146
PARTISAN REVIEW
let me mention the expressionist dictum that "vertical motion is
more interesting than horizontal," so that actors somewhat "fly"
after all.
We now ask, however, How are the
sequences,
whether of
pictorial images, synthetic montages, or dramatic episodes, organ–
ized into the ninety-minute-long film? In answering this, we shall
again have to return to the relation of the screen and the stage–
opening in a more fundamental way. But let me first ·indicate
another possibility.
The
ideal
for Eisenstein would no doubt be that the whole
should be one vast synthetic montage of parts of synthetic montage.
This result is even somewhat achieved in
Old and New,
where the
overall changes of tone and rhythm is a direct expression of the
general theme, while the narrative is reduced almost to a story–
framework for the montage. But certainly for the most part in
Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Trauberg, or any of the others, the organ–
ization of the sequences of montage is not itself montage but either
narrative or drama. As such, it draws again on the illusion of a
whole visible world. Do not misunderstand me: the narrative and
drama may themselves be symbolic and not the chief expression,
which may be an idea; but the point is that this idea is not presented
directly by the montage, but indirectly thru the narrative and
drama, with their sense of a self-contained illusory world.
3. Some Kinds of Stage
Let us now broaden our scope from the screen or stage-open–
ing itself to the more inclusive whole of the scene-opening in the
theatre, with its conditions of light or darkness, silence or music,
and other spectators. My contention is that the fiat oblong screen
and the ordinary dark cinema-theatre are conditions for the same
kind of illusion. But I can analyze this out better first in terms of
some kinds of stage.
The argument against the peep-hole or absent-fourth-wall
stage has generally been wrongly proposed as an absolute rejec–
tion, but the correct formulation should be: The peep-hole has an
expression incompatible with the theme or attitude that we now
wish to express; or again, the peep-hole produces a psychological
state in the audience that makes impossible such and such a com–
munication; or again, putting it formally, such and such a stage
