Stage managers have
sometimes tried the experiment of reducing those differences, for
instance, keeping the audience also in a fully lighted hall, and they
always had to discover how much the dramatic effect was reduced because
the feeling of distance from reality was weakened. The photoplay and the
theater in this respect are evidently alike. The screen too suggests
from the very start the complete unreality of the events.
But each further step leads us to remarkable differences between the
stage play and the film play. In every respect the film play is further
away from the physical reality than the drama and in every respect this
greater distance from the physical world brings it nearer to the mental
world. The stage shows us living men. It is not the real Romeo and not
the real Juliet; and yet the actor and the actress have the ringing
voices of true people, breathe like them, have living colors like them,
and fill physical space like them. What is left in the photoplay? The
voice has been stilled: the photoplay is a dumb show. Yet we must not
forget that this alone is a step away from reality which has often been
taken in the midst of the dramatic world. Whoever knows the history of
the theater is aware of the tremendous role which the pantomime has
played in the development of mankind.
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