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THE THEATRICAL STORY 225
of stylized presentation (however effective) and make it completely natural/'18 they feel irresistibly attracted by the street and its extensions. Presumably the sharp contrast between unstaged street life and purposeful stage action is responsible for this common preference.
To mention also a few less typical efforts along similar lines, Laurence Olivier in his Hamlet has the camera incessantly pan and travel through the studio-built maze of Elsinore castle, with its irrational staircases, raw walls, and Romanesque ornaments, in an effort to expand the play into the twilight region of psychophysical correspondences. Or remember Eisenstein's script of American Tragedy, which clearly centers on an "idea conception": his desire to externalize Clyde's inner struggle in the form of a monologue interieur marks an attempt to dissolve one of the most decisive complex units of his script into an all but unlimited succession of cinematic elements uncalled-for by the story construction. It sometimes is as if these extensions were considered more essential than the story itself. Stroheim confessed to an interviewer that he was possessed with a "madness for detail."19 And Bela Balazs praises a silent American film for leaving on two occasions its story behind and indulging instead in a "thin hail of small moments of . . . material life"20 which were to bring the environment into play.
No doubt these cinematic elaborations have the function of adjusting the theatrical intrigue to the medium. But what about their relation to the intrigue proper? From the angle of the story they are much in the nature of gratuitous excursions. The story does not depend upon their inclusion to cast its spell over the audience.21 On the one hand, then, such extensions prove desirable, if not indispensable, cinematically; on the other, they are inconsistent with a story form which for full impact requires straight representation. The concern for the extensions and the regard for the fabric of story motifs tend to conflict with each other.* This conflict shows in two ways both of which press home the difficulty of a solution.
Two alternatives
THE STORY COMPOSITION OVERSHADOWING THE CINEMATIC ELABORATIONS
"Nevsky I found too stylized and too prearranged," says Rotha. And comparing it with Eisenstein's earlier films, Potemkin and Ten Days, he adds: "The well-known Battle on the Ice never roused me to heights of response as did the Odessa Steps or the Storming of the Winter Palace."22
* See the Seve quote, p. 176.