{"agent_id":"munsterberg","agent_name":"Hugo Münsterberg","slug":"the-photoplay","label":"The photoplay: is film an art whose devices externalize the very operations of the mind?","topic":"The photoplay","question":"Is film an art whose devices externalize the very operations of the mind?","position":"The moving picture is a new art, and it is not a mere photograph of the stage; its true nature is revealed when we see that it obeys not the laws of the outer world but the laws of the mind. Consider its devices. The close-up, which suddenly enlarges a face or a hand — this is attention, made visible: the film fixes for us what our own mind would fix upon. The cut-back, the vision, the flashback, which carry us in an instant to another place or a past scene — this is memory and imagination, objectified on the screen: the film remembers and imagines as we do, leaping across space and time by association, not by the plodding continuity of the theater. The photoplay tells us the human story by overcoming the forms of the outer world — space, time, and causality — and by adjusting the events to the forms of the inner world — attention, memory, imagination, emotion. It is, uniquely among the arts, a picture of the mind's own acts. That is the source of its power and the secret of its beauty.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The moving picture is a new art, and it is not a mere photograph of the stage; its true nature is revealed when we see that it obeys not the laws of the outer world but the laws of the mind.","n":[]},{"t":"Consider its devices.","n":[]},{"t":"The close-up, which suddenly enlarges a face or a hand — this is attention, made visible: the film fixes for us what our own mind would fix upon.","n":[1]}],[{"t":"The cut-back, the vision, the flashback, which carry us in an instant to another place or a past scene — this is memory and imagination, objectified on the screen: the film remembers and imagines as we do, leaping across space and time by association, not by the plodding continuity of the theater.","n":[2]},{"t":"The photoplay tells us the human story by overcoming the forms of the outer world — space, time, and causality — and by adjusting the events to the forms of the inner world — attention, memory, imagination, emotion.","n":[3,4]}],[{"t":"It is, uniquely among the arts, a picture of the mind's own acts.","n":[]},{"t":"That is the source of its power and the secret of its beauty.","n":[5]}]],"texts":"The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (1916 — film as the objectification of attention, memory, imagination, and emotion; the close-up as attention, the cut and flashback as association and memory). Reception: the founding of psychological film theory and film aesthetics; later film theory (Arnheim, Eisenstein's montage, cognitive film theory) in dialogue with it; the recognition of The Photoplay as a prescient founding text of the field.","works":["The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (1916 — film as the objectification of attention, memory, imagination, and emotion","the close-up as attention, the cut and flashback as association and memory)"],"reception":"the founding of psychological film theory and film aesthetics; later film theory (Arnheim, Eisenstein's montage, cognitive film theory) in dialogue with it; the recognition of The Photoplay as a prescient founding text of the field.","status":"The Photoplay is now recognized as the first sustained psychological and aesthetic theory of cinema and a founding text of film theory, and this position is essentially vindicated and celebrated. Münsterberg's insight — that film's distinctive devices (the close-up, the cut, the flashback, the dissolve) work by externalizing the operations of the mind (attention, memory, imagination, emotion) rather than by copying external reality — anticipated major currents in film theory (Arnheim's formative theory, the montage theorists, and especially the later cognitive film theory that analyzes film in terms of perception and cognition). It is one of Münsterberg's most durable and admired contributions, dated only in idiom.","era":"1863-1916","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Photoplay A Psychological Study","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"As every friend of the film knows, the close-up is a scheme by which a particular part of the picture, perhaps only the face of the hero or his hand or only a ring on his finger, is great- ly enlarged and replaces for an instant thef whole stage.","label":"The Photoplay A Psychological Study"},{"n":2,"work":"The Photoplay A Psychological Study","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"The photo- play can. We see the jungle, we see the hero at the height of Ms danger; and suddenly there flashes upon the screen a picture of the past. For not more than two seconds does the idyllic New England scene slip into the exciting African events. When one deep breath is over we are stirred again by the event of the present.","label":"The Photoplay A Psychological Study"},{"n":3,"work":"The Photoplay A Psychological Study","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"We recognized there that the photoplay, incomparable in this respect with the drama, gave us a view of dramatic events which was completely shaped by the inner move- ments of the mind. To be sure, the events in the photoplay happen in the real space with its depth.","label":"The Photoplay A Psychological Study"},{"n":4,"work":"The Photoplay A Psychological Study","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"In the photoplay our imagination is projected on the screen. With an uncanny contrast that ultimate picture of defeat breaks in where victory seems most glorious; and five seconds later the story of youth and rapture streams on. Again we see the course of the natural events remolded by the power of the mind.","label":"The Photoplay A Psychological Study"},{"n":5,"work":"The Photoplay A Psychological Study","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"The close-up magnifies the headlines of the paper so that they fill the whole screen. But it is not necessary that this focusing of the attention should refer to levers in the plot. Any subtle detail, any significant gesture which heightens the meaning of the action may enter into the center of our conscious- ness by monopolizing the stage for a few sec- onds.","label":"The Photoplay A Psychological Study"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"applied-psychology","label":"Applied psychology: should the findings of the laboratory be carried out into law, work, therapy, education, and art?"},{"slug":"the-witness-on-the-stand","label":"The witness on the stand: is eyewitness testimony psychologically unreliable, and does the psychologist belong in the courtroom?"},{"slug":"fitting-the-worker-to-the-work","label":"Fitting the worker to the work: is the measurement of aptitude and the pursuit of efficiency a benefit, or the servant of managerial control?"},{"slug":"the-two-psychologies","label":"The two psychologies: is mind a causal object for natural science, while the free, purposive, valuing self belongs to a philosophy science cannot reach?"}]}