For living, moving sculpture, the human eye requires a costume and a part
in unity with the meaning of that particular figure. There is the Greek
dress of Mordkin in the arrow dance. There is Annette's breast covering
of shells, and wonderful flowing mermaid hair, clothing her as the
midnight does the moon. The new costume freedom of the photoplay allows
such limitation of clothing as would be probable when one is honestly in
touch with wild nature and preoccupied with vigorous exercise. Thus the
cave-man and desert island narratives, though seldom well done, when
produced with verisimilitude, give an opportunity for the native human
frame in the logical wrappings of reeds and skins. But those who in a
silly hurry seek excuses, are generally merely ridiculous, like the
barefoot man who is terribly tender about walking on the pebbles, or the
wild man who is white as celery or grass under a board. There is no short
cut to vitality.
A successful literal use of sculpture is in the film Oil and Water.
Blanche Sweet is the leader of the play within a play which occupies the
first reel. Here the Olympians and the Muses, with a grace that we fancy
was Greek, lead a dance that traces the story of the spring, summer, and
autumn of life. Finally the supple dancers turn gray and old and die, but
not before they have given us a vision from the Ionian islands. The play
might have been inspired from reading Keats' Lamia, but is probably
derived from the work of Isadora Duncan. This chapter has hereafter only
a passing word or two on literal sculptural effects. It has more in mind
the carver's attitude toward all that passes before the eye.
The sculptor George Gray Barnard is responsible for none of the views in
this discourse, but he has talked to me at length about his sense of
discovery in watching the most ordinary motion pictures, and his delight
in following them with their endless combinations of masses and flowing
surfaces.
The little far-away people on the old-fashioned speaking stage do not
appeal to the plastic sense in this way. They are, by comparison, mere
bits of pasteboard with sweet voices, while, on the other hand, the
photoplay foreground is full of dumb giants. The bodies of these giants
are in high sculptural relief. Where the lights are quite glaring and the
photography is bad, many of the figures are as hard in their impact on
the eye as lime-white plaster-casts, no matter what the clothing. There
are several passages of this sort in the otherwise beautiful Enoch Arden,
where the shipwrecked sailor is depicted on his desert island in the
glaring sun.
What materials should the photoplay figures suggest? There are as many
possible materials as there are subjects for pictures and tone schemes
to be considered. But we will take for illustration wood, bronze, and
marble, since they have been used in the old sculptural art.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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