If
the photoplay needs a brutal boxer in a mining camp, the producer will
not, like the stage manager, try to transform a clean, neat,
professional actor into a vulgar brute, but he will sift the Bowery
until he has found some creature who looks as if he came from that
mining camp and who has at least the prizefighter's cauliflower ear
which results from the smashing of the ear cartilage. If he needs the
fat bartender with his smug smile, or the humble Jewish peddler, or the
Italian organ grinder, he does not rely on wigs and paint; he finds them
all ready-made on the East Side. With the right body and countenance the
emotion is distinctly more credible. The emotional expression in the
photoplays is therefore often more natural in the small roles which the
outsiders play than in the chief parts of the professionals who feel
that they must outdo nature.
But our whole consideration so far has been onesided and narrow. We have
asked only about the means by which the photoactor expresses his
emotion, and we were naturally confined to the analysis of his bodily
reactions. But while the human individual in our surroundings has hardly
any other means than the bodily expressions to show his emotions and
moods, the photoplaywright is certainly not bound by these limits. Yet
even in life the emotional tone may radiate beyond the body.
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