Analogies between the stage and the screen assume that they deal with the same material. But they don't. The material of the scree...n is not actual objects but images fixed on the film. And the very fact that they have their being on film endows these images with properties which are never found in actual objects. For instance, on the stage the actor moves in real space and time. He cannot even cross the room without performing a definite number of movements. On the screen an action may be shown only in terminal points with all its intervening moments left out. Similarly, in watching a performance on the stage the spectator is governed by the actual conditions of space and time. Not so in the case of the movie spectator. Thanks to the moving camera he is able to view the scene from all kinds of angles, leaping from a long-distance view to a close-range inspection of every detail. It is obvious that with this extraordinary power of handling space and time--by elimination and emphasis, according to its dramatic needs--the motion picture can never be content with modeling itself after the stage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the old days, one married a wife; now one forms a company with a female partner, or moves in to live with a friend. And then on...e seduces the partner, or defiles the friend.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket. Revolution, legality--counter-moves in the same game; forms of idl...eness at bottom identical.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In chess we find several quite crisp distinctions that can also be discerned rather more problematically in the larger game of lif...e. There are, for instance, the "forced moves" in chess. Moves are occasionally forced by the rules of chess: in these instances one finds oneself so boxed in that one and only one legal move is available.... More interesting ... are the forced moves on those occasions when there is more than one legal move, but only one non-idiotic, non-"suicidal" move, which is said for that reason to be forced. It is forced not by the rules of chess, and not by the laws of physics, but by the dictates of reason. It is obviously the only rational thing to do, given one's interest in winning (or just not losing) the game.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man moves in all modes, by legs of horses, by wings of winds, by steam, by gas of balloon, by electricity, and stands on tiptoe th...reatening to hunt the eagle in his own element.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When other helpers fail and comforts flee, when the senses decay and the mind moves in a narrower and narrower circle, when the gr...asshopper is a burden and the postman brings no letters, and even the Royal Family is no longer quite what it was, an obituary column stands fast.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »