Theater and Cinema: Contrasts in Media, 1916 – 1966

 by

Cardullo, Robert

Credentials:

 Professor of Media and Communication at the Izmir University of Economics in Izmir, Turkey

Professor Robert Cardullo teaches courses in film history, theory, and criticism as well as popular culture. He was formerly on the faculty of the University of Michigan.

The author of over 250 articles, notes, and reviews, he is also the author, editor, or translator of more than thirty books, among them "A Critical Edition of Two Modern Plays on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff"; "Theater of the Avant-Garde, 1890-1950: A Critical Anthology"; "The Theater of Fernand Crommelynck: Eight Plays"; and "German-Language Comedy: A Critical Anthology,Antigone Adapted (2011)"

By focusing on the important early theoretical writings about these two media, "Theater and Cinema: Contrasts in Media, 1916-1966" becomes one of the first books in over thirty-five years to examine the historical, cultural, and aesthetic relationships between theater and film. As we move through the twenty-first century, almost all artists, students, and critics working in theater will have had earlier and greater exposure to film than to theater. In fact, film has become central to the way in

which we perceive and formulate stories, images, ideas, and sounds. At the same time, film, video, and digital media occupy an increasingly significant place in theater study, both for the adaptation of plays and for the documentation or preservation of theatrical performances. Yet far too often young theater and film artists, as well as educators, make the jump from one medium to the other without being fully aware of the ways in which the qualities of each medium affect content and artistic

expression. This book is intended to fill such a gap by providing a theoretical and practical foundation for understanding the effect that film and drama have had, and continue to have, on each other’s development. The theoretical as well as practical foundation provided by

the writings in this volume, furthermore, is the one established during the fifty years from 1916 to 1966, when, despite the advent of the feature-length film, the introduction of sound, and the triumph of color, the theater was still seen as a serious artistic rival to the cinema.

The introduction to "Theater and Cinema" provides a history of the relationship between theater and film, starting with the pre-cinematic, late nineteenth-century impulse towards capturing spectacular action on the stage and examining the artistic and commercial interaction between film and drama, both in popular and experimental work, throughout the twentieth century. By attempting to trace the cross-fertilization between theater and film—connecting the business practices of the evolving Hollywood system, for example, to the types of artistic

appropriation in which Broadway has long engaged—the introduction provides an historical context for the essays to come, while arguing for the vital importance of an understanding of both theater and film to the contemporary practice of either.

In this volume, a variety of writers, directors, and theorists, from the period of silent film to the mid-1960s (before the arrival of video, DVD, and digital media), examines the differences between working in,

and creating for, drama and film. A playwright such as Bernard Shaw looks at the ways in which the differences between the two industries, audiences, and writing processes affect the author’s artistic control. A

theater director like Tyrone Guthrie confronts a large number of issues involved in directing for theater and film, including the differences in narrative strategies and the diverse relationship among image, sound, and language brought about by the inherent qualities of the two media. And a film director of the stature of Josef von Sternberg examines how the working methods of the actor differ between theater and film; he also considers the effect of the camera versus a live audience on the

actor’s performance, and the consequences on the actor’s preparation and process of shooting films out of narrative sequence.

Finally, critic-theorists like Rudolf Arnheim, André Bazin, Siegfried Kracauer, and Susan Sontag consider the similarities and differences that arise from the intrinsic qualities of each medium, touching on

structure, technique, and dialogue, as well as audience experience, the manipulation of time and space, and the nature of three- versus two-dimensional performance. These and the aforementioned essays in "Theater and Cinema" will be supplemented by a smattering of movie

stills, a comprehensive bibliography, filmographies of plays adapted to the screen, biographies of all the contributors, and a thoroughgoing index.

Introduction:

1. Vachel Lindsay, “Thirty Differences Between the Photoplays and the Stage” (1916).

2. Hugo Münsterberg, “The Means of the Photoplay” (1916).

3. Brander Matthews, “Are the Movies a Menace to the Drama?” (1917).

4. Bernard Shaw, “The Drama, the Theatre, and the Films” (1925).

5. Erwin Panofsky, “Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures” (1934).

6. Rudolf Arnheim, “A New Laocoön: Artistic Composites and the Talking Film” (1938).

7. Allardyce Nicoll, “Film Reality: The Cinema and the Theatre” (1946).

8. André Bazin, “Theater and Cinema” (1951).

9. Josef von Sternberg, “Acting in Film and Theatre” (1955) and Siegfried Kracauer, “The Theatrical Story” (1960).

10. Ingmar Bergman, “Film Has Nothing to Do with Literature” (1960).

11. Tyrone Guthrie and Carl Foreman, “Movies versus Theatre” (1962).

12. Peter Brook, “Finding Shakespeare on Film” (1964).

13. Michael Kirby, “The Uses of Film in the New Theatre” (1966).

14. Susan Sontag, “Film and Theatre” (1966).