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156 PROBLEMS OF STYLE IN THE FILM
sible value of a painting, but no such value can be manifested without recourse to colour — colour is the only medium in which it can be perceived in a painting.
The dialogue is not a specific feature of the talkie; it is a far older and more essential component of both the drama and the epic. But the basic forms of film art previously mentioned, determine other, specific, new laws according to which dialogue can be used in films, and which lend the film dialogue a new specific character and produce specific effects.
PURE CINEMATOGRAPHY
Years before the sound film was invented, the means of expression of the silent film had acquired such wealth and subtlety that a tendency had arisen which advocated the discarding of all other means of expression — notably the story — entirely. At that time artists in other spheres of art were also searching for and insisting on a 'pure' style. But nowhere did such demands appear as justified as in the sphere of filmic art.
We have seen that microphysiognomy and microdramaturgy, angle, set-up and cutting had acquired a creative force which could penetrate so deeply to the core of life, reproduce so vividly the raw material of reality, as to find sufficient expressive dramatic elements in it without a need for a constructive 'plot', a preliminary literary treatment, a story, a script.
This trend established the artistic principle that the camera ought not to illustrate novels or plays written in advance (even if specially written for the purposes of the given film) but should create its works of art by the direct approach of the camera to the raw material of life. It should seek its subjects not in epic or dramatic happenings but in simple visibility, in visual existence. Approximately the same postulate had a couple of decades before eliminated the 'theme' from painting.
It cannot be denied that this demand for a 'pure style' had some artistic justification in the sphere of the film and the followers of this trend undoubtedly enriched cinematic art by certain variants of style and form. Soon however this school, known in European cinematic art as avantgardism, developed