Cinema Quarterly (1933 - 1934)

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FILM AND RADIO RUDOLF ARNHEIM Author of " Film '* The last century seems to have produced an inflation of new branches of art. We are used to the idea that art is of the same venerable age as mankind. The beginnings of the dance, music, poetry, theatre and arts are veiled in the mist of a far-distant past. But glance at the last century. In 1830, photography was created; in 1920, radio; in 1930, sound-film. Are these all new arts? If one examines the technique with which these new branches of art take effect, one discovers that, in spite of all the diversity of the technical apparatus and results, there is a surprising uniformity. One feels tempted to speak of subdivisions in an entirely new branch of art, which might be called reproductive art. This new art is not fundamentally different from other branches of art. There is a difference between the harmony of colours and the harmony of music ; so is there a difference between the expressions of reproductive art and those of all other branches of art. What is characteristic in reproductive art? It is the reproduction of reality. It is like the model taking the painter's brush, when the rays of light make impressions of light and dark; when the sound waves draw their lines on a waxen plate or on a strip of film. We know that this is not merely a process of mechanical reproduction comparable to a technical process such as printing, which has nothing to do with the creative activity of an artistic human mind. Reproductive art requires creative genius. The fact that reality can copy itself is only a hint to us that we should search for the characteristics of the new art; its strength lies in the fact that it does cop}", especially from a selected point of observation and with a selected choice of subjects. Camera and microphone permit us to retain the perceptions of our most important senses through the eye and the ear; and to transmit these perceptions through space and time. Photography and silent film leave out the auditory element. Radio and gramophone leave out the visual element. Sound-film combines both factors. Visual perception is far more complete and true to nature than auditory perception and, in consequence, the visual branches of reproductive art (photography and film) are closer to reality than the auditory branches, which command only part of the senses and are therefore limited in their means, at least as far as thev try to express the position of sound in space and time. This 84