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FILM NARRATOR 241
many roundabout visual and acoustic devices developed for this purpose by the silent film, but completely crowded them out of the film by force of the aesthetic law of impermeability already mentioned.
All these are realities of the evolving history of the film about which it would be vain to argue. No theory could alter this practice. But we maintain that the power of theory to render conscious what is instinctive can grow into a material force and while it is itself a result of evolution, can dialectically react on evolution and influence it. This return of the sound film to a previous stage is not inevitable and final. Without reducing the importance of the word, the expression and artistic forming of acoustic experiences can (and I am certain will), again develop to a higher stage. I am sure that our sound-film makers will soon realize that in the sound film the use of the word offers quite different possibilities and is therefore faced with quite different tasks than the dialogue on the theatrical stage.
FILM NARRATOR
I believe there is a great future for the narrated film, in which the story is narrated by an invisible author-narrator. This device would free the visual presentation from having to show unimportant details merely in order to render the story intelligible — for we shall hear the words of the narrator telling us what has happened. While he is doing so the pictures can show the internal happenings in a counterpointed association of ideas and thus open a depth-dimension to the film which it did not possess before.
This kind of sound film, the birth of which is imminent, will again be able to use, and thus save for us, the high degree of visual culture once already attained by the silent film.
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