We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
intimate fellow-traveller, as it were, in the realm of art, such as it had never been able theretofore to pick out.
Obviously, the motion picture of which I write here is not the mere unfolding of beautiful scenes any more than it is a direct rendering of the stage play on the screen. Nevertheless, within a certain group of critics today there are still those who, while admitting the fact that the motion picture is not a film version of the stage play, are none the less inclined to believe that it is a series of tableaux. Just as the dance is absolu¬ tely dependent upon music for its execution, so is music an essential part of the new films, particularly the “talkie”. Accordingly, the enormous possibilities of the motion picture do not lie merely in the interest which it can arouse through the unfolding ot a story on the screen, or in the strange wonders created by its multitudinous variations, or in its subtlety of exhibition. Irrespective of how cleverly these three elements are brought together and perfected, a motion picture that is lacking in musical fluidity is, at best, only a spiritless display of scenes.
As a matter of fact, there are many people who are under a similarly erroneous impression with regard to the dance. It is the belief, in fine, that the dance is a con¬ tinuous series of plastic exhibitions. By no means does the beauty of the dance consist in the rapid change from one plastic pose to another. It lies in the manifestation of rhyth¬ mic sparks that skip from one movement to another. Similarly, the beauty of the motion picture is conceived, not in the dissolving and merging of one scene into another, but in the rhythmic flow of reflections. Hence it follows that the relation of music to the mo¬ tion picture is closer by far than that existing between music and poetry, between music and the dance, or between music and the stage play.
Here I should like to elucidate the meaning of the term “music” as I have used it. It does not mean composed music. Consequently it is not the sort of semi-musical perform¬ ance common to motion pictures, nor yet the concert type which enlivens pictorial scenes or cover up their boresome interludes. Rather, it is that energy of musical expres¬ sion which flows in unison with our very existence. The harmony of sounds does not in itself constitute the whole range of the life of music. The rhythm which courses through a musical note possesses, in fact, a greater value. Just as loquaciousness brings on boredom, the mere iteration of musical tones only leads us to a state of confusion and languor. It is well to become acquainted with the innumerable masterworks of famous composers. One will then be able, perhaps, to realize how infinitely more important, indeed, is the power that lies in the beauty of soundlessness as compared with the beauty of sounds. A silent interval in music does not necessarily mean that its pulsating force has, in that instant, ceased to exist. It signifies that rhythm, which is the lifeblood of music, is cours¬ ing during this period of silence through a realm which it is beyond the capacity of the human ear to communicate with. Therefore, the music in motion pictures should not
37