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

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE MUSICAL FORMS It is obvious that the film of an opera and a film opera belong to different forms of art. This is not a play on words. Bizet's Carmen or Verdi's Rigoletto and every classical opera can be shot as a sound film and thus a superlative performance may be perpetuated and popularized. Such films are necessary and valuable reproductions and are very useful in improving the musical taste of the public. But it has little to do with the problems and tasks of film art. The film opera on the other hand, which is intended and directed and composed for the film from the start, is a new musical form of art with new problems and new tasks. If the object is to adapt an already existing opera for the film, the work can be motivated by two intentions. One of them is to popularize high quality music in its unadulterated, original, classical form. The other motive may be that the subject and musical motifs of the opera seem to offer material for film presentation. In the first case we cannot treat the opera as novels or plays can be treated when adapted for the film — that is to say, we cannot regard it as raw material and remodel it in filmic style. The reason why this cannot be done is that the music, which is to be filmed and which must not be changed in any way, ties the adaptor to the existing order of scenes and acts. The music, crystallized around the action, must necessarily transfer the action unchanged to the film. The result is that such action will appear even more stiff and unnatural in the film than on the operatic stage. For we have in the course of time become accustomed to this style on the operatic stage, it has become traditional and conventional and is in harmony with the 'unnatural' stylization of stage, scenery and visible orchestra. In the unstylized, photographed 'natural' world of the film the operatic style of acting (which, however, 275