And here, it
seems, we have a definite starting point for an esthetic comparison. If
we raise the unavoidable question--how does the photoplay compare with
the drama?--we seem to have sufficient material on hand to form an
esthetic judgment. The verdict, it appears, can hardly be doubtful. Must
we not say art is imitation of nature? The drama can show us on the
stage a true imitation of real life. The scenes proceed just as they
would happen anywhere in the outer world. Men of flesh and blood with
really plastic bodies stand before us. They move like any moving body in
our surroundings. Moreover those happenings on the stage, just like the
events in life, are independent of our subjective attention and memory
and imagination. They go their objective course. Thus the theater comes
so near to its purpose of imitating the world of men that the comparison
with the photoplay suggests almost a disastrous failure of the art of
the film. The color of the world has disappeared, the persons are dumb,
no sound reaches our ear. The depth of the scene appears unreal, the
motion has lost its natural character. Worst of all, the objective
course of events is falsified; our own attention and memory and
imagination have shifted and remodeled the events until they look as
nature could never show them.
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