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TIME AS THEME AND EXPERIENCE 121
indicate the reasons for the picture being what it is. In a film scene we see only what is happening before our eyes. Why things happen as they do, of what they are the result — these are questions to which a thousand different answers could be given in the silent film.
The talkie, on the contrary, has words, words which may refer to past or future, which have a logic that determines the place of each scene in the time-sequence of events.
TIME IN THE FILM
The scenes of a film, just like the scenes of a stage play, are enacted before our eyes, that is, in real time. The photographed picture of a scene cannot last either a longer or a shorter time when projected on to the screen, than the scene itself had lasted. On the stage as much time as the author pleases may elapse between the acts, while the curtain is down. There are plays in which a century elapses between two acts. But film scenes are not separated from each other by curtains or intervals. Nevertheless the lapse of time must be conveyed, a time-perspective given. How is this done?
If the film wants to make us feel that time has elapsed between two scenes, it interpolates between these two scenes another scene enacted in some other place. When we return to the former place, time has elapsed. But how much time has elapsed can never be ascertained from the scene itself, unless one of the characters tells us.
TIME AS THEME AND EXPERIENCE
In an epic, a drama, or a film, time is just as much a theme for a work of art as is action, characterization, or psychological analysis. The reason for this is that time belongs to all of them as an organic component. There can be no story the course, significance and effect of which did not depend on the amount of time it takes up. If an event occurs twice — once slowly and once quickly, then it is no longer the same event. An explosion differs from a quiet chemical reaction only in that it is a more rapid process. One speed may take life,