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ON THE NATURE OF CINEMA 65
merit, unless the visual be entirely static, which would be meaningless ; for the visual and aural are personified in the actor. We have, therefore, a synthesis of the static and the temporal. It would be convenient to call it moving sculpture were those words not a contradiction in terms. In sculpture you can look round the corner — the orientation of viewpoint is circular. In theatre, viewed through a frame, it is not. Let us, then, just call it theatre, leaving fancy terms to those who care to invent them.
Realism being somewhat akin to the man who thought he had invented a perpetual-motion machine, only to find the awkward little business of frictional inertia had to be overcome, it is meet theatre should turn its eye towards stylization from whence it came.
The origin of drama being religious, its form is ritualistic. And the objective structure of ritual is built on stylization. The stories of the Attic drama were known to the Athenians; it was the manner of their presentation that was of significance. Objectively, appreciation of High Mass lies in the stylized performance of its ritual.
A realistic production of Shakespeare betrays a misunderstanding of Shakespeare as dramatic poet. I do not, of course, mean naturalistic acting; the conditions of poetic drama demand a stylized technique of the actor in any event. Not that by this we should fall into the common fallacy of supposing stylized acting is acting technique. A good naturalistic performance requires as much a technique of a different