MOST POPULAR OF THE ARTS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 305, 27 April 1945, Page 6

MOST POPULAR OF THE ARTS

"The Things Which: Really Make A Good Film"

HE cinema has become so much a part of our daily lives that we are apt to ignore the fact that it can be an art at all. But it is-the most popular of all arts. That is the aspect of the cinema discussed by Dr.

Roger

Manvell

in this talk for the BBC (in tae series Art for Everyone ), which was rebroadcast recently

by ZYA:

HEN anyone asks me whether the film is an art like the drama or the novel I always reply, "Of course it is. It’s as capable as either of showing how human beings feel and think and behave." A film can’t, like a novel, describe thoughts and feelings. No more can the drama, but it can show them. The film offers to its makers just as much power of choice as the other arts as to what to put in, what to leave out, what to emphasise, what to throw away. And this is where the director comes in, if he’s an artist. The cinema, which began as a flickering sideshow on the fair ground level, has developed during the last 30 years into a necessary part of the entertainment needs of most townspeople throughout the world. It soon revealed that it had certain powers over its audiences, once they had been induced to come in. And so immense sums were _ spent, especially in America, in the earlier days ef the cinema, to establish and increase the cinema habit. Film-going is one of the easiest habits to acquire. There is a hypnotic element in the power of the film. It is almost impossible, unless you deliberately dose or sleep, to keep your eyes off the brightlylit screen. A wise and skilful film direcger will guide, compel, and maintain that attention which you so willingly offer him. Prokably about ten times as many people prefer to see their stories acted as to read them on paper. This is true partly because it is much less trouble. All you have to do is to drop into a cinema and sit in comfort while the story is shown to: you. But it’s also true because our sight*is our most vivid and our most impressionable sense. We find out more about our surroundings, and find it out more quickly, through our

eyes. So that’s why good films are made visually interesting all the time, whatever added value they may get from the dialogue and music and natural sounds. A "Team" Art For instance, in John Baxter’s British film Loye on the Dole, as soon as the young apprentice has finished his training and wants to earn a man’s wage, he finds his search for a job hopeless. Now this situation is represented by the hopeless. moving figure of the lad superimposed on an industrialised background. The refusal of work is shown by the shaking heads of the foremen.

A talkie camera and the sound film projector 1epresent together one of the greatest inventions of the last 50 years. A good cameraman is both a technician and an artist. He has to be a technician to know how to use this highly-compli-cated instrument. He has to be an artist to realise what the effect of his endeavour wiil be in the finished photograph. To make a successful picture is, therefore, no small job-it demands planning and organisation. It demands a team, of technicians which varies from make-up men to electricians, property men to script writers, carpenters to cameramen. So the film is a "team" art, but a good director must also be a good leader. Yet even good technique is useless unless it is guided by vision. And by vision I mean vision-film vision. The eye sees the story in terms of significant, vital, moving pictures, made all the more significant and vital by the voices and the sounds and the music which go with them. How It Works Now let’s make up a section of a film story and observe some of these qualities for ourselves. The story concerns the adventures of a young man called Jim on the way to meet his girl. He’s reached the top of the street where she lives. It’s an ordinary back street of an industrial city, with shops and houses which open flush on to the pavement. The screen shows us an almost still picture of the street: ordinary enough, but with certain key points of interest, to which our attention is drawn. It’s dusk, it’s been raining, and the pavement is wet. A solitary street lamp is prominent, lighting the pavement in the front of the house. A sheet of newspaper blows up the street, floating through the lamplight. Now this simple thing moving in an otherwise still setting somehow emphasises the loneliness of the place. The camera moves up to concentrate, first on the house, and then on a curtained window. The window is grimed, it’s got a cracked pane. A close-up follows to show the broken pane in detail, and a hand sliding down the edge of the curtain. Suddenly the hand disappears and the curtain falls back to the window,

Now what has been done so far? Well, first we got the careful selection of what we shall see. And second the careful development of our mood as we see it. The lighting has been arranged to develop a sinister atmosphere. The drifting newspaper is a visual symbol of loneliness, and the broken pane tells of neglect, the moving hand of some sinister, unseen activity. The film is always using some significant detail which tells its own story visually. Without a word spoken, our emotions are already closely involved in this story, this locality; the atmosphere has been reinforced by quiet

and sinister music, specially composed to time with the movement of the pictures, and the emphasis of the camera. Well, let’s get back to the story. The camera introduces the young man, Jim. We see his feet striding along the pavement, from one patch of lamplight to the next, the camera "tracking back" as he advances. His stride is eager and -happy; it’s all in pointed contrast to what we’ve already seen. The sinister music has stopped. All we hear now is his happy whistling of a dance tune, (continued on next page)

. al (continued from previous page) Then, in une of the circles of lamplight, the feet stop, ome foot just stirring irresolutely. The whistling stops... Silence . .. The camera glides up to the level of his hands, poised in the act of taking a cigarette from a packet. They are still, and the camera comes to rest on his face-a study in lamplight and shadow. The close-up shows his eyes widen a little, his jaws drop slightly; he’s concentrating as he listens. His listening face fills the screen, Now that close-up makes us listen as tensely as he. Whet was it? Then we hear it, too. The low scream. Jim’s eyes are staring towards the place from which the scream has come. The camera swivels swiftly to follow Jim’s gaze, which is fixed on the house. Silence holds a moment, and then a low, insistent note is played on a violin. We go back to our close-up of Jim. His pause is ours. For in all well-made films our relation to the chief people is very intimate, very actual, We can see every movement of their faces, every change of expression. And that’s why good film acting is much more detailed, more small-scaled than stage acting. But a good film is full of physical symbols of thought and purpose. Things which convey psychological meaning by being seen. The director uses inanimate objects like cigarettes because they can become things of great» emotional significance, and tell us more about the character’s feelings. The Things to Look For But we’ve described enough to see what matters most in good cinema as in any other art-selection for the right effect. Selection of setting and lighting, selection of viewpoint-far away or close up-selection of significant detail. Everything has to be moulded into one simple whole, so that your attention and your interest are never lost. And these are the things to look for and to criticise, the things which really make a good film. And it’s for these things that the team of technicians, and the set designers and the builders and the electricians and the property men and the camera men, the script writers, the musicians and sound engineers, the director and his assistants-it’s for these things that they all have to pool their experience and their feeling for human emotion. The film must move you, so bo ag can feel it in your marrowFilming the Battle of Agibceurt That film story about Jim which I have dealt with was purely imaginary, but the technique should remind you of films that you’ve actually seen, You'll soon be seeing the’ now famous sequence of the Battle of Agincourt in Laurence Olivier’s film of Shakespeare’s Henry V. William Walton, who prepared a fine score for the film, combines the rousing excitement of his music with the buildup of the sequence to its climax in the rout of the French cavalry. The British archers hold their fire as the horses gallop towards them with an ever-quicken-ing pace. A magnificent "tracking shot" centres on a horseman in black armour with pointed visor riding a white stallion, As the cavalry appear immediately before them the archers shoot in unison. With a whizzing roar the arrows curl up into the sky and fall into the heart of the French line. Then follows an incredible panic and chaos, into the midst of which the camera plunges, catching every detail from every angle.

Yet the bulk of cinema goers, old and young, are quite indifferent to all this complexity. Some go to see a favourite star, a few may come prepared tobe critical, but most people turn up regularly to take anything they can get. The cinema is qa bare 30 years old as a significant form of public entertainment, and yet it has now grown to such an extent that the world demand ‘is said to be about 250,000,000 seats a week. The Vanguard of Filmgoers In the film we have got the one art which is really popular, in the sense that the people, as a whole, want it, without any self-conscious feeling that they’re being cultured or artistic. And _ yet among these many millions of regular cinemagoers is an increasing number, I am glad to say, who try to choose their films more carefully, who think of the

story rather than the star, of the photography rather than the beauty chorus, of the conception of the film and the process of its structure rather than its power to help pass an idle evening in .an idle’ dream. And it’s for this critical public that many directors now Work, and for whom the film critics write in the responsible press. For this public is the vanguard of filmgoers, and their standards of appreciation are what realiy matter to the men and women who have their hearts in the production of good pictures. The box office may seem to win most of the time, but there is always the enlightened picture that turns up and restores one’s faith: in the moments, here and there, in the purely commercial job which shows an artist at work. These are the films,.and these are the moments, from which in the: endea real enjoyment of the art of the film can be obtained.