tage. The film picture is such a reflected rendering
of the actors. The process which leads from the living men to the screen
is more complex than a mere reflection in a mirror, but in spite of the
complexity in the transmission we do, after all, see the real actor in
the picture. The photograph is absolutely different from those pictures
which a clever draughtsman has sketched. In the photoplay we see the
actors themselves and the decisive factor which makes the impression
different from seeing real men is not that we see the living persons
through the medium of photographic reproduction but that this
reproduction shows them in a flat form. The bodily space has been
eliminated. We said once before that stereoscopic arrangements could
reproduce somewhat this plastic form also. Yet this would seriously
interfere with the character of the photoplay. We need there this
overcoming of the depth, we want to have it as a picture only and yet as
a picture which strongly suggests to us the actual depth of the real
world. We want to keep the interest in the plastic world and want to be
aware of the depth in which the persons move, but our direct object of
perception must be without the depth. That idea of space which forces
on us most strongly the idea of heaviness, solidity and substantiality
must be replaced by the light flitting immateriality.

But the photoplay sacrifices not only the space values of the real
theater; it disregards no less its order of time. The theater presents
its plot in the time order of reality. It may interrupt the continuous
flow of time without neglecting the conditions of the dramatic art.
There may be twenty years between the third and the fourth act, inasmuch
as the dramatic writer must select those elements spread over space and
time which are significant for the development of his story. But he is
bound by the fundamental principle of real time, that it can move only
forward and not backward. Whatever the theater shows us now must come
later in the story than that which it showed us in any previous moment.
The strict classical demand for complete unity of time does not fit
every drama, but a drama would give up its mission if it told us in the
third act something which happened before the second act. Of course,
there may be a play within a play, and the players on the stage which is
set on the stage may play events of old Roman history before the king
of France. But this is an enclosure of the pas