The screen and the ballet: “Cinema is like a reservoir”

Whenever I have heard the suitability of ballet for filming purposes being discussed it is always as if some preposterous scheme is being investigated. First there are those who pillory the idea with such film trade cliches as lack of appeal, bad box-office and the high-brow bugbear, and then there are those whose objections seem more reasonable when they assert that technical difficulties merit that film producers keep their distance from anything that concerns the balletomane. Actually both sides have their grains of truth, but only when that almost mythical time will arrive when many of the assessments of film prophets and producers will cease to go off like damp squibs and expensive experiments in lavishness will come to an end, can stones be cast by the “guiltless”. Meanwhile ballet deserves serious consideration by serious film people, since film dynamics can absorb almost any art form.

Ballet in its present form, however, which is linked up with its stage tradition from the times of the ancient Greeks and Romans to the elaborate artistic creations of Diaghileff, can be of little use to the film medium. On this assumption, then, it is necessary to consider whether the art of orchestics can ever have a progressive cinematic future, and, if so, what methods can be adopted to change and develop it into suitable material for filming purposes. This calls for a new perspective in the treatment of ballet, in the same way that an adjustment of outlook is demanded from the craftsman of the theatre when confronted with the more complex material provided by the cinema.

More as a postulation than anything else, one can now submit that the cinematic ballet, if it can emerge, should seek for a peculiarity and texture rather similar to that of the film cartoon. This may be anathema to some ballet purists, but their objections would be necessarily biased. Further the film ballet must ally itself at the outset with the many film devices that make for fantasy while enlisting human aid for the actual dancing.

Acknowledging one’s indebtedness to Disney for his scheme of approach to the spirit of fantasy and for many technical points which he has even now perfected in his Silly Symphonies, one can proceed to theorise without having a conscience at trying to steal the exclusive Silly Symphony thunder at any particular juncture.

Despite Walter Wanger’s statement that “by the beginning of 1939 all important films will be produced in colour and a black-and-white feature will be as archaic as a silent one”, the use of colour for all full-length films is still a controversial matter. One cannot say the same about colour as used in the cartoon film; without colour this attractive medium would now appear incomplete and artistically unsatisfying. For it is precisely colour which aids and enhances throughout the fantasy that is needed in the cartoon film. The same principle can now be tentatively applied to the film ballet form. Here colour could be used to its best advantage, giving atmosphere and background to the function of the poetry of movement in its photographic statement. (A good but not very appropriate example of how colour fits in with the scheme of dance movement can be found in the short film La Cucaracha. This can hardly be placed in the same category as the ballet form, but in any case film ballet having passed through a process of adaptation will be closer to such a film than the stage presentation of a ballet.)

What is equally as important as colour is that the ballet film, as a complete entity and not used as a sequence in an ordinary fiction film, must be preferably short in the manner of cartoon films. And if the ballet film is to achieve a status anything like the cartoon film, or even a definite recognition as something significant and ultimately necessary in film entertainment, it must supply the ingredients of story value and general appeal. Even with the demarcation between the highbrow and lowbrow, there still seems to exist some almost miraculous method of bridging this difference of taste. Disney has proved it most admirably; Capra has made a brave attempt at doing so and has partially succeeded. Such men have somehow learnt the secret of “general appeal” which is nothing but a mutual paradise for film financier and cinema-goer.

It is often possible that if the synopsis of a ballet is not read before witnessing its presentation, its superficial meaning which in this case does not touch upon the emotions will be lost or at least very vague. This can be tolerated on the grounds that the aesthetic values attached to pantomine must not be interfered with. But this cannot hold good in films, and the use of the chorus as a factor which will solve this problem must be introduced. We know how in the Silly Symphonies and some other cartoon films, off-screen choruses sometimes announce the theme of the story and give a certain intellectual content to what is going to be seen. Sometimes when there are crowds, the choruses cease to be off-screen and are taken over by the actual figures projected on to the screen.

If similar technical methods are applied to the short ballet film, will it mean that each dancer will also have to be a trained singer? Not necessarily. The off-screen choruses could be used to unfold the entire story of the ballet, but this need not exclude the possible interruption of pure pantomine by singing from the corps de ballet. This can only be a matter of conjecture at the moment, since the best solution as to the ratio of the singing voice in co-operation with the poetry of movement, can be found only in the actual experiment and making of such films.

Ballet is conceived on a static plane at present; cinema with the aid of trick-photography, cutting and a specialised technique, would broaden its scope and appeal. The same skill that Hollywood applies in presenting the contrapuntal nature of a quick-moving gangster film, could just as well be applied in the adaptation for the screen of many well-known ballets. As for the danger of evoking shudders from ballet-fans and making the pioneers of ballet turn in their graves, it is best to point out that the cinema is like a reservoir, breaking down the restrictions and limitations which have so far gripped many art forms.

In the development of art as well as other expressions of the human spirit, we move always nearer to synthesis on a higher level. Thus we can look back at the ancient Cretans, Spartans and other Dorians who used the primitive chorus as the accompaniment and message behind their music and dancing, and now contemplate an analogous form of expression which will in time find its way into the modern cinema.