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THE ACTUAL
Nina Petrovna, Homecoming, and Asphalt. While it is admitted that studio architecture is absolutely necessary for certain incidental situations, which cannot be achieved on actual location (such as the creation of special streets and landscapes), nevertheless this artificiality is in opposition to the real aim of the cinema. Material that serves for filmic creation in the process of constructional editing has need to be the nearest approach to reality, if not reality itself.
The German film has contributed many valuable attributes to the cinema of the world. From the studio film there has been learnt the complete subordination of acting material, revealed so well in The Student of Prague; the pre-organisation of studio floor-work, including the composite set which allows for the taking of scenes in their correct sequence 1; the unification of light, setting, and acting material (the central part of Tar tuff e, and The Last Laugh); and the freedom of the camera as an instrument of expression, assuming the status of an observer and not of a spectator. The German cinema has taught discipline and organisation, without which no film can be produced as a unified whole.
The importance of the realisation of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari has already been dwelt upon at some length. To reiterate, it was the first significant attempt at the expression of a creative mind in the new medium of cinematography. It broke with realism on the screen; it suggested that a film, instead of being a reality, might be a possible reality; and it brought into play the mental psychology of the audience. There has been a tendency of late to look back with disdain at the theatrical character of Wiene's film. It has been objected' that The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, in its structural co-ordination of light, design, and players, in its cubist-expressionist architecture, was pure stage illustration. It needs but little intelligence to utter this profound criticism, but it must be realised that The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari was produced under extraordinary circumstances. It is simple to look back now and diagnose the crudities of Wiene's work, with the most recent progress of the Soviet film and the American 'compound' cinema fresh in mind, but in 1919 all theory of the cinema was extremely raw. It is only through such experiments as that of Wiene, Warning Shadows, The Street, and The Last Laugh, that advance has been at all possible. The narrow-minded cinejournalists of to-day blind themselves to the traditional development
1 See description, page 118, of composite set used in Hotel Imperial.
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