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SILENCE IS ACTION 225
saying were so trite, so inane, that the public of a higher level of taste longed to have the silent film back again. Thus it happened that the objection to the platitudes and silliness of the dialogue turned into a prejudice against dialogue as such.
The authors of the silent films were very seldom great writers and the quality of their dialogue was in accordance with their own qualities as writers. The mimic dialogues of great actors were often more expressive, more profound and more moving than the dialogues of even the best film writers of the day. In the silent film we understood the speech of the eyes even without words. A glance from Asta Nielsen or Lilian Gish or Charlie Chaplin spoke volumes — more than the words of many a good writer. The mute dialogues of such actors often moved us even if the story of the film was as silly as could be.
But when these great mute speakers actually began to speak, something terrible happened. The incredible triviality of their audible words overlaid the human depths of their glances and gestures. For now it was no longer these great artists who were speaking to us in the language of hand and eye, but the scriptwriters ! A great illusion was destroyed.
Strangely enough to this day the public and the critics treat the dialogue in sound films with far greater indulgence than dialogue on the stage. But in those old days no one so much as conceived the idea that the film might have anything to do with serious literature and that the dialogue of the sound film might have possibilities, tasks and problems that are deeper than those of the stage dialogue, and, what is more, are completely new, completely of our own time.
SILENCE IS ACTION
Even to-day the watchword is still 'speak as little as possible'. And yet it is wrong to represent the characters in a film at all cost as always less talkative than the actors in the theatre. After all, the characters in the silent film also spoke but we did not hear what they were saying. The titles of course told us no more of the mute dialogue than was absolutely indispensable for the understanding of what was going on.
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