the church used the pantomime for the portrayal of sacred history, and
later centuries enjoyed very unsacred histories in the pantomimes of
their ballets. Even complex artistic tragedies without words have
triumphed on our present-day stage. "L'Enfant Prodigue" which came from
Paris, "Sumurun" which came from Berlin, "Petroushka" which came from
Petrograd, conquered the American stage; and surely the loss of speech,
while it increased the remoteness from reality, by no means destroyed
the continuous consciousness of the bodily existence of the actors.
Moreover the student of a modern pantomime cannot overlook a
characteristic difference between the speechless performance on the
stage and that of the actors of a photoplay. The expression of the inner
states, the whole system of gestures, is decidedly different: and here
we might say that the photoplay stands nearer to life than the
pantomime. Of course, the photoplayer must somewhat exaggerate the
natural expression. The whole rhythm and intensity of his gestures must
be more marked than it would be with actors who accompany their
movements by spoken words and who express the meaning of their thoughts
and feelings by the content of what they say. Nevertheless the
photoplayer uses the regular channels of mental discharge. He acts
simply as a very emotional person might act. But the actor who plays in
a pantomime cannot be satisfied with that. He is expected to add
something which is entirely unnatural, namely a kind of artificial
demonstration of his emotions. He must not only behave like an angry
man, but he must behave like a man who is consciously interested in his
anger and wants to demonstrate it to others. He exhibits his emotions
for the spectators. He really acts theatrically for the benefit of the
bystanders. If he did not try to do so, his means of conveying a rich
story and a real conflict of human passions would be too meager. The
photoplayer, with the rapid changes of scenes, has other possibilities
of conveying his intentions. He must not yield to the temptation to play
a pantomime on the screen, or he will seriously injure the artistic
quality of the reel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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