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17CINEMATIC NARRATIVE ON THE EXPRESSIONIST STAGE: BACK TO THE HISTORY OF THE
ISSUE
Solomkina T.
Candidate of Art,
Associate Professor of TV and Radio Journalism department Federal State-Funded Educational Institution of Higher Education
"St. Petersburg State University " Russia
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9662-9625
Abstract
The article investigates the incorporation of the cinema art features into the stage narrative by the example of German art. The specific features of the expressionist painting, cinema and theatre are analyzed. By the example of Transfiguration (Die Wandlung), directed by Karl Heinz Martin, the use of cinema expressive techniques on the stage is observed.
Keywords: Stage, screen, expressionism, Karl Heinz Martin, Fritz Kortner.
The issue of the cinema art integration into the stage art lies at the intersection of two sciences - cine-matology (film study) and theatricology (theatre study). In order to detect the peculiar features characteristic of a play with the traits of film aesthetics, it is essential to employ the terminological apparatus of both arts. Applied on the stage, such cinematic techniques as actor's restrained existence, deep layout of the frame, flexible character of montage acquire different perception and generate a new implication.
The penetration of film aesthetics onto the stage became most vivid in German art in the first three decades of the 20th century. By that time, cinema art had decisively become conscious of itself as an independent art, with its own system of expression. A contributing role was played by a French film studio "Le Film d'Art", which aimed to draw theatre devotees' attention to the screen product. The audience were shown films based on high drama plots and featuring stage actors. In 1908 there was a release of Assassination of the Duke de Guise, directed by Charles Le Bargy and André Calmettes. The film retains some principles of a stage performance, such as arranging the mise en scene in full shot (when the actor is shown in the full height on the screen), restraining the scenes with blackout (which served to interrupt the narration), and exaggerated acting (which was aimed at a large audience). Alongside with that, the film reveals specific features of the cinema art. The space where the actors perform is evenly illuminated. The actors are well lighted in any part of the frame. There can be spotted some light nuances on the objects in the frame, for example, a glow on the curtain or a light spot on the floor. Thus, one can speak about the separation between the filling light, which levels the contrast of light and shade, and the modeling light, which identifies the surface texture of an object.
The practice of Assassination ofthe Duke de Guise demonstrated that the transfer of stage techniques to the screen has to be adapted to specific nature of the cinema. In the frame, the exaggerated acting becomes enlarged and, therefore, unrealistic. The actor's existence on the screen must be more restrained. For multilateral performance of the story and, consequently, for retaining the spectators' attention, the picture must vary in
terms of camera view points and the type of camera shot.
The first filmmakers who embodied stage techniques on the screen were English cinematographers from the Brighton School [1]. The live action film Attack on a China Mission, directed by James Williamson, was shot on location. Instead of theatrical scenery they used the natural one. But it would be premature to speak about multishot narrative. The action took place in a full shot. The artistic picture on the screen was created by means of change in tempo rhythm of intraframe montage. It implied altering the intensity of the actors' motions. Later, in cinematography there were invented such types of montage, when the shot change occurs according to the scheme: particular length of shots and particular rhythm pattern of their alternation. This type of montage was developed by an American film director David Wark Griffith (The Birth of a Nation, 1915 and Intolerance, 1916).
It is particularly important to emphasize the invention of the double exposure technique. It is a combination of two or more images in one frame. It is often used in the scenes of recollections and dreams in order to create another reality. One of the first filmmakers to try out the double exposure technique re on the screen was a French director Georges Melies (From the Earth to the Moon, 1902 and The One Man Band, 1900).
Thus, by the mid-1920s, in the cinema there had been formed a new way of presenting artistic material, which made it possible to depict simultaneously, in motion, internal and external processes happening to the hero, and also, to vary the general course of action according to its intensity. In the first years of its existence, the cinema art adopted theatrical features. Nearly twenty years had passed before the cinema acquired its own language of expression means unavailable for other art forms. And now it was theatrical masters who started to pay regard for the cinema and adopt the expertise of the new art.
Most experiences of screen and stage interactions are related to the expressionist aesthetic. Apparently, it was the possibility to visualize the hero's internal life in external reality that drew theatrical expressionists' attention to the cinema.
Expressionism manifested itself in the German fine art in 1905. The students of Technical university Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde and others founded the art group The Bridge (German: Die Brücke), which developed the program of the new school. They declared against impressionist art, in which impression was made the cornerstone, and the picture was iridescent, as so the colours evanished in one another. The expressionists searched for a new way to express their outlook, a new manner of addressing the audience. The acute and painful perception of reality couldn't be fully expressed by means of the canonical art. In the German art criticism, the expressionists' art is called "spiritual degeneration" [2, S.9]. It is primarily revealed in the deformation of habitual forms of objects and humans. The characters of expressionist works are in the state of tension and fear. The world is aggressive towards them. The only conceivable form to express the feelings is a scream. The scream distorts the hero's facial features, making them unaesthetic and repulsive. The hero's bursting pain is so strong that it deforms the surrounding space. Deformation becomes the main artistic device in expressionism. Not only forms of objects and humans are deformed, but so is the space where they exist. The paramount objective is to express the artist's own outlook.
An expressionist work (pictorial, theatrical or cinematic) represents a minutely storyboarded visualization of the author's inner state. An expressionist painting, performance or film includes the features of different art forms. Therefore, in the paintings, on the stage and in the films, it is possible to apply simultaneous depiction of the hero's deep feelings and the way they are reflected in the surrounding space.
The starting point for expressionists was The Scream painting by Edvard Munch (1893). The Norwegian artist was the forerunner of the Expressionist art. In his paintings he depicted the inner world of a human in the state of emotional crisis. The tension is reflected in the surrounding space by means of high colour and light contrast and the deformation of habitual proportions. In The Scream, the character seems to be gasping for air. He is placed at the edge of the painting, and there is hardly any vacuous space in front of him to breathe in. The character himself is depicted in the shape of a blur resembling a human figure. It is impossible to differentiate his facial features, but there can be detected a mouth, wide open and distorted. This is the way the painter embodied the instant of scream.
Expressionist paintings prioritize distorted composition: a curved horizon line (or its absence), high colour and light contrast, distorted shapes of objects and their black shadows. In the painting Potsdamer Platz ^German: Potsdamerplatz, 1914) by Ernst Kirchner, Potsdam Square has a narrow oblong shape; the silhouettes of people, roads and buildings are defined with rough black lines, forming sharp angles. The background is represented by the black sky, which seems to be impending over the square, causing the viewers' anxiety. The expression devices formed in the pictorial art were to become critical for stage and cinema expressionism.
The German expressionist theatre appears to be a direct follow-on from the aesthetic system developed in pictorial art and literature. An expressionist play implies a specific manner of speech expression on the stage. Forced breathing, watchword phrases [3, S.15], accentuation of hissing and growling sounds in words
- all that is uncomfortable for the audience, and it conveys the characters' painful impression of the world around. Expressionists refuse to present the reality objectively. The expressionist act develops not in accordance with the logic, but in accordance with the feeling.
The issue of hidden, hardly expressible processes happening in the hero's inner world, is established on the level of expressionist dramaturgy. Amongst traditionally defined types of expressionist drama (Drama of The Way, Drama of The Proclamation, Drama of The Transformation, Drama of The Scream [4, S.31], we will expand on Drama of The Scream.
Following in the painters' footsteps, expressionist dramatists (Reinhard Sorge, Georg Kaiser, Walter Hasenclever, Ernst Toller) address the hero's inner world. Therefore, one of the most precise definitions of expressionist drama is The I-Drama [5, S.55] (German: Ich-Drama). The characters of expressionist plays are immersed in their sensations. "The emphasis is put on the ecstatic monologue, and everything happening around is just a reflection of discord inside the author's own self."
The visualization of internal discord required fundamentally different means of theatrical expression. The expressionist stage directors Karlheinz Martin, Richard Weichert, Gustav Hartung give their special consideration to the cinema as the art with numerous possibilities of tempo-rhythmic narrative, and possibilities to manage spectators' attention effectively. "The rooms are enshrouded in darkness, their corners are invisible, the shapes of separate objects are contoured, the actors are illuminated with upper light, or they step out of the gloom" [6, p.128]. The stage presents the world as if assembled from separate fragments.
Expressionist directors try to recreate the frame space on the stage. They invent a so-called "stage frame". The stage employs its proportions to enlarge the characters and their surroundings. The collapse of the universe is embodied in monumental mise en scenes and crowd scenes, where the actors move synchronously, speeding up and slowing down in turn.
A representative example is Transfiguration by Ernst Toller (directed by K.H. Martin, Tribune, Berlin, 1919). At the beginning of the play, the main character, a young man Friedrich, is viewed by the audience as a staunch supporter of the war. However, at the end of the play he undergoes a dramatic change, vehemently disclaiming military actions.
The play consists of six episodes. Each episode reveals a particular phase of the hero's development [7, S.35]. A prominent place in the play is held by Frie-drich's dreams. He appears in them in different images
- a soldier, a traveller, a priest... The stage visualization of the hero's spiritual search and search of his life role was vital.
The fine play solution of Transfiguration is far from realistic picture, and it conforms to the expressionist concept of addressing the hero's internal impulses. However, the play was performed on a chamber stage. The distance between the actors and spectators was not very long, which made it impossible to apply any special effects creating surreal atmosphere. But it was exactly in that space, limited in terms of expression, where the artist Robert Neppach created the atmosphere of surreality. He emphasizes the absence of the depth of space, and he does not define the horizon line. A similar pictorial device can be spotted in expressionist paintings (Apocalyptic City by L. Meidner, 1913; Child and Large Bird by E. Nolde, 1912), and later in films (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, directed by Robert Vine, 1920; The Nibelungs, directed by Fritz Lang, 1924).
Like in most expressionist paintings and films, the stage background is a black rear. It is a versatile background for objective and subjective scenes, and so, it integrates the images of external and internal processes, akin to the double exposure on the screen.
At the rear there is a mobile scenery with pictures created with sharp ragged lines: a wall, a shape of a pit after explosion, etc. The large picture of the scenery is drawn in minimalist style. It resembles a large cinematic image, where in the frame there is a minimum of objects, or a small part of an object, and along with that, such "picture" carries emotional information.
The part of Friedrich in Transfiguration was played by Fritz Kortner. Before working with K.H. Martin, he collaborated with Max Reinhardt, participated in his performances on the big stage. That collaboration defined his manner of acting: exaggerated pronunciation, broad gesticulation. All that was transplanted by Kortner onto the big stage of the Tribune Theatre. Such manner of acting looked unrealistic in that space. The actor "grasped the bounds of the scene and exploded the space" [7, S.53]. His movements were slow and rapid in turn, as if the "stage cine-film" was now slowing down, now speeding up.
The interaction between cinema and theatre commenced in German expressionism and was a basis of Erwin Piscator's political theatre. Expressionists proved, that cinema can exist not only on the screen, but also on the stage. There appeared a new form of theatrical convention [8, p.7] - a play of "scream". Cinematic features were incorporated into the structure of the play.
The inclusion of the screen aesthetic traits in the play's structure extended the bounds of the stage reality. The discoveries made by expressionists predetermined the aesthetics of Bertolt Brecht's theatre. However, the "epic theatre" is an absolutely special artistic phenomenon and is left beyond this research.
Having asserted itself in fine art, expressionism as an artistic direction immediately manifested its focus on visualization. Declaring itself in visual-sound art forms, such as drama theatre and cinema, expressionism retains the dominance of the visual channel in communication with spectators.
It is the representation that forms the meaning in a play or a film. It projects the heroes' inner state. Expressionist heroes' souls hurt, they are in despair. The representation of heroes' critical inner state requires going beyond the traditional stage expression, and applying a fundamentally different method of communication with the audience. It was a sort of violation of theatrical canons to incorporate expressive features of pictorial arts into a play, and the cinema art in particular. Such techniques as high colour and light contrast, lack of half-tones, distortion of habitual shapes of objects on the stage acquire heightened meaning. And cinematic techniques, like close-up, slow motion, frequent change of images make the stage narrative impetuous in its development, which is consonant with the irresistibly evolving picture of the hero's inner world.
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