Theory of film : the redemption of physical reality (1960)

The Spectator EFFECTS During the silent era practically all critics were agreed that films affect the spectator in specific ways. In 1926, for instance, Rene Clair likened the images on the screen to visions such as invade our sleep and the spectator himself to a dreamer under the spell of their suggestive power.1 Working through images, silent films most certainly produced effects peculiar to the cinema. (To be sure, there were then enough "photoplays" and theatrical adaptations which merely illustrated plots detachable from the medium, but even they often included shots or scenes whose singular impact did not simply result from the significance of the intrigue they had to sustain.) One might argue that what holds true of the silent film no longer applies to the talkies. Audience-reaction research in this field having only begun, we will have to rely on more or less impressionistic observations for relevant information. The literature of the past decades is rich in them. For the most part they concur in suggesting that the arrival of sound has not noticeably altered the picture: that actually the present-day moviegoer undergoes much the same experiences as the moviegoer in the days of the silent.2 Rene Clair in 1950, it is true, remarks that speech and sound add an element of reality to the cinema which prevents it from setting the spectator dreaming— the very effect he himself had attributed to it in 1926.3 Yet more likely than not his 1950 remark bears on films overburdened with dialogue rather than talkies whieh, like his own Paris comedies, continue to emphasize the visuals and therefore may well conform to the cinematic approach. Silent or not, film— cinematic film, that is— can be expected to influence the spectator in a manner denied to other media. 157