The photoplay can not only "cut back" in the service of memories, but
it can cut off in the service of suggestion. Even if the police did not
demand that actual crimes and suicides should never be shown on the
screen, for mere artistic reasons it would be wiser to leave the climax
to the suggestion to which the whole scene has led. There is no need of
bringing the series of pictures to its logical end, because they are
pictures only and not the real objects. At any instant the man may
disappear from the scene, and no automobile can race over the ground so
rapidly that it cannot be stopped just as it is to crash into the
rushing express train. The horseback rider jumps into the abyss; we see
him fall, and yet at the moment when he crashes to the ground we are
already in the midst of a far distant scene. Again and again with
doubtful taste the sensuality of the nickel audiences has been stirred
up by suggestive pictures of a girl undressing, and when in the intimate
chamber the last garment was touched, the spectators were suddenly in
the marketplace among crowds of people or in a sailing vessel on the
river. The whole technique of the rapid changes of scenes which we have
recognized as so characteristic of the photoplay involves at every end
point elements of suggestion which to a certain degree link the separate
scenes as the afterimages link the separate pictures.
CHAPTER VI
EMOTIONS
To picture emotions must be the central aim of the photoplay. In the
drama words of wisdom may be spoken and we may listen to the
conversations with interest even if they have only intellectual and not
emotional character. But the actor whom we see on the screen can hold
our attention only by what he is doing and his actions gain meaning and
unity for us through the feelings and emotions which control them. More
than in the drama the persons in the photoplay are to us first of all
subjects of emotional experiences. Their joy and pain, their hope and
fear, their love and hate, their gratitude and envy, their sympathy and
malice, give meaning and value to the play. What are the chances of the
photoartist to bring these feelings to a convincing expression?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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