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Source: ‘V.E. Meierkhol’d o kinematografe’, Teatral’naya gazeta, Moscow, no. 22, 31 May 1915, p. 7.
Technique in cinema is worth a great deal more than those who participate in it. My task is to search out this possibly unutilised technique. First I want to study and analyse the element of movement in cinema.
Special actors are required for cinema. We often see that fine artists of the drama and ballet are completely unsuitable for cinema. The measure of their movement is either too broad or too short and their gestures are exaggerated to extremes. On the other hand, however, Harrison, who had no special training as an actor, captured the technique that is inherent in cinema and mastered it. To me this technique is still terra incognita.
The cinema must be divided into two parts: 1) moving photography – shots of nature and so on and 2) staged productions into which artists should instil an element of art. I consider the transfer to the screen of productions that we see in the theatre or the opera to be a great mistake. If colour is absent a new artistic problem emerges in which none of the old methods will be of use.
I have my own theoretical methods of approach to this question and I intend to put them into practice but it is still too early to talk about them. My attitude towards the existing cinema is extremely negative. My immediate task is to investigate the methods of cinema that have not been used but that undoubtedly lie concealed within it.
In a week’s time I shall start shooting The Picture of Dorian Gray. I myself wrote a special kind of script: everything in it is divided into distinct spheres – dialogue for the actor, instructions for the director, the designer and the lighting technician. This kind of score is essential and I shall publish my work as a model script.
It is still too early to say whether cinema will be an independent art or subsidiary to theatre.
13 ‘Special actors are required for cinema’ (Meyerhold). Ivan Mosjoukine, seen here in Protazanov’s I and My Conscience (1915), was the leading star of pre-Revolutionary Russian cinema.
14 Meyerhold played Lord Henry Wotton (right) in his own film of Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1915), now lost.
15 A Life for a Life (1916) directed by Kuleshov’s mentor, Evgeni Bauer, for Khanzhonkov.