Films and Filming – Feb 1959
The Play’s the Thing
By ANTHONY ASQUITH
The distinguished British director of Shaw’s Pygmalion, Rattigan’s The Browning Version and Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, writes about his approach to filming drama originally conceived for the theatre.
IN any artistic medium it would seem to be a self-evident truth that a work which, from the start, has been conceived in terms of that medium must be a better, a “truer” example of it than the translation into it of something which already exists in its own right in another medium. And yet one has only to think of Verdi’s Othello to realise that art, unlike science, is an obstinate non-conformist to general principles.
I believe that there is only one test of the validity of a work of art – Does it “come off”? And I don’t think it matters a hang whether the source of a film is a play, a novel or an original story. What does matter is that the director should have truly imagined or, in the case of a play or novel, re-imagined his material in the terms of his medium.
There is an enormous amount of nonsense talked about what is or is not “cinematic,” and when a film is an adaptation of a play, there are some who jump to the conclusion that it cannot be true “cinema,” that it must be “just a photographed play” (is there not just a touch of snobbery in their pious shudder?), unless the scenes in the play are given visual movement which extends beyond the limits imposed by the stage set. Such people believe that if you have a scene in a play where two people are sitting talking to each other, the only escape from the theatrical medium is to start the dialogue in the room, get them to move out, dissolve to them on top of a bus, dissolve to them on the moving staircase of the Underground and finish with them on a punt on the river. By doing this they believe they have translated a theatrical scene into film terms by giving it the kind of movement which is impossible in the theatre.
This, of course, is a complete misunderstanding, both of the nature of dramatic movement and the fundamental difference between the theatre and the cinema. It is true that sometimes such treatment is appropriate. I have done it myself in French Without Tears and The Final Test, but more often, the dramatic movement is in the growing tension between the two characters and depends on the ebb and flow of the dialogue. If you impose visual movement which neither naturally accompanies the dialogue nor adds’ point to it by its very incongruity, especially movement which involves dissolving from one setting to another, you will find you have slowed down the real movement of the scene if not destroyed it altogether. It is perfectly possible to film a scene out of a play without altering one comma, or adding one movement, and yet have achieved the necessary translation from one medium to another.
Schoolmaster Scene
To take an extreme example there is, in The Browning Version, a long scene where the schoolmaster (Michael Redgrave) is giving a lesson to a boy (Brian Smith). They are both sitting at the master’s study desk, exactly as they were on the stage. The scene is played through without any change of camera angle, or cut. There is no movement. What, then, makes this into a film scene and not just a film record of the stage scene? In this instance, entirely by placing the camera so that Redgrave is in foreground, in profile, with the boy beyond, three-quarter facing camera.
During this scene the master, for a moment, lets us see beneath the cold dry shell … a glimpse of the pathetic, disappointed, vulnerable human being. The boy also sees it, and responds with immediate sympathy. At once the master’s defences are up. He dreads pity. It is only a moment of emotion; but a deeply touching one. What makes it a film scene is firstly, the extreme intimacy which the camera establishes between actor and audience. This enables Redgrave to express the finest shades of thought and emotion in a way that would be literally invisible on the stage. Then the camera angle enables the audience to see Redgrave’s mental processes as he instinctively turns from the boy towards the camera, and at the same time the eager response to them reflected in Brian Smith’s face. Further it is not only the proximity to the actors, but the momentary exclusion of their surroundings which gives such a intensely concentrated effect.
Theatre Angles
Lastly, there is one of the fundamental differences between film and theatre. In a theatre everyone sees something slightly different, according to his position. In a cinema, everyone sees exactly the same thing. The film director can, unlike his stage colleague, ensure that every member of the public shall see exactly what he wants them to see and nothing else.
But, to return for a moment to movement. I believe as strongly as anyone that visual movement is a vital element in the cinema; but I believe that in a sound film it must not be imposed on the aural flow, or even be a casual fellow-traveller. It must be the partner of an indissoluble marriage. And this is never more true than when you have long dialogue scenes involving several characters.
This is a problem which is constantly arising in filming the plays of Bernard Shaw, of which I have done two – Pygmalion, in 1937, and The Doctor’s Dilemma this year. The heart of a Shaw scene is nearly always a verbal one. The dialogue is closely knit, but elaborate. It is almost impossible to break up such scenes into small sections, without destroying the general rhythm and also making it far harder for the actors.
I prefer, therefore, to do such scenes in one continuous take. At the same time I try to achieve the different emphasis of long-shot, medium-shot and close-up by devising movements for the actors and the camera which will give me these gradations at the right moment without having to interrupt the scene with a cut. lt is what I might call a legato technique.
Sometimes into these scenes I interject a staccato chord, as it were, by a sudden cut in to a big close-up. Sometimes a scene which has started smoothly and flowingly leads naturally into a quick machine-gun fire of individual close-ups. This would happen when the pace of the dialogue quickens and long paragraphs are broken up into short sentences.
Generally speaking, with Shaw I try to make the visual flow and emphasis correspond to the rhythm and sense of the dialogue, not make a counterpoint to it, because Shaw is so verbally explicit that everything must be done to concentrate the attention to the audience on what is being said. This does not, of course, mean that I never use individual silent reactions from characters who are not speaking.
I profoundly distrust any generalisations, but broadly speaking, with Shaw I found that the best approach to long dialogue scenes involving several characters was that of a choreographer whose prima ballerina is the camera- a prima ballerina whose movements, paradoxically, only deserves applause if the audience does not notice them.
February 1959 – Page Thirteen
