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Edited by
Catalin Brylla
Mette Kramer

Cognitive
Theory
and
Documentary
Film
 Cognitive Theory and Documentary Film

“The editors of Cognitive Theory and Documentary Film make ambitious claims
about the usefulness of cognitive theory for understanding the documentary as
well as the fiction film—and their volume more than delivers. Equipped with a
fuller picture of the mind as embodied and socially networked, the authors here
offer exciting approaches to a wide range of work including biographies, anima-
tions, nature films, docudramas and ‘fake news’ websites, while attending as well
to the creative processes and aims of documentary filmmakers.”
—Cynthia Freeland, Professor of Philosophy, University of Houston, USA

“Cognitive film research is about narrative fiction, or so it seems. This milestone

volume presents the cognitive approach to documentary. Specialists in the field—
some of them documentarists themselves—paint a vivid picture of the rich experi-
ences that an exceptionally multifarious genre gives rise to. They document how
people watching documentaries construct and engage with other people, their
minds, emotions, realities, truths and actions. Moreover they highlight in convinc-
ing detail the amazing variety of aesthetics displayed by documentaries supporting
viewers’ experiences.”
—Ed Tan, Professor of Media Entertainment University of Amsterdam,
The Netherlands

“Represents a welcome first foray into the relation of cognitive theory to docu-
mentary film studies. It not only expands our conceptions of documentary but asks
us to consider not only how we see reality through films but how films shape our
notions of reality. The ideas are complex but are made more accessible through the
straightforward writing of many of its contributors.”
—David MacDougall, Professor of Visual Anthropology,
Australian National University, Australia

“This unique collection is likely to become a landmark in documentary studies. It

is ambitious, innovative, sometimes provocative but always rigorous. Its pioneer-
ing approach to the complex relationship between selfhood, emotion, subjectivity,
cognition and the art of the record is utterly convincing and inherently valuable.”
—Anita Biressi, Professor of Media and Society,
University of Roehampton, UK
“Cognitive Theory and Documentary Film is an exceptionally rewarding read.
Featuring probing accounts of such timely topics as post-truth, stereotyping,
trans-species empathy, and filmmakers’ use of cognitive theory, the volume more
than delivers on its ambitious promises. Featuring a formidable team of contribu-
tors and evidencing great clarity of purpose, Cognitive Theory and Documentary
Film provides conceptual tools, arguments, and examples that deserve attention,
within and beyond the academy.”
—Mette Hjort, Chair Professor of Humanities and Dean of Arts,
Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

“This collection of essays, through the emphasis on thought processes, brings an

original approach to documentary reception and representation. Even more
important, this book will expand the reach and boundaries within the study of
cognitive theory itself, which can only benefit from the further influence of doc-
umentary production on this field. Thus the reader has a view from both ends of
the telescope, and in a truly interdisciplinary fashion, which surely has to be
welcomed.”
—Jane Chapman, Professor of Communications,
Lincoln University, UK

“Brylla and Kramer’s impressive interdisciplinary and international selection of

scholars lead a ground-breaking extension of cognitivist theory into documentary
film studies.”
—Trevor Ponech, Associate Professor of English,
McGill University, Canada
 Catalin Brylla • Mette Kramer
Editors

Cognitive Theory and

Documentary Film
Editors
Catalin Brylla Mette Kramer
University of West London University of Copenhagen
London, UK Copenhagen, Denmark

ISBN 978-3-319-90331-6    ISBN 978-3-319-90332-3 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90332-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018942708

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
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publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.

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 Foreword

The specter of madness plagues our love of methodology. Methods can

narrow our field of vision, tie us to a predetermined dogma, limit our
imagination, blind us to alternatives that call on us to forfeit fundamental
assumptions, and yet, we embrace them. Film studies has embraced them
with exceptional vigor from the early genre/auteur studies through struc-
tural, poststructural, psychoanalytic, Marxist, feminist, formalist and semi-
otic approaches and on to phenomenology and cognitive theory, among
others. Clearly, there are benefits to such a wild embrace or this wagon
train of methodologies would have pulled up into a defensive circle to
watch others stream past with alternatives less beholden to a body of sys-
tematic thought.
One clear benefit, abundantly evident throughout this volume, is the
opportunity to see things from the other end of the stick, as it were. That
is exactly what Galileo did when he moved the earth to the periphery of
the solar system and replaced it with the sun. Everything astronomical
took on a new meaning and a fresh perspective. Much the same can be said
for our pantheon of critical methodologies from an auteur theory that
discovered the directorial “termites” within the seemingly monolithic stu-
dio system to semiotics that proposed we understand cinema as a language
that lacked a grammar, and a psychoanalysis that regarded narrative as
systematic, and highly gendered play in the field of desire.
Cognitive theory takes hold of the other end of the critical stick as well.
It helps us see things anew by urging us to see them differently. As these
essays demonstrate, this line of sight is not the same as what it was when
cognitive theory first arrived as a formalistic, grammar-like catalogue of

v
vi FOREWORD

how mental processing takes place in relation to a film. Cognitive theory

has grown in sophistication and complexity. It joins many of the issues that
other methods tackle and, in Catalin Brylla and Mette Kramer’s Cognitive
Theory and Documentary Film, does so with particular reference to docu-
mentary. How is a documentary different from a fiction, if it is? What
changes when we cognitively process a documentary versus a fiction or
even a docudrama? How do we come to empathize with characters or
social actors? Do animal characters in wildlife documentaries change the
nature of our response? How do we experience emotions and embodied
experiences through documentary? How do we assess truth value? What
effect do preexisting cognitive schema and social stereotypes have on our
understanding and engagement? What types of interviews prevail and how
do their effects differ? Why do viewers differ in their response to specific
works if our cognitive mechanisms are the same?
Such a rich array of questions was hardly in the forefront of my mind
when I first encountered David Bordwell’s Narration in the Fiction Film
in 1987, but his introduction of neoformalist—cognitive theory into film
study got me thinking. I saw things in a new light. I was not ready to sign
up as a follower on a path that seemed profoundly misguided in certain
ways, but I was ready to rethink assumptions I have taken for granted
about the nature of documentary.1 I asked myself I if could do something
like what Bordwell had done, that is, Could I develop a more systematic,
rigorous understanding of the documentary than had been proposed in
previous work? Was documentary sufficiently accounted for by memoirs,
interviews, and vaguely conceived histories? Were there not underlying
principles of formal organization in need of exploration, such as the vari-
ous modes of documentary that subsequently occurred to me? Could
insights gained from the study of fiction film transfer to the nonfiction
film? The answer became Representing Reality (1991), which, in turn, and
to my surprise, became one of the starting points for what is now the richly
cultivated field of documentary film studies. It strikes me that sometimes

1
See my “Form Wars: The Political Unconscious of Formalist Theory,” in Jane Gaines,
ed., Classical Hollywood Narrative: The Paradigm Wars (Duke University Press, 1992):
49–77. Most of my critical view of Bordwell would now be understood as a rejection of the
first wave of cognitive theory and its formal, structural, ahistorical, and decontextualized
approach to narrative, cinema, and the viewer as a hypothetical entity more akin to a black
box than a socially situated individual. As Catalin Brylla and Mette Kramer’s introductory
chapter, “Intersecting Documentary and Cognitive Theory,” indicates, cognitive theory has
moved significantly beyond that starting point.
 FOREWORD
   vii

the sidelong glance can provide a way forward and that is precisely what I
think this volume provides for many of us who are not cognitive theorists
in our own right.
In many ways, Cognitive Theory and Documentary Film is both a step
forward and back. Forward in the evolution of cognitive theory toward a
more complex view of human behavior from a neuroscientific perspective
fused with strong elements of a variety of other more affect-oriented
approaches such as phenomenology and social cognition, and back in a
return to many of the preoccupations of classic rhetoric. Gone is the effort
to formalize mental processing into abstract algorithms that apply to each
and every one of us regardless of external factors. Present is a deep con-
cern for the ways in which a text engages viewers and predisposes them to
see the world, and even act in the world, in a certain way. This was always
the great divide between rhetoric and fiction. Fiction is, in my view, an
allegorical act aimed at creating a parallel universe in which we can identify
qualities akin to the qualities we find in our everyday world. Rhetoric is a
persuasive act aimed at offering us a distinct perspective on the world we
already occupy. It is closer to a metaphor that’s meant, a way of saying
“Reality is like this, isn’t it?” Rhetoric is the province of politicians, trial
lawyers, essayists, reporters and many if not most documentary filmmak-
ers. It is why I once described documentary as a “discourse of sobriety” in
its more conventional forms.
Both fictional texts and rhetorical ones adopt aspects of narrative story-
telling to achieve their ends. That has proven a source of confusion in
many cases since it has been historically more tempting to align narrative
technique with fiction than documentary. That was certainly the tactic of
Dziga Vertov and John Grierson, among others, in the early days of docu-
mentary. But narrative can serve both masters. The line between fiction
and documentary, as several essays here argue, is a finer, more fluid one
than we sometimes suppose. There remains a tendency, in some of the
essays here, and elsewhere, to continue to perform a mopping up opera-
tion to remind us of this: documentaries are not necessarily true—they tell
stories; documentaries construct characters from social actors (real peo-
ple), build suspense, and create empathy by means not unlike those of
fiction films. They are, in fact, a fiction (un)like any other. These essays
take us on a journey to discover some of the many ways in which docu-
mentaries are like and unlike fiction films.
Another way to say this is that documentaries take up the problem of
dissoi logoi directly. This Greek term referred to cases where different
viii FOREWORD

points of view contend but no one point of view can claim, though claim
it will, that it and only it represents the truth of the matter.2 These are
issues involving values and beliefs, understanding and interpretations, ide-
ology, or what Catalin Brylla’s chapter, “A Social Cognition Approach to
Stereotyping in Documentary Practice,” refers to as “folk-psychological
narratives.” God exists. God does not exist. Capitalism gives the greatest
benefit to the greatest number. Capitalism immiserates vast numbers in its
quest for profit. Central governments and diversely populated nation
states deserve priority over local governments and more monolithic com-
munities, or vice versa. Fossil fuels are a prime source of energy vital to our
future. Fossil fuels are a prime cause of global warming; they endanger the
future.
Values and beliefs, understanding and interpretations change with time
and place but they take hold of the human imagination at a deep level.
Documentaries explore what it means to hold one form of belief, to
embody one set of values over another. They often set out to predispose
us to see things one way rather than another. They do so rhetorically, and
sometimes poetically. Cognitive theory, in these essays, contributes to our
understanding of how they go about doing so. The essays explore the
many “complex embodied cognitive activities,” as Veerle Ros, Jennifer
O’Connell, Miklós Kiss and Annelies van Noortwijk term it in their

2
Richard Lanham develops the meaning and use of the term brilliantly in his A Handlist
of Rhetorical Terms (University of California Press, 2012). The following explanation elabo-
rates on Lanham’s insights.

In essence, dissoi logoi posits that one side (logos) of an argument defines the existence
of the other, creating a rhetorical situation in which at least two logoi struggle for
dominance. In contrast, Western culture’s implicit assumption that argument is about
truth or falsity urges one to assume that one side of the argument is true or more
accurate and that other accounts are false or less accurate. Quite differently, Sophists
acknowledge that one side of the argument might in a particular context represent the
“stronger” logos and others the “weaker,” but this does not preclude a weaker logos
from becoming the stronger in a different or future context. Sophism assumes that
the stronger logos, no matter how strong, will never completely overcome competing
logoi and earn the title of absolute truth. Rather—and this is the heart of dissoi logoi—
at least one other perspective is always available to serve as another to the stronger
argument.

In Richard D. Johnson-Sheehan, “Sophistic Rhetoric,” Theorizing Composition: A Critical

Sourcebook of Theory and Scholarship in Contemporary Composition Studies, ed., Mary Lynch
Kennedy (Greenwood, 1998).
 FOREWORD
   ix

c­ hapter “Toward a Cognitive Definition of First Person Documentary,”

that go into this effort to predispose us to see the world as others want us
to. Cognitive theory now goes beyond reason—as we routinely do as well.
It tackles questions of the nature of emotions and emotional response, of
empathy and its arousal or dissipation, of seduction and its sway, of stereo-
types and their mobilization or subversion.
Documentaries are sometimes considered ways of conveying informa-
tion. They inform us about the world. And yet, they are never simply that.
Tables, charts, spreadsheets convey information but documentaries speak
in the voice of a filmmaker and convey a perspective on the world. This is
why the rhetorical tradition is such a crucial resource. It is far more than a
way to make an argument effectively, although it is well known for its
contribution to oration and court room debate. It is, more essentially, a
way to win hearts and minds, to convince others in a compelling way that
one way of seeing things is preferable to another. This is not a matter of
factual detail alone, not when we enter the realm of dissoi logoi, although
contradicting proven facts seldom makes for good rhetorical practice. It is
more a matter of finding the ways and means of predisposing viewers to
believe, internalize, and even act upon a particular view of how things
“really” are in the world. It is a matter of credible, convincing, and com-
pelling representations of the sort fruitfully explored by classic rhetoric.
Work to the margins of what we might consider the heart and soul of
documentary—the stand-alone work by a specific individual who addresses
a given topic in a distinct style and with a recognizable voice—makes this
matter yet more clear. Reality TV shows like the The Real Housewives fran-
chise, American Ninja Warrior, or Duck Dynasty strain credibility; they
may not fully convince, and yet they may well be compelling. Truth is not
in the air so much as absorption into a particular view of reality, quite often
a view of reality as spectacle, that borrows heavily from a documentary
tradition and the affective and cognitive activity it invites in order to pre-
dispose us to say “Yes, reality is like this—at least for the moment.
Advertisements and political campaign ads carry out similar procedures
but with even more blatant uses of rhetoric and style not only to predis-
pose us to see things as they want us to but to act upon these predisposi-
tions in ways that have significant consequences.
In other words, placing documentary in general upon the shrine of
sober discourse can be an error. It is not sobriety we seek so much as
engagement, conviction, and belief. It is the use of rhetoric and narrative
technique that so often provides it. In documentary films, information
x Foreword

may serve more as bait or lure than as the heart of the matter. Knowledge
may be a basic goal but it is heavily tempered by the voice and point of
view of the maker and the specific form of predisposition desired from the
viewer. In this light, cognitive theory can also help address questions
regarding the particular conception and structure of documentaries from
a film production perspective, as discussed in some of the essays. It is in the
exploration of these matters that this collection invites us to see documen-
tary from a different angle, to take up the other end of the stick.
What is at stake for us, ultimately, is the getting of wisdom, something
non-transferable and inexplicable, something beyond words or the form
and structure of any given work. Cognitive theory contributes to our
understanding of the process by which we encounter, assess, internalize,
and take guidance for our actions from the representations, documentary
and otherwise, that we encounter. Wisdom contributes to the long-term
survival of our society, if not our civilization. It relies on reasons, which
reason may not know, but which we can understand and deploy. This vol-
ume invites us to take one more step on that journey toward wisdom that
lies beyond the values and beliefs, myths and ideologies, categories and
interpretations we may take for granted but not yet fully understand.

School of Cinema, San Francisco State UniversityBill Nichols

San Francisco, CA, USA
 Contents

1 Introduction: Intersecting Cognitive Theory and

Documentary Film   1
Catalin Brylla and Mette Kramer

Part I The Mediation of Realities  19

2 A Documentary of the Mind: Self, Cognition and

Imagination in Anders Østergaard’s Films  21
Ib Bondebjerg

3 Little Voices and Big Spaces: Animated Documentary

and Conceptual Blending Theory  39
Juan Alberto Conde Aldana

4 Documentary Spectatorship and the Navigation of

“Difficulty”  59
John Corner

5 Docudrama and the Cognitive Evaluation of Realism  75

Torben Grodal

xi
xii CONTENTS

6 The Duties of Documentary in a Post-Truth Society  93

Dirk Eitzen

Part II Character Engagement 113

7 Characterization and Character Engagement in the

Documentary 115
Carl Plantinga

8 The Difficulty of Eliciting Empathy in Documentary 135

Jan Nåls

9 Fake Pictures, Real Emotions: A Case Study of Art

and Craft 149
Aubrey Tang

10 Engaging Animals in Wildlife Documentaries: From

Anthropomorphism to Trans-species Empathy 163
Alexa Weik von Mossner

Part III Emotions and Embodied Experience 181

11 Collateral Emotions: Political Web Videos and Divergent

Audience Responses 183
Jens Eder

12 Slow TV: The Experiential and Multisensory

Documentary 205
Luis Rocha Antunes
 CONTENTS
   xiii

13 Toward a Cognitive Definition of First-P ­ erson

Documentary 223
Veerle Ros, Jennifer M. J. O’Connell, Miklós Kiss, and
Annelies van Noortwijk

14 The Communication of Relational Knowledge in the

First-Person Documentary 243
Mette Kramer

Part IV Documentary Practice 261

15 A Social Cognition Approach to Stereotyping in

Documentary Practice 263
Catalin Brylla

16 A Cognitive Approach to Producing the Documentary

Interview 281
Michael Grabowski

17 Documentary Editing and Distributed Cognition 303

Karen Pearlman

Index 321
 Notes on Contributors

Luis Rocha Antunes holds a PhD in Film Studies from the University of
Kent and a PhD in Aesthetics from the Norwegian University of Science
and Technology. He is the author of The Multisensory Film Experience: A
Cognitive Model of Experiential Film Aesthetics (Intellect, 2016). His main
research interests revolve around experientiality and the senses in film.
Ib Bondebjerg is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Media,
Cognition and Communication at the University of Copenhagen. He was
Chairman of The Danish Film Institute (1997–2000), founder and direc-
tor of the Centre for Modern European Studies (2008–2011) and chair-
man of the Danish Research Council for the Humanities (1993–1997).
He is co-editor of the book series Palgrave European Film and Media
Studies and on the editorial board of the Journal of Documentary Studies.
He was the co-director of three European research projects: Changing
Media—Changing Europe (2000–2005), Media and Democracy in the
Network Society (2002–2006) and Mediating Cultural Encounters
Through European Screens (2013–2016). His most recent books in
English are Media, Democracy and European Culture (co-edited) (Intellect,
2008); Engaging with Reality: Documentary and Globalization (Intellect,
2014), European Cinema and Television: Cultural Policy and Everyday
Life (co-edited) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); and Transnational European
Television Drama: Production, Genres and Audiences (co-authored)
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
Catalin Brylla is Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of West
London. Focusing on documentary film studies, cognitive film theory,

xv
xvi Notes on Contributors

phenomenology and visual anthropology, his research aims for a pragmatic

understanding of documentary spectatorship in relation to experience,
empathy and narrative comprehension. He has co-edited, with Helen
Hughes, Documentary and Disability (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and is
currently writing a book on stereotypes and spectatorship in documentary
film. As a practice-led researcher, he has made documentaries about blind-
ness and women’s football in Zanzibar. His films have been screened and
broadcast internationally.
Juan Alberto Conde Aldana has a degree in Communication Studies,
an MA in Philosophy and a PhD in Semiotics from the University of
Limoges. He is Assistant Professor in Semiotics on the master’s program
in semiotics at the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, Bogota. His research
interests include visual semiotics, graphic narratives, interactive media and
sound studies.
John Corner is Visiting Professor in Media and Communication at the
University of Leeds and Professor Emeritus of the University of Liverpool.
He has published widely since the 1970s in a range of international jour-
nals and in books. His monographs include The Art of Record (Manchester
University Press, 1996) and, more recently, Theorising Media (Manchester
University Press, 2011) and Political Culture and Media Genre (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012). His long-standing research interests include the his-
tory and development of documentary forms, theories of media power
and the changing forms of political mediation.
Jens Eder is Professor of Audiovisual Media, Aesthetics and Storytelling
at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. After studying phi-
losophy and literature, he worked as a script editor for German television
and taught film studies, media studies and communication studies at uni-
versities in Hamburg, Mainz and Mannheim. He has written several books
and papers on audiovisual narrative, characters, digital media, transmedial-
ity, and representations of human nature, politics and emotions in the
media. His publications in English include Image Operations: Visual Media
and Political Conflict, edited with Charlotte Klonk (Manchester University
Press, 2017); Characters in Fictional Worlds, edited with Fotis Jannidis
and Ralf Schneider (De Gruyter, 2010); and three papers in the journal
Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, including the most recent,
“Films and Existential Feelings” (2016). He is currently writing a mono-
graph about media and affects/emotions.
 Notes on Contributors 
   xvii

Dirk Eitzen is Professor of Film and Media Studies at Franklin &

Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and an award-winning docu-
mentary producer. He has previously published in The Velvet Light Trap,
Post Script and Iris, among other journals. His article, “When is a
Documentary? Documentary as a Mode of Reception” has initiated
debates amongst the cognitive film theory community, especially since it
shifts the neoformalist focus from the film text to the actual reception
process. He is therefore considered one of the few cognitive film scholars
to have pioneered the analysis of documentary.
Michael Grabowski is Associate Professor of Communication at
Manhattan College, New York. He is the editor of Neuroscience and
Media: New Understandings and Representations (Routledge, 2014). His
work on documentaries, feature films, commercials, music videos and
news has played at the Guggenheim, the Smithsonian, film festivals, and
on broadcast and cable networks. He serves as a Senior Research Consultant
for Audience Theory, which advises television and cable networks, OTT
providers and new media companies. Grabowski’s work explores how dif-
ferent forms of mediated communication shape the way people think and
act within their symbolic environment.
Torben Grodal is Professor Emeritus at the University of Copenhagen.
In addition to several books and articles on literature, he has authored
Moving Pictures: A New Theory of Genre, Feelings, and Emotions (Oxford
University Press, 1997); Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture
and Film (Oxford University Press, 2009); an introduction to film theory
in Danish, Filmoplevelse (2003); and edited Visual Authorship: Creativity
and Intentionality in the Media (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2005). He
has also published articles on film, emotions, narrative theory, art films,
video games and evolutionary film theory. His most recent articles include
“How film genres are a product of biology, evolution and culture—an
embodied approach” (Palgrave Communications, 2017) and “Die Hard
as an Emotion Symphony” (Projections, 2017).
Miklós Kiss is Assistant Professor in Film and Media Studies at the
University of Groningen. His research intersects the fields of narrative and
cognitive film theories. Published in anthologies and academic journals
(including Projections, Scope, Senses of Cinema, Necsus, New Cinemas,
New Review of Film and Television Studies), he is an editorial board mem-
ber of [in]Transition, the first peer-reviewed academic journal of
xviii Notes on Contributors

videographic film studies. His recent books are Film Studies in Motion:
From Audiovisual Essay to Academic Research Video (co-authored with
Thomas van den Berg) (Scalar, 2016) and Impossible Puzzle Films: A
Cognitive Approach to Contemporary Complex Cinema (co-authored with
Steven Willemsen) (Edinburgh University Press, 2017).
Mette Kramer is a film lecturer at the University of Copenhagen. She has
written on emotion and cognitive film theory in a number of Danish and
international film journals and anthologies. She is currently finishing a
book project on attachment, cognition and affect.
Jan Nåls is a scriptwriter, author and editor, film educator and commu-
nications scholar. He is currently Lecturer in Directing and Scriptwriting
at Arcada University of Applied Sciences, Helsinki. He has been active in
teaching and researching intercultural communication for the past decade,
primarily in a documentary-film exchange program between South Africa,
Ghana and Finland. His research interests include the functions and effects
of empathy in visual narratives, a topic on which he has published exten-
sively. His latest scriptwriting effort is an award-winning novella film,
Beware of Thin Ice (2017). Author of several works on varied topics, such
as sports betting and modern theatre, his most recent titles include a fic-
tional biography of Finnish maverick and smuggler Algoth Niska
(Borderline, 2015) and a work on set design in theatre (Skenographia,
2015).
Annelies van Noortwijk is a senior lecturer in the Department of Arts,
Culture and Media Studies at the University of Groningen. Her current
research concentrates on contemporary documentary practice, with a spe-
cific interest in questions of engagement, resistance and ethics, and the
penetration of artistic discourse into non-traditional forms of art. Recent
publications include “The Other, the Same: Towards a Metamodern
Poetics with Heddy Honigmann” in Female Authorship in Contemporary
Documentary Media (Edinburgh University Press, 2018) and “See Me,
Feel Me, Touch Me, Heal Me, La question de la mémoire dans le docu-
mentaire à l’epoque métamoderne” in Un Art documentaire: Enjeux esthé-
tiques, politiques et ethiques (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2017).
Jennifer M. J. O’Connell is a junior lecturer in the Department of Arts,
Culture and Media at the University of Groningen. She graduated with
honors with a thesis on first-person documentary. She is also the main film
programmer of the International Film Festival Assen, a festival that centers
 Notes on Contributors 
   xix

on women and film. Her research focuses on documentary theory and film
festival policy. Recent publications include two entries on the Netherlands
in Women Screenwriters: An International Guide (Palgrave Macmillan,
2015) and an interview with Rada Šešić (co-authored with Annelies van
Noortwijk) in Documentary Film Festivals: History, Politics, Challenges
(Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming).
Karen Pearlman is a senior lecturer at Macquarie University, Sydney, and
the author of Cutting Rhythms: Intuitive Film Editing (Focal Press, 2016).
Her creative-practice research film, Woman with an Editing Bench (2016),
won the Australian Teachers of Media Award for Best Short Fiction and
the Australian Screen Editors Guild (ASE) Award for Best Editing in a
Short Film, along with six other film festival prizes. Other publications
from her ongoing research into editing, cognition and feminist film histo-
ries include “Editing and Cognition Beyond Continuity” in Projections:
The Journal for Movies and Mind (2017) and co-editing a special 2018
issue of Apparatus: Film, Media and Digital Cultures of Central and
Eastern European on women and editing.
Carl Plantinga is Professor of Film and Media at Calvin College,
Michigan. He is the author of three books, including Rhetoric and
Representation in Nonfiction Film (Cambridge University Press, 1997),
Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator’s Experience
(University of California Press, 2009), and Screen Stories: Emotion and
the Ethics of Engagement (Oxford University Press, 2018). Plantinga is
also co-editor of Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) and The Routledge Companion
to Philosophy and Film (Routledge, 2008). He is currently working
on a book about the relationship between realism and the imagination
in narrative film and documentary with the working title,
Alternative Realities.
Veerle Ros is a PhD student in Film and Media Studies at the University
of Groningen. She is currently working on a dissertation that explores the
cognitive and hermeneutic dynamics of authenticity attribution in docu-
mentary film viewing. Her recent publications include “Disrupted PECMA
Flows: A Cognitive Approach to the Experience of Narrative Complexity
in Film” (co-authored with Miklós Kiss) in Projections: The Journal for
Movies and Mind (Spring 2018) and “The Living Landscape of Jakarta in
Leonard Retel Helmrich’s Documentary Triptych” (co-authored with
xx Notes on Contributors

Annelies van Noortwijk) in Filmurbia: Screening the Suburbs (Palgrave

Macmillan, 2017).
Aubrey Tang is a PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative
Literature at the University of California, Irvine. Her research interests
include the history and phenomenology of perception, sensations and cin-
ema, Chinese and Sinophone film historiography, and Hong Kong cin-
ema. Her essays on Chinese literature and cinema have appeared in the
journal Frontiers of Literary Studies in China and the collected volume Li
Ang’s Visionary Challenges to Gender, Sex, and Politics (Lexington Books,
2013). She has contributed a chapter on Shanghai sensationalism, “The
Sensations of Semicolonial Shanghai: A Phenomenological Study of the
Short Stories by Liu Na’ou”, to Sensationalism and the Genealogy of
Modernity: A Global Nineteenth Century Approach (Palgrave Macmillan,
2017). A practicing Tibetan Buddhist, she has a great interest in the topic
of compassion, and currently teaches college writing at Irvine Valley
College.
Alexa Weik von Mossner is Associate Professor of American Studies at
the University of Klagenfurt. Her research explores the theoretical inter-
sections of cognitive science, affective narratology and environmental lit-
erature and film. She is the author of Cosmopolitan Minds: Literature,
Emotion, and the Transnational Imagination (University of Texas Press,
2014) and Affective Ecologies: Empathy, Emotion, and Environmental
Narrative (Ohio State University Press, 2017), the editor of Moving
Environments: Affect, Emotion, Ecology, and Film (Wilfrid Laurier
University Press, 2014), and the co-editor, with Sylvia Mayer, of The
Anticipation of Catastrophe: Environmental Risk in North American
Literature and Culture (Winter 2014).
Another random document with
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 How could we best define a really adequate motion picture text?
By saying that it is a lump of ice in which there is a glowing coal.
“Night—” This is obviously the artistic sense of the style we are
considering: we are endeavoring to make it possible for the actor to
indulge in an unhampered and unhindered mimicry that is poles
removed from the gymnastics of the pantomime. Carl Hauptmann
said once upon a time: “That will always be a poor motion picture in
which a violent effort is made through the overworking of gestures to
express an idea which in reality can be expressed only through the
medium of words. That, too, will always be regarded as a benevolent
inter-pictorial text which holds up to the mind of the spectator,
suddenly and without warning, certain necessary words the mission
of which will be to impart roundness, fullness, and ultimate clarity to
the mental content of the pictures that have been passing before our
vision.”

Fig. 4. Scene from The Stone Rider.

[See p. 82]
 The compass of the motion picture were far too limited to merit
serious and universal study if the materials that are used by it were
confined to such as can be fully and adequately interpreted through
gestures alone, and without the use of even the briefest of
explanatory text.
The American, who troubles himself but little about theoretical
considerations, frequently mounts, in less important films, individual
scenes with six or more bits of text arranged in remark and reply.
There has been a tendency of late, however, to exercise greater
moderation in this, respect. The whole matter can be summed up by
saying that with regard to the number of interspersed words, and the
length of the explanatory sentences that are used, one’s feelings are
the only safe criterion to follow; and they set down this as an
infallible guide: A text is good if it is effective. It can be effective only
when it harmonizes with the pictures. And if it is to be effective—that
is, if it is to find its way to the heart, the very narrowest of limitations
are imposed upon it.
The business of depicting feelings must be left to the actor. Any
feature of the action that cannot be controlled in an unconstrained
way by the art of mimicry must be cared for by the text. Under this
heading would fall the announcement of decisions reached or
resolutions made by the participating personages. But when the text
essays to chew, swallow, and regurgitate what our imagination can
dispose of by virtue of its own power much better than words can
tell, failure raises its austere visage; for imagination, if not left alone,
slinks into the corner in disgruntled mood and proclaims from its safe
but sinister seat that the entire performance is a fraud, that what
seems like splendor is nothing but cheap paint.
It is not the mute but the monosyllabic character that the motion
picture develops. We are becoming aware of the fact that there is a
pronounced tendency in this modern age toward greater brevity; we
are turning away from the prolix and diffuse; we are endeavoring
more and more to say a great deal in a few words, and to use
expressions that carry comprehensive meaning. The man of the
motion picture is related by affinity and by his very being to the man
of the first quarter of the century.
 In the hands of a disciplined and experienced film writer the text,
as a tool of the trade, disports itself benevolently, and is a
handmaiden of the arts. In the hands of an inferior writer, it murders
art and slays the canons of art; for the text becomes an end in itself,
and its æsthetic lassitude as well as its gradual effacement, or rather
extinction, robs in time the legitimate gestures of their specific
meaning and their general significance.
It is remarkable, however, that these facts, these bits of
knowledge regarding the film, do not apply to the comic motion
picture. Even the ingenious Chaplin, who makes more out of
gestures than any of his colleagues, has never been known to object
to a right good, or juicy, text. There are, in truth, quite a number of
film comedies in which the foils and florets of wit are swung about
with marked liberality and hilarity.
But whatever may be said, whatever theories may be proposed, it
remains a sober truth that the real freedom of the film artist is
preserved, for his own enjoyment and that of his spectators, when he
is allowed to make his picture effective as he sees it, and through
such gestures as he personally sees fit to employ to this end. That is
the thought the Swedes kept in mind in the making of their
astonishing film entitled Erotikon, in which they played fast and loose
with all academic deductions touching on the muteness of the film.
And if asked, “When is text permissible?” we would be obliged to
reply that it is permissible only when it is necessary.
 CHAPTER III
TRICKS
On what planet was the man of the moving picture born? Did he,
and does he, first see the light of day on some magic star where the
established laws of nature fail to function? Where time stands still, or
runs backward? Where spread tables emerge from the earth? Where
the wish suffices to enable a man to fly through the air, or to
disappear without a trace into the ground beneath him?
Long before the World War, when the real power of the motion
picture to represent feelings was as yet unknown, and when serious
literature, on this subject or on that, was as yet unable to rise above
the low level of the cheap pamphlet, one of the most valiant of
German literati—Julius Bab—referred to the trick film, the fairy film,
as the exclusive species of creation with which the so-called moving
picture could legitimately lay claim to success, achieved or potential.
The pedagogues rushed to his support; they showered him with
applause; they demanded the fairy film; they hated and even
damned the serious motion picture.
But never mind! Let us grant that the film Bab and his supporters
had in mind enjoys substantial possibilities in the way of setting forth
certain types of pictures. Their contention merely increased the
scope of the moving picture. But did the picture they had in mind add
to the artistic scope of the business at hand? Bab wrote at that time
these words: “For the motion picture, and in the motion picture, it is
easy to have water run uphill, to have a venerable costermonger of
the gentler sex soar through the empyrean heights, to have a snail
overtake an express train.”
Now, there is at least one irrefutable proof that a given thing is not
art: unlimited possibilities. These make up the stock-in-trade of the
trick film. In such a production there is no development; there is
nothing in which the artist soul triumphs over the soul of the merest
mechanic. There is none of the torture or anguish that goes with the
act of real creation. There is nothing more than a trick played on the
object in question. The trick film is the work of a cold hand. The
inventive mind is constantly bringing out new and quite ingenious
tricks—magic tricks. Having become experienced in this, “it has the
Devil kidnap a railway train and make off with it through the air.” But
this is not art; it belongs to the variety shows; it is in place where all
that is asked for and paid for is physical cleverness, legerdemain, art
without soul.
There comes a time where we really feel sorry for the motion
picture artist—when he finds tricks indispensable if he is to give an
adequate idea of the miraculous magic in which he is interested. We
will concede that in the trick film, and particularly in the fairy film, a
certain measure of inner and intimate development is possible, and
is at times evident. This “art,” however, always has a flaw in it that
defies mending. Any art that forms an alliance with pure mechanisms
in order to be effective, or to bring out the intended effects, is to be
distrusted from the very beginning. For art ceases when
mechanismus begins to play a rôle that can in any way be
considered creative or important. The purpose of art is clear: it is to
serve in the colorful reproduction of a scene.
 Fig. 5. Scene from The Nibelungs.
[See p. 82]

This fact should be recognized, and in the films that set forth that
reality which makes the warping and twisting of natural laws
impossible, there should be just as little use made of tricks as the
situation allows; and when employed, they should be employed with
extreme caution. For the spectator, enlightened as he may become
through the papers and magazines, is all too apt to catch on to these
tricks. And it is never wise to grant the man whose art-sense is
undeveloped, and whose æsthetic understanding is anything but
mellow, a peep behind the scenes. The sole place that the artistically
immature can occupy with impunity is in front of the stage.
Many film tricks are, indeed, distinctly deceptive—or fraudulent. If
the incomparable detective is to land in an automobile that is
whirring by at a fearful rate of speed, he goes about his undertaking
in a quite calm way: four pictures a second, and the car making sixty
miles an hour. What really happens? Twenty or thirty-second
pictures, mad speed, foolhardy defiance of every known danger, and
so on and so on. But woe to the final effect if the average spectator
sees through the thing!
Even when there is no great or real mystery about the applied
tricks, the artistic effect of them is rather weak. The spectator looks
at it all, and so many technical questions arise in his mind as to how
the feat is accomplished that his attention is drawn away from the
picture itself. “How do they do that?” is one question that distracts
him. Another is: “Is it real?” Indeed, the legitimate stage not
infrequently finds it hard to resist the temptation to amaze and
bewilder the spectator through the use of technical appliances.
Simple tricks, such as the sudden appearance of a dream figure,
the unforeseen vanishing of magic people right in the middle of the
picture may, in urgent cases, be employed. They rarely radiate
anything that even distantly approaches what might be called
psychic power, as did, for example, the unpretentious and altogether
laudable tricks employed in the Indisches Grabmal. The truth is, we
are reluctant about submitting to these mechanical devices; we
refuse to be duped. Be the management and mounting ever so
clever, we feel too keenly the presence of the cold mechanism.
More complicated and more difficult tricks, which really deceive no
one, are the appearance of the same person twice in the same
picture. When such takes place, two thoughts, or feelings, fight
rather vigorously for dominance: we don’t like to refuse homage to
the at times marvelous art of the actor (as in the case of Henny
Porten in Kohlhiesels Töchter, or Ossy Oswalda in Puppe); and the
situation can be so captivating that it is out of the question for us to
witness it and remain cold. But the point is eventually reached where
we feel the impossibility, indeed the very absurdity of it all: “Just
hand the old quockerwodger over to me! I’ll cut him in half and each
part will dance on the rope just as comically as you please!” This is
all very well, but you cannot expect a man to be an earth-worm, for
which dual dancing of this type would be a mere trifle. Any pleasure
that we might otherwise be enabled to draw from such a
performance is vitiated by the ineluctable consciousness that we are
witnessing a trick of a distinctly technical virtuosity.
But it is still more impossible to feel that we are in the presence of
an artistic performance when—and it is common enough—the scene
demanding that a man be pushed off some dangerous ledge or
routed from some death-giving height, a big stuffed doll is substituted
for the mortal thus to be visualized. In Golem, for example, we know
full well that it is not the actor, Lothar Müthel, who is swept from the
tower by the raging ghost. And we merely smile when the Golem
drags a stuffed doll around by the hair. The presence of Mirjam’s
clothing helps neither one way nor the other. Or take another type of
situation: Where would it be possible to find an actor who was willing
to have himself hurled high into the air on the occasion of one of the
numerous and popular automobile collisions? In such a scene,
where the living actor, of course, does not take part, the most that
even the naïvest of spectator experiences is a quasi-thrill just as the
“hero” receives his bump. After that there is nothing left but the
disagreeable feeling on the part of the spectator that the staging of
the piece was inadequate.
The man of the moving picture is born upon the same earth upon
which all the rest of us live, move, and have our being. The
established laws of nature apply to him just as they apply to us.
Flying through the air, disappearing into the earth—these are the
inartistic little simpletons that belong to the “movie” in its most
desperate and degraded age. It is not the degree to which we can
imitate that makes art: art is determined by the degree in which
figures are fashioned that have souls in them.
The fairy-tale imitation on the part of the motion picture is fearful,
at least in those instances in which, in order to carry out the trick, the
lion’s share is allotted to the text. The fairy film is a bit of merry
nonsense, a charming piece of roguery and skylarking, which takes
place here on this earth, and which is not supposed to reflect the
profound seriousness of the really poetic world of fairies or other
supernatural creatures.
But we are at a loss to know what to do with the fairy film, for the
fairy world—in this hard, sober, material, and at times, brutal world of
ours—has become about extinct, depopulated, dead. For this reason
alone, the fairy film cannot hope to succeed as a business
proposition.
Within the last year, the magic tricks that were once so common
have almost completely disappeared from the screen. The Swedes
—the most artistic of all film peoples—have never found the trick
necessary, not even in their fairy films, though the Swedes belong to
a race that loves reverie, likes to dream, and enjoys visions.
 CHAPTER IV
THE SCENE

Let thought impart fixed content to the forms

That move across the stage in restless search.
—Gœthe.

All that has been said thus far is supposed to serve as an

Ariadne thread through the labyrinth of the moving picture. All
individual forms should be bound together and be reminded in this
way of their common purpose and objective. For it is impossible, if
art is to flourish, to permit each individual section of this manifold
complex to scream aloud, and that with all its might, in an endeavor
to drown out other sections by coercing them into a parrot’s cage,
where the most they can do is to observe an obligatory
subserviency.
There is no art in which the star system, the mere existence and
independent, inconsiderate activity on the part of a few gifted
persons, is so nefarious as in the motion picture. This is an art in
which there must be an unreserved ensemble of effort, a friendship
of minds, a perfect harmony of creative souls. In the orchestra of
productive spirits that plays in the motion picture, no man dare be
master, no man dare be assistant. The manager himself must be
primus inter pares. And neither the author nor the manager is the
chief creator of a work: it is created in truth with the idea of equal
honor and responsibility for author, manager, actor, operator, and
architect. Let each man in this circle of personalities be a
professional in his field—and an intelligent person with regard to the
fields of each of his colleagues. If anyone fails to perform his full
duty, or if anyone pushes his own personality too obtrusively into the
foreground, the inherent value of the film is weakened while its
eventual success is jeopardized. This is true, for art is weak and but
little capable of defending itself against the fatuous doings and
dealings of all that is merely dazzling, just as truth is but little minded
to take up effective warfare against the hollow phrase.
The values that have been found in this way solved the problem
of the material. An artist soul that is certain of itself will never find
any great difficulty in seizing upon the right tools to accomplish its
ends; and it will rely upon its feelings in determining what these tools
shall be. And yet the labyrinth in which the film artist is supposed to
find himself is so ramified and many-sided that even the greatest
connoisseurs not infrequently lose their way in the winding maze of
paths that lie open and seem to bid for popular usage.
The main wheel in the machinery of film art has been found; the
technical bases which decide the limits to which the
accomplishments and achievements of the motion pictures may
hope to go, these are known. Just as brush and colors, or hammer
and chisel, each inartistic means in themselves, circumscribe the
arts which they aid in creating, and set up a vigorous resistance to
an alien or irrelevant aid, just so does the moving picture mechanism
become indignant at the intrusion of any and every foreign
contrivance or figuration the essential being of which is beyond its
natural control.
These technical means, by which the manifolding of scenes is
made possible and their reproduction stimulating, aid in preserving
the naturally perishable art work of the scene or act. The actor-scene
becomes the pivot of all art consideration. It is from it that all
recruiting and recreation radiate; and the fame and glory that attach
to the enterprise fall upon those people who delineate the play of the
human heart in the visible presence of the spectator.
 Fig. 6. Scene from Destiny.
[See p. 83]

The actor on the legitimate stage is a person—that is, a per-sona

(a “sounding-through”); he is the speaking tube of the poet. His
conception of the rôle he acts is limited, determined, and
circumscribed, at least by the words of the poet, and these are, so to
speak, anchored in the harbor of his activity. If the art of the actor
means “art seen through a temperament,” there still remains the
marginal latitude of the temperament, of the personality. Despite this
latitude, however, it is unlikely that an actor will be minded to, or be
able to, make such self-imposed use of his personality as would be
subversive of the ends the poet himself had in mind. The contest, the
dispute, the disagreement about the interpretation of a given rôle—
we have but to think of the riddle of Hamlet or Mephistopheles—
invariably revolves about the question of what the poet himself
meant by it when he created it. The stage actor becomes the
interpreter of the poetic purpose.
 The most important means at the disposal of the stage actor is
the words, the lines he has to learn. The world in which he acts is
relatively the same as the everyday world in which he lives when off
the stage and going about his usual business. The northern actor
makes but little use of gestures; they mean but little to him. Such
concepts as he wishes to transmit to the spectator he feels should
and must be transmitted through the aid of speech. Naturally, the
stage actor does not speak in the restless, uncertain, and indistinct
manner in which he speaks when off the stage. His language—with
the exception of that employed in the hyper-naturalistic drama—is
filed and planed, whether it be prose or verse. But he makes himself
understood by his dramaturgic colleagues, principally through the
same means that he employs when he wishes to convey an idea to
them in daily life.
In the frame of the scenic apparatus, the actor plays in the course
of a few moments, and in one progressive and uninterrupted action,
his rôle from beginning to end. In this case there is no such thing as
the splitting up of the action that is to be gone through with into a
hundred or more different scenes. It is only rare, to be sure, that the
artist observes the whole of his playing from the wings, but in the
scenes he has to play the character of his rôle is developed in logical
sequence, and he has become familiar with the entire play through
rehearsals or through previous performances.
He is his own auditor. The lines of the poet are transformed also
for him into intoxicating music to which he resigns, by which he is
inspired, and on the wings of which he is carried along.
In addition to all of this, there comes that rare and invaluable
reciprocal action and reaction between him and his spectator, the
force of which lends an inextinguishable and inescapable force to his
receptive soul.
There is only one thing that tortures him, and from which there is
no possible escape: he sees himself obliged to crawl into a new and
strange rôle to-morrow, and into still another new and strange rôle
day after to-morrow, and so on throughout his entire career as long
as this is in the ascendancy. This being the case, even the greatest
creation of the greatest poet is apt, if the danger is not incessantly
guarded against, to rattle around in his soul with the emptiness of a
hand-organ. But it is right there that we note the real task of the
stage actor: he is not supposed to bellow forth scene after scene in
uncontrolled eruptions of feelings. On the contrary, he is supposed to
study each work of art, rehearse it, say it over, look into it, until he
knows it from every angle and in its every aspect. There is only one
state of mind that can be sure of success when it is a question of
performing a written play on the legitimate stage: the calm, easy,
superior assurance that comes from infinite study and practice. “I
seize the passions as the pianist seizes the octaves—without seeing
what I am doing!” This confession was made by Salvini.

Compared with his colleagues on the legitimate stage, the film

actor has in many ways a much more difficult task. The Italian and
the Frenchman, both highly gifted in the art of mimicry, are much
better adapted to the art of gesticulation than is the stiff northerner,
or the snobbish cosmopolite whom the moving picture of all peoples
takes such great delight in portraying. But the feverish gestures of
the Romance people is beginning to screech and scream, in the
moving picture, with the result, rather astonishing in itself, that the
undemonstrative northerner is becoming the most gifted film actor.
Now, why have the film actors of the Romance peoples been a
failure? It is easy to answer the question: Because the film shows
life, while the Romance film, and particularly that of the Italians, has
shown theater, and not always good theater at that.
The film actor is split with doubt; he labors under a dual desire: he
is supposed to avail himself of all the means of mimic expression
which he consciously neglects and oppresses in daily life—and he is
supposed consciously to neglect and suppress the linguistic means
of expression which he employs in everyday life. The defective
mimic ability of the northerner is revealed in the majority of German,
Scandinavian, and American films. So soon as the actor becomes
aware that his gestures are not putting the picture across, he begins
to speak his soundless language.
 His gesture is supposed to embrace the content, in the way of
feeling, of the entire scene. In this striving, the actor is supported by
the peculiarity of the film mechanism, which catches up even the
gentlest and most subdued mimicry and holds it up before the
spectator.
It would be impossible, especially for a northerner, to play an
entire mimic action, in all its shades and nuances, at one time or in
one concerted effort. This explains why the pantomime could never
rise above the level of a rather crude art form. But the film dissects
the action, winnows its parts, and allocates them to various places or
dramaturgic localities. Everything that happens in the same place is
assembled, while the picture is being taken, and made into a united
and single play. This is done, of course, for practical reasons
associated with costumes, decorations, and travels. This being the
case, the actor does, and has to, concentrate his entire attention, for
a very short time, a time that is generally measured in seconds, on
the mimic material and means that are naturally placed at his
disposal.
This human weakness—which makes a relatively long and at the
same time inspired action impossible—has been made the basis of
photographic technique by the American. His reasoning and his
technique must be commended. Where his European colleagues
generally let the apparatus stand during the entire scene and then
play a few close-ups later on, the American takes a picture of every
individual scene, and from all conceivable angles. His scenario is
arranged from the beginning with this end in view. The result is that
each scene is wrapped in a spirited, glimmering, glittering unrest
which lifts even the most indifferent episode quite up above the
shadow of tedium. I am of the opinion that the American film owes a
good share of its charm to this distinctly advantageous and manifold
dissection of the pictures, just as I believe that the failure of so many
German and Swedish films is due to the slowness and tediousness
that are familiarly associated with their photographic technique.
 Fig. 7. Scene from The Children of Darkness.
[See p. 83]

This splitting up of the film action, however, into individual scenes,

which are not photographed in their logical sequence, brings into the
artistry of the film actor that profound psychic cleft, even physical
disruption, which fundamentally differentiates his creative activity
from that of the actor on the legitimate stage. The action does not
carry him into his playing, or into the inner nature of his rôle, in calm,
gradual development. On the contrary, the flood-tide of feeling
springs up obviously without the proper motivation, and ends with a
suddenness that suggests that someone cut it off before it had been
fully lived out. There is no such thing as a gliding and swelling of
mood such as is necessary, it would seem, to effect a mild and
logical transition from scene to scene.
This causes the actor and the manager all manner of difficulty;
neither is able to gain a complete survey of the work to be done.
Where the regular stage actor brings his mind into the proper
equilibrium, we might say equanimity, slowly, step by step, and with a
careful studying of the objective that is to be taken, so that the climax
of his effort will stand out from the subsidiary efforts that have led up
to it, the film actor scatters his entire energy over all the scenes, and
some of them are not merely preparatory to the climax, they are in
themselves of a distinctly subordinate nature. When a case really
arises in which there is perfect artistic gradation, each scene
receiving the emphasis it deserves and the climax rising up above all
that has gone before, we may be certain that this is due to the
solemn fact that both the acting and the management have been in
possession of unqualified artistic appreciation, that each has worked
in harmony with the other, and that the eventual and final success of
the achievement has been due to unusual excellence in the way of
creating and producing a picture. When this happens, however, the
layman remains altogether unaware of it. He takes it for granted. But
even he appreciates the astonishing effect of it all; he somehow
knows that the performance was perfect. He feels the perfection
though he is unable to explain it.
Take the case of Lubitsch’s Sumurun. The histrionic brilliancy of it
was due to the fact that it consisted of an unbroken and dazzling
chain of episodes and pictures. The truth is, this disadvantage that is
inherent in the technique of the film can be removed only by the
author. He must see to it that there is a rhythm about his scenes;
these must rise and fall naturally and smoothly.
An excess of magnificence is easier to endure than a total lack of
ebullient ingenuity. The average film is a tedious, wooden affair that
moves along with the slowness of all that is mediocre and
commonplace. For in the very inherent inability to get a complete
survey of what is taking place lies a hazard which only the best of
film actors, and these only when urged on and inspired by the best of
producers, can take with ease or success: the hazard lies in the fact
that the entire character of a figure is tuned either to a sharp or a flat
note, in a major or a minor key, and once set going it works like an
unwelcome narcotic. The actor plays on a certain day just one
individual scene, now from the first and then from the last and still
again from some intervening act. Then on still another day he takes
up another scene from another act, and so on until the mosaic of all
the scenes has been, not composed or arranged in becoming
sequence, but heaped up in a veritable pile.
It is perfectly easy to see how that fine feeling that is associated
with real art, and which even the least gifted actor in the spoken
drama has at his immediate disposal, escapes the less gifted film
actor, when this method of playing is in vogue, and especially so if
he is not carried along by a colorful bit of poetry. He is simply not in a
position to bring new colors, new tones, new passions into his acting,
and therefore into his act. The result of all this is that entire film
actions are played by one or several actors on a single string. The
women of the film fraternity are frequently characterized by this very
type of playing; indeed, it is rare that any one of them can boast of
the innate possession of that choice ability which enables them to
vary the chords that are struck in their souls by the actions they are
supposed to depict.
There are a few, however, who have the psychic power which
spells variety in the creation of character. In Germany there is first of
all Mady Christians; and then there is Lil Dagover. France has only
one such film actress, and she is but little known: Marie-Louise Tribe.
In Sweden, Karin Molander and Tora Teje are noted for their genius
in this direction. In America, colorful film actresses are as numerous
as the sands of the sea. But in all film countries the average film
actress is a tired, tedious, washed-out, and worn-out character.
Such lifeless moving pictures present us consequently with the
soporific drama of a single sorrow or grief or pain, of a conventional
melancholy, sadness, or lament. And these emotions are reiterated
time out of mind, and through the abnormal exploitation of
sentimentality they become swollen and mendacious. Indeed, even
buoyancy and mirth can sound hard and tinny if they are made to trip
along without variation or interruption.
It is the task of the author and the producer to work hand and
hand with the actor to the end that he may be enabled to put life into
his acting. To do this, flashes of light must be shed, in the real and
artistic sense, on the action of the play; the individual scene must be
made to appear in its true light with regard to the play as a whole—
that is to say, this must be done if the complete and completed play
is to give the effect of unified art, art as an entity, art in its totality.
The dissection of the action into countless inorganic parts
naturally has its effect on the artistic form of the film actor, and gives
to his efforts a tone and quality that is altogether different from what
we are accustomed to in the case of the actor in the spoken drama.
This is seen first of all in the rehearsal. Such a thing as the
learning of a rôle by heart, or the practicing of gestures before the
mirror, is unknown to the film actor. With him the rehearsal is rather
an experimenting. In America, where the use of the negative plays
no rôle, the individual parts of the scenes are turned again and
again, until it is possible to establish a “model copy” from which the
best parts are chosen. But such a “waste,” which seems to be quite
profitable in the end, is unknown in Europe, which, following the lead
of its lack of reason, feels that it is too impoverished to indulge in
such lavishness. In Europe the apparatus, literally speaking, is
turned but once, or, in case the result is wholly unacceptable, it is
turned twice, but with a sigh.
The stage actor is a “soul stormer.” But, as contrasted with the
film actor, the stage actor can work himself into his rôle gradually
and by all manner of psychic cajolery. The film actor is not presented
with an entire work of art, but with the merest particle of such a work,
and then he is told to put life into it. “Inspire it!” That is the command
to which he must be obedient. “That is the trial by fire of the film
actor,” says the doughty Danish director, Urban Gad, “when he can
poetize himself, so to speak, into the rôle that he is supposed to
create, when he can feel the situation in its entirety. Then he is the
born film actor. Otherwise he is merely a more or less well trained
circus horse.”
The creative work of the film actor is, consequently, not a matter
of slow and possibly even tiresome learning in solo and ensemble; it
is a matter of ingenious and spontaneous improvisation. The man
who has to stand up before a mirror and see whether this gesture is
fitting and another permissible is no film actor. And it is from his
ability to rise from nothing to an exalted and passionate art-feeling
that the pride and joy of the film player owe their origin; and having
originated, they cast a beneficent atmosphere over the art that is
called into being.
It is not enough to delude oneself regarding an essentially cold
heart by the abundant use of gestures that would seem to indicate
that the heart is warm. There are actors on the legitimate stage who,
by the traditional use of the merest and veriest routine, can carry
their publics along with them and raise them to pinnacles of
enthusiasm; make them rage with indignation; or petrify them into
horror over the deeds done before them. No film actor has ever yet
succeeded in doing that. The lines are creations of the mind; they
are spoken with shrewd calculation as to the effects they can evoke;
they are declaimed with real consideration. The gestures, on the
other hand, are truer than the lines; they come direct from the soul.
Moreover, the lens of the familiar apparatus is sharper and less
indulgent than the human eye. The lens catches everything; nothing
escapes it. It makes a living picture of every attempt to deceive and
visualizes all that comes before it. No film actor who is not
passionately concerned with and about the incident he is to portray
will ever bring other people to the point of passion. The inert playing
of comedy which infests the legitimate stage with false and idle
pathos, with the spirit of repulsive paint and powder, is utterly out of
place, and out of the question, in the moving picture. The film actor
has got to be what he plays.
Every actor, however, has his own personality; his own world.
There is an atmosphere about him that is his. He cannot escape it; it
makes itself felt; and it causes him to have a definite, even unique,
disposition, temperament, character. Now if the circumference of his
soul is very large, the compass of his soul will be equally large—and
he will provide us with a wonderful drama—the drama of a man who
can create one character to-day, another to-morrow, and in so doing
renew himself as a molder of personalities.
The moving picture, with its spontaneous creation, is a high grade
and first-class measurer of temperament. The world has a plentiful