The soul of the moving picture (1924)

22 The Soul of the Moving Picture like utter nonsense, when the film, intended to create its effects through moving bodies, supererogates unto itself art forms for which better means have been provided, more appropriate ways found. The book was made for poetry, and if it is to be spoken, its place is manifestly on the stage. The task of the motion picture, let us repeat, is to express feelings by gestures. In this proposition there lies hidden a great deal of knowledge. Feeling does not belong to the text; the written text is not its sphere; it is not to be spoken; it is to be given form and substance through the art of mimicry. But there are motion pictures staged by men who at the very thought of an / love you (the warmest and tenderest possibility of this art) cannot resist the temptation to have these three words roared forth through so much accompanying text. But never mind ! / love you — that would be an almost classically sober wording. The actors could play this concept so perfectly that such a sentence, however superfluous it might be, would scarcely be noticed. The more, however, the text endeavors to create atmosphere through itself alone, the more the film departs from real art. In a certain gloriously dilettanteish screen creation one reads : "Vera, you are so lovely and good to