Irish Jesuit Province

A Timid Suggestion: Put Forward by One Who Knows Nothing about Film TechniqueAuthor(s): Emily HughesSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 66, No. 778 (Apr., 1938), pp. 273-278Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20514316 .

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273

A Timid Suggestion

PUT FORWARD BY ONE WHO KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT

FILM TECHNIQUE.

By EMILY HUGHES.

O NE of the advantages of ignorance is that it allows the boundaries of conjecture unlimited stretching-room. There is such a thing as knowing too much about a sub

ject. This surfeit of knowledge has a depressing effect on inspiration, reminding one, as it does, that something of that kind was tried out in Poland in 1923, and nothing came of it; or

that Von Pommer got the same idea ten years ago and died of

influenza shortly afterwards. But ignorance is bliss, and it is from the heights of bliss that the following proposal is tenta tively put forth.

In the days of the silent films-the phrase is acquinrng some thing of the ring of "in the time of the Barmecides"-one of the

most admirable things about a cinema entertainment was the agility with which the pianist changed his tune in step with the emotional trend of the story. He was an extremely hard working gentleman-sometimes, indeed, he was a lady-and had to have hls wits constantly about him. He was, as it were, the

medium through which the actions depicted on the screen pro duced reactions in the sentiments of the audience. The audience knew from him what emotions they were expected to feel, and

they felt them more or less according to his skill on the instru ment he played.

A kind of waterfall music, consisting mainly of arpeggios and

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274 TIIE IRISH MONTHLY

dominant sevenths, usually expressed the delicacy, beauty and fragility of the heroine, as yet happily unaware, poor thing, of the hieavy weather in store for her. Chiming bells, played linger ingly on the top right-hand keys, represented the peace and righteousness with which the countryside is always credited 'in romances. Handel's " Blacksmith " hords introduced the hero, golden-hearted if plain. Dead silence, followed by uneasy thumps and rumbles in the bass, put the audience into a proper condi tion of fascinated horror at the machinations of the villain.

How hard that pianist worked! Cut adrift from the guidance and intentions of the mere composer, he was forced to introduce the clip-clop of castanets into the moonlight son-ata if, in ohedi ence to the exigencies of the plot, one of the characters happened to be trotting on horseback across the silver screen. He was obliged to swell into fortissimo for the big denunciation scene, even though the score at that point dwindled away into

diminuendo, and to race ahead at allegro, accompanying the lawyer with the real will across the earth, oblivious of the fact

that Mr. Beethoven had marked that bit of his composition andante.

The idea behind all this was sound. The audience was welded into a sentimental whole. Everyone, including those people

who, oddly, boast that they do not know one note from another, is emotionally effected by music. Aboriginals derive pleasure from the beating of tom-toms-surely the most rudimentary form of music that exists. Hard-headed business men have been known to wipe away a tear upon hearing Gounod's " Ave

Maria" played on the violin. If the intention of drama, whether on the stage or on the screen, is to rouse, employ and satisfy the emotions of the audience, then drama cannot afford to dispense with the aid of music. In the case, which I have cited, of the silent film, the audience all felt the same emotions

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A TIMID SUGGESTION 275

-in varying degrees, of course-and, as a result, identified itself with the story of the film in a way which the present-day patrons of talking films rarely do. And it is obvious which experience is better value for admission money-that of being the central character of an exciting story, or that of merely beholding someone else acting the part.

Talking-film mechanism has a wonderful range of effects at its disposal, if it would but use them with a little imagination. It is able to identify any character with the audience in two senses sound and sight. The illusion could be made almost perfect. For instance:

A film was shown recently about a bank robbery. The robbers had noiseless shoes on, so the whole proceeding was carried out in dead silence, which suggested that the sound track had broken down. But no, at the eleventh hour, shots rang out which sounded more like distant thunder than revolver shots, owing to the dead silence which t1hey broke, and also, one supposes, to faulty recording. (Shots should be very like the real thing to pass muster in this experienced city!) This is realism of the most unimaginative order. The robbery was carried out in silence, so the scene was recorded in silence. But each robber must have heard dozens of small noiseless sounds-the breathing of his accomplices, or even the beating of his own heart. Such sounds cannot be very well recorded on the- screen, since everything

must be larger than life, and there are some sounds which cannot be amplified without losing their identity altogether. This is where our friend, -the pianist of the silent picture days, would have been able to deliver the goods.

The most obvious accompaniment, possibly, would have been a few creepy skirmishes in a minor key, just to make the audience eold with apprehension. But what about having a faint echo of the waltz to which one of the robbers had been dancing at a

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271; TElII IRISH MONTHLY

hhshioniable ball the night before? Or the organ to which he hia(d stunrg as a boy in the village dhoir? Or-and this is where the

tallking film would have an advantage over the faint but pursuing

l)ianist-a very muted repetition of some snatch of conversation lie had heard that day, in which, had he known it, there was a

warning of the trap now lying in wait for him? Or even-this idea was carried out very successfully in " In the Train," pro duced recently in the Abbey Theatre-a disjointed sequence of words or phrases running round and round in his mind?

Then, the audience would have been emotionally inside that

man's brain, and would have felt to the full the shock and terror of the subsequent events. Novels written from this single

minded viewpoint are, by those people who have the right word for everything, called subjective novels. The viewpoint may limit the scope of the vision, but it engages the emotions more surely. Although it is for a short time entertai.ning to look down from an impersonal height upon the actions of different charac ters hidden from each other, the attention is likely to wander after a time because what happens to them one way or another does not really matter to the audience. Sometimes a film-actor or actress attracts the audience so much that, unbidden, it identifies itself with him or her. From then on, his triumphs are its triumphs, his trials melt it into tears. And when the camera leaves him in order to gather up another thread of the story, or to give some other highly paid star a chance of making an impres

sion, it yawns and sighs for his return.

In a subjective film, the story would become less important. Just as essays, reviews, poetry, and commentaries command the attention of the educated reader as much as fiction does, so also

would short film essays, poems and reviews have an appeal of their own. Youth and beauty would no longer be essential to the principal character, since the audience would be that character,

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A TIMID SUGGESTION 277

and would spend little of its time looking at itself in a mirror. It is what happens to the character, and what the character feels about it, that arc all-important. Characters need not even be human beings at all-aniytliirig to which by the pathetic fallacy

man has granted emnotions simiiilar to huminian emotions could be the hero of suchl a filmil. l4'or instance, take this piece of poetry by Gerard Manley Hopkins on the " Felling of Binsley Poplars " :

My aspens dear, whose airy (ages (ilcilled, Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sutn, All felled, felled, alre aill felled;

Of a fresh and folloNving f olde(l rianIk Not spared, not one That dandledi at sand(alled

Shadow that swaim or siiank On meadow andl river andi(l wind-wandering weed-winding

bank. "

It is not hard to inmagine a film with a tree for a hero-a short film, of course, none of youir two-hour ordeals. After all, a tree grows and blossoims aind bears fruit; it defies the wind and shelters the birds. Its niemiesis is the man with the hatchet. Possibly it hears-the audience hears, too, and sees-some kindly soul addresses himy tlhus:

" Oh, woodnian, spare that tree, in youth it sheltered me!" and the woodman retires in confusion. That is the happy ending, with a close-up of leafy boughs swinging against a windy sky. Possibly the woodman takes no notice of protests, but carries out his job as per instructions. That is the sad ending, and the one which prompts such beautiful poetry as Father Hopkins' lines.

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278 THE IRISH MONTHLY

In " Man of Aran" the sea was the hero-or villain-and a nost unwieldy and unmanageable clharacter it proved, because its

conflicts were all so one-sided. An audience finds it diffictult to share in the feelings of an ocean. No amount of sentimnentality can endow an ocean with any other emotion than anger -we frequently read about the angry ocean. But it is a nmatter only for the wildest conjecture what the ocean is so angry about, and, therefore, it must be left out of the modest scope, of the subjective film. Trees, dogs, buildings, anything that is frail or vulnerable or mortal can be treated with what, for want of a better word, we must call the domestic touch of subjectivity.

It would be a change from the present run of film heroes and heroines depicting mythical romances of pseudo-historical charac ters to see a film which told in autobiographical fashion the story of the " Little Grey Home in the West " or " The Primrose

by the River's Brim "or the " Grecian Urn." It is all a matter of perspective and proportion-at least, that is all it seems to be to one who has, as above, rushed in where angels and experts and technicians and cinematologists evidently fear to tread.

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