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182 FORMALISM OF THE AVANT-GARDE
they signified anything at all, they signified only themselves.
What we saw were not the forms of life, but the liberated life of shapes, the dance, the rhythm, the mobile ornamentality of lines, planes and solids. Such a dance of shapes, which its adherents like to call visual music, could easily be linked with musical rhythms. There was no clash with the resistance of the laws of living reality, if circles and squares were made to move in perfect time with the rhythm of some piece of music.
They were the creatures of the director and he could do what he liked with them. This great ease, and especially the utterly complete, residueless, precise solutions it permitted, would in themselves have sufficed to destroy all artistic credit of such a playing with form. There was nothing here of the redemption of the chaotic material of life by forcing it into shape at the cost of a struggle, as a result of which even the most perfect form still retains a little of the raw tang of life.
SOUND ABSTRACTION
The making of abstract sound films was an obvious development. Schiffer, a Viennese, very cleverly accompanied the rhythms of Strauss with a dance of fines. It was a sort of cartoon-technique choreography and really convincing. It often brought out, and by its visual emphasis rendered more audible, the subtler, less obvious nuances of the music.
If we apply the viewpoints of our aesthetic epistemology to this art form, we find that it is not as objectless as was the silent abstract film. Its object is the music, the tonal lines of which it depicts with its graphic choreography, just as the movements and gestures of a dancer express, and render visual a piece of music. It is a moving ornament which may be of great aesthetic value. Why should there not be such a form of film art? Many film-goers would derive great enjoyment from it.
FILM SUB-TITLES
Effects of the abstract film were in fact used from the inception of the silent film, in the titles. The film-makers soon dis