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The Kinetics of Silent
Film
The Relationship
between Film and Movement in the Early Twentieth CenturyPart 1
John J. Cook
This is the first in a
series of articles which will investigate the
relationship between visual representations of the human
form and the performing body. I begin with two of the
youngest genres Silent Film and Modern Dance. Both genres
first appeared, in a significant manner, at the end of
the nineteenth century in Paris. Each playing an
important role in the 1900 exposition in the French
capital ushering in new visual and kinesthetic languages
for the 20th century. And it is towards these new
languages I wish to draw our attention in my forthcoming
articles.
The Media in Flux
We can
never truly know what early modern dance looked like, or
more importantly, felt like. We may have a better sense
of the early cinema since many films are still available
in their "original" form. However, we are only
seeing these films in an altered state. As any
re-representation of dance is mediated by either another
media, (photography, film, video, text, etc.) or through
a historically displaced body, early cinema too poses
problems in reconstructing; as the films have often been
transferred to more stable film stock or onto video/DVD.
Quite often the films we watch now are shown at an
incorrect speed with a loss of their true color (a silver
tinting was applied to films giving the images a greater
depth of environment). Nor do we experience the sound of
the live music except on special occasions. Our
contemporary perspective is quite skewed due to the
transformation of visual culture during the past century
for both dance and film.
The
Language of Motion
Two new
forms of performance/entertainment/art emerged at the end
of the nineteenth century in Europe and North America.
Both forms would challenge the world's perception of the
"moving image." The emergence of a new dance
form and vocabulary in 1890s Paris threatened the 300
year old tradition of concert dance in Western Europe. In
the same decade an even more devastating assertion of
modern image making and moving, film or moving pictures,
threatened the traditional languages of art and
performance. It was not by coincidence that these forms
develop at the same time and place.
Modern Dance develop as a reaction to the elitist and
misogynist world of ballet in the 1890s by two powerful
and articulate women from America. Their tenatious
perservearence and daring won them a place in modern
history. Loie Fuller and Isadora Duncan arrived in Europe
from America with the goal to transform bodies and
movement into a new art. At roughly the same time the
Lumiere Brothers were transforming still images into
moving images and models into actors. Not surprisingly,
modern dance and silent film tread a common ground. Both
forms brought a new performativity and physical
expressivity to audiences. Both invented a new vocabulary
to reach a new society.
In early Modern dance, the danced movement replaces
spoken or mimed language with kineticism. We can also see
a direct correlation between the kinesthetic
performativity of silent screen actors and the silent
film's narrative content. However, in the end it is not
dance that shares a common kinetic language with film,
but avant-garde theatre. An observation of the highly
physical articulation of characters and the discernible
movement motifs in silent film could lead one to believe
that these qualities are indicative of its debt (silent
film) to the new choreographic and kinesthetic
developments of modern dance/dance modernism. Especially
considering that many choreographers and dancers (Loie
Fuller, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn for example) worked
for and with film in the early years. It should be noted
that there is a difference between films which employ
movement narratives and dance movement from films which
document dance performances.
The American dance and cultural historian Elizabeth
Kendell argues for such a direct influence of modern
dance on the development of silent film. In her book,
Where She Danced, Kendell sees a common heritage for the
new kineticism of film acting and modern dance which
evolved into a common kinetic language. "Dance, a
new art in this country (USA), accomplished the same
things as movies: it fused inherited theatrical gestures
plus other kinds of behavior into a new, wordless,
plastic language."
I agree with Kendell's implied relativeness between dance
and film performance, but I disagree with her concept of
"wordless" language for film acting. Indeed
they share a common kinesthetic and performative
heritage, Delsartism and Symbolist Theatre, but they are
not of the same structural composition or intention.
While it is clear that similarities abound between dance
and silent film, and that dancer's regularly crossed over
into the medium of film, they are not structurally or
semiotically the same. The abstract movements of dance
and the method for organizing these movements into
phrases differs strongly from the stylized movements
accompany the silenced voice.
The movement employed by actors of the silent screen in a
technical manner for dramatic expression served not to
replace language, as it does in dance, but to augment the
implied text of the screen play.
The gestural language coexisting with the spoken, but not
heard text, of the silent actor is not a dance. This
gestural language of kinesthetic dynamics interplays with
the characters in the film or with the architectonic
structure of the film to support the unheard voice, but
it does not supersede or replace the voice as it does in
dance. This does not mean that similarities between the
kinesthetic of dance and silent film acting do not exist
or can not be read in conjunction to one another, but it
does mean that they are not the same, nor does a silent
film taken as a whole equate a dance piece as Kendell
eludes to.
The acting styles employed in the silent films bare a
strong resemblance, visually and kinesthetically not only
to early modern dance forms as already mentioned but also
to puppet theatre and physical theatre as developed in
Russia/Soviet Union by Vesvolod Meyerhold (1874-1940) and
Nikolai Foregger (1892-1939) and German expressionist
drama with its associative dance forms. Meyerhold
developed a system of expressive movement serving both as
exercises to prepare the body for performing and as
performative physical language to aid in the dramatic
staged text.
Foregger created mechanical dances embracing the new
technology of mechanized Industry. The dancers formed
human machine imitating the structure and functions of
the mechanized utopia professed by the recently founded
Soviet Union.
These movement techniques allowed for a greater
expressivity of the body, which developed in the case of
physical theatre following the Symbolist influence into a
mechanistic imitation, or reciprocity in more delicate
hands, best defined in the Russian Futurist /
Constructivist theatre, allowing for a conception of
expression of the new society / modern society. In the
case of modern dance it developed into an acrobatic
biomechanics of abstracted movement phrases or, in
expressionist dance, into a somatic organic exposition of
the unconscious or inner self.
To illustrate my point I have chosen to discuss two films
Metropolis (1926) by German director Fritz Lang and
Aelita (1924) by Soviet director Yakov Protazanov, with
an eye towards where modern dance or physical movement
techniques (such as Biomechanics) have had a semiotic
function and can be read with a kinesthetic understanding
as a sub-text.
In Metropolis and Aelita the use of dance/physical
theatre plays an integral role in the construction of
these films. Again it does not overtake the voiceless
acting, but the stylized gestures and defined movement
qualities are very important in defining kinesthetically
the socio-political and cultural parameters of these
films.
METROPOLIS
Metropolis
opens with scenes of a futuristic society. A high rising
city dominates the modern landscape where an elevated
rail, cars, and planes replace birds and four legged
animals and glass, steel and concrete replaces trees,
grass and rivers. Next a montage with a spinning
kaleidoscope of machinery visually and kinetically akin
to a futurist painting such as a work by Giaccomo Balla
draws the viewer into the hectic urban society of
Modernism
In sharp contrast the next scene moves us underground to
the world of the workers. Here a space of faceless
apartment buildings surrounding a cold concrete plaza
mimic the expressionless masses of workers who toil under
the rigid confines of their subterranean world providing
energy for the expansive city above. The workers form a
solid mass moving in unison to the massive elevators
which carry them to and from the machines at which they
labor. The all male movement chorus (referring to Laban's
movement choruses) sway to a noticeably different tempo
depending on whether they are coming from or going to
work. This swaying rhythm continues wherever we see the
workers; either at the machine which energizes the city,
in the quad around their apartments or even when they
move in smaller groups into the catacombs to hear the
heroine of the film Maria (played by Brigitte Helm) speak
about liberation from their daily drudgery. The bound
internally focused movement qualities found in the
underground starkly changes when we move above ground or
when the workers revolt. The closed fists of the workers,
their tight forwardly curved shoulders, their faceless
expression and uniformed movement patterns
kinesthetically provides the socio-political subtext of
oppression and suppression which runs through Metropolis.
These stylized gestures of a faceless or
dehumanized/mechanized worker bare a strong kinesthetic
relation to the mise-en-scene of Symbolism, to movement
choruses of Laban (1879-1958) and to the Biomechanics of
Meyerhold. Even the workers uniforms look, in black and
white, similar to the attire (Prozodezhda) worn by the
constructivist / agit-prop performers of the 1920's who
embodied these same movement qualities.
Above ground characters move independently with light,
open and outwardly directed movement qualities, as can be
see in the garden scene where young inhabitants enjoy the
pleasures of a Baroque styled garden with lush greenery
and a decorative fountain. The only time this is not true
comes late in the film when a group of the elite male
population of the upper city are worked into frenzied
movements of ecstasy after an erotic dance by the Robot.
Likewise, the only time the workers movements break out
of their constrained boundness is when they are in revolt
(this is where the two groups meet kinesthetically) lead
by the Robot.
The main characters of Metropolis are the only ones who
can cross the physical and kinetics boundaries of the
split metropolis. As Maria (the heroine from the
underground) appears in the garden by mistake, she has a
light open chest with soft expansive gestures. When we
see her underground she is closed, tighter in her
expression, more inwardly focused and more angular with
smaller movements. This is exaggerated when she is
replaced by the Robot where her gestures become more
fluid, serpentine almost, where she alternates between
closed and open and her use of sharp angular gestures,
which have a futuristic quality about them now, are
complimented by fast almost violent-like exposures of
herself. In the final segment of her exotic dance where
she agitates the crowd of men into a fury of ecstasy,
just as she will agitate the workers into a explosive
state of revolt, she lures them (MEN) closer with her
tentacle arms, their eyes swirling in uncontrolled
amazement; an image which replicates the earliest image
of the machines swirling as an animated futurist canvas .
Images of disks, the circular motion of the orbital eyes
and serpents reinforce the kinesthetic reading of the
socio-political subtext of mechanization /
industrialization / modernized woman gone awry. An image
quite often found in the paintings and dances of the
German Expressionists.
Maria's wild release from bondage through the decadence
of a strip tease kinesthetically develops into her
encouragement of the workers revolt leading them into a
frenzy of destruction culminating in a celebratory circle
dance which references the circle of men in the exotic
dance scene connecting her aboveground and underground
persona unlike any other character in the film. Perhaps
since she is the only non-human character she can
transcend both planes without having to change her
kinesthetic qualities.
Lang's awareness of the kinesthetic possibilities of
movement to reinforce the narrative development of his
film and to underscore its socio-political parameters is
manifested in Metropolis.
AELITA
Aelita
works in a similar fashion to Metropolis in its use of
stylized movement to develop a subtext for the
socio-political parameters of the film by employing the
same dichotomy of underground versus aboveground
movement. The film incorporates two realms of reality:
one is on earth in Moscow just after the Revolution and
one is at a contemporary time but in an
imaginary/futuristic society on the planet Mars. The
movement qualities on Mars is more stylized, more
gestural bearing a close relationship to the physical
acting techniques developed by Meyerhold and Foregger
(which also happens to be where many of the actors were
trained) than the realistic acting style of the
characters on Earth.
As with the Metropolis' workers, the workers of Mars are
kept as virtual slaves running the machinery which powers
the city from underground. Their movement qualities of
bound tension, curved in shoulders and literally faceless
expressions (they have cubical helmets on) are almost
identical to their Metropolitan counterparts.
Another important comparison between Metropolis and
Aelita should be made between the movement qualities of
the robotic/futuristic woman Maria and the queen of Mars,
Aelita. Aelita employs stylized gestures which alternate
with angular movements and serpentine fluidity. As does
the Robot in Metropolis, the Queen of Mars acquires power
and control through her movement. In an encounter between
Aelita and the Astronomer of Mars we can see the
implementation of the physical theatre experiments of
Meyerhold and Foregger. Their interaction serves as a
small micro-kinesthetic example of my argument. If we pay
attention to Aelita's serpentine body her closed then
exposed chest, her gripped fists and the Astronomers
angular motions his closed fists and stylized stance then
we can clearly make a kinesthetic line to the
biomechanical experiments of the Soviets and the
expressionist techniques of German physical movement
theories of this period and back to the stylization of
Metropolis.
Aelita, and Maria and the Robot in Metropolis, rely on
movement to identify and empower their roles, but they
still direct the narrative development of the films
through spoken text. Where with the large chorus
movements (the workers in Metropolis and slaves in
Aelita) socio-political references are carried through
the bodies, the narrative plot of the films progress with
spoken text, unheard by the audience -- but still
registered and imagined by them -- and with the
inter-titles.
The kinesthetic similarities between Metropolis and
Aelita that I have been mentioning show movement
qualities which directly relate to the experiments of
modern dance at the beginning of the century are indeed
present, as are the physical acting techniques used in
futuristic or modern theatre, but do not constitute a
compositional structure which would enable us to read the
entire film as a dance. As mentioned earlier a
differentiation needs to be made between the use of dance
in film, the use of dancers in films, the use of a
movement quality in individual performance, group action
and editing which resembles dance techniques created by
the early dance modernists visually and kinesthetically,
but does not replace the unheard voice.
They
speak. They speak, but their voices are silent.
August
2000
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