The really decisive distance from bodily reality, however, is created by
the substitution of the actor's picture for the actor himself. Lights
and shades replace the manifoldness of color effects and mere
perspective must furnish the suggestion of depth. We traced it when we
discussed the psychology of kinematoscopic perception. But we must not
put the emphasis on the wrong point. The natural tendency might be to
lay the chief stress on the fact that those people in the photoplay do
not stand before us in flesh and blood. The essential point is rather
that we are conscious of the flatness of the picture. If we were to see
the actors of the stage in a mirror, it would also be a reflected image
which we perceive. We should not really have the actors themselves in
our straight line of vision; and yet this image would appear to us
equivalent to the actors themselves, because it would contain all the
depth of the real stage. The film picture is such a reflected rendering
of the actors. The process which leads from the living men to the screen
is more complex than a mere reflection in a mirror, but in spite of the
complexity in the transmission we do, after all, see the real actor in
the picture. The photograph is absolutely different from those pictures
which a clever draughtsman has sketched.
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