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44 THE NEW SPIRIT IN THE CINEMA
to a low and degraded use? By this, I mean, by what means can the Cinema instruct human beings, conjure the demons out of them, and initiate them into the old and sustaining truths of their existence? I was thinking of the wartime demons, of fear, hate, misery, despair that eat into the vitals. Such demons invariably possess the victims of overwhelming disaster, and reason demands that they shall be driven out and destroyed (as undoubtedly they were by the wartime German theatre) so that folk may resume their normal shape.
By way of a start I cut away, in imagination, the bag of gold with which the Cinema appeared to me to be heavily weighted, to try and discover the nature of the social service the Cinema could perform. Next I tested its human influence on myself and noted my reactions to and against it.
I was much assisted in these preliminary tasks by the rapid technical development of the Cinema and by the introduction of psychological characters. To the genius of Griffith was due certain innovations which largely affected the results hitherto obtained by the use of the camera and the interpretation of the subject by actors. To him belongs the credit as already stated, of being the first to make use of the transforming " close up," " cut-back," " fade-out," and " dissolve," and to invest the actors and scene with " atmosphere." By such methods of pictorial emphasis one was able to study the reactions of the actor, to note the most intimate expression of the feelings of pain, fear, grief, joy, anxiety, etc., raised to the highest interpretative power the influence of which no one could escape. Likewise, the evolution of lighting from the out-door, preKleig lighting to the Kleig and post-Kleig studio lighting, also added significant black and white values, and gave emphasise to feelings expressed by movement, and by picking out details of characters.
I remember that the first sign of a social purpose in the Cinema that came to me through such means, was intimacy. To those who are acquainted with the contemporary history of