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

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR HEROES, BEAUTY, STARS AND THE CASE OF GRETA GARBO The hero, the paragon, the model and example is an indispensable element in the poetry of all races and peoples, from the ancient epics to the modern film. This is a manifestation of the natural selection of the best, of the instinctive urge towards improvement, a postulate of biology, not of aesthetics. In the course of the cultural history of man, changing, increasingly discerning tastes modified merely the beau ideal of the hero according to thetinterests of the class, the wishful thinking of which determined the hero's qualities and beauty. The physical being of the hero, the ideal of beauty, was a signpost for more than biological selection and evolution. From the beginning it also appeared in literature and art in sublimated form, as the physiognomic expression of spiritual and ethical values. In the age of conceptual culture initiated by the invention of printing (of which mention was made earlier on) the bodily visibility of human values lost its significance. Beauty was no longer a dream and an experience of great masses. The revival of visual culture with the advent of the film has again made physical beauty an important experience of the masses. If to-day every illustrated paper of the world is full of the pictures of beautiful women, this does not mean that all mankind has grown less serious-minded. Illustrated papers existed long before the films, but they were at that time not galleries of physical beauty. On the other hand in ancient Athens, where there were no illustrated papers, the streets and squares were full of ideal images of human bodies in the guise of gods and goddesses and pregnant women came to look at them in order that the fruit of their wombs would be as beautiful as those images. For images of beauty were 283