The photoplay; a psychological study (1916)

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THE PHOTOPLAY plastic things. Again the events are seen in continuous movement; and yet the pictures break up the movement into a rapid succes- sion of instantaneous impressions. We do not see the objective reality, but a product of our own miad which binds the pictures to- gether. But much stronger differences came to light when we turned to the processes of attention, of memory, of imagination, of suggestion, of division of interest and of emotion. The attention turns to detailed points in the outer world and ignores every- thing else: the photoplay is doing exactly this when in the close-up a detail is enlarged and everything else disappears. Memory breaks into present events by bringing up pictures of the past: the photoplay is doing this by its frequent cut-backs, when pictures of events long past flit between those of the present. The imagination anticipates the future or overcomes reality by fancies and dreams; the photoplay is doing all this more richly than any chance imagination would succeed in doing. But chiefly, through our division of interest our mind is drawn hither and thither. We think of events which run parallel in different places. The 172