The photoplay; a psychological study (1916)

Record Details:

Title:
The photoplay; a psychological study
Date:
1916
Publisher:
New York [etc.] D. Appleton and company
Volume:
The photoplay; a psychological study
Leaf #:
000146
Language:
English
Collection:
Books
Format:
Books
Contributor:
Cornell University Library
Sponsor:
MSN
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
Date Added:
July 19, 2022
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THE PURPOSE OF ART have sufficient material on hand to form an esthetic judgment. The verdict, it appears, can hardly be doubtful. Must we not say art is imitation of nature? The drama can show us on the stage a true imitation of real life. The scenes proceed just as they would hap- pen anywhere in the outer world. Men of flesh and blood with really plastic bodies stand bef orie us. They move like any moving body in our surroundings. Moreover those happenings on the stage, just like the events in life, are independent of our subjective at- tention and memory and imagination. They go their objective course. Thus the theater comes so near to its purpose of imitating the world of men that the comparison with the photoplay suggests almost a disastrous fail- ure of the art of the film. The color of the world has disappeared, the persons are dumb, no sound reaches our ear. The depth of the scene appears unreal, the motion has lost its natural character. Worst of all, the objective course of events is falsified; our own atten- tion and memory and imagination have shift- ed and remodeled the events until they look as nature could never show them. What we really see can hardly be called any longer an 137