The Cinema, Tenth Muse…
To say that one prefers the cinema to a
certain type of theatre still strikes many as a sort of droll boutade, tossed
off with the more or less obvious intent to shock.
This
misunderstanding is derived from the fallacy that one form must necessarily be
superior to the other, and that expressing a predilection for the “seventh art”
is equivalent to a total betrayal of all traditional and respectable stage
productions. However, with the considerable technical advances made recently by
filmmakers in American studios, there are no two forms more divergent, in means
or aesthetics, than theatre and cinema; while the former is relatively
“static,” the latter, dominated by speed, is increasingly schematic, and
utilizes means of expression that one could only try in vain to bring to the
stage.
The
considerable superiority of American filmmaking over that of most of Europe is
owed, above all, to the fact that Yankee directors do not consider the screen
inferior to, or a caricature of the stage. While French studios chase down
stars of the Comédie-Française and even opera singers to play in the their
films, the studios in California are home to specialists trained for the
screen, who possess the gift of mimicry and are versed in the minute secrets of
the camera.
The
great virtue of Chaplin, which makes him one of the exceptional artists of our times, is his mastery of imitation. That marvelous clown, who has lampooned the
wholly human tragedy of “misery striving to be decent,” is himself a
caricature; that creator of a silhouette as painful as a Courteline comedy does
not move his lips, and never speaks on screen. All of his eloquence, all of his
humor, lives in the precision of his gestures. Thus, Chaplin is the prototype
of the artist who will only grow in importance as his art moves, with great
strides, away from the stage.
Otherwise,
the growing sympathy that today’s audience feels for the cinema is completely
logical. Privately, the spectator senses the perfect accord established, between
the aesthetics of this new art form and their actual living conditions. The
pace that tyrannically rules over our daily lives prevails on the screen,
where, in less than two hours, hundreds of scenes, scores of locations and an infinite
number of expressions parade by. The almost narrative-free vision of the
filmmaker speaks to our times, which require of us a mind as segmented as a
fly’s eye, and endowed with the power of simultaneity.
Moreover,
we take intimate pleasure in the spectacle in which everything is perfect and
calculated, where nothing is left to chance, which transports us in seconds,
with complete ease, from a rural village to the top of a skyscraper.
But
perhaps the cinema’s greatest strength lies in the endless possibilities of the
“trick,” original and unique to the cinematographic arts. The camera already
has the ability to make us experience new sensations, not yet stripped of their
aesthetic value. There is a rare and powerful beauty, for instance, in the
image of a leaping horse, or a body falling au ralenti; the instantaneous
flowering of a plant; the reversed dive of a swimmer; street traffic receding,
or advancing with an absurd slowness… There are also amusing photographic
enhancements, dissociative images, visions, and disappearances.
These
merge into an evermore-masterful mise en scène, created through a collaboration
of talented artists who achieve wonderful effects like those we admire in The
Thief of Baghdad, and so many Griffith productions.
Glorifying
artifice, the filmmaker must cut the ties that bind him to the theatre. While
the theatre is, as mentioned earlier, a “static” art of expected effect and
marked limits, the cinema initiates the pursuit of a new technique, from which
none of the marvelous and inexhaustible devices of artifice should be
excluded.
This
is why, aesthetically speaking, I consider the cinema, that youthful art, the
art of the “tenth muse” as Cocteau referred to it, far more interesting than
bad theatre.
“But
what about good theatre?” you will ask. Good theatre is an art form so distinct
from film that to declare a preference for one over the other is to demonstrate
that I understand neither. They are located on two altogether different planes.
Alejo Carpentier
El Pais, Havana, July 3, 1925
