Star-dust in Hollywood (1930)

Star-dust in Hollywood the ' direction ' is lost. The figures gradually accumulate their own characteristics, and, with the bigger scale and wider movements of the piece, the subtly automatic nature of the action is hidden. Another fact that they brought home to us was the intense difference between this acting and that of the stage. We do not refer to the spasmodic nature of the continuity, but to the wholly different means of producing illusion. On the stage the voice conveys almost all of the emotional message ; gestures emphasize the voice, but subtlety of facial expression is lost by distance, and the eyes are almost invisible to the greater part of the audience. On the stage the actors are human beings reduced to the scale of speaking puppets. On the film the contrary occurs, and gesticulating puppets are enlarged to the size of human beings. The film must make use of almost everything that the stage neglects. Gestures must be very restrained or they seem exaggerated and absurd ; especially heroic gestures, which the voice renders dramatic and apparently natural on the stage, at once look ridiculous on the screen. This is shown by any film of fifteen years ago. Small movements, almost imperceptible on the stage, acquire a real value ; facial expression carries half of the emotional message, and is supplemented by the use of the eyes — the gestures of the eyes, one might almost say. Oddly enough, where an exaggerated motion of the arm would seem absurd an exaggerated movement of the eyes becomes quite realistic. Thus stage actors do not, of necessity, make the best film stars, and English films that clung to the shibboleth of using the famous names of the stage suffered long from an exaggeration of gesture and a feebleness of expression. Opposite, as we came from the little theatre, were the cutting-rooms, cubicles hung with strips of film like ribbon [in]