The photoplay; a psychological study (1916)

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THE PHOTOPLAY with the conscious awareness of the emotion expressed; we feel as if we were directly see- ing and observing the emotion itself. More- over the idea awakens in us the appropriate reactions. The horror which we see makes us really shrink, the happiness which we witness makes us relax, the pain which we observe brings contractions in our muscles; and all the resulting sensations from muscles, joiats, tendons, from skin and viscera, from blood circulation and breathing, give the color of living experience to the emotional reflection in our mind. It is obvious that for this lead- ing group of emotions the relation of the pic- tures to the feelings of the persons in the play and to the feelings of the spectator is exactly the same. If we start from the emotions of the audience, we can say that the pain and the joy which the spectator feels are really projected to the screen, projected both into the portraits of the persons and into the pictures of the scenery and background into which the personal emotions radiate. The fundamental principle which we recog- nized for all the other mental states is accord- ingly no less efficient in the case of the specta- tor's emotions. 124