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

Page scan 000193 from Theory of the film : (character and growth of a new art)

Record Details:

Title:
Theory of the film : (character and growth of a new art)
Date:
1952
Publisher:
London : Dennis Dobson Ltd.
Volume:
Theory of the film : (character and growth of a new art)
Leaf #:
000193
Language:
English
Collection:
Books
Format:
Books
Contributor:
Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum
Sponsor:
Media History Digital Library
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
Date Added:
September 12, 2024
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

NATURE FILMS 173 do not pose or act in front of the camera, not even trained animals. Strangely enough these absolutely authentic nature films often appear quite fantastic. Nothing could be more like fairy tales than the scientific films which show the growth of crystals or the wars of infusoria living in a drop of water. The explanation of this is that precisely their authentic reality makes the spectator feel most vividly their distance between them and the human sphere. For the farther away the existence presented in the film is from the possibility of human interference, the less is the possibility of its being artificial, faked, stagemanaged. Hence the curious similarity of atmosphere between pictures of inaccessible nature and inaccessible fairyland. For although what we see is a natural phenomenon, the fact that we can see it at all strikes us as unnatural. That we can witness at closest quarters the love idylls of hedgehogs or submarine fishes or the horror thriller of a battle between two snakes, is as exciting as the eating of forbidden fruit has ever been. In watching such things we feel as if we had entered a territory closed to man. If we are shown something that human beings cannot see in normal circumstances, then, as we nevertheless see it, we have the feeling of being invisible ourselves; hence the fantastic atmosphere of such nature pictures.