Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Star-dust in Hollywood a process of slow and discreet psychology. Yet this film was taken in the most haphazard way. A long piece in the middle which was left out for several months had to be connected exactly in true emotional relationship with what had gone before and was to come after. The director is both an emotional dancing-master and a never-ceasing picture-maker. At the side of his cameras Von Sternberg had a small view-finder, through which he could watch the movements of the actors exactly as the camera was recording them. All this time he had to be composing each scene into a complete work of art. Each scene had to satisfy the laws of composition as a picture, but had also to be striking and original at the same time. Then, apart from the mere optical flow already mentioned, he had to shape the movements of his actors into a kind of unconscious rhythmic statement. If George knocked another man down, the camera recorded a certain direction and rhythm of action ; the next scene had either to echo the flow, answer it, complement it, or diminish it to stillness. As in a dance, each action necessitated a following concerted reaction of harmonious movement. In the creation of such concerted movement the actors are nothing but puppets. They can have little idea of the actual pictures they are making — this depends solely on the camera. Therefore the good director controls his cameras, arranges his compositions and movements, and so turns what appears only to be a mere matter of depicting a story into a piece of calculated and deliberate art. How many times did we not watch Von Sternberg's puppets repeat a movement? To them it might seem emotionally correct enough, but to him, as picture-maker, it was still rhythmically imperfect. Such rhythms, when found, however cunningly planned, always had to be hidden in the realism of the scene. [no]