The soul of the moving picture (1924)

The Soul of the Moving Picture from these two — it is with these that the film has to do. It has to do with nothing that comes rigidly from the intellect — or exclusively from the soul itself. In the moving picture everything becomes pale and colorless which is not born of the sensual emotions. Every art seeks its way to the soul. Sensuality 1 and soul, that is the moving picture. There is only one eternal, immutable, and never-failing material for the film: it is the passion of the soul. Thought and intellect are given an intelligent welcome by but very few people. Were it not for the herd and hypocrisy, poetry would be unread and the stage would be a temple of the lonely and isolated. Is Shakespeare or Goethe really understood by the masses? The senescent stage is the counterpart of the 1 There is no word that occurs more frequently in this book than sinnlich, or the noun derived from it, Sinnlichkeit. Throughout, the former is rendered by "sensual," the latte'r by "sensuality." Neither of these words has here the connotation that is ordinarily attached to it: "Sensual" means nothing more than relating to the -senses; and "Sensuality" is the noun form and means nothing more than the composite result of our being "sensual." We have, as a matter of fact, five "senses." The German for "sense" is Sinn. Consequently, sinnlich has reference to our capacity for sensations, our sensibility. The words might have been translated in a variety of ways. I might have commandeered such terms as "sentient," "sensory," "susceptible to sense experiences," and so on. Such variety would have been, probably, in the interest of seeming erudition, which leaves me cold, or in the interest of pedagogy which, so long as I remain normal, no man can ever persuade me to study. — Translator. xvi