Cinema's Superiority to Stage
In this comparative paper, I will explain some of the improvements that cinema has made on theatre by looking at Hugo Munsterberg’s “The Psychogy of the Photoplay,” and Boris Eihkenbaum’s “Cine-Stylistics.” Hugo Munsterberg and Boris Eihkenbaum consider cinema superior to theatre in its ability to construct a spatially and temporally coherent world, which allows for greater ease in involving the spectator and directing their attention throughout the film
One of cinema’s most noticeable features over theatre is its method of constructing a believable space and temporal continuity. Film has many powers that theatre can never possess. One of which is the obvious realism inherent with capturing the real world on film. Plays can create lavish sets using painted canvases and elaborate arrangements of flats, but their falsity takes away from the overall impression of the work (Langdale, 84). The stage and screen also differ in their presentation of the space. Firstly, it is necessary to point out the opposite orientations. All stages are constructed to appear narrow at the back and widen towards the audience to ensure maximum visibility. Film space however is a limitless space presented by the narrow framing of the camera. Another difference of presentation is the distance of the spectator from objects in that space. Theatre spectators can lose clarity on the objects that compile a setting due to the distance between the actual stage and the spectator. Without the ability to magnify certain objects, as done in a close-up, many audience members may miss key information of the play.
As any film spectator may notice, a great advantage of film over theatre is its ability to transport the viewer to any place or time in a matter of seconds. The quick changeovers allow greater significance to be applied to the two settings. The seamless transition from one space to another allows the plot to continue without interruption for a set change. The space of the theatre integrates itself into the plot, as it is restricted to the boundaries of the stage (Taylor, 21). An audience member does not even fathom what exists past these imaginary walls, while a cinema spectator can marvel at the complexity of the limitless space presented. Whether shot in a studio or on location, something always exists just offscreen whether it is more landscape or the studio itself. As the audience never sees what lies offscreen, the sense of a vast space is always present in their minds.
Just as film is more coherent in constructing a spatially plausible world, it is also more skilled at creating a logical, compelling timeline. Time in the theatre sense is passive in nature (Taylor, 24). The time that passes for the characters is parallel to that of the spectator. On of the main theatrical problems is to fill time by condensing the written work to allow as much plot into the designated time as possible. Scenes are often laid out in chronological order and must be shown in a causal succession. Film, however, is able to manipulate time to suit its artistic needs. Film’s main temporal problem is not filling time but constructing time. As the world onscreen often digests time at an alarming rate, filmmakers are more concerned with how to link these temporal moments together as simply as they can. Film is able to cut out certain chunks of time in order to progress to the next narrative step. Unlike theatre, Film has the ability to infuse scenes from the future as well as scenes from the past. These are referred to as flash-forwards and cutbacks (Taylor, 98). While a play can reference another point in time through speech, cinema is able to return to that moment and present the necessary information in a more compelling method. Theatre’s inability to display multiple spaces also restricts its capacity to portray a character’s thoughts, memories or premonitions. The visual portrayal provided onscreen can create a state of suspense as well as begin a chain of causality. By withholding these spaces and moments visually, spectators might not be able to immerse themselves within the play as well as in the cinema.
A patron’s involvement with the material is vital to their appreciation and understanding of the play or film as a whole. While both arts do employ the audiences’ reception of plot and time, the stage treats the spectator as more of a fly on the wall while cinema treats the viewer as a secluded individual who is alone in a theatre. A similarity between theatre and film is their reliance on the audience to provide their own personal experiences that they can use to help create a more emotionally charged interpretation (Langdale, 79). Munsterberg states that each spectator has to deal with two different groups of emotions during a performance. The first concerns the emotions produced in response to the play or film and the second pertains to the emotions transmitted by the characters towards the spectator. “The visual perception of the various forms of expression of these emotions fuses in [the] mind with the conscious awareness of the emotion expressed; we feel if we were directly seeing and observing the emotion itself. (Langdale, 105).” This creation of an experience from within the mind is quite small compared to the mind’s creation of movement and depth within a film.
While the stage is unnatural, it is three-dimensional causing the actions to seem more credible. Film is also able to establish a notion of depth, which combined with the naturalistic settings, is much more accessible to the spectator than the stage. This filmic depth is created by the orientation of objects onscreen through their differences in apparent size, their perspective relations and their subsequent shadows. Objects moving away or towards the camera can also display the depth of a scene (Langdale, 68). The mind also creates the illusion of movement in film through the effect of a positive afterimage. A positive afterimage refers to the act of light causing a perception in our eye and when the light continues its path, the new perception overlaps causing an aftereffect that is different from the original perception (Langdale, 72). These mental activities occur subconsciously with the spectator. They are perceived as real actions in a real space. While these mind processes are happening, we are also conscious of other interactions. On both stage and screen, scenes are presented in a specific order so that certain ideas and emotions are aroused and maintained. The theatre neglects the transition between scenes and relies on titled acts or verbally supplied causes. Since film contains many more scenes than a play will, the use of titled cards would become redundant for every change of space. This has caused filmmakers to rely on the audience’s development of an inner speech that helps to fill in the narrative gaps. Boris Eihkenbaums definition of internal speech dictates that “the spectator must constantly compile a chain of [scenes]… to enable him to divine the meaning of an episode….(Taylor, 12).” This creation of an internal speech must be able to link together the basic connection between scenes, but also must be able to understand the placement of flash-forwards and cutbacks with regard to the present action. Another major function of internal speech is to maintain knowledge of multiple spaces when techniques such as crosscutting are employed. As the action switches from one space to another, the spectator is able to imagine what has happened since the last time a space was projected (Taylor, 27). In the theatre, this notion of internal speech is utilized to understand the motivation and causality that links scenes together. These links, which are also created for film, can base themselves upon an associative relation between the two scenes. Another form of link between scenes is the effect of suggestion. In theatre, most actions play out until their end so that the audiences’ premonitions and thought processes are not lost. In cinema, many actions are cut or interplayed with other scenes to cut down on time. When characters in a play die or make love, the actions present themselves in full to the viewer, but in film, these actions remain offscreen leaving the details of the action to the spectator to produce. This effect allows the audience member to achieve a sense of control over what is actually happening within the story.
Our involvement with a spectacle on stage or screen fuels our interest in the work. Whether a performance is captivating enough to hold our attention is the backbone of a work of art. Patrons attend the theatre and cinema to be entertained. These spectacles are based upon our voluntary and involuntary attention. Existing in both the theatre and the screen, these categories help direct us through the art’s composition as well as contribute meaning through our perception. Voluntary attention occurs when we approach the material through our own personal interest. Involuntary attention occurs when cues present objects or people for us to focus on. Primarily involuntary attention is the nature of distractions. All that is bright and shiny or emotionally controlling grabs our attention. The delicate balance of these two categories is the main challenge of a director. In theater, we may pay attention to any object regardless of its importance to the current action. When a character speaks, we are drawn to them yet through their words we may begin to gaze elsewhere. The movement in a scene controls our attention whether through a motion towards the foreground, a gesture in a motionless crowd or a quick or unusual movement. The observations apply to the structure of cinema with the exception that cinema is able to direct our attention more clearly by using certain cinematic techniques. The most important technique used is the close-up. In film, all of our attention is directed to a single object, gesture, movement or facial expression by enlarging that object or action to fill the entire screen. This magnification serves to produce detail in an object and to reduce the amount of distractions onscreen. The stage can only reduce the distraction by employing a blackout and a spotlight on a given object. This method, resembling the filmic close-up, only destroys the scene by jarring the audience with this unconventional technique. In most cases, significance is displayed through verbal reference. This only directs attention to an object; it is unable to visually present significance. Since the object is not isolated, the remainder of the scene distracts the viewer from achieving a true understanding of the significance as it dilutes the perception. In order to achieve significance, the spectators must remove themselves from the scene and consciously focus on the object, as is outlined by Munsterberg.
“As we are passing along the street we see
something in the shop window and as soon
as stirs up our interest, our body adjusts itself,
we stop, we fixate it, we get more of the detail
in it, the lines become sharper, and while is impresses
us more vividly than before, the street around us has
lost its vividness and clearness. (Taylor, 86).”
As we become more and more conscious of our focal point, our senses begin to adapt themselves to enhance the perception and absorption, isolating us from the world around us. This is one of the key fundamentals behind the moviegoers’ ideal viewing environment.
In cinema, attention is obtained using movement since audible words are not possible. This creates an even greater focus on the movement of film. A filmmaker accentuates these movements by using light, shadows, and vagueness that play on the involuntary attention. Eihkenbaum extends this structure of composition of the shot, outlined by Munsterberg, in his theory that the composition of scenes can focus attention. Since theatre cannot supply flashbacks or flash forwards as a visual spectacle, they must rely on speeches to remind or relate this information to the viewer. By asking the viewer to recall or create his or her own mental scenes, the spectator is temporarily excused from the action onstage, into a daydream (Langdale, 89). Cinema tries to avoid such periods of detachment by linking scenes together in a causal method. Film also tries to hold the attention of the audience through the concept of photogeny. Eihkenbaum describes photogeny as a way of presenting a deformed version of the world (Taylor, 15). This deformed version contains a produced beauty and an aspect of spectacle. Through faster editing and the spectator’s required acknowledgement of each shot, photogeny can create a sense of constant surveillance. Along with this method, directors can also present multiple angles of the same object, similar to the 30-degree rule of the continuity system, which can produce various stylistic effects. These multiple angles, in collection with every other shot in a film have yet another advantage over theatre. The mimicry of actors onstage is continuous and realistic, yet it still holds the possibility of being a poor presentation at that time. Film is able to rewards a performance or action multiple times on different days and choose the most expressive or captivating performance (Langdale, 101). While theatre can impart a sense of impressiveness due to its live performance, it is no match for film’s ability to present the possibility of a flawless performance, having all errors been removed through editing and multiple takes.
Hugo Munsterberg and Boris Eihkenbaum outline the relationship between theatre and film, as they describe cinema’s superiority over the stage by analyzing the construction of spatial and temporal continuity. We have seen how each medium involves the spectator and how their attention is directed and utilized to create a greater understanding of the representation.
Bibliography
Langdale, Allan, ed. Hugo Munsterberg on Film: “The Photoplay: A Psychological Study and Other Writings. NY: Routledge, 2002.
Taylor, Richard, ed. “The Poetics of Cinema.” Russian: Poetics in Translation 9. Oxford: RPT Publishing, 1982.
One of cinema’s most noticeable features over theatre is its method of constructing a believable space and temporal continuity. Film has many powers that theatre can never possess. One of which is the obvious realism inherent with capturing the real world on film. Plays can create lavish sets using painted canvases and elaborate arrangements of flats, but their falsity takes away from the overall impression of the work (Langdale, 84). The stage and screen also differ in their presentation of the space. Firstly, it is necessary to point out the opposite orientations. All stages are constructed to appear narrow at the back and widen towards the audience to ensure maximum visibility. Film space however is a limitless space presented by the narrow framing of the camera. Another difference of presentation is the distance of the spectator from objects in that space. Theatre spectators can lose clarity on the objects that compile a setting due to the distance between the actual stage and the spectator. Without the ability to magnify certain objects, as done in a close-up, many audience members may miss key information of the play.
As any film spectator may notice, a great advantage of film over theatre is its ability to transport the viewer to any place or time in a matter of seconds. The quick changeovers allow greater significance to be applied to the two settings. The seamless transition from one space to another allows the plot to continue without interruption for a set change. The space of the theatre integrates itself into the plot, as it is restricted to the boundaries of the stage (Taylor, 21). An audience member does not even fathom what exists past these imaginary walls, while a cinema spectator can marvel at the complexity of the limitless space presented. Whether shot in a studio or on location, something always exists just offscreen whether it is more landscape or the studio itself. As the audience never sees what lies offscreen, the sense of a vast space is always present in their minds.
Just as film is more coherent in constructing a spatially plausible world, it is also more skilled at creating a logical, compelling timeline. Time in the theatre sense is passive in nature (Taylor, 24). The time that passes for the characters is parallel to that of the spectator. On of the main theatrical problems is to fill time by condensing the written work to allow as much plot into the designated time as possible. Scenes are often laid out in chronological order and must be shown in a causal succession. Film, however, is able to manipulate time to suit its artistic needs. Film’s main temporal problem is not filling time but constructing time. As the world onscreen often digests time at an alarming rate, filmmakers are more concerned with how to link these temporal moments together as simply as they can. Film is able to cut out certain chunks of time in order to progress to the next narrative step. Unlike theatre, Film has the ability to infuse scenes from the future as well as scenes from the past. These are referred to as flash-forwards and cutbacks (Taylor, 98). While a play can reference another point in time through speech, cinema is able to return to that moment and present the necessary information in a more compelling method. Theatre’s inability to display multiple spaces also restricts its capacity to portray a character’s thoughts, memories or premonitions. The visual portrayal provided onscreen can create a state of suspense as well as begin a chain of causality. By withholding these spaces and moments visually, spectators might not be able to immerse themselves within the play as well as in the cinema.
A patron’s involvement with the material is vital to their appreciation and understanding of the play or film as a whole. While both arts do employ the audiences’ reception of plot and time, the stage treats the spectator as more of a fly on the wall while cinema treats the viewer as a secluded individual who is alone in a theatre. A similarity between theatre and film is their reliance on the audience to provide their own personal experiences that they can use to help create a more emotionally charged interpretation (Langdale, 79). Munsterberg states that each spectator has to deal with two different groups of emotions during a performance. The first concerns the emotions produced in response to the play or film and the second pertains to the emotions transmitted by the characters towards the spectator. “The visual perception of the various forms of expression of these emotions fuses in [the] mind with the conscious awareness of the emotion expressed; we feel if we were directly seeing and observing the emotion itself. (Langdale, 105).” This creation of an experience from within the mind is quite small compared to the mind’s creation of movement and depth within a film.
While the stage is unnatural, it is three-dimensional causing the actions to seem more credible. Film is also able to establish a notion of depth, which combined with the naturalistic settings, is much more accessible to the spectator than the stage. This filmic depth is created by the orientation of objects onscreen through their differences in apparent size, their perspective relations and their subsequent shadows. Objects moving away or towards the camera can also display the depth of a scene (Langdale, 68). The mind also creates the illusion of movement in film through the effect of a positive afterimage. A positive afterimage refers to the act of light causing a perception in our eye and when the light continues its path, the new perception overlaps causing an aftereffect that is different from the original perception (Langdale, 72). These mental activities occur subconsciously with the spectator. They are perceived as real actions in a real space. While these mind processes are happening, we are also conscious of other interactions. On both stage and screen, scenes are presented in a specific order so that certain ideas and emotions are aroused and maintained. The theatre neglects the transition between scenes and relies on titled acts or verbally supplied causes. Since film contains many more scenes than a play will, the use of titled cards would become redundant for every change of space. This has caused filmmakers to rely on the audience’s development of an inner speech that helps to fill in the narrative gaps. Boris Eihkenbaums definition of internal speech dictates that “the spectator must constantly compile a chain of [scenes]… to enable him to divine the meaning of an episode….(Taylor, 12).” This creation of an internal speech must be able to link together the basic connection between scenes, but also must be able to understand the placement of flash-forwards and cutbacks with regard to the present action. Another major function of internal speech is to maintain knowledge of multiple spaces when techniques such as crosscutting are employed. As the action switches from one space to another, the spectator is able to imagine what has happened since the last time a space was projected (Taylor, 27). In the theatre, this notion of internal speech is utilized to understand the motivation and causality that links scenes together. These links, which are also created for film, can base themselves upon an associative relation between the two scenes. Another form of link between scenes is the effect of suggestion. In theatre, most actions play out until their end so that the audiences’ premonitions and thought processes are not lost. In cinema, many actions are cut or interplayed with other scenes to cut down on time. When characters in a play die or make love, the actions present themselves in full to the viewer, but in film, these actions remain offscreen leaving the details of the action to the spectator to produce. This effect allows the audience member to achieve a sense of control over what is actually happening within the story.
Our involvement with a spectacle on stage or screen fuels our interest in the work. Whether a performance is captivating enough to hold our attention is the backbone of a work of art. Patrons attend the theatre and cinema to be entertained. These spectacles are based upon our voluntary and involuntary attention. Existing in both the theatre and the screen, these categories help direct us through the art’s composition as well as contribute meaning through our perception. Voluntary attention occurs when we approach the material through our own personal interest. Involuntary attention occurs when cues present objects or people for us to focus on. Primarily involuntary attention is the nature of distractions. All that is bright and shiny or emotionally controlling grabs our attention. The delicate balance of these two categories is the main challenge of a director. In theater, we may pay attention to any object regardless of its importance to the current action. When a character speaks, we are drawn to them yet through their words we may begin to gaze elsewhere. The movement in a scene controls our attention whether through a motion towards the foreground, a gesture in a motionless crowd or a quick or unusual movement. The observations apply to the structure of cinema with the exception that cinema is able to direct our attention more clearly by using certain cinematic techniques. The most important technique used is the close-up. In film, all of our attention is directed to a single object, gesture, movement or facial expression by enlarging that object or action to fill the entire screen. This magnification serves to produce detail in an object and to reduce the amount of distractions onscreen. The stage can only reduce the distraction by employing a blackout and a spotlight on a given object. This method, resembling the filmic close-up, only destroys the scene by jarring the audience with this unconventional technique. In most cases, significance is displayed through verbal reference. This only directs attention to an object; it is unable to visually present significance. Since the object is not isolated, the remainder of the scene distracts the viewer from achieving a true understanding of the significance as it dilutes the perception. In order to achieve significance, the spectators must remove themselves from the scene and consciously focus on the object, as is outlined by Munsterberg.
“As we are passing along the street we see
something in the shop window and as soon
as stirs up our interest, our body adjusts itself,
we stop, we fixate it, we get more of the detail
in it, the lines become sharper, and while is impresses
us more vividly than before, the street around us has
lost its vividness and clearness. (Taylor, 86).”
As we become more and more conscious of our focal point, our senses begin to adapt themselves to enhance the perception and absorption, isolating us from the world around us. This is one of the key fundamentals behind the moviegoers’ ideal viewing environment.
In cinema, attention is obtained using movement since audible words are not possible. This creates an even greater focus on the movement of film. A filmmaker accentuates these movements by using light, shadows, and vagueness that play on the involuntary attention. Eihkenbaum extends this structure of composition of the shot, outlined by Munsterberg, in his theory that the composition of scenes can focus attention. Since theatre cannot supply flashbacks or flash forwards as a visual spectacle, they must rely on speeches to remind or relate this information to the viewer. By asking the viewer to recall or create his or her own mental scenes, the spectator is temporarily excused from the action onstage, into a daydream (Langdale, 89). Cinema tries to avoid such periods of detachment by linking scenes together in a causal method. Film also tries to hold the attention of the audience through the concept of photogeny. Eihkenbaum describes photogeny as a way of presenting a deformed version of the world (Taylor, 15). This deformed version contains a produced beauty and an aspect of spectacle. Through faster editing and the spectator’s required acknowledgement of each shot, photogeny can create a sense of constant surveillance. Along with this method, directors can also present multiple angles of the same object, similar to the 30-degree rule of the continuity system, which can produce various stylistic effects. These multiple angles, in collection with every other shot in a film have yet another advantage over theatre. The mimicry of actors onstage is continuous and realistic, yet it still holds the possibility of being a poor presentation at that time. Film is able to rewards a performance or action multiple times on different days and choose the most expressive or captivating performance (Langdale, 101). While theatre can impart a sense of impressiveness due to its live performance, it is no match for film’s ability to present the possibility of a flawless performance, having all errors been removed through editing and multiple takes.
Hugo Munsterberg and Boris Eihkenbaum outline the relationship between theatre and film, as they describe cinema’s superiority over the stage by analyzing the construction of spatial and temporal continuity. We have seen how each medium involves the spectator and how their attention is directed and utilized to create a greater understanding of the representation.
Bibliography
Langdale, Allan, ed. Hugo Munsterberg on Film: “The Photoplay: A Psychological Study and Other Writings. NY: Routledge, 2002.
Taylor, Richard, ed. “The Poetics of Cinema.” Russian: Poetics in Translation 9. Oxford: RPT Publishing, 1982.
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