple principle, he is unable to grasp the underlying principle of the motion picture as an art. To fail to recognize commercial success as the basic condition on which film art rests is to call down upon one’s head the irritation that ensues from ineffectual grumbling. Consequently, the much lauded redeemer of the film will be he, and he only, who can create what is at once of enduring artistic value and financial potentiality.
And every film will have this artistic and commercial success which glows with real passion because it has been wrung from powerful feeling. The art, the very soul of the motion picture, cherishes no desire for subtle, intellectual form or forms. It longs, indeed, for a soul form of elementary force.
This is true, for the unique though inexhaustible domain of the motion picture is the eternalfeelingsof man, the initial and primeval feelings that rise from out of thesensesand mount to thesoul. Love or hate, and the joy, sorrow, grief, hope, lamentation and good fortune that emanatefrom these two—it is with these that the film has to do. It has to do with nothing that comes rigidly from the intellect—or exclusively from the soul itself. In the moving picture everything becomes pale and colorless which is not born of the sensual emotions. Every art seeks its way to the soul. Sensuality1andsoul, that is the moving picture. There is only one eternal, immutable, and never-failing material for the film: it is the passion of the soul.
1There is no word that occurs more frequently in this book thansinnlich, or the noun derived from it,Sinnlichkeit. Throughout, the former is rendered by “sensual,” the latter by “sensuality.” Neither of these words has here the connotation that is ordinarily attached to it: “Sensual” means nothing more than relating to the senses; and “Sensuality” is the noun form and means nothing more than the composite result of our being “sensual.” We have, as a matter of fact, five “senses.” The German for “sense” isSinn. Consequently,sinnlichhas reference to our capacity for sensations, our sensibility. The words might have been translated in a variety of ways. I might have commandeered such terms as “sentient,” “sensory,” “susceptible to sense experiences,” and so on. Such variety would have been, probably, in the interest of seeming erudition, which leaves me cold, or in the interest of pedagogy which, so long as I remain normal, no man can ever persuade me to study.—Translator.
1There is no word that occurs more frequently in this book thansinnlich, or the noun derived from it,Sinnlichkeit. Throughout, the former is rendered by “sensual,” the latter by “sensuality.” Neither of these words has here the connotation that is ordinarily attached to it: “Sensual” means nothing more than relating to the senses; and “Sensuality” is the noun form and means nothing more than the composite result of our being “sensual.” We have, as a matter of fact, five “senses.” The German for “sense” isSinn. Consequently,sinnlichhas reference to our capacity for sensations, our sensibility. The words might have been translated in a variety of ways. I might have commandeered such terms as “sentient,” “sensory,” “susceptible to sense experiences,” and so on. Such variety would have been, probably, in the interest of seeming erudition, which leaves me cold, or in the interest of pedagogy which, so long as I remain normal, no man can ever persuade me to study.—Translator.
1There is no word that occurs more frequently in this book thansinnlich, or the noun derived from it,Sinnlichkeit. Throughout, the former is rendered by “sensual,” the latter by “sensuality.” Neither of these words has here the connotation that is ordinarily attached to it: “Sensual” means nothing more than relating to the senses; and “Sensuality” is the noun form and means nothing more than the composite result of our being “sensual.” We have, as a matter of fact, five “senses.” The German for “sense” isSinn. Consequently,sinnlichhas reference to our capacity for sensations, our sensibility. The words might have been translated in a variety of ways. I might have commandeered such terms as “sentient,” “sensory,” “susceptible to sense experiences,” and so on. Such variety would have been, probably, in the interest of seeming erudition, which leaves me cold, or in the interest of pedagogy which, so long as I remain normal, no man can ever persuade me to study.—Translator.
Thought and intellect are given an intelligent welcome by but very few people. Were it not for the herd and hypocrisy, poetry would be unread and the stage would be a temple of the lonely and isolated. Is Shakespeare or Goethe really understood by the masses?
The senescent stage is the counterpart of thegoal of our civilization, which is the thought that can be felt, the idea that can be filled with soul. It is for this reason that we have to-day, more than ever, thespiritual stage.
Art based on emotions is art for the masses. The youthful motion picture is the counterpart of the origin of our nature, which is the sensuality that can be felt and filled with soul. It is for this reason that we have to-day the sensual, the sensuous, moving picture.
There are limits to feelings. For we live in an age that demands crystal clarity and coy niceness. The limp, flabby and effeminate we dislike. No age was less naïve than ours, and yet none was less sentimental.
The motion picture is art for the masses; it is mass art. Sectarianism, chilly aestheticism, attempts at escape from inadequate culture—these are not known to the motion picture. Art for the masses, art for the money. That is the entire story. But does art for the masses mean art such as the masses themselves would create? Rabble art? The film in which the plebeian soul alone takes interest and from which it derives pleasure is not a good film. Nor is that a good film which is understood only by the aesthetic soul. To be good, satisfactory, excellent, a film must carry along with it and enrapture all, those whosehearts are simple and those whose hearts are intricate, complex, full of intertwined sensations. To do this is hard. If and when done, it is done through the medium of great art.
This book was written by a man who writes scenarios. It is not beyond reason to believe that such a book could have been written only in Germany, where one, in matters of art, not infrequently forgets the action out of an all-absorbing interest in meditation. It arose from an inner desire, from an inner exertion: I wished to become clear, for the benefit of my own manuscripts and using them as a basis, as to how a film should be constructed so that art and profit, which are inseparable in this field, might get along with each other; might endure mutual juxtaposition. And I wished to give other people the benefit of my views.
I have devoted my attention mainly to those motion pictures that have been most readily accessible to my fellow-countrymen and, to me. In other words, I have discussed German films. The time at which my wounded and bleeding country will again take its place among the happy and prosperous nations of the earth is still remote. Moreover, it is only in rare instances that the best films of foreign lands are shown in our theaters.The taste, however, in the matter of the moving picture is virtually the same among white people the world over, and we are all striving, even competing, for the identical goal—to please.
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 of1923.