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THE WORK OF ART AS OBJECT 115
lift them out of the dynamic stream of the action. Such beauty has its own centre of gravity, its own frame and does not reach beyond itself to the preceding and the subsequent. 'Je hais le mouvement qui deplace les lignes, wrote Baudelaire in his sonnet on beauty. But the film is art in motion.
THE WORK OF ART AS OBJECT
The film is faced with a peculiar problem if it has to reproduce not nature but an already existing work of art, a painting, a sculpture, a puppet play, i.e. when the camera merely copies what a painter or sculptor or carver has already created as a work of art. But if such works of art are presented as a visual experience of a character in the film, from the angle, both external and internal, from which the character views them, then the cameraman is confronted with a very intricate and interesting task.
The terrifying Asiatic Gothic of the medieval icons photographed in Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible shows not only already existing works of art but the savage superstitions and visions of a tormented people. When in Alexander Korda's Lady Hamilton the prospective husband leads the poor ignorant girl past all the accumulated works of art in his mansion, the camera shows not only works of art but the good taste and culture of a superior social environment, which are destined to have a decisive influence on the heroine and thus have an important dramaturgic function.
Works of art may thus play a part in front of the camera, reverting, as it were, to the state of raw material, imposing on the camera the difficult task of adding to the given expression of the object a further, secondary expression by means of angles and set-ups. This secondary expression is that of the effect made on the spectator. In fact a gifted cameraman can show a picture or sculpture in the same way as an orchestra conductor can give voice to a musical score. In such productions two artistic personalities are merged in one another.