Theory of the film : (character and growth of a new art) (1952)

CHAPTER THREE A NEW FORM -LANGUAGE If the film had from its infancy produced specific new subjects, new characters, a new style, even a new art form, why then do I say that it was not yet a new art, but merely a photographic copy of a stage performance? When and how did cinematography turn into a specific independent art employing methods sharply differing from those of the theatre and using a totally different form-language? What is the difference between photographed theatre and film art? Both being equally motion pictures projected on to a screen, why do I say that the one is only a technical reproduction and the other an independently creative art? The basic formal principle of the theatre is that the spectator sees the enacted scene as a whole in space, always seeing the whole of the space. Sometimes the stage presents only one corner of a larger hall, but that corner is always totally visible all through the scene in question, and everything that happens in it is seen within one and the same frame. The second basic formal principle of the theatre is that the spectator always sees the stage from a fixed unchanging distance. True, the photographed theatre already began to photograph different scenes from different distances, but within one and the same scene the distance was never changed. The third basic formal principle of the theatre is that the spectator's angle of vision does not change. The photographed theatre did change the perspective sometimes from scene to scene, but within one and the same scene the perspective never changed, any more than the distance. These three basic formal principles of the stage are of course interconnected, they form the groundwork of dramatic style and means of expression. In this connection it makes no difference whether we see the scenes on the living stage or in 30