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256 THE SCRIPT
however, can be readily found in any text-book on aesthetics. Nevertheless, all things can be characterized the most precisely by means of the specific peculiarities which differentiate them from all other things. It is this specific trait which determines the varying forms of manifestation taken in each art by elements basically common to them all. For instance, painting can express not only experiences 'purely' and 'absolutely' pertaining only to the art of painting — it can also express motives borrowed from literature, philosophy, psychology — in fact every kind of thought and emotion. But whatever may be the content it expresses, such content will have to be made apparent in the specific material of painting, that is, in the form of visual impressions — otherwise it would not be made manifest at all. Hence if we talk of painting, we must first define its specific material.
The art of the film does not consist solely of specific film effects (any more than painting consists of colour effects alone) — however fiercely the fanatics of the absolute film championed such a limitation. In it, as in other art forms, we can find elements of dramatic presentation and of psychological characterization. But one thing is certain: in the film the^e elements can appear only in the form of moving and talking pictures, that is, they must conform to the specific laws of film art.
It has been said that the content determines the form. But things are not quite so simple as all that, and one need not take this rule to mean that for ages writers had been hatching film themes, film stories and film characters which could not be presented in novels or plays; that these poor authors had to wait decade after decade for the possibility of visual expression, until finally they went to the Lumiere brothers and ordered a cinematograph, the new form to fit the new content.
History tells us that the reverse is what actually happened. Lumiere had been photographing stage performances for a dozen years before a truly filmic, genuinely specific film story could be born. The hammer and the chisel were not invented by sculptors for their own ends. The technique of the film was known for some time. But it did not develop into a new form-language until a new content, a new and different mess