 | Guest Column Nirad N Mohapatra |
The scientific quest, which gave birth to cinema, had nothing to do with its aesthetic growth and development. Its inventors considered it just as a recording device like the phonograph (gramophone) whose novelty, they presumed, would wear off with the passage of time. Cinema, for its survival, had to follow in the footsteps of its elder sibling — theatre, till it was realised that the new medium had an arsenal of means to chart out a completely different path.
Up to 1912, film shows were held in dingy little halls called ‘nickelodeon’ and were often furnished with hard chairs or benches to accommodate its working-class audience who paid five nickel coins — hence the name nickelodeon — to entertain themselves for an hour. The aristocracy looked down upon the new medium and disdainfully called it “the poor men’s theatre”. But once its dramatic story telling potential was uncovered and films grew in length (originally one reel), the enterprising ones discovered a virtual gold mine in this medium of entertainment.
In 1907, an attempt was made to entice the aristocracy by bringing in theatre artistes and record famous plays in an abridged and silent form. In France, a company named ‘Film d’ Art’ began the movement and its success was soon emulated the world over. In 1912, Adolf Zukor, an enterprising young man started his ‘Famous players in famous plays’ (the ancestor of ‘Paramount Pictures’) in the U.S. after successfully distributing “Queen Elizabeth” which featured Sarah Bernhardt, the famous heartthrob of French theatre-goers. It did help in attracting the cultural elite all right, but the trend did not contribute anything to the growth of cinema. Scornfully termed as “canned theatre” by critics, that phase has since been a forgiven and forgotten chapter of film history.
It was finally redeemed by a man called D.W. Griffith who was quick to realise that the space in cinema could be fragmented to narrate dramatic reality more effectively. Before going any further, one must distinguish between theatrical reality and dramatic reality. Drama is the soul of the theatre but this soul can inhabit other bodies. A sonnet, a fable, a novel or a film can owe their effectiveness to what Henri Gouhier calls “the dramatic categories” (Bazin).
Unlike the traditional open-air theatre of the East, the proscenium theatre of the West has a certain arrangement of space in which the audience watches the performance from a frontal angle. The stage is built on a raised platform and is separated from the audience by the footlights. It is enclosed on all three sides and a curtain is used for scene transition. Basically, it is that rectangular space called stage which contains the whole theatrical act. It is a rigidly defined space, a centripetal space that represents the world. By comparison, the space in cinema is centrifugal in nature. It is not restricted by boundaries or fixed frame line and can open out to infinity. The audience is aware all the time that the world exists beyond the rectangular frame line. Literally speaking, the whole world becomes its stage.
In theatre, the distance between the stage and the audience remains constant and the audience has no other option but to look at the entire stage. The angle of viewing the performance too remains the same. In cinema, arguably, the physical distance of an individual viewer from the screen remains unchanged, but psychologically his position and angle of viewing keeps shifting with that of the camera. In effect, the lens of the camera replaces the human eye.
One of the most important distinctions between the two is in relation to the time and space continuum. It is known that within a given unit of continuous time, space and time are inter-locked. On stage, a scene is the minimum unit of continuous time but on screen it is the length of the shot. For example, in theatre, within a given scene, the actor has to cover actual space and time to move from one end of the stage to the other to perform some action. However, in cinema, because of fragmentation of space (shot division), it is possible to condense or expand time within a given scene, or in other words, manipulate time. Griffith was the first one to realise it and that really marked a new and separate path for cinema.
For theatre, the human being is all-important. Theatre can be denuded of everything except the actor or dramatis personae. However, the drama on the screen can exist without actors. Cinema can substitute man by nature and bring it to the centrestage. Obviously, if the cinema makes use of nature it is because it is able to do so. The camera empowers it with all the properties of the telescope and the microscope.
In theatre, the actor is real and the backdrop (a painted screen or a set) is artificial or make-belief. The audience is aware of this, but he suspends his disbelief for the time he witnesses the play. Conversely, with cinema, both the actor and his background are reduced to an image - a mirror-like image of the real world. Both are rendered homogenous. Therefore, the role of milieu or ambience is of great significance in the cinema. It has been said that in theatre, the drama proceeds from the actor, in cinema, it goes from the décor or setting to man.
In terms of experience, there is a distinct difference between the two. Every medium has its own mode of expression and is perceived differently. The theatre is indeed based on the reciprocal awareness of the presence of the audience and the actor and it acts on us by virtue of our participation in a theatrical action. All the time the audience remains conscious of his surrounding because his peripheral vision remains intact. Cinema’s unique viewing condition, however, casts a hypnotic spell on the audience.
Sitting in a dark auditorium, unaware of the surrounding, the life-like images and sounds generate a perfect ‘illusion of reality’. There is nothing to prevent him from identifying himself with the moving world before him, which virtually becomes his own world.
In theatre, we rarely lose ourselves completely or give ourselves up totally to fantasy. We remain conscious of the audience, conscious of theatre as social occasion, conscious of the actors as actors, conscious of the actor’s awareness of us, conscious finally of ourselves. Movies, in contrast, make for an infinitely more involved, more private viewing.
