The new spirit in the cinema (1930)

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HISTORY OF THE MACHINE 25 trick picture of a journey to the moon. Trick pictures were in vogue in 1905. In time the youthful trick photography grew up and was handed on to the Germans who since 1922 have demonstrated to their own satisfaction if to no one else's, that there are more things in the little box with an eye than are dreamed of in our aesthetic. Rooms appear constructed at strange angles to one another to make interesting shots which ordinarily are not found in houses, broken floor and ceiling levels are seen making changes in light and shade. Ramps, instead of the stairways, give approach to upper floors.1 Tall windows, the ingenious use of spotlights and other devices, serve to produce an illusion of movement. Cinema movement has then become hopelessly confused with illusion of movement. Properly speaking illusion of movement does not come within the legitimate sphere of the Cinema. It is a small region bordering upon that sphere. Owing to misconception it has come to encroach upon and now threatens to dominate it. By this I mean that under the name of Art of the Cinema likeness, which is the object of the camera, is being superseded by unlikeness which, unless checked, will do as much harm to the Cinema as the Art of the Theatre has done to the Theatre by substituting stage aesthetic for a living form of drama, drama that is, that expresses the memory and aspiration of the people as a whole. What is the legitimate sphere of cinema movement? It is important to answer this question. Rightly conceived it covers four regions: — actuality; phantasy; fantasy; and a combination of actuality and fantasy. Of the first kind, which includes a multitude of pictures composed of objects bearing the likeness of actual ones, are such pictures as the early current events one-reel ers, and the two and three and five and six reelers that followed when the Cinema began to find its way about the world persuading the camera to snap-shot whatever came in its way. Then there 1 See The Daily Express, September 6, 1928.