Plan for cinema (1936)

74 PLAN FOR CINEMA Any regular spectator of modern American films will appreciate visually what Hardy had in mind. He says : The scene changes. The exterior of the cathedral takes the place of the interior, and the point of view recedes, the whole fabric smalling into distance and becoming like a rare, delicately carved alabaster ornament. The city itself sinks to miniature, the Alps show afar as a white corrugation, the Adriatic and the Gulf of Genoa appear on this and on that hand, with Italy between them, till clouds cover the panorama. Part I, Act ii, sc. 3 describes the camp and harbour of Boulogne during the time Napoleon and a large army were concentrated there, and the fear of invasion in southern England was very real. As a piece of descriptive writing, its visual quality is so vivid that one automatically sees it as a series of shots. In fact, it is a more or less accurate replica of a film treatment, the word 'treatment' being used in scenarist's parlance to denote a broad outline of subject and the technique to be applied, in distinction to a final scenario or shooting script. We must appreciate that Hardy visualized the scene c whole,' possibly from an aerial viewpoint, a 'camera angle' of which he was very fond, for repeatedly in The Dynasts various panoramic scenes are described from a position as if the reader were to suppose himself in a balloon. I propose to quote the scene to the middle of Napoleon's second speech, exactly as Hardy wrote it. Then I shall endeavour to show how it would be treated dialectically. The difference between the two will reveal the difference between a physically free theatre or the colour, stereo