Boom is a festival dedicated to the Free Spirits from all over the world. It is the gathering of the global psychedelic tribe and of whoever feels the call to join in the celebrations!! Boom is a weeklong unpredictable and unforgettable adventure. It takes place, every two years, during August Full Moon, on the shores of a magnificent lake in the sunny Portuguese inland and every one is invited! An environmentally conscious event is a way to offer a concrete example that it is possible to live on this Planet in respect of Mother Earth and of one another.
Permaculture is a brilliant example of how such understanding can be turned into practice. Moreover Boom widely promotes knowledge and practices of sustainability through lectures, workshops and… practical example! Since its beginning in , Boom is the home of the global nomadic tribe. Since then, it has grown organically by word of mouth into an incredibly culturally diverse festival, attracting people from nationalities At Boom music is sacred. The dancefloors are temples where to transcend ordinary states of perception and the limitations of our egos. Through dance and music, we can reconnect to our own individual divine essence, while in synch with the beating heart of the whole tribe.
Scattered across four stages, music at Boom is as diverse as it gets: Psytrance culture remains one of the inspiring sources of Boom's vision and intention. And Boom remains as a testimony of the evolutionary potentials of such a culture. The Boom experience has been conceived to activate the vital force directing every being towards the fulfillment of its highest potential. To reach this ambitious goal, Boom relies on the continuous exchange of radically innovative knowledge and practices by countless Boomers, musicians, artists, teachers, visionaries, healers, farmers, ecologists, wisdom keepers, researchers, scientists, activists.
Besides the music stages and the countless art installations scattered all over the site, the other areas where Boom channels transformation are the Liminal Village, the Healing Area and the Visionary Art Museum. Boom is an autonomous zone of cognitive liberty and therefore is and will always be free from corporate sponsorship and logos. Boom is funded by the financial support of the thousands of people that buy the tickets and come to the festival. Es sind kleine Momente, in denen das Lernen stattfindet.
Und jene Momente in denen dir klar wird, dass du es an anderen Stellen genauer nehmen musst. Genau hier setzt die Idee der Boom an: Zu diesem Zweck kippen wir das Schubladensystem, das unseren Alltag bestimmt, einfach mal komplett aus. Und zwar mitten hinein in die sonnige, unverdorbene, nuklearfreie Natur Portugals. Dann nehmen wir uns 7 Tage lang Zeit, um spielerisch neue Denkwege und Handlungsweisen, um eine neue Ordnung zu erkunden. Das ist unsere Vision von psychedelischer Kultur und sie wollen wir aktiv vortreiben.
Auf der Boom kannst du erleben wie inspirativ diese einfache Tatsache ist. Und zwar in konzentrierter Form: We Are One — Wir sind eins! Mit Lebensphilosophie und praktischem Wissen. Ein Filmprogramm zur neuen, planetarischen Kultur bietet noch mehr Stimulation auf intellektueller Ebene. Mach dir selbst ein Bild! In ihrer Gesamtheit schwingen sie sich zum kosmischen Groove der universellen Liebe auf! Mit jedem Herzschlag der Boom bebt das portugiesische Hinterland. Im monumentalen Tanztempel verschmelzen utopische Zukunftsvisionen und das archaische Ritual des Stammenstanz zu einer einzigartigen Trance-Erfahrung.
Die Grundidee der Boom unterscheidet sich ganz erheblich von der einer kommerziellen Massenproduktion. So wird ganz konkret erfahrbar: Es gibt kostenlose Taschenaschenbecher. Die Boom seid ihr, die Boomer. Tragt bitte dazu bei, dass sie ein nachhaltiges Festival ist. Auch das ist ein zentraler Aspekt unserer Vision. Und vieles, vieles mehr! Obwohl das Boom Team den Rahmen schafft — das eigentliche Erlebnis, die eigentliche Inspiration und der eigentliche Geist lebt in euch. Wenn du oder jemand deiner Freunde behindert ist, sendet uns bitte bis Juni eine Email um optimale Bedingungen zu garantieren: Deshalb haben wir uns entschieden, auf diese Tatsache mit einem flexiblen Eintrittsmodell zu reagieren.
Portugal, Irland, Griechenland und Spanien. Habe mich im Verkehrshaus dann mit S. The Futurological Symposium on Free Cultural Spaces provides an open platform of ideas and strategies striving to create an independently focused, internationally linked culture.
Based on the principles of creativity, solidarity, awareness, and respect of nature, it is a forum for networking and for generating a fruitful dialogue between different projects, spaces, events and the people participating in them. This year Boom Festival has the honor of hosting the 4th Symposium session, and it is our intention to build a bridge between the more historical projects and the emerging festival culture, which we believe is one of the most successful current manifestations of free culture.
Finance ministers from sixteen EU nations awoke in Brussels this morning to find that a huge wooden horse had been wheeled into the city center overnight. The Greek Prime Minister will keep his job, at least for now, after securing a crucial confidence vote from Parliament. It comes after George Papandreou horrified the country's European partners and wreaked international havoc on the markets by calling a referendum on the EU bailout plan for Greece, a move he later cancelled. RT correspondent Sara Firth is in the Greek capital with the latest.
Doch bis zum Schluss rangen Konservative und Sozialisten um einen geeigneten Kandidaten. An den Ratings orientieren sich die Finanzinstitute, wenn sie Staaten Kredite verleihen - wer ein niedriges Rating hat zahlt mehr. Greece has 60 billion euros in unpaid taxes: EU report 17th November The figure is equivalent to around 25 percent of Greek gross domestic product. Greece's total public debt stands at billion euros, or around percent of GDP. Of the 60 billion euros of unpaid taxes, half is in uncollected taxes that are already subject to court cases, some of which have been running for more than 10 years, the report said.
Only about 8 billion euros is quickly recoverable. The Commission's Task Force on Greece has the task of identifying and coordinating all technical assistance to Greece to help reforms in the country and boost its economic growth. Die Proteste gegen die harten Sparauflagen eskalierten in Athen. Die Gewerkschaften riefen unter der Losung "Leistet Widerstand! Polizeigewerkschaften drohten gar mit Haftbefehlen gegen Vertreter der Dreiergruppe. Karatzaferis warf Bundeskanzlerin Merkel Herrschsucht vor. Auch der Dax gab nach. Die Euro-Finanzminister wollen Griechenland in Zukunft strikter kontrollieren.
Doch solle alles in einem Gesamtpaket am Mittwoch verabschiedet werden. Athen Reuters - Die griechische Regierung hat die Parlamentsabgeordneten am Samstag massiv unter Druck gesetzt, das am Vortag von ihr verabschiedete Sparprogramm zu billigen. Der stellvertretende Finanzminister Filippos Sachinidis warnte: Allerdings drohten einige Pasok-Abgeordnete, das Reformpaket abzulehnen. In Athen waren am Freitagabend die Proteste eskaliert: Fires in central Athens as rioters clash with police ekathimerini.
The unrest came as lawmakers prepared to vote on a new debt deal agreed between Greece and its foreign creditors. And the Greek people, regardless of ideology, have risen. Glezos is a national hero for sneaking up the Acropolis at night in and tearing down a Nazi flag from under the noses of the German occupiers, raising the morale of Athens residents. Doch daraus wird nichts. Sollen Spanien, Italien und Portugal gleich hinterhertaumeln? Soll die gesamte Eurozone in eine Rezession schlittern? Soll die Weltwirtschaft insgesamt davon angesteckt werden?
Das griechische Wahlvolk muss zu den Urnen, weil die Parlamentswahlen am 6. Dann kam die Krise und raffte die guten Aussichten dahin. Christos nimmt einen Schluck aus seiner Dose Lipton-Eistee. Er hat keine Perspektive, und das ist schwer zu ertragen, auch wenn viele seiner Landsleute noch viel schlimmer dran sind. Am Sonntag wird Christos seine Stimme abgeben, und er will sie sich nicht nehmen lassen. Darunter ist ein alter Freund von Tsipras. Er gibt sich als Jannis aus, seinen wahren Namen will er lieber nicht nennen. Jannis kannte Tsipras schon in den er-Jahren, als sie gemeinsam Schulen besetzten, um gegen die Privatisierung des Bildungssystems zu protestieren.
Deshalb bin ich mir gar nicht so sicher, ob er am Was machen Arbeitslose, wenn sie unter Diabetes, Asthma oder anderen chronischen Krankheiten leiden, aber nicht versichert sind? Woher er die Medikamente hat? Am Donnerstag, den Die beiden lebten von Euro im Monat, der Pension der alten Frau. Doch neben vielen anderen Unterschieden zur griechischen Situation ist vor allem einer bedeutend: Spanien wird man eher entgegenkommen, Griechenland dagegen nicht. Die beiden Hauptakteure, Berlin und Paris, wissen, dass angesichts der Dramatik diesmal geklotzt und nicht gekleckert werden muss.
Aber wo ist die Partei eigentlich? Der Eventkalender auf der Website www. Gibt es vielleicht kleinere Wahlkampfveranstaltungen ohne den Parteichef Samaras? Nikos Lisidakis, mit seinen 27 Jahren eine der Zukunftshoffnungen der Nea Dimokratia, sitzt in einem Kaffeehaus vor der Zentrale der Parteijugend und blickt unentwegt auf sein Handy.
Gerade eben erst hat er mit Parteichef Antonis Samaras telefoniert und ein paar Wahlstrategien besprochen. Die Kanzlerin schaut tatenlos zu, wie Athen brennt. Zuletzt zeigten sie griechische Medien in Nazi-Uniform. So fragt Hasan gleich zu Beginn: Wieder falsch", so Hasan, um dann selbst zu antworten: Merkel schaue tatenlos zu wie Athen brenne, aber auch Madrid und Rom. Es sei geradezu eine Ironie der Geschichte, dass die Regierungschefin eines Landes, das nur ungern an seine Nazi-Vergangenheit erinnert werde, nun gelassen zusehe, wie die drakonische Sparpolitik neuen sic!
Der "NewStatesman", eine traditonsreiche und mehrfach ausgezeichnete linke Wochenzeitung, gilt als respektable Publikation mit nahmhaften Kolumnisten. Die Finanzminister der Eurozone haben offenbar Angst vor der eigenen Courage bekommen. BBC News, 29th June Insgesamt sind bisher Milliarden Euro an Krediten aus den verschiedenen Rettungsfonds nach Griechenland geflossen, um das Finanzsystem in der Eurozone zu stabilisieren.
Nicht eingerechnet sind die Notkredite der EZB, die sich vermutlich auch noch einmal auf Milliarden Euro belaufen werden. Februar in Berlin vorstellen will. When you visit Rothenburg ob der Tauber , a town in Middle Franconia Germany, Bavaria , you should not miss the city wall.
The fortification wall existed since the 14th Century and belongs to a sightseeing tour. The military roofed corridor stretches over 3 km around the old town. With 43 portal towers and wall towers the wall ring is almost completely intact. The outlook at the gables and roofs of the historic center is lovely and you can feel the medieval romance.
For 40 years, there is a fundraising campaign, in the beginning for the reconstruction and today for the preservation of the city wall. You found there names of individuals and companies from all over the world, particularly Japan and the United States. Best view to see the structures and details Large On Black then press F11 ;-.
Die Stadtmauer wurde im If you like view "All my photos on one site". The Dresden Frauenkirche German: Built in the 18th century, the church was destroyed in the firebombing of Dresden during World War II. It has been reconstructed as a landmark symbol of reconciliation between former warring enemies. The reconstruction of its exterior was completed in , its interior in and, after 13 years of rebuilding, the church was reconsecrated on 30 October with festive services lasting through the Protestant observance of Reformation Day on 31 October.
George's Anglican Chaplaincy in Berlin. A first Kirche zu unser liuben Vrouwen was built in the 11th century in romanesque architecture. It was outside the city walls and surrounded by a grave yard. This first Frauenkirche was torn down in and replaced by a new church due to capacity requests. The modern Frauenkirche was built as a Lutheran Protestant parish church by the citizenry. Even though Saxony's Prince-elector, Frederick August I, reconverted to Roman Catholicism to become King of Poland, he supported the construction to have an impressive cupola in the Dresden townscape.
In , famed organ maker Gottfried Silbermann built a three-manual, stop instrument for the church. The organ was dedicated on 25 November and Johann Sebastian Bach gave a recital on the instrument on 1 December. The church's most distinctive feature was its unconventional 96 m-high dome, called die Steinerne Glocke or "Stone Bell". An engineering feat comparable to Michelangelo's dome for St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, the Frauenkirche's 12,ton sandstone dome stood high resting on eight slender supports.
Despite initial doubts, the dome proved to be extremely stable. Witnesses in said that the dome had been hit by more than cannonballs fired by the Prussian army led by Friedrich II during the Seven Years' War. The projectiles bounced off and the church survived. The completed church gave the city of Dresden a distinctive silhouette, captured in famous paintings by Bernardo Bellotto, a nephew of the artist Canaletto also known by the same name , and in Dresden by Moonlight by Norwegian painter Johan Christian Dahl. In , the church was at the heart of the revolutionary disturbances known as the May Uprising.
It was surrounded by barricades, and fighting lasted for days before those rebels who had not already fled were rounded up in the church and arrested. For more than years, the bell-shaped dome stood over the skyline of old Dresden, dominating the city. On 13 February , Anglo-American allied forces began the bombing of Dresden. The church withstood two days and nights of the attacks and the eight interior sandstone pillars supporting the large dome held up long enough for the evacuation of people who had sought shelter in the church crypt, before succumbing to the heat generated by some , incendiary bombs that were dropped on the city.
The temperature surrounding and inside the church eventually reached 1, degrees Celsius. The pillars glowed bright red and exploded; the outer walls shattered and nearly 6, tons of stone plunged to earth, penetrating the massive floor as it fell. The altar and the structure behind it, the chancel, were among the remnants left standing. Features of most of the figures were lopped off by falling debris and the fragments lay under the rubble.
The building vanished from Dresden's skyline, and the blackened stones would lie in wait in a pile in the center of the city for the next 45 years as Communist rule enveloped what was now East Germany. Shortly after the end of World War II, residents of Dresden had already begun salvaging unique stone fragments from the Church of Our Lady and numbering them for future use in reconstruction. Popular sentiment discouraged the authorities from clearing the ruins away to make a car park. In , the remnants were officially declared a "memorial against war", and state-controlled commemorations were held there on the anniversaries of the destruction of Dresden.
In , the ruins began to be the site of a peace movement combined with peaceful protests against the East German regime. On the anniversary of the bombing, Dresdeners came to the ruins in silence with flowers and candles, part of a growing East German civil rights movement. By , the number of protesters in Dresden, Leipzig and other parts of East Germany had increased to tens of thousands, and the wall dividing East and West Germany toppled. This opened the way to the reunification of Germany. The foundation stone was laid in , the crypt was completed in and the inner cupola in As far as possible, the church — except for its dome — was rebuilt using original material and plans, with the help of modern technology.
The heap of rubble was documented and carried off stone by stone. The approximate original position of each stone could be determined from its position in the heap. Every usable piece was measured and catalogued. A computer imaging program that could move the stones three-dimensionally around the screen in various configurations was used to help architects find where the original stones sat and how they fit together.
Of the millions of stones used in the rebuilding, more than 8, original stones were salvaged from the original church and approximately 3, reused in the reconstruction. As the older stones are covered with a darker patina, due to fire damage and weathering, the difference between old and new stones will be clearly visible for a number of years after reconstruction.
The builders relied on thousands of old photographs, memories of worshippers and church officials and crumbling old purchase orders detailing the quality of the mortar or pigments of the paint as in the 18th century, copious quantities of eggs were used to make the color that provides the interior its almost luminescent glow.
When it came time to duplicate the oak doors of the entrance, the builders had only vague descriptions of the detailed carving. Because people especially wedding parties often posed for photos outside the church doors, they issued an appeal for old photographs and the response—which included entire wedding albums—allowed artisans to recreate the original doors. The new gilded orb and cross on top of the dome was forged by Grant Macdonald Silversmiths in London using the original 18th-century techniques as much as possible.
It was constructed by Alan Smith, a British goldsmith from London whose father, Frank, was a member of one of the aircrews who took part in the bombing of Dresden. In February , the cross was ceremonially handed over by The Duke of Kent,[1] to be placed on the top of the dome a few days after the 60th commemoration of D-Day on 22 June For the first time since the last war, the completed dome and its gilded cross grace Dresden's skyline as in centuries prior.
From such little-known work flows the life-blood of the art, keeping its expression young and vital. It is to these film-makers specifically that we dedicate this evaluation of their work alongside the experimental achievements of their colleagues serving the greater public of the world's cinemas.
Watson and Melville Webber, U. THE vow M. Stereoscopic film A. Pabst, Germany, Instructional We are grateful to the following for their co-operation in supplying stills: The art of the film was born when the first artist was excited by the chances offered him by these inventors' achievements. Another medium had been created with which to bridge the unhappy gulf between man and men. When Melies ran to Lumiere and begged him for permission to use his moving picture apparatus, the in- ventor laughed: But Melies knew with the intuitive foresight of the artist that here was a medium to which he could devote the main productive part of his life.
No art had appeared before which was so suddenly to transform the relationships of men and delight their imaginations. No art before had been so completely dependent for its absolute existence on technical equipment which science was not ready to provide before the nineteenth century. The slow-moving passage of the generations since humanity had learnt to plough and build became more intricate as thought evolved and civilizing activities widened. For these teachers and artists, using the words so painfully evolved in the mouths of men and the earliest of musical sounds and visual images, became the first legislators of man, guiding him towards a form of living where values might overcome violence.
When these standards tended to prevail, as in the golden age of Greece, we can speak of civilization. When these standards were destroyed by greed and cruelty, civilization halted and waited as a recollection in the minds of a minority of educated men until circumstances permitted its wider resumption. There are therefore no dates, barely even periods for the birth of drama, of poetry, of fiction, of sculpture, of painting and of music.
No one can say when the civilizing arts began as an active and continuous preoccupation for men who singled themselves out from the rest of mankind to practise these professions, which produced no im- mediate results in food, or clothing or shelter. Over the thousands of years, in the variety of the world's climates and civilizations, the arts were nurtured, until their achievement became so high and so permanent that examples and records of them have sur- vived to the present day.
Similarly, the technical innovations with which the artist has widened the range and effectiveness of his medium have come slowly after generations of practice. The introduction of the tech- nique of perspective to painting was the event of a century.
Yet because the film has come so late in this preliminary phase of human civilization in which we live, we expect it to show a matur- ity similar to that of music and painting after merely fifty years of existence. Rarely has an art evolved under such high pressure, like the Greek drama of fifth- century Athens, and that was unhindered by the economic and educational barriers which complicate the relationship of the artists of our time to their public. The later technical innovations of the cinema sound and colour arrived suddenly, shaping its youth most awkwardly.
The sound film required a major readjustment of film aesthetics whilst it widened the scope of film technique to a degree we have yet barely realized. Colour has brought its own technical complications, and stereo- scopy will soon revolutionize the art of the film once more. But not only these major readjustments but a host of minor ones complicate the task of the film artist. Similarly, the image in this fundamentally visual art may be distorted or optically treated until it achieves effects unknown to the human eye watching the world of normally visible pheno- mena.
No artist before has been given a medium of such astonish- ing flexibility, where all arts seem to combine to serve his purposes in forms completely under his control, should he have the imagination to evolve them. Great though the artists are who have already served the cinema, none has brought the art of a Shakespeare or a Beethoven to free the film from the constricting circumstances of its established convention. We work still in the formative age of a Marlowe. Our Shakespeare may come in the next half-century.
Meanwhile it is well for all film-artists of imagination to prepare the way for him. When he does arrive he will find his artistry tested by the involved pattern of film economy. The artist must not only support himself during the process of his creation, he must obtain the tools and raw materials of his medium.
No film can exist merely on paper, any more than a building can exist in a blue- print. The final art which transforms the spectator into a partici- pant in the action cannot exist until production has been under- taken and the film has reached its final polished stage of editing. A great barrier of finance, the costs of creating this complex technical entity, have placed the artist in the hands alike of promoter and public, a public so wide that it must extend to millions before the promoter sees his profit.
Few artists have acquired the money of a Griffith or a Chaplin to satisfy their personal ambition in celluloid, or have been given the latitude to create films according to their imagination which a few Soviet directors have enjoyed. Most film artists are forced to compromise to meet the wishes of the promoter and the assumed desires of the public. Most film artists, too, unless they have also unusual qualities of artistic leadership, find they must allow for the fact that their art requires the collective contributions of scriptwriters, designers, motion-picture photographers, sound recordists and composers.
Architecture notably requires the group understanding of the purpose of a design, and may well involve a number of designers before a great building is unified with decoration and furnishings, and its effect possibly augmented by the presence of statuary and paintings. Music is a co-operative art, for music cannot be heard without the execu- tant. Drama similarly requires producer, actor and designer.
Even a painter has been known to use assistants on a single work which he supervises and to which he contributes the uniqueness of his touch. But no great art is so completely dependent upon the har- monious blending of skills as the film, which, because it is a pic- torial art, requires a special virtue in designer and actor as well as in the photographer who lights and frames their work and the editor who controls its presentation in time, and a further virtue in the imaginative use of sound in its elaboration of speech, music and the noises of nature.
Among the small army of technicians camera- men, electricians, sound engineers, carpenters, decorators, and many more who crowd the film set, there must preside over them a small group of artists who have agreed among themselves as to the final artistic integrity of the work they have undertaken. Without this unity of purpose the potentially valuable collective effort of their imaginations will be squandered in disintegrating attempts to dominate the film by a number of rival skills.
The greater the difficulty of achieving harmony in the composition of an art, the greater the artistic triumph when that harmony is brought about. The history of experiment in the film is the history of imagina- tion applied by single individuals who have often worked alone, subjecting their technicians entirely to their purpose, or who have built around them teams which understand their individual styles and manner of work. Bitzer was Griffith's cameraman throughout the important productive years of his life: Though the credit due to these subsidiary artists is considerable, no one denies that the original conception, the final creation, the purpose and dynamic of the work of Griffith and Eisenstein emanated from them alone.
The coming of sound and colour has made the technical under- standing required of the great director far wider and more com- plicated than during the silent period. He must be a master of drama conveyed by pictorial images, by dialogue, by music, by the sounds of the natural world. His attention while he is at work will be dispersed over a variety of activities all of which must be a calculated part of his purpose. So far, there have been few artists working in the cinema who have begun to possess all these qualities in one single talent.
We await still this superman. The Nature of Film Art The film is a new and independent art of expression. It belongs to the narrative arts since it develops its subject whether by story or argument in the process of time. As a medium for story-telling it belongs to the dramatic group, since its characters have to be impersonated.
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Yet it is a new and independent medium, because it can give its subject-matter, as all the great arts do, the advan- tage of its own peculiar powers of expression. All arts possess the limitations natural to their form. The painter must work in two dimensions within the limits of his canvas. The sculptor must observe the qualities of his stone and carve with a care for the texture of his woods. The poet must use the sound values of words and the rhythmic framework of his verse. Yet the very limitations thus imposed upon him are a gift which test his skill and give delight to his public.
The values of his meaning are enhanced by the beauty and dexterity of his use of his medium of expression. Every artist delights in this technical struggle, for he knows it is to his advantage.
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Every genius succeeds in expanding his chosen medium beyond the limits which previous artists have observed. It is the function of genius to reveal new horizons. The delight of Griffith, Pudovkin, Eisenstein and Grierson is the delight of the true artist: He must train his imagina- tion, he must develop the habit of representing to himself what- ever comes into his head in the form of a sequence of images upon the screen.
Yet more, he must learn to command these images and to select from those he visualises the clearest and most vivid; he must know how to command them as the writer commands his words and the playwright his spoken phrases. And the process whereby this image is per- ceived is identical with the original experiencing of the theme of the image's content.
Just as inseparable from this intense and genuine experience is the work of the director in writing his shooting-script. This is the only way that suggests to him those decisive representations through which the whole image of his theme will flash into creative being. Simple notion as it is, that has been my propaganda ever since — to make peace exciting.
In one form or another I have produced or initiated hundreds of films; yet I think behind every one of them has been that one idea, that the ordinary affairs of people's lives are more dramatic and more vital than all the false excitements you can muster. That has seemed to me something worth spending one's life over. These words are not written or spoken by men preoccupied with a lesser art.
The film went through the forcing-house of childhood and adolescence in an astonishingly short period. It has always as its rivals the drama and the novel, and it was inevitable that its technique would develop rapidly in order that it should be brought to a state of equality with these rivals. Its mass audiences, ill-equipped to appreciate artistic subtleties and almost untouched by the beauties of great theatre and great writing, have shown themselves to be at once the worst handicap and the brightest glory of the film. There is no finer audience for the artist to work for than the audience of the human race as a whole, but in an age of incomplete and unequal standards of civilization, the mass audience will tend to favour only the easier forms of emotional expression.
Therefore the artist finds himself surrounded by promoters who are only too ready to keep the mass audience pleased with trifles. It is the function of the artist to lead, to initiate, to legislate. There is no doubt he will eventually do all these things, whatever the economic difficulties he has to face. Shakespeare did this in an open theatre filled with courtiers and groundlings whose manners were no better than those to be found in a low-grade cinema today.
But by his subtle combination of showmanship and poetry Shakespeare in a few years raised the standard of his drama to a level which has never been equalled since. The artist must not become remote from his audience, a recluse hiding the treasures of his genius behind an esoteric veil. He must, as Euripides, Shakespeare, Moliere, Balzac.
Dickens and Shaw have done, take the thoughts and emotions of the people and turn them to his purpose through the natural quality of his art. When an artist of this stature arrives to lift the cinema into line with the achievement of Shakespeare and Beet- hoven he will not make films only for the elite and the cultured.
He will make films so ostensibly human in value and so rich in ingenuity that no cinema audience will remain unmoved. He has at his disposal a technical medium of astonishing potentialities many of which I do not believe we have at present the imagination to foresee. To repeat, we have not evolved beyond the rich and promising stage of Marlowe in our pursuit of the film drama.
But I believe them to be there, and all the experiments with the technical medium of the cinema which the past few decades have produced are the beginnings only of a contribution which this artist will take up and develop for his purposes. He has incomparable advantages. Visually he can govern com- pletely the range of his audiences' vision: He can control their approach to what he allows them to see: He can control its presentation in time, allowing a long or short impression of it, a continuous view from a fixed place, or one varied as to angle and viewpoint.
He can present it, too, in black and white, in natural colour or in artificial colour, modifying completely the viewer's attitude to what he sees, as real, unreal or fantastic. He can allow it normal movement; or he can quicken, retard, or reverse its movement. He can present it as a two-dimensional image, or when the equipment becomes available for him, he will be able to make use of the illusion of the third dimension. For the first time in the world a stereoscopic effect was obtained without spectacles, and demon- strated to an audience of nearly people.
They made enthusiastic comments. They saw birds that seem to fly above their heads; they instinctively started back at the sight of a ball seeming to jump out at them from the screen; they in- voluntarily shivered at the sight of sea waves rushing down upon them as if they were pouring out of the screen. Aurally, the artist has equal power. He can use the sounds of nature to match their visual counterparts on the screen, either in the confused medley of the natural world or isolated with a sharpened emphasis. The quality of all these sounds can be changed artificially either in the process of record- ing or subsequently in fulfilment of the artist's needs.
The face of a man on the screen can be matched with the voice of another human being so that the maximum dramatic effect can be achieved. Musical instruments combined in an orchestra can be balanced with new kinds of effect which the human ear in the concert-hall can never be able to hear. Lastly, an unreal world of sound, artificial and strange, can be drawn visually and repro- duced as an entirely new aural experience. There is no limit but the human imagination itself and the rapidly receding barriers of the cinema's technical boundaries to hinder the artist who possesses the desire and the means to exploit the potentialities of the film.
The barriers are rather financial than technical, or the failing vision of men faced with such astonishing powers. For the nature of the film is in line with the terrifying and inspiring discoveries of its period, with atomic energy and the revolution which has suddenly overtaken all branches of human communications in a bare half-century. The pace is upon us: Our scientists and technicians have outpaced these values and made us technical supermen before we have learned to be wise as ordinary mankind. They have given us the cinema and turned aside to make other discoveries.
It is for us to use this new gift in communications to help strengthen the conception of our human nature so that it can take the strain of our great technical discoveries and their social implications. So far almost all philosophers, psychologists, sociologists and other students of human affairs have neglected the cinema as if it were only worth the attention of adolescents, journalists and financiers. This is as wrong as it is dangerous. More recently a French philosopher, Gilbert Cohen-Seat, has began to speculate upon the wider long-term significance of film- communications to the human species.
He thinks of it as of equal significance to printing, without which the history of the world since the Renaissance would have been directed upon entirely different and narrower paths, owing to the limitations which its absence would have placed upon the spread of knowledge. For knowledge, once communicated, increases indefinitely in the process of its propa- gation.
L'homme tenait de l'ecriture, superposee au langage, le moyen d'une action profonde sur l'e sprit, capable de le transformer sans cesse, d'une maniere imprevisible. Nous avons obtenu de l'elec- tricite une promptitude d'effet et une action universelle, un mepris de l'espace et du temps jusqu'alors inconnu. Mais Taction electrique n'affecte immediatement que la matiere; et l'ecriture trouve un frein dans sa lenteur, parce qu'il faut entendre les langues, se plier a la lecture, savour lire.
Le film se rend maitre de la portee morale; il s'est empare de l'universalite et de la promp- titude. Heritier de l'ecriture, comme elle sans dessein arrete entre le bien et le mal, le vrai et le faux, le beau et le laid, ce jeu d' images possede comme l'electricite une sorte de polyvalence exceptionnelle. Quelques atomes de films, pour parler comme les chimistes, combines avec chaque autre element de l'univers humain, peuvent constituer aussitot quelque "ecrit", immediate- ment et universellement intelligible.
Synthese singuliere des deux principaux produits de l'intelligence: Cohen-Seat suggests that if the history books of today refer to the Renaissance as the age of printing, those of the future may well call this the age of the film. He sees the cinema as a revolution in human communications based on the cultural possibilities which can come from a mass audio- visual process. On the other hand, there are those such as the French Catholic philosopher and film-maker Jean Epstein who say that the film as a medium does not possess the necessary qualities to rival the verbal arts.
Words are the logical, classical tools of expression, the servants of thought, the film, as a visual and photographic medium, is a mosaic of surface pictures; it encourages man to feel himself part of a flux of never-ending superficial sensations. Cette mobilisation generale cree un univers ou la forme dominante n'est plus le solide qui regit principalement l'experience quotidienne.
Le monde de Fecran, a volonte agrandi et rapetisse, accelere et ralenti, constitue le domaine par excellence du malleable, du visqueux, du liquide. I am not in agreement with this generalized attack upon the film. There are already a number of films, both fictional and factual, which have been conceived wholly on an introspective plane, and have used the innate powers of the controlled use of significant moving pictures presented in a predetermined order and rhythm to present human thought and emotion.
Similar, though in an entirely different style, was Jean Vigo's U Atalante. Should the artist so use it, the film medium can demand of the critic the fullest and most sensitive attention of which he is capable. That few films so far have made a demand of this order is no condemnation of the medium, but rather of the level on which the mass audience persuades the commercial producer to keep it. We do not condemn literature as such because of the pulp writing which makes up the greater part of contemporary literary pro- duction.
Again, we do not, or should not, condemn music because it is primarily concerned with emotions and not ideas, or sculpture because it relies for much of its effect on the texture of stone and the balance of masses. Literature alone is an art solely composed of words, but men have not placed it above music on this account. The film shares words with literature: The human face and body, the visible world of nature and the handiwork of man are full of mean- ing and association when presented visually to a spectator.
An heiligen Wassern (1960)
The fact that the film as a photographic medium does not possess a direct access to the artificial mental processes of a fictional character such as the writer's analyses in, for example, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu or a dramatist's soliloquys in, for example, King Lear does not mean that the film or for that matter the visual art of painting is debarred from the analysis of human character. Without resorting to the psychological symbol- ism of Pabst's Secrets of the Soul though this may point to a future development in film technique , the film is well able through the faces, gestures and words as well as the dramatic action of its characters, to express the subtle play of mood and feeling and thought.
This is done simply in the silent film Mother, more complexly in, for example, La Grande Illusion and Brief Encounter. In life we depend on the physical expression, the words and the deeds of our friends to gain an insight into their characters. The film can present all these facets, amplified by the astonishing resources of its technique. There is no adequately demonstrated reason why the film should be regarded as a technical medium unworthy of a great artist. It is true that its so-called great productions as yet are mainly unequal experiments, now brilliant, now subtle, now infinitely moving, now offering some visual image as fine and clear as the poetic imagery of Wordsworth, now strong and sweeping with a touch of the nobility of Beethoven, but perhaps never yet sustaining their vision in a technical form which comes near to the rarer achievements of the greater artists of the established media.
It is the perpetual delight of the film critic to watch for these moments of greatness and to hope that as the curtains part before some new film it will bear the name and style of a master. When indeed this does happen, we may be faced with an achievement which will astonish the critics of every established art.
Here it is necessary to distinguish between modern times when by the processes of printing, reproduction and radio performances, as well as by the increase in travel facilities, the achievements of the artist are made generally available to critic and public more quickly and more extensively than was possible in the earlier period of the manuscript codex and the mural painting.
As with other processes in civilization, the opening-up of communications has speeded development. What took a century to achieve as a European movement in the first decades of the Renaissance would today take a few years only, when counter-movement succeeds movement almost simultaneously, in, for example, painting dur- ing the past hundred years. Experiment is now the order of the day in all the arts, because critical public attention on a wide scale is focused on a work of art the moment it appears. This is particularly true of the film.
This, however, does not alter the nature of artistic experiment; it merely alters its pace and its mood. Men experimented in earlier centuries at leisure, and were mostly content if they and their immediate patrons and disciples were affected by their work. The weight of conventional patronage, when the artist was a hired craftsman by status, must have retarded the rate of experiment and encouraged conservatism of technique and outlook.
Only when experiment was, it might be said, in the air and feeling of a period as in the case of the classical period for Greek drama and the Renaissance period for portrait painting was the pace some- what quickened. But at no time has the pace of artistic experi- mentation been so rapid and so concentrated as during the past hundred years in Europe and America. He is impatient at the narrow conventions of his art, at what appear to him to be the self-imposed limitations of his seniors. He may not recognize that they were probably at one time as rebellious as he, and expanded the boundaries of their art to match the burden of their own vision.
So the generations of artists join their inspiration in an endless chain whose links widen with the years and with the pace of their progress. For once a vision has been resolved in words or paint or musical sounds it becomes part of every future artist's heritage. His task is that degree more easy because this problem of expression has been resolved; his task is seen to be more difficult only if he accepts the challenge to go further than the last man since he cannot be content to remain his imitator.
The progress of art is merciless; the century must be served and each new artistic generation absorbs the achievements of its predecessors and assumes their powers as part of its heritage. The problem for the artist is to use the traditions of the past so that his evolution towards the future may be firm and strong.
Few great artists have failed to make their revolution a natural development. To part entirely with the past is to risk death in an unfertile soil. Even in its short span the film has shown this evolution clearly: Porter, Griffith, Eisenstein and Pudovkin for example within the silent period. Again there has been the natural inter-relation between the thought of a period and its expression.
It is a natural step from the background of the theories which culminated in Freud's dominance of the psychological thought of the first half of the twentieth century, for the arts to reflect the outstanding elements felt to derive from his account of human nature. One result was the surrealist and avant-garde school of cinema, not- ably developed in France, and the psychological school of cinema, notably developed in Germany. Similarly, the ideological needs of Soviet Russia led to the remarkable Soviet experiment in film technique. For technical experimentation worked out in cold blood is valueless; great innovations of technique can only be conceived under the intense pressure of the artist's desire to communicate his feelings and reactions to the inner meaning of his subject.
Take the example of D. Griffith, whose career in films began as an actor in Griffith, before breaking away to make The Birth of a Nation as an independent venture the characteristic gesture of the true artist , had made well over films of the kind required in the period before the First World War. But inspired by literary ambitions deriving from his admiration for certain nineteenth- century writers he could do little in many of these quickly-made films except express his ideas when subject and theme allowed, and experiment generally in the technical development of his medium.
More outstanding than these were The Battle , a film of the American Civil War from the Southern political point of view, Judith of Bethulia —14 , a four-reel Biblical film made with large sets inspired by the Italian spectacle pictures and anticipating the Judean section of In- tolerance, The Escape , a film of slum life and its problems and The Avenging Conscience based on two stories by Poe and notable for its psychological treatment of character. Simul- taneously, as Griffith worked on these and other films he expanded his technical facility and quite literally turned the motion picture camera with its lengths of film into an artistic medium.
Griffith published by the British Film Institute. The Lonedale Operator was a great technical advance, summarized by Seymour Stern as follows: The technique of cross-cutting, also, was further developed. Index to the Creative Work of D. Griffith, Part I, p. He reached his first maturity in this film and The Battle, and then showed that his powers were a true development of technical style by continuous use of them in The Massacre , Judith of Bethulia, The Escape, Home Sweet Home and The Avenging Conscience.
With this wealth of experimental work behind him, he was in full maturity as an artist and ready to take the strain of producing his first masterpiece, The Birth of a Nation. Similarly, von Stroheim in his early days of experiment as a director fought to achieve a technical expansion of the medium to express his critical view of humanity and society. He fought a losing battle against the commercial interests of Hollywood which by their very opposition drove him into what appeared to be increasing extravagance and individualism.
Lewis Jacobs writes of him: Working with extreme care to achieve the realism he wanted regardless of the box office, he was casti- gated as an extravagant spendthrift. Had he been more willing to compromise in his attention to details, his big expenditures would have been condoned and exploited in publicity.
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Actually he made no more box-office failures than less worthy directors; no more money was lost on Ben Hur, for example, than on Greed. But Hollywood steered clear of von Stroheim because it was steering clear of reality and endorsing claptrap. His career, brilliant and spectacular, was climaxed in his excommunication by the very companies and individuals whom his film successes had given major stature.
Again his rebellious nature sought to expand the film medium to make it adequate for his artistic purposes. Vigo died with no more than a promise on the screen. His four films were A propos de Nice , Taris , Zero de Conduite and UAtalante , of which the last was his most mature work. Zero de Conduite was his most revolutionary film in technique, born of his deep desire to condemn the futile but terrifying tyranny of petty authority. Artists such as these, together with the greater Soviet directors who had the political inspiration of the Russian Revolution to drive them on to achieve a cinema which should possess qualities felt to match their social theme, created the true art of the film.
While others, very naturally, were using the resources of a mass medium to give efficient entertainment to a public easily excited by the simpler stories and easier techniques of the Hollywood commercial film, these men struggled against the general code of film entertainment and often enough against the exigencies of inadequate finance, in order to make films to satisfy their needs as artists. Their task was greatly complicated when the sound film arrived and sent the costs of production soaring, for the film artist soon realised that sound added greatly to the expressive capacities of the cinema, and knew therefore that he could no longer be satisfied by experimenting on a silent screen.
Experi- ment thereafter had to be edged into films intended for the greater public, or freedom of expression had to be bargained for by men like John Ford, whose prestige put him into a favourable position to barter his talents for the price of a measure of personal liberty. The result of such bargaining, for example, was The Informer, one of the greatest American films.
The sponsored film, such as Soviet feature production or British documentary, can also offer to the artist considerable freedom. Ivan the Terrible could never have been produced as a commercial proposition: The artists in this case are merely concerned to satisfy their sponsors the Soviet State film authori- ties and the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board respectively , though a sponsored film is valueless to its sponsor unless it is seen by the public for which it was intended.
This is true of some avant-garde films. It is also true of a film like Citizen Kane which was not popular with the greater public, but which has left a technical mark on many a more popular production from American studios since it was first shown. Experiment, therefore, has been continuous in the cinema since its inception. Generally speaking, this experiment has taken place initially outside the broader stream of commercial production, occurring where the artist could seize an opportunity or where it was given to him directly in the form of sponsorship.
Once demonstrated, the less esoteric examples of new film technique have usually been rapidly incorporated into the broader stream of more conventional production, so that the general idiom of the cinema has been expanded, often turning striking discoveries into cliches by over-use. It is true to say that the less imaginative technician feels the constant need to draw upon the creations of his more perceptive colleagues, and even, as in the case of Holly- wood's absorption of the German technicians of the 'twenties, engage their services to put new life into commercial work over which they are seldom allowed to be complete masters.
The result is that many fine imaginations have seemed to perish in Holly- wood, or to turn to the easier paths of conventional work. It is one of the anomalies of the history of cinema that men who have made a distinguished contribution to the art may be found subsequently associated with the most banal films. The psychology of the artist is a difficult and relatively unexplored subject, but the cinema shows only too many cases of men who descend with little apparent protest from one grade of success to another of a lower kind, quite possibly without even recognizing the change in the quality of their work.
The co-operative nature of film-making may well be the cause of this: The desire for easy fame and money may be too much for him. However this may be, men with only one or two good films to their credit are frequent in the history of the cinema, especially in the past twenty years. The cinema still shows all the unequal standards characteristic of adolescence, though this must be credited as much to the economic complexi- ties which lie behind its production as to the diffidence of many of its artists.
Film in the Epic Style The following examples of film innovation are chosen because in one way or another they represent the expansion of technique in the service of widening subjects, social and psychological. Although so-called abstract films have frequently been made for example, the work of Oscar Fischinger and Norman McLaren the more important developments of the film have necessarily been concerned in one way or another with human beings and their problems, either presented factually in documentary or fictionally in screenplays. Consequently these examples offer for considera- tion different kinds of approach to their human subjects, for which such inadequate catchwords might be used for descriptive headings as epic Intolerance and October , melodramatic Jeanne Ney, Le Jour se leve , realistic Mother, Kamaradschaft, Paisa poetic La Passion de Jeanne a" Arc, Song of Ceylon, Henry V , surrealist UAge a" Or and formalist Ivan the Terrible.
The need of the different artists concerned with making these films all of them highly individualistic creations was to use the cinema to realize their particular vision of the human scene, and in so doing they have in different ways and in different degrees expanded the technique of the film itself by their example. Apart from Griffith's own Birth of a Nation made July to October the twenty-year-old cinema had never been used to serious purpose in the presentation of a theme on the scale of an epic.
Concerned as it is with the subject of mankind rather than man, revealing the spiritual values behind the rise and fall of nations and the representation of historical periods, the epic form has scarcely been satisfactorily produced since the great poems of such a writer as Milton. For Intolerance made in twenty-two months —16 Griffith had no precedents but literary sources. Yet he realized that the film medium possessed three great qualities which were necessary for the epic treatment of his chosen subject of human intolerance.
First came pictorial scale, for the film could present the great clash of forces in the settings of history: Second came rhythm, inseparable from the great epic in its formal presentation of history as an evolutionary phase, a plan in the mind of God. The epic moves to its climax, stately in its rhythmic reflection of time and established spiritual order.
Lastly, the film, like the bards of old, possessed the attention of the people: For this reason he used the technical capacities of the cinema to fuse present with past, and revealed for the first time the mastery of the medium over time and space. The famous last section of the film, when Babylon is stormed, Christ is crucified, the French Protestants die on St.
Bartholo- mew's Day and a young American worker is almost hanged through a miscarriage of modern justice, used the sheer physical capacities of the film to merge these actions into one and to create as a result a fusion impossible in any other medium. The verbal descriptions of literature the only other medium which could have attempted this composite feat of narrative would have been too slow and too detailed to have achieved the tornado of inter- related detail which the quick cutting in visual rhythm, possible to the cinema, compressed into twenty minutes at the end of Intolerance.
The following description suggests something of the effect created by Griffith's editing: The camera watches them now from outside the city, now from the great parapets themselves. Meanwhile the colossal image of the god Ishtar is faced by desperate worshippers who invoke his ineffectual aid to save Babylon. The defenders pour down burning oil on the Persians, while the invading Emperor Cyrus commands the attack from his chariot.
The besiegers' scaling ladders propped against the walls are flung down; bodies fall from the height of the parapet; a huge battering-ram is swung by Persian soldiers backwards and for- wards against the gates; the camera rises slowly up the side of one of the towers. Men fall and die in close-shot. Then while Ishtar's worshippers continue their supplications, the Persian catapults come into action. One of the towers collapses, and men fall alive from its structure and from the parapets.
The walls are burning, and the scenes of fire are coloured purple. The camera, high above the crowds, watches the battle; then suddenly we are in the heart of the hand-to-hand fighting: A tower catches fire; the worshippers of Ishtar praise the God for his apparent goodness. From the sky above the great steps the camera gradually descends to earth and hovers over the crowded steps themselves; then it mounts slowly above the throngs of people: Next comes the trial scene in the contemporary story: She weeps and bites her handkerchief: As sentence of death is pronounced on her innocent husband, Christ is seen on the way to Calvary.
The face of the wife holds its tragic expression: The Persian armies advance in great hordes in the deep blue of the night. The massacre of St. Cyrus's horsemen move along the banks of a river: Christ dies on Calvary: When all the rest perish, symbols of the result of man's intolerance, the boy alone is saved by his wife's devotion. Griffith is the first and the greatest experimenter in the film largely because so much of what he did became the basis for the experiments of those following him.
Pudovkin acknowledges this debt to Griffith throughout his book Film Technique. It was Eisenstein, however, who developed most logically the work of Griffith in Intolerance. In October ; and now no longer politically acceptable to the Soviet authorities Eisenstein made the most ambitious of the Soviet silent films in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Revolution.
Its second title, Ten Days that Shook the World, announces its epic scale; the scope of its action is large; it uses the full resources of the silent cinema and its capacity for spectacle and for the rhythmic presentation of mass-movements to create a film in all senses above the normal. Taking his cue from Griffith, but possessing a more complex and subtle sense of formal design, Eisenstein developed his interpreta- tion of history as a literal pattern of events, contrasting through the editing principle carefully chosen details with the broadest survey of the action, as in the case of the famous sequence of the great drawbridge opening to prevent the revolutionaries escaping from the bullets of the Czarist troops.
This event is stressed by the inter-relation of shots of a dead horse suspended by its harness hanging from one span of the tilting bridge until finally it falls, a distant white form dropping far down into the water below, and shots of a dead woman whose streaming hair lies across the part- ing spans of the bridge. Then the camera moves to the first level of the grand ornamental stair- case at the far end of the hall; Kerensky's climbing jackboots mount away from the camera at tread level. The camera moves up two more turns of the stairway: Kerensky climbs towards us. The whole mid-section of the staircase is seen, regal, imposing, palatial.
A still vaster shot shows the tiny military figure still climbing alone. The vast views change as the figure continues to climb, symbolically mounting to power. He is followed at respect- ful distance by his attaches. The ornate balustrades, the chandeliers, the great angles of the architectural staircase itself all become emphasized by their formal composition into symbols of power. Various close shots are seen of statues with wreaths in their hands: A huge tilted shot of a statue with wreath up-raised to crown the dictator: Big close-ups of Kerensky's bowed and solemn face lit from above and shots of the statue with up-raised wreath alternate.
The figures still mount the staircase. Kerensky passes a formal line of servants grouped on the stairs. The statue with its wreath appears in ever more imposing tilted shots. A high officer salutes Kerensky with gross, smiling respect: Kerensky gravely responds in close-shot. The figures hold their salutes in close-shots; then break their pose and shake hands. The handshake is prolonged. Kerensky turns away regally tilted shot: He shakes hands with a servant. The figure of Kerensky stands formally and stiffly in front of two great ornate doors, symbols of power and office.
A servant smiles admiringly. Kerensky's great boots stand masterfully apart. His gloved hands are clasped behind his back. The servants smile and nod to each other. Kerensky grips and shakes his gloves commandingly. He changes the posture of his feet. The servants smile and laugh. A mech- anical peacock shakes its head. Close-up of Kerensky's masterful military boots. The peacock's tail rises, and it twirls round and round.
The doors swing open regally, and Kerensky marches in, his boots striding forward. The attaches follow quickly: The peacock rotates and twirls. The great bolts on the door are seen in close-up. The scene shifts to the waiting Bolsheviks recumbent outside, and there follows a montage of the waiting city and of the rising sun near the little encampment where Lenin bides his time.
Mean- while in the Winter Palace an elaborate montage of crests, plate, hangings and luxurious furnishing all associated with the Tsarist family introduces Kerensky, who is working in the vaulted library of Nicholas II. He studies the decree restoring the death penalty. He signs it, leaves the library by a staircase followed by the turning heads of his officers. A statue of Napoleon with folded arms stands white and glistening. Another shot of Napoleon is followed by a montage of shots of wine-glasses and decanters drawn up in formal and shining lines on a polished table; they are followed by shots of toy soldiers drawn up in neat rows.
The hands of Kerensky play with a decanter which is con- structed in four sections: Immediately a factory siren sounds with a burst of white steam. The siren sounds again with its jets of steam: Montage of Orthodox Church splendour leading into Oriental statuettes of pagan deities and mosque-like architecture. Smoke rises before a Buddha. The fierce toothed head of a dragon-like Oriental statue. A fat Chinese Buddha: Masks of actors, and the barbaric formalism of negroid statuary, followed by primitive sculptured figures.
Montage of medals, epaulettes, decorations and orders. There follows a quick montage of shots of laughing deities as the statue reassembles. The head wobbles into place: Rapid flashing montage of imperial and clerical architectures and symbols: We look up at a figure on horse-back.
Statue of Napoleon on horseback. Montage of Napoleon and the Tsar's orb. Kerensky folds his arms, 'Two Bonapartes' title. Two statuettes of Napoleon face each other closer and closer in quickly-cut montage, contrasted momentarily with two of the most primitive-style of the previous statuettes.
Quick montage of curious god-like Eastern statues. Kornilov on horseback raises his hand in salute. At once a great caterpillar tractor rises up symbolically on a mound. A flash of Napoleon. Kerensky flings himself face-downwards onto a couch. The statuette of Napoleon is smashed as the great symbolic tractor crashes down the side of the mound.
The October Revolution has begun. The Film and Human Character While artists such as Griffith and Eisenstein were developing the technical capacity of the cinema to represent concepts on the epic scale, other artists, notably Pudovkin, Pabst and Dreyer among some few more were in various ways discovering what could be done by the film in the representation of more detailed human issues. Whilst the epic was concerned only with the individual if he were a great leader or a representative of mankind as a whole, stories involving a psychological approach to the raw material of humanity concentrated on the individual for his own sake.
If the German film concentrated on the individual in melo- dramatic circumstances and the Russian film on the individual in ideological circumstances, Dreyer in his unique study of Joan in La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc was concerned solely with the objective analysis of the last agonized hours of a tortured girl. Pabst, is a melodrama, a spy story based on a novel by Ilya Ehrenburg. In its concentra- tion on situation and atmosphere, it shares a quality of most melodrama, namely, the non-realistic use of character in which human beings are part of the atmosphere of the series of situations involved, rather than the promoters of the action as in normal life.
Characters in melodrama do not develop and change and fluctuate and react like characters realistically conceived and portrayed from actuality. They are rather functionaries in a pre- conceived plot, and however detailed the presentation of them they remain functionary-types rather than evolving human beings. That is one reason why they degenerate so readily into lay-figures, or can be written-up to fit the star-types represented by actors such as Boris Karloff or, more subtly, by the melo- dramatic artistry of a Fritz Rasp.
The Love of Jeanne Ney is one of the finest of the screen's melo- dramas, and its technical mastery shows a stage in the develop- ment of Pabst which he was later to supersede in such films as Westfront, , and Kameradschaft.
But in The Love of Jeanne Ney his craftsmanship is superb, possessing a degree of atmo- sphere and type character- drawing that demonstrated the facility with which the film medium could create melodramatic tension. Melodrama depends largely on timing and the calculated elements of suspense and surprise, the very elements that editing can build up so effectively with its hypnotic hold on the viewer's attention.
Pabst's development of these elements was meticulous. Iris Barry writes on one particular sequence in the film: It lasts about three minutes. It contains not a single title. It says all there is to say about the two men and about the momentary relation- ship. How is it done? Though one is hardly conscious of move- ment, the camera is constantly shifting, although it is no longer used like a toy with new-found uses which must be displayed, but with the instinctive movements of psychological necessity. Though one is scarcely aware of a single cut, there are forty in this short scene — needless to say, the director cut and edited the film himself.
It is here that both the cinema and the theatre meet their severest challenge. The stock character has always been easy to represent, because so many of his human qualities are visibly apparent in expression, gait, costume and in the standardized reactions and phrases of his speech.