The soul of the moving picture (1924)

Record Details:

Title:
The soul of the moving picture
Date:
1924
Publisher:
New York : E. P. Dutton & Company
Volume:
The soul of the moving picture
Leaf #:
000101
Language:
English
Collection:
Books
Format:
Books
Contributor:
Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum
Sponsor:
Media History Digital Library
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
Date Added:
December 21, 2023
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The Scene 59 dances of antiquity and in the pantomime of past centuries, the soul wrestled with the body, for it had already sensed its ability to speak through the body. But the spectators sat too far away, the ring of the gesture was drowned out by space, and the bodies had to shriek, as it were, in order to be understood. But a tender feeling can do nothing more than whisper, for it is averse to all that is loud. The soul gave up the struggle as hopeless; pantomime became petrified, or stereotyped, into the conventional ballet which has dragged its weary course through the centuries. It was not until our own day — the ancient arts of which are tired to death and foul to the very marrow of their bones — a day in which it seemed that art could take no hope, that technique stepped in and made inventions as a result of which the gesture took on fullness and acquired sound. Modern technique has invented the film, and the film is the violin of the human body. Before one recognized the nuances of which the film was potentially capable, it had to wander along through the crude errors of pantomime. That the imperfect films of the firsst decades offered only imperfect, at times even repellent, pictures, is altogether natural. The intellectuals of all nations, and those who had schooled their eye and their heart on the perfection and beauty of the