The art of sound pictures (1930)

102 THE ART OF SOUND PICTURES emotions and their portrayal. Just now, let us sum up the simpler facts about character and the characteristic acts in which the emotions arise. The ordinary man is interested in the emotional side of human nature far more than in character, as such. But he knows he can appreciate the emotions most thoroughly only when he beholds them arising in their natural setting. We mean by this nothing profound, but rather the simplest of things: you, a spectator in the theater, are not interested in mere rage, as a detached emotion, but you are interested in a man who flies into a rage as a result of his wife smiling at an old flame of hers in the theater. Fear, as a biological phenomenon, scarcely grips you; but would you not enjoy the spectacle of a woman stricken with terror at the sight of a man who once had threatened to slay her because she rejected him as a suitor? Emotions have no existence or meaning apart from men and women who face situations and struggle in them. They are only a phase of personality, nothing more. But they happen to be the one phase which is most intimately bound up with pleasure, both in the presented character and in the movie spectator. Hence, the stress we place upon them. A WHY THE WRITER DEALS WITH CHARACTER TRAITS MORE THAN WITH TOTAL PERSONALITY Were the author of a sound picture allowed unlimited time (and expense) for the presenting of his story, he would occasionally take a year or two off to describe complete personalities in action. To do this he might require fifty reels, if not a hundred. For personalities, even the