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

PROPHECY 195 which in twenty years has not risen and evolved into an art. On the whole the film has reverted again to a speaking photographed theatre. No question but that it is often very well photographed very good theatre. The development of the new technique has served the old art well. But the new technique has not like the silent film developed into a new art, revealing new spheres of human experience and based on new principles. I said 'on the whole'. For there have been and are certain signs that the independent acoustic manifestation of the sound film is not dead yet and that this abortive great possibility of human culture, this potentiality is still seeking its own forms of expression and has broken through now and then between the pores of some recent films. BLIND ALLEY Was an almost useless standstill of nearly two decades really necessary in order to prove by drastic experience the correctness of this forecast? Did we have to pass along this blind alley in order to convince ourselves that it is a blind alley? Well, I believe in the continuity of development. I believe that even this was not time lost. It is the job of the theoretician to discover whether this standstill was not apparent only. But only a resumed development will be able to show what it owes to the past. It is certain that in the reviving film culture of a Europe recovering from the second world war, the dissatisfaction with the sound film in its present state has become so universally felt that the voice of the theoretician may now meet with a better response. The time has come for an art of the sound ifilm and hence the time has also come for a theory that is still valid to-day to attempt to render conscious and transform into will and purpose something that is now merely an instinctive urge. PROPHECY Two decades ago I wrote: Tn its last years the German film really began to develop rapidly. But then another depar