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By Luigi Pirandello – He reflects on the relationship between drama and the spoken cinematograph at the very moment when sound cinema is emerging. He criticises the introduction of dialogue into film and defends the autonomy of the visual language of cinema from the spoken word of the theatre.
The Drama and the Spoken Cinematograph
1929
Published in La Nación, Buenos Aires, 7 July 1929
Original Italian version: Il dramma e il cinematografo parlato
Pirandello addresses the question of the spoken film at the very moment when this technological innovation is beginning to establish itself, immediately grasping its deeper implications. His position is strikingly critical: sound does not represent progress, but rather an alteration of the essential nature of cinema.
At the heart of his argument lies a sharp distinction between two forms of artistic expression: the word and the image. Theatre belongs primarily to the first, whereas cinema should develop fully within the second. The introduction of dialogue into film therefore appears to Pirandello as a contamination, a return to theatrical models that restrict the specific expressive possibilities of the cinematic medium.
According to Pirandello, cinema should function as a form of pure visual experience, capable of acting directly upon the spectator’s imagination without the need for verbal explanation. Speech introduces a rational element that interrupts the immediacy of the image and weakens its suggestive power.
The spoken film thus becomes a hybrid: no longer entirely cinema, yet not genuine theatre either. In this respect Pirandello anticipates a criticism that would recur repeatedly throughout the history of cinema: the danger of subordinating one artistic language to another instead of allowing each medium to develop according to its own nature.
The article, however, is not merely polemical. Pirandello also reveals an experimental impulse and openly declares his intention to explore cinema as a new form of artistic expression. His attempt to translate the fundamental problems of his theatre into purely visual terms demonstrates an open and adventurous artistic research, even while he remains fully aware of the difficulties involved.
At a deeper level, the article develops a broader reflection on the relationship between the arts and the limits proper to every form of language. Each artistic medium possesses its own truth and cannot be forced into another form without losing something of its authenticity. The spoken cinematograph therefore becomes both a sign of crisis and an opportunity to redefine the boundaries of modern art.
Text of the Article
There are two ways in which an artist can make his inner life — that is, his thoughts and feelings — intelligible to others. The first is through words, and indeed through written words even more than spoken ones: words which, through meaning and hearing, reproduce in the listener the impression of the person speaking. The second is through images, which, by means of sight, give the spectator a vision of the events that move the artist.
The ideal form for expressing the first of these two artistic means is drama. As for the second, cinema would fulfil its purpose ideally if it were fully conscious of the possibilities and motives that belong exclusively to it.
By completely renouncing the thread that still binds it to the entirely different art of drama, cinema should transform itself into pure vision: that is, it should seek to achieve its effect in the same way that a dream — itself almost pure vision — acts upon the mind of a sleeping person.
For this reason, in my view, there is no greater absurdity than the experiments now being made with the spoken film. From the outset I regard it as an experiment destined to fail, because it attempts to obtain in cinema effects that properly belong to the stage, and because it cannot at the same time do justice both to theatrical representation and to the nature of film.
Absurd though I consider all the noise surrounding plans for the spoken cinematograph, I must nevertheless admit that I intend to set myself to the task of seeking a true work of art for cinema: a work of pure vision, entirely different from the language I have used until now as a means of expressing my experience of life. Dialogue has always played a more important role than action in my plays.
My play Six Characters in Search of an Author is now to be adapted for the cinema. To say simply that it will be adapted is not entirely accurate. Rather, I am attempting to resolve in purely visual terms the problem that lies at the very root of the play, a problem that is treated only indirectly within the dramatic work itself.
I am trying to make intelligible, through this visual medium, how the Six Characters and their destinies were conceived in the author’s mind and how, once endowed with life, they became independent of him.
Naturally, this projection of the problem onto a new plane is merely a substitution, a hybrid creation still very far from the idea of a truly cinematic work. It must therefore be conceived by the author from the very beginning as pure vision, so that it may consequently be reproduced as such.
Everything in present-day cinema that recalls the theatre must disappear: every element that appeals primarily to intellectual comprehension instead of acting upon the spectator’s soul exclusively through the sense of sight.
I want to indicate new paths for cinema. How these paths can technically be made practicable is still my secret; but it will soon be revealed through the work that I intend to present to the public.
Naturally, an intense involvement with one form of artistic expression is not sufficient reason to regard another form, practised until now, as something that has been superseded.
On the contrary, I believe that drama still has much to teach humanity, and I hope I shall be allowed to express myself further on this subject.
I have recently completed a new play of mine, Lazarus, which treats the problem of resurrection after death in a new way: as an awakening, as a second earthly life.
It presents the conversion of the resurrected man to a new religion that builds earthly life upon a foundation of love, after death has “opened his eyes” and given him the power to understand the value of earthly existence.
At present I am working on a new dramatic subject. It too is a myth, the form of drama to which I have devoted myself with particular interest since The New Colony.
It is entitled The Giants of the Mountain and deals with the complex and futile struggle now being waged by intellectual and spiritual values against the supremacy of brute physical matter in the strictest sense.
It portrays an actress who longs to make the masses understand the work left by the poet she loved. She is mocked and despised and finally finds an audience among the giants who live in the solitude of their mountains.
Yet these giants, incapable of understanding the feeling embodied in the artistic creation or of responding to the actress, ultimately kill her.
Such is the fate that true art suffers today throughout the world.
This, however, must be understood solely in relation to the drama and should not be interpreted personally. It reflects contemporary reality rather than my own personal experience, although many bitter successes and recent disappointments might perhaps have led me to similar conclusions.
The problem of my play has nothing to do with the new Italian theatre that I once hoped to create and which was never realised.
It is a symbol of modern life throughout the world: a world that glorifies Dempsey and, through its one-sided admiration for physical strength, threatens to destroy every other value worthy of esteem.
Luigi Pirandello
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