Here is a scene of storm and stress in an office where the hero is caught
with seemingly incriminating papers. The table is in confusion. The room
is filling with people, led by one accusing woman. Is this also
sculpture? Yes. The figures are in high relief. Even the surfaces of the
chairs and the littered table are massive, and the eye travels without
weariness, as it should do in sculpture, from the hero to the furious
woman, then to the attorney behind her, then to the two other revilers,
then to the crowd in three loose rhythmic ranks. The eye makes this
journey, not from space to space, or fabric to fabric, but first of all
from mass to mass. It is sculpture, but it is the sort that can be done
in no medium but the moving picture itself, and therefore it is one goal
of this argument.
But there are several other goals. One of the sculpturesque resources of
the photoplay is that the human countenance can be magnified many times,
till it fills the entire screen. Some examples are in rather low relief,
portraits approximating certain painters. But if they are on sculptural
terms, and are studies of the faces of thinking men, let the producer
make a pilgrimage to Washington for his precedent. There, in the rotunda
of the capitol, is the face of Lincoln by Gutzon Borglum. It is one of
the eminently successful attempts to get at the secret of the countenance
by enlarging it much, and concentrating the whole consideration there.
The photoplay producer, seemingly without taking thought, is apt to show
a sculptural sense in giving us Newfoundland fishermen, clad in oilskins.
The background may have an unconscious Winslow Homer reminiscence. In the
foreground our hardy heroes fill the screen, and dripping with sea-water
become wave-beaten granite, yet living creatures none the less. Imagine
some one chapter from the story of Little Em'ly in David Copperfield,
retold in the films. Show us Ham Peggotty and old Mr. Peggotty in
colloquy over their nets. There are many powerful bronze groups to be had
from these two, on to the heroic and unselfish death of Ham, rescuing his
enemy in storm and lightning.
I have seen one rich picture of alleged cannibal tribes. It was a comedy
about a missionary. But the aborigines were like living ebony and silver.
That was long ago. Such things come too much by accident. The producer is
not sufficiently aware that any artistic element in his list of
productions that is allowed to go wild, that has not had full analysis,
reanalysis, and final conservation, wastes his chance to attain supreme
mastery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account