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A NEW FORM-LANGUAGE 31
photographic reproduction; nor does it matter whether the scenes presented are such as could not be shown on the stage at all, but only in the open air and by means of photographic technique.
It was these three basic principles of theatrical art that were discarded by the art of the film — it begins where the three principles no longer apply and are supplanted by new methods. These are:
1. Varying distance between spectator and scene within one and the same scene; hence varying dimensions of scenes that can be accommodated within the frame and composition of a picture.
2. Division of the integral picture of the scene into sections, or 'shots'.
3. Changing angle, perspective and focus of 'shots' within one and the same scene.
4. Montage, that is the assembly of 'shots' in a certain order in which not only whole scene follows whole scene (however short) but pictures of smallest details are given, so that the whole scene is composed of a mosaic of frames aligned as it were in chronological sequence.
This revolutionary innovation in visual artistic expression came about in the United States of America, in Hollywood, during the first world war. David Griffith was the name of the genius to whom we owe it. He not only created masterpieces of art, but an art that was totally new.
One of the specific characteristics of the art of the film is that not only can we see, in the isolated 'shots' of a scene, the very atoms of life and their innermost secrets revealed at close quarters, but we can do so without any of the intimate secrecy being lost, as always happens in the exposure of a stage performance or of a painting. The new theme which the new means of expression of film art revealed was not a hurricane at sea or the eruption of a volcano: it was perhaps a solitary tear slowly welling up in the corner of a human eye.
A good film director does not permit the spectator to look at a scene at random. He leads our eye inexorably from detail to detail along the line of his montage. By means of such a sequence the director is enabled to place emphasis where he