The soul of the moving picture (1924)

24 The Soul of the Moving Picture his feelings more commendable. His texts are more objective and material; and the effects they produce are more wholesome and artistic. For wherever and whenever the text displays an excess of fire and fancy, the spectator remains as cold as ice. His feelings can be aroused only by the gestures, by the movements of the bodies of the actors. In Dr. Mabuse we were regaled with this bit of declamation: "He — who is he? No one knows him. He stands over the city. He is as tall as a tower. He is damnation, he is salvation— and he loved me." The public was not moved one iota — but it laughed tears. Instead of being exalted, it was disenchanted; it was sobered down. For the very simple reason that the laws of the motion picture text are different from and narrower than those that have to do with poetry. The film texts that are written in verse prove to be pretty thin and anemic in their effect, even when a serious and gentle poet writes them. We have but to think of Der milde Tod ("Weary Death"). They are however altogether unbearable when they come trotting across the screen in the cumbersome armor of the iambic pentameter — as the Italians so frequently employ them. That kind of inflated film text has been rejected by the entire world. The film text cannot endure a revel