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122 PLAN FOR CINEMA
^A picturejwhich moves, therefore, is a contradiction. .„. in terms. 2 A picture which moves, and also has depth, is still further removed from painting. .The idea of c seeing through a frame' should be alien to theatre for this reason, and for another which is psychological. The frame, with the movements inside it, at once erects a barrier between the participants in the "-^ ' moving picture' — the play, opera, or ballet — and the spectator looking in. He is an observer outside the event instead of being a tacit participant in it, as he should be. He is isolated so far because he is, really, peeping through a key-hole. And the disadvantage of key-hole peeping is that we do not see" the whple ^j picture; neither would we if the door were opened and we still remained outside. We could not look round the corner. Not until we are actually inside the room do we become fully merged in the events taking place therein. You might argue that you have no desire for further intimacy with the drama in a cinema hall or theatre, that already, if the work be well enough done, you c lose yourself temporarily and forget where you are. That may well be so, up to a point. But I submit, we are never so completely at one with a great play before us in a theatre as we are at one with a great novel or poem read in solitude. To admit that, of course, is to admit the inferiority of theatre to literature as a form. Indeed, there seems no alternative but to accept this obvious fact, to qualify it, though, by saying it is only on account of theatre's (and cinema's) seemingly eternal marriage to the picture-frame idea.
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