Plan for cinema (1936)

ON THE NATURE OF CINEMA 7 1 interest is his vindication of the epic's form. He would have liked the stage, but he knew the stage could never fulfil what he desired to show. Thus, he stipulates the drama is for ' mental performance ' only. He continues : . . . Readers will readily discern, too, that The Dynasts is intended simply for mental performancet and not foE — _the stage. Some critics have averred that to declare a drama as being not for the stage is to make an announcement whose subject and predicate cancel each other. The question seems to be an unimportant matter of terminology. Compositions cast in this shape were, without doubt, originally written for the stage only, and, as a consequence, their nomenclature of ' Act,' 'Scene,' and the like, was drawn directly from the vehicle of representation. But in the course of time such a shape would reveal itself to be an eminently readable one ; moreover, by dispensing with the theatre altogether, a freedom of treatment was attainable in this form that was denied where the material possibilities of stagery had to be vigorously remembered.1 Hardy was obviously unconscious of the cinematic form taking shape under his pen. The idea of a physically free theatre probably never occurred to him, even as a remote possibility. So far as I know, Hardy's opinion of cinema has not been recorded. Like most eminent men of letters, in all probability he regarded it with abhorrence. Of one thing we can be sure : when he wrote The Dynasts he had never set foot in a cinema hall, for there were no cinema halls for him to hayeset foot in. If he saw the silent-film version of Tess of the Z)' Urbewilles, if he had been alive to see the sound-film version of Under the Greenwood Tree, he must have been impressed by the similitude 1 My italics.