FALLING IN LOVE WITH A PHOTOGRAPH.
WE have no word to express the lighter side of symbolism, yet very obviously it has a light side which comes into prominence whenever what we ordinarily mean by symbolism retakes its recurrent hold upon the human imagination. At the present moment the public seems to take a wonderful pleasure in various forms of dumb show and seeks eapression for eenti. ment, and very often for sentimentality, in something other than words. Take, for instance, the rage for souvenirs which during the war caused sensible men to risk their lives. These little worthless objects were transformed for the time into symbols of victory and adventure. The regard for them was In some sort akin to the rage for relics which showed itself in the middle ages. It has become the fashion for each regiment to have a mascot. What sentiment these " mascots " embody it is not easy to say, but they certainly bear witness to some emotion of esprit de corps and give Men some pleasing sense that they have thrown in their luck with their fellows. One of the great arts is declared by some of its votaries to be in danger of decay and disappearance in consequence of this new passion . for dumb show. The camera, which produces neither colour nor sound, and which can only stereotype the show of the moment, is able to satisfy the dramatic instinct of the multitude. A very short time ago reasonable people were gazing in amazement at a crowd who had fallen in love with a photograph. The greatest actress that ever was seen never had a greater ovation than Mary Pickforcl. She was acclaimed the world's sweetheart by people who had never seen her at all and who, until she landed at Southampton, had known her only by her shadow. It is a most astonishing thing that such an enthusiasm of admiration should be evoked by a counterfeit presentment and one which owes nothing to the intervening personality of an artist. The great pictures of the past did—at least in Italy—arouse the enthusiasm of the crowd, but it was the painter who aroused it : it was the inspiration of a man of genius which made its mysterious appeal. The camera has no genius. It makes no subtle comment upon the faces which it reproduces, and seta no revelation of character before the eyes of its audience. Of course, its powers have been wonderfully developed lately. There is nothing to be wondered at in the fact that it should hold men and women spellbound as it illustrates the adventure stories that they love or shadows forth the scenes of which they have only heard. The remarkable thing is that it should be able to replace all those personal influences which we imagined alone able to con. quer the heart of the crowd. Actors and actresses on the real stage are real people subject to moods, subject to the nameless spell of the hour, aware of the temper of the audience, unable, we are told, to do their best in an empty or an unsympathetic house. Those who fell in love with the heroine of so many domestic dramas owed their emotion to no sympathetic waves of feeling. No joyous or pathetic intonation, no humorous trick of voice made appeal to their hearts. Exactly what did appeal is beyond our power of analysis. Some critic will tell us some day when the cinema is older and when the goal of many modern tendencies has been perceived and become a matter of history. It is the negative side of the matter which interests the present writer.
We are always being told in conversation in the Press everywhere that " magnetism " accounts for almost all the power which certain men and women are able to exercise over those with whom they come in contact. We are told that ertain speakers carry the House of Commons with them because of their magnetism. Again, we read that the great orators of the past triumphed by means of this indefinable yet wholly material spell. Grace of manner is now described as magnetism, and we are snubbed if we account for it as merely the expression of certain qualities of mind or character. Even if a boy becomes popular at 86°01 it is supposed to be because of "a certain magnetism," and if a master is liked by the boys he is always supposed to be magnetic. If a wise and moderate man succeeds in settling a strike after a conference with its leaders, hal his acquaintances will assure us that he did it by his personal magnetism. For ourselves, we are delighted to see this tiresome explanation questioned. If an orator succeeds in appealing, half the interest of his success, both to himself and to the world, con- sists in consideration of the psychology of his audience. What was it in what he said which seemed to them true or touching or inspiriting ? That is a matter of real importance, constantly lost sight of and brushed aside by a catchword.
But there is another and more important aspect of this capa- city of the crowd to fall in love with a photograph in defiance of the fashionable " magnetic " theory. Magnetism of this kind as usually understood, though a great power, is also a limitation. If, however, personal charm of a kind to enthrall a crowd really consists in something quite different, in something irrespective altogether of the actual physical presence of the influential personality, that limitation is done away. We are always hearing that it is within the bounds of possibility that before long not colour only but voice will be mechanically reproduced in such a manner as to make the illusion of the cinema complete. Such an illusion will, of course, be reproducible in any number of places simultaneously. We may see not only the whole world in love with one woman, but the whole world mentally subju- gated by the personal influence of a popular hero. Would not this mean an extension of the powers of the individual hitherto undreamed of? We should be face to face with something like omnipresence ! An alarming b hought in an emotional time Just now the world is in dramatic mood. How much good and how much harm the war has done is a question which will afford food for discussion from now till doomsday. One of its smaller effects would seem to have been to have made the new generation of Englishmen once more, for good or evil, a romantic people, capable of all the ineffable follies of youth and high spirits and laughing gaily at the benevolent efforts of the wiseacres who seek to do it good by screwing an old head on to its upright young shoulders.
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