Carl Th. Dreyer – My Métier (Jensen, 1995)
My Winter Movies # 16
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«The eye absorbs horizontal lines rapidly and easily but repels vertical lines. The eye is involuntarily attracted by objects in motion but remains passive over stationary things. This is the explanation why the eye, with pleasure, follows gliding camera movements, preferably when they are soft and rhythmic. As a principle rule, one can say that one shall try to keep a continuous, flowing, horizontally gliding motion in the film. If one then suddenly introduces vertical lines, one can reach an instantly dramatic effect––as, for instance, in the pictures of the vertical ladder just before it is thrown into the fire in Day of Wrath.»
«I have often seen a fast rhythm used with great effect in film––where such a rhythm was right for the situation. But I have also seen films where the pictures were whipped up by an artificial rhythm that was uncalled for by the action: it was a rhythm for the sake of the rhythm itself. But used this way, the rhythm is actually just an inheritance from the time of the silent films, an inheritance that the sound film still hasn’t shaken off. It is a remnant from the time when film was fitted out with printed remarks. Between the remarks, it was empty, and the remarks were also empty, and in order to cover up all this emptiness the persons flew through the pictures and the pictures flew past on the screen––there was certainly “rhythm” enough! But such was the rhythm of the silent film.»
(More here.)
(Image via Diário de um Cinéfilo)
