by Sheila Seclearr
Taos, New Mexico
(bumper sticker for Taos Ski Valley:
TAOS is a 4-letter word for steep)
I’ve had a steep but fun learning curve since The Screenwriting Conference in Santa Fe and especially since The Mentor Academy with Kirk Ellis in June. Ellis not only taught a phenomenal and info-loaded class but he gave us a reading list to continue our exploration of cinema studies. Interestingly, our group of screenwriters was offered a list of books heavily geared toward psychology and film direction.
According to Emmy award-winning Ellis, he wanted to help us achieve a sophisticated level of writing that was cinematic and multi-layered. I’ve been studying several of these books since we completed the class and I’ll probably refer to them often in the coming months. And yes, not only have I signed up for Ellis’s class again next year, but I’ve also been invited to join the staff of SCSFe (more on that soon.)
One of the most brilliant guides that Ellis pointed out has been around the longest, but is a lesser-known film study. It’s called “The Photoplay: A Psychological Study” and is included with other writings in the book, Hugo Munsterberg on Film (Routledge, London, 2002, edited by Allan Langdale.) Editor Langdale offers an informative background for Hugo Munsterberg, one of the leading figures in psychology when he first published “The Photoplay” around 1916. Many regard it as the first serious piece of film theory and the first to argue for cinema’s potential as an independent art form.
Munsterberg completed his M.D. in Heidelberg and was a professor at the University of Freiburg during the late 19th century. At the First International Congress of Psychologists in Paris in 1889, he met the American psychologist, William James, who was instrumental in wooing him to Harvard as Professor of Experimental Psychology. Munsterberg became notorious in America for his outspoken German perspective on American culture in the early 20th century.
As a devoted critic of the theatrical stage, Munsterberg’s forays into motion picture exploration were focused on the impact of the new medium (at that time) on psychology and perception. His “Photoplay” offers insights along the lines of his other famous business related psychological analyses. His observations of the fledgling industry still ring amazingly true as they relate to the psychology of the cinematic spectator.
I'll list a few favorite passages:
(Referring to another new medium, illustrated magazines) “… the masses of today (1916) prefer to be taught by pictures rather than by words.” Have we learned?
From his fascinating chapter on Attention, here is perhaps the best sentence I’ve ever read on film theory. Munsterberg refers to accompanying images with a wealth of ideas:
“They must have a meaning for us, they must be enriched by our own imagination, they must awaken the remnants of earlier experiences, they must stir up our feelings and emotions, they must play on suggestibility, they must start ideas and thoughts, they must be linked in our mind with the continuous chain of the play, and they must draw our attention constantly to the important and essential element of the action.”
His chapters on Memory, Imagination, Emotions and the Aesthetics of the photoplay are rich with insights, even nearly a century later. As a fan of the stage drama, Munsterberg was adamant about the benefits of film to take the spectator beyond his own limits of experience and “show” worlds, times and visual perspectives that were previously unimaginable.
Even though early cinema advocates heralded film’s ability to show and imitate the real world, Munsterberg championed the transformation of reality through film. He compared our appreciation for a white marble statue as opposed to a realistic looking colored wax figurine. Of film he said, “It is artistic just in so far as it does not imitate reality but changes the world, selects from it special features for new purposes, remodels the world, and is, through this, truly creative.”
Additional writings include several magazine articles and an interview with Hugo Munsterberg conducted by Paramount Pictures. All are more than historically interesting.
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