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 #:
000169
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 Compass of Poetry 113 intellect. The great stage personages are never men of mere impulse. Thoas is not a barbarian of the senses; Tell is not a rude, crude fellow just as nature made him; Romeo is not a mere sensual seducer but a psychic visionary. The legitimate stage strives after great, free thoughts; and characters such as Faust represent the very strongest expression of its arts. In this excess of excelsior, however, in this defection from the wishes of this earth, lies a real danger to which not merely the poetising dilettant is apt to succumb; indeed the very greatest of German poets have at times failed to escape its intriguing peculiarity. It is the danger of the toohigh, of arctic clarity, of the exclusively intellectual. The soul glows through real art like a vestal fire, pure, mild, serene. Let the flight be too hardy and too upward, and the fire goes out, art ceases, and shrewd, shivering theatrical dialectics set in. In the case of the motion picture, the opposite takes place. The word withdraws, becomes unessential, often directly adverse to art and the canons of art. Then it is that mimicry steps out and up and becomes the bearer of the action. If humanity had been born deaf and dumb, it would long since have perfected its mimic apparatus so completely that it would be the tool and