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PERSPECTIVES OF THE SOUND FILM 239
There is another very interesting difference between the old Chaplin and the new, between the old grotesque figure and the new, many-faceted personality. In the last shot of Modern Times Charlie for the first time does not go his ways alone but with a girl friend. The silent Charlie was not only silent, he was also always alone and lonely !
PERSPECTIVES OF THE SOUND FILM
It has already been said that the sound film was not an organic continuation of the silent film, but another art in its own right, just as painting is not a more highly developed form of black and white graphic art but a different art altogether. We can easily imagine that they might have emerged in inverted sequence. If the sound film had been invented first, someone might still have had the idea of using dumb-show silent pictures to create a separate new art, the silent film. It might have been an artistic tit-bit for the select few, a collector's piece for the highbrows in contrast to the more widespread and vulgar art of the sound film. But it might also have been much more. I could imagine, I might even dare to initiate (now that the sound film has become paramount) a new kind of silent film which would really present only those most specifically visual experiences which cannot find room in the sound film. I can also imagine quite concretely, and would like to initiate, a new kind of film lyric which would be a hitherto unknown synthesis of the silent and sound films. Its content would be not a story but a lyrical poem. One would hear the words of the poem and the images of a parallelrunning picture film would form a silent accompaniment to these words, not as illustrations but as free associations of ideas, the two interpreting one another in counterpointed simultaneity, just as in a lied the melody and accompaniment are a complement to the words. The music of silent pictures would widen the film poem into a work of art in three voices, in which words, music and pictures would be merged into one organic whole.