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180 FORMALISM OF THE AVANT-GARDE
LOGIC IS THE MEANS, PSYCHOLOGY THE END
Logic is often the vehicle for the construction of a work of art but never the theme to be presented. Logic is the scaffolding in the creation of the work, never the end in itself.
But in its psychological presentation the work also presents psychology itself. We are not only interested in what is happening in the course of a story, but even more in why and how it happens, in the psychological background of it. We are interested in the internal process of the association of ideas which led to the action. Such internal action, such internal happenings are often more important that the external.
The film can convey such associations of ideas more completely than the verbal arts, because words are loaded with too many conceptual elements, while a picture is a purely non-rational image. A sequence of such pictures needs no connecting tissue of words. But if parallel to the sequence of irrational internal images and simultaneously with it we could hear rational and conscious words in counterpoint; if we had two independent manifestations running concurrently side by side, the film could be given a dimension of depth which would greatly increase its possibilities. In this I see the great chance of a new third period in the evolution of the film. That is why so much attention has been devoted here to problems of the absolute film.
SURREALIST FILMS
The surrealist films of the avantgardistes wanted to depict internal moods and states of mind by means of a sort of pictorial hallucination. Epstein's exciting film The Fall of the House of Usher depicts — what? Not Edgar Allan Poe's tale, but only the haunting atmosphere of it and the moods and associations awakened in its readers. Halls without lines, uncertain flights of steps, dark and endless corridors, in which tragic shadows wander aimlessly. Doors open, curtains billow, hands stretch out, veils float on misty waters. These are not intelligible illustrations to a story, but the confused associations aroused by the dark impressions of a sinister tale.