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World Literature Transnational Cinema and Global Media Towards a Transartistic Commons 1st Edition Robert Stam
Palgrave European Film and Media Studies is dedicated to historical and contemporary studies of film and media in a European context and to the study of the role of film and media in European societies and cultures. The series invite research done in both humanities and social sciences and invite scholars working with the role of film and other media in relation to the development of a European society, culture and identity. Books in the series can deal with both media content and media genres, with national and transnational aspects of film and media policy, with the sociology of media as institutions and with audiences and reception, and the impact of film and media on everyday life, culture and society. The series encourage books working with European integration or themes cutting across nation states in Europe and books working with Europe in a more global perspective. The series especially invite publications with a comparative, European perspective based on research outside a traditional nation state perspective. In an era of increased European integration and globalization there is a need to move away from the single nation study focus and the single discipline study of Europe.
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Henry Bacon Editor
Finnish Cinema
A Transnational Enterprise
Editor Henry Bacon
University of Helsinki Finland
Palgrave European Film and Media Studies
ISBN 978-1-137-57650-7 ISBN 978-1-137-57651-4 (eBook)
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Cover illustration: PR-photo for the film Mother of Mine (Äideistä parhain) by Malla Hukkanen. With the kind permission of Hukkanen and Matila Röhr Production Oy.
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A LSO BY TH E AUTHORS
Bacon, H. (1992). Tiikerikissan aika – Luchino Viscontin elämä ja elokuvat (The Age of the Leopard – The life and films of Luchino Visconti). Helsinki: Suomen Elokuva-Arkisto/VAPK-kustannus.
Bacon, H. (1994). Continuity and transformation – The influence of literature and drama on cinema as a process of cultural continuity and renewal. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia.
Bacon, H. (1995). Oopperan historia (History of Opera). Helsinki: Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava. (Second edition in 2001.)
Bacon, H. (1998). Luchino Visconti – Explorations of beauty and decay Cambrdige/New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bacon, H. (2000). Audiovisuaalisen kerronnan teoria (Theory of Audiovisual Narration). Helsinki: Suomen elokuva-arkisto/Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden Seura. (2nd edition in 2003.)
Bacon, H. (2005). Seitsemäs taide – elokuva ja muut taiteet (Seventh art – Film in relation to other arts). Helsinki: Suomen elokuva-arkisto/ Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.
Bacon, H., Anneli, L., & Pasi, N. (Eds.). (2007). Suomalaisuus valkokankaalla. Kotimainen elokuva toisin katsoen [Finnishness on screen anthology]. Helsinki: Like.
Bacon, H. (2010). Väkivallan lumo – elokuvaväkivallan kauheus ja viihdyttävyys (The enchantment of violence – The horror and fascination of film violence). Helsinki: Like.
Bacon, H. (2013). Visconti – Güzelliǧin ve çürümenin keşfi. Translated in into Turkish by Nilgün Şarman. Istanbul: Payle yayinevi.
Bacon, H. (2015). Fascination of film violence. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hupaniittu, O. (2012). Tutkijoiden ääni ja sähköiset aineistot. Selvitys muistiorganisaatioiden asiakkaitten digitoitujen aineistojen tarpeista ja saatavuudesta. (Researchers’ voice and digital material. Survey of the users’ needs and accessibility of the digitized material in cultural memory organizations). Helsinki: Svenska litteratursällskapet för Finland. www.sls.fi/forskaransrost
Hupaniittu, O. (2013). Biografiliiketoiminnan valtakausi. Toimijuus ja kilpailu suomalaisella elokuva-alalla 1900–1920-luvuilla. (The Reign of the Biografi business – Operators and competition in Finnish Cinema from the 1900s to the 1920s). Turku: Turun yliopisto & Arkistolaitos.
Kääpä, P. (2010). The national and beyond: The globalisation of Finnish Cinema in the films of Aki and Mika Kaurismäki (New studies in European cinema series). Oxford: Peter Lang.
Kääpä, P. (2011). The cinema of Mika Kaurismäki: Transvergent Cinescapes, Emergent Identities. Bristol: Intellect.
Kääpä, P. (2014). Ecology and contemporary nordic cinemas (Issues and methodologies in national cinema series). New York: Continuum.
Laine, K. (1994). Murheenkryyneistä miehiä? Suomalainen sotilasfarssi 1930-luvulta 1950-luvulle (Finnish Military Comedy from the 1930s to the 1950s). Turku: Suomen elokuvatutkimuksen seura.
Honka-Hallila, A., Laine, K., & Pantti, M. (1995). Markan tähden. Yli sata vuotta suomalaista elokuvahistoriaa (More than a century of Finnish film history). Turku: Turun yliopiston täydennyskoulutuskeskus.
Laine, K., Lukkarila, M., & Seitajärvi, J. (Eds.). (2004). Valentin Vaala. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.
Laine, K., & Seitajärvi, J. (Eds.). (2008). Valkoiset ruusut. Hannu Lemisen ja Helena Karan elokuvat (The films of Hannu Leminen and Helena Kara). Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.
Koukkunen, K., Laine, K., & Seitajärvi, J. (Eds.). (2013). Elokuvat kertovat, Matti Kassila (Films will tell, Matti Kassila). Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.
Lehtisalo, A. (2011). Kuin elävinä edessämme. Suomalaiset elämäkertaelokuvat populaarina historiakulttuurina 1937—1955 (As if alive before us. Finnish biographical films as popular historical culture 1937−1955). Doctoral dissertation. Suomen Kirjallisuuden Seuran toimituksia, 1315 Tiede, Kansallisen audiovisuaalisen arkiston julkaisuja. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society.
Lehtisalo, A. (2011). “Kaikki tänne nyt moi”. Tyttöjenlehdet kohtaamisen ja vuorovaikutuksen tiloina (‘Hey, come here all together.’ Girls’ magazines as spaces for encounter and interaction). COMET –Tampere Research Centre for Journalism, Media and Communication, http://tampub.uta.fi/T/tanne_kaikki_nyt_moi_2011.pdf. Tampere: University of Tampere, School of Communication, Media and Theatre. Seppälä, J. (2012). Hollywood tulee Suomeen – Yhdysvaltalaisten elokuvien maahantuonti ja vastaanotto kaksikymmentä luvun Suomessa (Hollywood Comes to Finland – The importation and reception of American films in Finland in the twenties). Helsinki: The University of Helsinki.
A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Finnish Cinema: A Transnational Enterprise is the result of a project, A Transnational History of Finnish Cinema, funded by the Academy of Finland. Under the leadership of Professor Henry Bacon, it was located in the department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies at the University of Helsinki. Many of the members of the project, particularly its initiators Anneli Lehtisalo and Pietari Kääpä, had focused previously not only on national but also on transnational questions related to exploring Finnish film history. They were joined by two fellow scholars, Outi Hupaniittu and Jaakko Seppälä, who during the project completed their PhDs on the history of the silent era of Finnish cinema on the basis of their earlier research. The distinguished film historian Kimmo Laine, whose period as a fellow at the University of Turku Research Collegium coincided with our transnational project, has also in effect fully participated in all phases of the project. Pietari Kääpä left the project when he assumed the position of lecturer at the University of Stirling, but nevertheless delivered the contributions that had been assigned to him. He also kept in touch with the research group by email throughout the three-year research period (1 January 2012–31 December 2014). All the chapters that appear in this volume were extensively discussed—not to say fiercely debated—among the project members (Kimmo Laine included). With her solid training as a historian and archivist, Outi Hupaniittu did the important job of compiling and unifying a joint bibliography.
The project had an Advisory Board consisting of some of the leading scholars who have focused on issues related to transnational approaches related to film history: Professor Andrew Higson (University of York),
Professor Mette Hjort (Lingnan University), Professor Tytti Soila (University of Stockholm), Research Fellow Jari Sedergren (KAVI) and Associate Professor Andrew Nestingen (University of Washington). Their support gave us confidence and a sense of direction. Professor Higson had a crucial role in securing the publication of this study.
Among other colleagues with whom we were happy to create new or deepen existing relationships were Anders Marklund (University of Lund), Erik Hedling (University of Lund), Tommy Gustafsson (Linnaeus University) and Lyuba Bugajeva (St Petersburg State University). Our Transnational Baltic Cinema Conference helped us to establish new connections between film scholars working in Scandinavia and the Baltic countries.
The project would not have been possible without the institutional support provided by the National Audiovisual Institute and the Finnish Film Foundation. At the Institute the friendly assistance of many people, starting from the Head of the Institute, Matti Lukkarila, and above all Jorma Junttila, Timo Matoniemi and Tommi Partanen, was absolutely invaluable for the realization of the project. We are similarly grateful to the helpful staff of the Central Archives for Finnish Business Records, the Swedish Film Institute, the Labour Movement Archives and Library in Sweden and the National Library of Sweden. We are similarly grateful to the helpful staff of the Central Archives for Finnish Business Records.
For the use of images we would like to thank Erkka Blomberg, Jörn Donner (Jörn Donner Productions), Matti Lukkarila (National Audiovisual Institute), Raija Pösö (Finnish Broadcasting Company), Haije Tulokas (Sputnik Oy) and Claes Olsson (Kinoproduction Oy).
Our understanding of the various challenges filmmakers meet in producing and creating films with both national and transnational appeal was significantly enhanced by interviews granted by Klaus Härö, Matti Kassila, Tero Kaukomaa, Petri Kemppinen, Maunu Kurkvaara, Jarkko T. Laine, Ilkka Matila, Marko Röhr and Markus Selin.
Collaboration with the Finnish Society of Film Studies significantly facilitated organization of the Transnational Baltic Cinema Conference, for which we received generous support from the Finnish Film Foundation and the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies. We are also grateful to Outi Hakola for her expert advice on conference organization.
The home base of the project was at the department of Philosophy, History, Cultural and Art Studies, where our work was supported by the two consecutive Directors of the Department, Hannes Saarinen and Matti Sintonen, as well as the Financial Administrators Kirsti Nymark and Tuija
Modinos. Many of the practical problems were sorted out with the kind and expert assistance of Office Secretary Säde Stenbacka and Department Secretary Tiina Erkkilä. Eija Peltonen, Financial Assistant at the Topelia Project Administration, had the all-important role of keeping the financial records straight all through the project.
We are also very grateful for the sensitive and precise language revision done by Michael Owston of Team Owston Company.
Completing this publication with the guidance of first Chris Penfold and then Lina Aboujieb, who have acted as Commissioning Editors of the Palgrave Macmillan Film and Television Studies series, as well as Editorial Assistant Harry Fanshawe, has been a great pleasure.
The chapter on Klaus Härö is based on Henry Bacon’s article “Nordic practices and Nordic sensibilities in Finnish–Swedish co-productions: The case of Klaus Härö and Jarkko T. Laine.” Journal of Scandinavian Cinema. 4, 2, 2014.
C ONTRIBUTORS
Henry Bacon, PhD is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He has published nine books and a number of articles on film theory and history. Among his major interests are the interrelationships between perceiving and understanding of the environment on the one hand and perceiving and understanding audiovisual fiction on the other, transnational aspects of film culture, film in relation to other arts and film acting.
Outi Hupaniittu, PhD is Director of Archives at the Finnish Literature Society and Vice-Chair of the Finnish Society for Cinema Studies. She specializes in the economics of film and cinema history, and has also researched digitized cultural heritage and users’ perspectives of archival material.
Pietari Kääpä, PhD is Lecturer in Media and Communications at the University of Stirling, UK. He has published seven books, edited four journal issues and contributed several articles to peer-reviewed collections on various areas in transnational film studies.
Kimmo Laine, PhD is Lecturer of Film Studies at the University of Oulu, Finland. He has published two books and a number of articles on film history. His ongoing research seeks ways to analyse film style in relation to contextual factors.
Anneli Lehtisalo, PhD has worked as Lecturer in Media Culture in the School of Communication, Media and Theatre at the University of Tampere, Finland. In her research she has focused on the relations between cinema and the past, cultural memory and genre, as well as questions of (trans)national cinema, film production and distribution and cross-cultural film reception.
Jaakko Seppälä, PhD is Chair of the Finnish Society for Cinema Studies and a researcher at the School of Film and Television Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland. His major research interests lie in the field of film history, in addition to which he is interested in film criticism, especially in film style and close textual analysis. In his current research project he explores the camera’s role in Aki Kaurismäki’s film style.
Fig. 4.1
Fig. 4.2
Fig. 4.3
L IST OF F IGURES
Sylvi (1913) was a midpoint between the flat and deep styles of tableau staging
Large shot scales that depict characters in Finnish nature are common in Anna-Liisa (1922)
Evil Spells (1927) relies on close-ups that emphasize character traits
Fig. 4.4 A scene in The Logroller’s Bride (1923) opens with an extreme long shot
Fig. 4.5 From the extreme long shot the film cuts to a medium shot without changing the camera’s perspective
Fig. 4.6 At the end of the scene the film cuts back to the opening view, as if returning to the status quo
Fig. 4.7
Evil Spells (1927) follows the premises of the classical style of editing, but violates the 180-degree rule
Fig. 4.8 Even though the film violates the 180-degree Rule, the editing patterns enhance the dramatic tension
Fig. 4.9 Anna-Liisa’s (1922) mise-en-scène is recognizably Finnish and conveys a sense of a lived-in space
Fig. 4.10 In The Logroller’s Bride (1923), the staging is horizontal and lacks depth, as a result of which it does not echo the style of Finnish interior paintings
58
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68
69
69
71
72
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77
Fig. 6.1
Fig. 6.2
Fig. 6.3
Fig. 6.4
Fig. 6.5
Fig. 6.6
The Wide Road (1931) was released both as a silent version and as a sound film with recorded music and sound effects
92
At the Rovaniemi Fair (1950): Vagabonds in a third-class train car on their way to the north 94
Lea Joutseno as the quintessential modern heroine of Miss Hothead (1943) 96
Activist Eugen Schauman assassinates the Russian governor-general Bobrikov in February Manifesto (1939)
97
Activists (1939) brings elements of women’s film into a historical drama 98
Low-angle shooting with the accordion blocking the characters in VMV 6 (1936) 99
Fig. 6.7 An extreme high-angle shot in Stolen Death (1938) 100
Fig. 6.8 Regina Linnanheimo in an expressive close-up in Restless Blood (1946) 111
Figs. 7.1 to 7.3 The Logger’s Bride (1937) attracted audiences in other Nordic countries with its spectacular rapid scenes 117–118
Fig. 7.4 ‘Nordic eroticism’—that is, nudity and beautiful nature scenes—was exploited in The Milkmaid (1953), earning the film an exceptionally wide distribution abroad 127
Fig. 10.1 A striking composition in depth in The Partisans (1963) 175
Fig. 10.2 The Asphalt Lambs (1968): Jörn Donner in a scene disowned by the director Mikko Niskanen 177
Fig. 10.3 Director Matti Kassila’s voiceover narration interrupts the action in Harvest Month (1956) 178
Fig. 10.4 A character in Crazy Finland (1967) addressed by the voiceover narrator from above 182
Fig. 14.1 Bergman–Nyqvist type of lighting effect in Elina: As If I Wasn’t There (2002) 215
Fig. 14.2 Some lighting patterns in Drifting Clouds (1996) are reminiscent of French poetic realist films and American film noir 220
L IST OF T ABLES
Table 1.1 Periodization of Finnish film history
Table 3.1 Number of Finnish films compared with the total number of films inspected in 1918–1930
Table 4.1 Intertitles in Finnish fiction films per 500 shots
Table 4.2 Shot scales in Finnish fictional films per 500 shots
Table 4.3 Cutting rates in Finnish fiction films
Table 6.1 Modes of style, their salient features and principal proponents
Table 7.1 The quantity of films produced in Finland and the number of exported films
CHAPTER 1
Introduction to the Study of Transnational Small Nation Cinema
Henry Bacon
In recent years transnational issues have emerged as one of the key issues in film studies. Much of this discussion has focused on diasporic cinemas, concerning films made for expatriate audiences dispersed around the globe, as well as on other forms of producing films outside Hollywood specifically targeted for the global market. A relatively new branch of this line of exploration is the study of the transnational nature of small nation cinemas. These produce films in languages that are not widely spoken or understood round the globe and thus their main audiences tend to be restricted to their own countries or countries with which they share the same language. The size of that audience is a crucial factor in determining how self-sufficient and continuous the production possibly can be at any given phase of film history. It also means that maintaining a thriving film culture is correspondingly dependent on transnational factors.
Technology has for the most part been developed and standards of style and quality set at the major centres of the film industry, but interesting and important developments have also taken place at minor centres and even in the periphery. While there has always been considerable pressure to gain access to the latest technology and meet cutting-edge industrial standards, small nation cinemas have above all seen it as their mission
H. Bacon ( )
Film and Television Studies, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland e-mail: henry.bacon@helsinki.fi
to create distinctly national film cultures. At times this might have taken place through appropriating stylistic means developed in the major centres of the film industry; at times it has found its inspiration from trends emerging closer to the periphery.1 The latter has sometimes entailed going against the grain of what has been identified as the global mainstream. For Finnish cinema, Sweden has often provided both models of style and models of operation in its attempt to create a national cinematic art and industry. The production and distribution structures that had already evolved during and immediately after the First World War made these pursuits quite arduous, leading to the creation of a studio system roughly on the lines of Hollywood, but adapted to the limitations of a small nation still at a fairly early stage of industrialization. The universal demise of studio systems towards the end of the 1950s eventually necessitated the development of systems of state subsidy to protect national film industries. The present study will focus on how the Finnish film business throughout its history, even while determined to express its national culture by offering a Finnish alternative to the international mainstream and trying to keep at least a fairly significant part of this important trade in Finnish hands, has in various interrelated ways always been tied both to global trends and to other national film cultures.
FILMS AS TRANSNATIONAL ART
Until the coming of television, cinema was the most transnational of all arts. There were several innovators of the moving image, but cinema truly began in 1896 when the Lumière brothers started sending their projectionists-cum-cameramen to all corners of the globe, reaching Helsinki in June of that year. French producers, together with a number of other European entrepreneurs, remained major players in the world film market right up to the First World War. During the war the American film industry—which eventually was to be commonly referred to as Hollywood, even when talking about films that have not actually been produced there—was able to build an unprecedented financial and technical infrastructure, develop what came to be known as the classical Hollywood style and consolidate its already almost complete control of its large domestic market. Meanwhile, because of the war most of the briefly flourishing European film industries lost a significant part of their international markets and were thus not able to continue investing in production infrastructure in the way Hollywood studios were doing. As Gerben
Bakker has argued, the main reason why Hollywood succeeded in gaining a major advantage after the war was that the European film industry was not able to compete effectively in the escalation of quality.2 Hollywood continued consistently to develop the classical style, thus setting new standards for narratively tight and emotionally involving filmic narration through effective camerawork and editing. According to Bakker’s statistics, for example at the American Film Manufacturing Company, ‘the number of different shots per film increased from 14 in 1911 to over 400 by 1918, while the number of set-ups increased from 7 to 230, and number of inter-titles from 5 to 177’.3 As this development went together with increased investment in production values, the production costs multiplied.4 It also became increasingly evident that in order to make films exportable, a certain minimum expenditure had to be invested to enhance quality.5
A key structural element that enabled this development was the economies of scale. The size of the US domestic market allowed for an economic stability that translated into a large output, with a great number of films being offered for foreign distributors and exhibitors more efficiently than what could be produced in those countries.6 European film industries simply did not have the finances or the facilities to follow suit. This imbalance has structured the relationship between American and European film economies ever since: European companies are at a permanent disadvantage because of the smallness of their home markets and their negligible ability to penetrate into the American market.7
Recent research has suggested that before the 1970s the dominance Hollywood achieved in terms of titles screened did not necessarily translate into correspondingly big overall box-office success.8 This opened at least a small window of opportunity for European small nation film industries. Yet exhibitors could not afford to promote only domestic output. Ian Jarvie points out:
It is true that in some head-to-head comparisons indigenous films outgrossed Hollywood movies. It does not follow that, had foreign screens been filled with indigenous films, revenues would have held up … The sheer quantity of Hollywood product, its reliable delivery of ‘entertainment value’, its professional gloss, its deployment of the tried and true, meant to the foreign exhibitor that if American films were played, week in week out, healthy annual profits would result. The option of replacing all American movies with local films was nowhere realistic because the quantities did not exist, and making them would not have been financeable anyway.9
The worries to which the Americanization of film culture has given rise have not been merely financial. In some ways even more significantly, Hollywood cinema has had a dominant position in the sense that for better or worse, it has been able to catch people’s imagination and even define notions about what cinema really is. Gian Piero Brunetta has observed that in Italy Hollywood ‘was a reality with a radiance of its own, an almost pentecostal light with the spiritual potential to bring to life desires, dreams and hopes, and to help the average man or woman, the home-owner and the petit bourgeois, to imagine his or her own future’.10 Many European cultural critics in the 1920s were more critical and saw Hollywood films as harbingers of Americanization and, as such, as a threat to European civilization. The historian and cultural critic Johan Huizinga grudgingly accepted film as an art form, but thought it could only widen people’s view of society through flattening of the social and cultural landscape.11 Another Dutchman, the socialist intellectual L.J. Jordan, wrote about the struggle against ‘“Americanism”—against the senseless and mindless transplant of the insipid, childish mentality and the overflowing energy of a young, and newly-marketed culture onto our old, experienced and weary state of mind’.12 Both cultural critics and filmmakers had good reason to worry. A memorandum of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) in 1928 stated that movies were ‘demonstrably the greatest single factor in the Americanization of the world and as such may be called the most important and significant of America’s exported products’.13
Inasmuch as cinema was not equated with Hollywood and set against ‘real’ arts, there was a call for European cinema that would be expressive of the values for which Europe was seen as standing. Films were expected to participate in maintaining and even constructing cultural heritage, including notions about the way of life peculiar to the nation. As Anthony Smith puts it: ‘In the eyes of its devotees, the nation posses a unique power, pathos and epic grandeur, qualities which film perhaps even more than painting or sculpture, can vividly convey.’14 Thus, even in the small nations that had emerged as ancient European empires were shattered in the First World War, there were determined efforts to create and maintain national film production and to develop domestic knowhow and talent. Yet hardly ever were even the fairly big European national film industries able to succeed in this alone, and so they had to create international networks and incorporate global trends into their own film cultures.
The so-called Film Europe movement sought to develop ‘international co-productions, the use of international production teams and
cast for otherwise nationally based productions and the exploitation of international settings, themes and storylines in such films’. Naturally, this also entailed ‘reciprocal distribution arrangements between renters in different nation-states, and other efforts to rationalise distribution on a pan-European basis, in order to secure long-term collective market share by establishing all Europe as their domestic market’.15 The idea was that European film companies would create a European film market sufficiently large to rival that of the USA. This might have entailed overcoming notions about nations altogether. One of the leading figures of this movement, Erich Pommer, stated: ‘It is necessary to create “European films,” which will no longer be French, British, Italian, or German films; entirely “continental” films, expanding out into all Europe and amortising their enormous costs, can be produced easily.’16 However, European film culture was in fact far too diverse for these efforts to amount to a sufficiently concentrated effort. According to Bakker’s analysis:
The idea was that European companies should increase the size of their domestic market to be able to compete internationally, by way of mergers, joint ventures, co-productions and distribution deals. The ideal was that a film producer anywhere in Europe would have access to the whole European market. … Nevertheless, the ‘Film Europe’ movement failed, probably because it concerned mostly ad hoc co-productions and not mergers or a deliberate strategy.17
Yet another reason for the failure was the difficulty of keeping talented and successful people working in Europe. Hollywood, just like other major players in the global film market, has always been eager to recruit talent and appropriate narratives, narrative formulas, styles and techniques whenever such people or developments have turned out to be successful. As Bakker puts it: ‘Artistic and technical talent … who initially developed in European markets, would at a certain point outgrow their markets and want to maximise the rent they could capture from their popularity or their talent, which often meant going to Hollywood.’ The Europeans did in turn recruit Hollywood luminaries, but ‘could only afford to buy away the stars that were already past their peak of popularity in the US’.18 Will Hays, President of the MPPDA, saw this development as a benign process of ‘drawing into the American art industry the talent of other nations in order to make it more truly universal’.19 For European film industries, this kind of transnationalism has always posed a major threat. For individual filmmakers, Hollywood has often offered budgets and equipment far beyond what has been available even in a cinematically cooperative Europe.
These developments have been fairly closely tied to politics and ideological struggles, which in various ways have at times spurred and at times restricted transnational cultural phenomena. As Susan Hayward describes it: ‘Hollywood presents a major problem, precisely because of its protean capacity to enter the national space and not be seen as “other” due to the popularity of many of its offerings.’20 Whether the American film industry had really succeeded in creating something truly universal may be debated, but the fact was that what it produced was going down well and was exceedingly profitable in Europe too. Bakker points out that the advantage the American studios had was not only a question of their having been able to create the economic basis for high-quality production that increased their market share, but also that they ‘collectively established the US nationality as a brand-characteristic for feature films, because the first were American’.21 Reinhold Wagnleitner, writing about American cultural diplomacy during the Cold War in central Europe, explains the attraction American films had in Europe at that time: ‘By virtually representing the codes of modernity and material abundance, America signified the defeat of the old, the traditional, the small, the narrow—and the poor.’22
The appreciation of what American cinema could offer for the imaginary sphere was not restricted to consumer culture and could surpass ideological boundaries in surprising ways. However much the French Communist Party would offer Soviet films and other similarly appropriate films with the intention of increasing the class consciousness of the working class, Hollywood could offer models that appealed to even more basic needs. Fabrice Montebello has analysed what he calls ‘distinct popular uses of the cinema applicable to larger groups’ through ‘micro-historical observations’.23 In a survey he conducted among working-class men, it turned out that for them American cinema was what they understood cinema to be, ‘in contrast to French films in general, which were believed to be too boring, artificial or wordy, and so judged absolutely useless dramatically, if not simply dismissed as “non-cinema”’.24 For them, Humphrey Bogart served as the kind of model with whom they wished to identify, ‘the womaniser who seduces all women with disconcerting ease and without being “naturally” handsome’. Bogart appeared to personify at least in the domain of seduction ‘all the social qualities required within the working class social situation’.25
We may well ask in what sense the features that make Hollywood films so popular really are specifically American. There is nothing specifically American about heterosexual love interest or the altruistically punishing
hero, but the Americans certainly did a good job of developing narrative formulas, stylistic features, genres and attractions that are conducive to creating maximal appeal to large sections of not only American but also European, if not global, audiences. Clearly, there was something to be learned from how that worked out and appropriating it to a national context at least in terms of setting, star actors and language. Popular genres were transplanted into recognizably domestic environments and attached to what were presented as national concerns and characteristics. Stylistic features were freely borrowed depending on what caught the attention of filmmakers and what kind of equipment and personnel studios were able to employ. And here, too, there would be a degree of give and take: successful European films could serve as models both for other Europeans as well as for American productions. European producers could be motivated either by a mission to make films that would above all serve as their contribution to national culture, or seek to play the game in the American way and make films that would have a popular appeal perhaps even beyond the borders of their own countries. Thus from the classical Hollywood style there emerged what may simply be referred to as the international mainstream style, which just like its model offered a fairly wide range of options, thus allowing for a variety of individual styles.
Until the end of the 1950s, the studio systems that had developed in most film-producing countries generally could offer the financial, technical and professional facilities for realizing all this. One crucial factor that made national cinemas possible at this stage was that even in small countries they had a sufficiently strong appeal among domestic audiences. There were measures that governments in different countries imposed in order to protect their national film industries—discriminatory taxes, quotas, various regulations—against which the Americans, particularly in the aftermath of the Second World War, fiercely fought in the name of free trade.26 Europeans were as adamant as they possibly could be and insisted on their right to protect their national cultures beyond the exegesis of free trade. Such policies have been at least partly justified by nations with fairly well-established film cultures being occasionally able to come up with trends, filmmakers and individual films that have been recognized as significant events in world film culture and that could be adapted to other national contexts. Furthermore, thanks to new kinds of systems of production and distribution, even many small nation film cultures could have a transnational reach as structures of distribution better suited for their needs developed, which allowed for distant film cultures to become better known even far beyond traditional centres of film culture.
The rise of international film festivals made it possible for films to reach at least some degree of distribution by virtue of what were observed to be their distinctly national qualities. In a few key instances, trends emerging from a certain national context turned out to have major transnational influence. Of particular importance were Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave. Neorealism served as a model of how to treat local, socially important issues in a simple but compelling way, and the New Wave, together with other modernist movements in different countries, demonstrated how cinematic means could be developed further in order to explore the complexities of subjective responses to both social conditions and existential concerns. These trends were by and large domesticated, so what emerged, while participating in the upsurge of international modernism, also had a quality that at least through language, cultural contexts and settings as well as funding and production systems belonged to distinct national cinemas.
By the time of the New Wave, studio systems had lost a significant part of their big audiences and either collapsed or went through a thorough restructuring. The situation called for a radical reorganizing of funding and production, as it was recognized that a system of subsidies was needed for there to be any national cinema. This took place in an ideologically heated political and cultural situation, giving rise to the notion of art cinema, which was to offer an alternative to the narrative and technical strategies of Hollywood. The aim was to create a new kind of cinematic language as a way of resisting the dominant culture to which classical narration geared to arouse mindless emotional involvement was seen to be attached.27 On the other hand, this was also an era of multinational film productions, giving rise to the question of how to maintain a distinct national flavour in the context of an ever more globalizing film culture. Randall Halle even suggests that ‘[i]n effect coproductions at that time [1970s] were primarily about raising enough of a budget to circumvent the ideological control of the subsidy system’.28 Yet these films tended not only to lack an ideological stand, but also not to have any distinguishable national quality, giving rise to the derogative expression ‘euro-pudding’.
By the time the Cold War ended, with the collapse of socialism dramatically taking place in the autumn of 1989, the European New Waves had subsided and the European Union had begun active efforts to enhance the prospects of film production and distribution in Europe. There were more than 300 million potential spectators to be won for a ‘domestic’ European cinema.29 Yet how was this to be achieved? In the 1970s American cinema
had started to overcome the severe difficulties it had experienced in the 1960s and further reconsolidated its position in the world markets. Major company mergers gave a new boost to blockbusters and soon Hollywood commanded a bigger share of European box-office receipts than ever. This pattern has continued until today. The risks are correspondingly greater, and Hollywood has also become more dependent on its foreign markets.
Thus, more than ever centre–periphery asymmetries are prevalent in respect of all aspects of filmmaking. One crucial aspect is the dual positioning that those in the periphery often have to assume. In the age of blockbusters, those acting in the culturally widely acknowledged and financially robust centres have to be able to reach global audiences in order to make profits—or just to break even. Those acting in the periphery have to negotiate between the need to be faithful to the cultural and possibly nationalistic aspirations of their own social and historical context, and the necessity of taking into account the tastes of their domestic audiences, moulded by the ever more globalizing film culture and the consequent financial realities. While European producers might suffer a structural disadvantage because of the vagaries of political and economic history, Europeans audiences arguably enjoy a privileged position. Bakker points out the irony of the situation: ‘while their countries lacked a film industry comparable to Hollywood, these consumers probably enjoyed a far larger variety of filmed entertainment than their American counterparts’.30
The history of Finnish cinema has followed these developments in broad outline. However, there are many distinguishing features that give a specific quality to the particular dialectic between the efforts to launch and maintain a national cinema on the one hand, and the desire to keep abreast with various international developments on the other. These derive partly from historical, political and cultural factors that have provided the framework for a Finnish film culture, partly from economic realities that have prescribed certain limiting conditions for the production, distribution and exhibition of films. What can be achieved in otherwise highly similar small nation film cultures can differ significantly due to relatively small differences in the size of their domestic audiences. In some countries, addressing a fairly large audience that can be expected to recognize the products of a national film industry as somehow its own has allowed for a degree of continuity of production, within which it has been possible to cultivate some professionalism and a sense of tradition.
The studio system in Finland got truly underway in the 1930s and fell less than three decades later, as Finnish films lost much of their domestic
audience; there was not much of a foreign audience to lose. Most susidized Finnish New Wave films—like modernist films elsewhere—failed miserably at the box office. By the 1980s, it was obvious that there was no point in subsidizing a national cinema that the nation did not care to watch. This recognition led eventually to yet another reconfiguring of the system of subsidies by stipulating that about half the funding should come from private sources. This went together with wide international networking in terms of funding, production and distribution. In regard to content, the main feature of the new strategy was referred to by successful Finnish producers as ‘the return of the genre film’. A staggering rise in average attendance figures was a clear indication that once again the Finnish film industry was doing something right. At the same time, Finnish auteurs led by Aki and Mika Kaurismäki began winning recognition abroad to an unprecedented degree, culminating in Aki Kaurismäki’s The Man without a Past winning the Grand Prize of the Jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002.
NOTIONS OF NATIONS AND NATIONAL CINEMAS
How can one define the particular ‘national quality’ that domestic cinema is supposed to express? The construction of national identity and of a national cinema to go with it is always a dynamic process in which notions of national specificity are negotiated and defined in the context of, first of all, models and notions about other nations and national traits, and secondly by the political, ideological, social and cultural influences that various other nations exert in a given political and cultural situation. All this takes place in historical frameworks of long- and short-term political allegiances and enmities, which offer either parallels or contrasts that may for various reasons be highlighted or played down. Transnational and national should be thought of as reciprocal concepts in the same manner as texts and contexts mutually define each other. One of the most fundamental background notions is, following Benedict Anderson, the construction of a nation as an imaginary community. Great efforts have been made to prove the authenticity of such communities, but what really matters is simply that in the minds of members there ‘lives the image of their communion’.31 And, as E.J. Hobsbawm emphasizes, ideas about nationhood must also appeal to ‘the assumptions, hopes, needs, longings and interests of ordinary people’.32 This entails ‘seeking for, and consequently finding, things in common, places, practices, personages, memories, signs and
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All learning is valuable; all history is useful By knowing what has been we can better judge the future; by knowing how men have acted heretofore we can understand how they will act again in similar circumstances.
Place the stress in the following exercises:
It is a compliment to a public speaker that the audience should discuss what he says rather than his manner of saying it; more complimentary that they should remember his arguments, than that they should praise his rhetoric. The speaker should seek to conceal himself behind his subject.
Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of. Our enemies are numerous and powerful; but we have many friends, determining to be free, and Heaven and earth will aid the resolution. On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important questions on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves. The faltering tongue of hoary age calls on you to support your country. The lisping infant raises its suppliant hands, imploring defense against the monster, slavery.
—J W , “Boston Massacre.”
Thou know’st, great son, The end of war’s uncertain, but this certain, That if thou conquer Rome, the benefit Which thou shalt thereby reap in such a name Whose repetition will be dogg’d with curses; Whose chronicle thus writ: “The man was noble, But with his last attempt he wiped it out, Destroy’d his country, and his name remains To the ensuing age abhorred.”
S , “Coriolanus.”
We say to you (our opponents) that you have made the definition of a business man too limited in its application. The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer; the
attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis; the merchant at the crossroads store is as much a business man as the merchant of New York; the farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, who begins in the spring and toils all summer, and who by application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain; the miners who go down a thousand feet into the earth, or climb 2,000 feet upon the cliffs, and bring forth from their hiding-places the precious metals to be poured into the channels of trade, are as much business men as the few financial magnates who in a back room corner the money of the world. We come to speak for this broader class of business men.
Oh do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers, pray for power equal to your tasks; then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life, which has come to you by the grace of God.
P B
There is so much good in the worst of us, And so much bad in the best of us, That it hardly behooves any of us, To talk about the rest of us.
R L S .
If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; if you would know and not be known, live in a city.
C .
No man is inspired by the occasion; I never was.
(Does stress fall upon “I,” or upon “never”?)
In men whom men condemn as ill,
—W .
I find so much of goodness still; In men whom men account divine, I find so much of sin and blot, I hesitate to draw the line between the two, Where God has not.
J M .
ALL IN THE EMPHASIS
B E M
Written expressly for Delight and Power in Speech
The crows flew over my field at morn, Shouting disdain: “Such corn, corn!” Hearing this, I said, “My corn is safe; When crows deride, the corn is safe.”
But the next hour I looked indeed, And they were digging up the seed, And shouting still—not now in scorn But in delight—“Such corn, such !”
A S P
When we pause we suspend our speech, but continue our thought. It is a resting place for us better to conceive of the importance either of the thought just expressed or of the one that follows. The mind is busy re-creating a new idea for the one who is listening. Pausing gives time for the speaker to get the new idea and it also gives time for the auditor to hear the new idea. It often occurs that we are more impressive during the interval of pausing than during the interval of speech. The majority of people in ordinary conversation do not use the pause enough. One result is that they are uninteresting and monotonous in speech.
In the following excerpt, taken from an address by Henry Ward Beecher, indicate the frequency of pauses and then tell fully, in your own words, what the successive ideas are upon which the mind is concentrating:
Now, a living force that brings to itself all the resources of the imagination, all the inspirations of feeling, all that is influential in body, in voice, in eye, in gesture, in posture, in the whole animated man, is in strict analogy with the divine thought and the divine arrangement; and there is no misconception more utterly untrue and fatal than this: that oratory is an artificial thing, which deals with baubles and trifles, for the sake of making bubbles of pleasure for transient effect on mercurial audiences. So far from that, it is the consecration of the whole man to the noblest purposes to which one can address himself—the education and inspiration of his fellow-men by all that there is in learning, by all that there is in thought, by all that there is in feeling, by all that there is in all of them, sent home through the channels of taste and beauty. And so regarded, oratory should take its place among the highest departments of education.
In reading the following of what value is pause? Does it indicate distance? Make selections from your own reading which illustrate the importance of the pause.
O hark, O hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going; O sweet and far, from cliff and scar, The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
T .
What is our failure here but a triumph’s evidence
For the fullness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?
Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?
Why rushed the discords in but that harmony should be prized? Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear, Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe; But God has a few of us whom He whispers in the ear; The rest may reason and welcome; ’tis we musicians know.
—B .
O well for the fisherman’s boy, That he shouts with his sister at play! O well for the sailor-lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill: But oh! for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.
T
K P
Pauses may be long or short, frequent or seldom.
In the following exercises indicate where and what kind of pauses you would naturally have:
Woman without her man is a brute
Speech is a jewel silence must form its setting
Silas Marner decided to keep the child who was frozen one evening outside his house in the snow
We will hang together or we will hang separately
Pausing is to speaking what shading is to drawing
The perfection of art is to conceal art
Henry wrote the book
What do you think I’ll shave you for nothing and give you plenty to eat and something to drink
S
I T
When we are speaking in ordinary conversation, or in public address, the tones we use have much to do in making our meaning clear. How often a person, merely by the tone of his voice, conveys an entirely different meaning than was intended. He is accused of being sarcastic when he had no intention that his remark should be so regarded.
Let us remember that in whatever state of mind we may be it is unconsciously reflected in our voice. If we feel timid, embarrassed or self-conscious it is registered in our tone when we speak. On the other hand, if we feel gay, optimistic, earnest and confident these moods are likewise revealed in our speech. Thus we find tone to be an index to character.
The function of tone-color is most important. It reveals the subtle changes of our thoughts and feelings. It can make the hearer see more clearly and feel more deeply what you say. Nothing so quickly reveals your sincerity of purpose as the tone of your voice. It is the source of the greatest pleasure to the hearer. It marks you as a cultured person. And best of all it cannot be regulated by rule. If you can express the tone admiration in colloquial language, there is no reason why you cannot express it in the language of a Browning or a Shakespeare.
It is not so much what you say,
As the manner in which you say it; It is not so much the language you use, As the tones in which you convey it.
“Come here!” I sharply said, And the baby cowered and wept; “Come here!” I cooed and he looked and smiled, And straight to my lap he crept.
The words may be mild and fair, And the tones may pierce like a dart; The words may be soft as the summer air, And the tones may break the heart.
For words but come from the mind, And grow by study and art; But the tones leap forth from the inner self, And reveal the state of the heart.
Whether you know it or not—
Whether you mean or care, Gentleness, kindness, love and hate, Envy and anger are there.
Then would you quarrels avoid, And in peace and love rejoice, Keep anger not only out of your words, But keep it out of your voice.
—S E H .
In Part II instructions were given in word analysis and thoughtgrouping. Let the student analyze the words, outline the thoughtgroups and determine just where the pause naturally falls, and whether the interval of rest is long or short, in the following selections. He should also be able to explain just why certain groups are separated by a long, and others by a short, pause.
A MESSAGE TO GARCIA
B E H
(Extract from The Philistine for March, 1899.)
When war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba—no one knew where. No mail or telegraph message could reach him. The President must secure his coöperation, and quickly.
What to do!
Some one said to the President, “There’s a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you if anybody can.” Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How “the fellow by the name of Rowan” took the letter, sealed it up in an oilskin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia, are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail.
The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask “Where is he at?” By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instructions about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebræ which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies; do the thing—“Carry a message to Garcia!”
The following is a one-minute composition by a student, illustrating the power of tone and also of mood suspense:
The lion crept stealthily onward, ever onward, with his eyes fixedly staring at the unfortunate boy who cowered before him. The boy, trembling from head to foot, backed slowly toward a yawning precipice. He was on the edge! The loose earth was slowly crumbling under his feet! He was falling! The earth was coming up to
meet him at a terrific rate. Another second, and he would be dashed to death on those rocks below!
Then a sweet voice called to him: “Time to get up, Johnnie.”
A most striking example of the power of suspense is Mark Twain’s story of “The Golden Arm.”
Once ’pon a time dey wuz a monsus mean man, ’en he live ’way out in de prairie all ’lone by hisself, ’cep’n he had a wife. En bimeby she died, en he tuck en toted her way out dah in de prairie en buried her. Well, she had a golden arm—all solid gold, fum de shoulder down. He wuz pow’ful mean—pow’ful; en dat night he couldn’t sleep, caze he want dat golden arm so bad.
When it come midnight he couldn’t stan’ it no mo; so he git up, he did, en tuck his lantern en shoved out throo de storm en dug her up en got de golden arm; en he bent his head down ’gin de win’, en plowed, en plowed, en plowed throo de snow. Den all on a sudden he stop (make a considerable pause here, and look startled, and take a listening attitude) en say: “My lan’, what’s dat!”
En he listen—en listen—en de win’ say (set your teeth together and imitate the wailing and wheezing singsong of the wind), “Bzzz-zzzz”—en den, way back yonder whah de grave is, he hear a voice!— he hear a voice all mix’ up in de win’—can’t hardly tell ’em ’part —“Bzzz-zzz—W-h-o—g-o-t—m-y—g-o-l-d-e-n Arm?—zzz-zzz—WH-O G-O-T M-Y G-O-L-D-E-N ARM?” (You must begin to shiver violently now.)
En he begin to shiver en shake, en say, “Oh, my! Oh, my lan’! en de win’ blow de lantern out, en de snow en sleet blow in his face en ’mos’ choke him, en he start a-plowin’ knee-deep towards home mos’ dead, he so sk’yerd—en pooty soon he hear de voice agin, en (pause) it is comin’ after him! Bzzz-zzz-zzz—W-h-o—G-o-t—M-y— G-o-l-d-e-n arm?”
When he git in de pasture he hear it agin—closter now, en acomin’!—a-comin’ back dah in de dark en de storm—(repeat the wind and the voice). When he git to de house he rush upstairs en jump in de bed en kiver up, head and years, en lay dah shiverin’ en
shakin’—en den way out dah he hear it ag’in!—en a-comin’! En bimeby he hear (pause—awed, listening attitude)—pat—pat—pat— hit’s a-comin’ upstairs! Den he hear de latch, en he know it’s in de room!
Den pooty soon he know it’s a-standin’ by his bed! (Pause.) Den— he know it’s a-bendin’ down over him—en he cain’t skasely git his breath! Den—den—he seem to feel somethin’ c-o-l-d, right down ’most agin his head! (Pause.)
Den de voice say, right at his ear—“W-h-o—g-o-t—m-y—g-o-l-d-en arm?” (You must wail it out plaintively and accusingly; then you stare steadily and impressively into the face of the farthest-gone auditor—a girl preferably—and let that awe-inspiring pause begin to build itself in the deep hush. When it has reached exactly the right length, jump suddenly at that girl and yell, “You’ve got it!” If you’ve got the pause right, she’ll fetch a dear little yelp and spring right out of her shoes. But you must get the pause right; and you will find it the most troublesome and aggravating and uncertain thing you ever undertook.)
The student may give himself fine exercise by choosing any one of the following moods and writing a one-minute composition upon it. Then let him read it aloud with the appropriate tone:
A wonderful illustration of “Mood” is afforded in a marvelous poem written by Bartholomew Dowling, at one time the editor of The Mirror, in San Francisco, California. It depicts the “heroism of despair,” as, perhaps, it was never presented before or since in all literature.
Without commending the sentiment expressed, the authors give this poem a place in their volume as an incomparable example, well worthy of prolonged study, of the power of words to express “mood.” One of the greatest dramatists the world has ever known used to read this poem aloud, daily, for years.
HURRAH FOR THE NEXT THAT DIES![10]
B B D
We meet ’neath the sounding rafter, And the walls around are bare: As they shout back our peals of laughter, It seems as the dead were there. Then stand to your glasses!—steady!
We drink ’fore our comrades’ eyes; One cup to the dead already: Hurrah for the next that dies!
Not here are the goblets glowing, Not here is the vintage sweet; ’Tis cold as our hearts are growing, And dark as the doom we meet. But stand to your glasses!—steady! And soon shall our pulses rise. One cup to the dead already: Hurrah for the next that dies!
There’s many a hand that’s shaking, And many a cheek that’s sunk; But soon, though our hearts are breaking, They’ll burn with the wine we’ve drunk. Then stand to your glasses!—steady!
’Tis here the revival lies; Quaff a cup to the dead already: Hurrah for the next that dies!
Time was when we laughed at others; We thought we were wiser then. Ha! Ha! let them think of their mothers, Who hope to see them again. No! Stand to your glasses!—steady!
The thoughtless is here the wise; One cup to the dead already: Hurrah for the next that dies!
Not a sigh for the lot that darkles, Not a tear for the friends that sink; We’ll fall ’mid the wine-cup’s sparkles, As mute as the wine we drink. Come! Stand to your glasses!—steady!
’Tis this that the respite buys; One cup to the dead already: Hurrah for the next that dies!
Who dreads to the dust returning? Who shrinks from the sable shore, Where the high and haughty yearning Of the soul can sting no more? No! Stand to your glasses!—steady!
This world is a world of lies; One cup to the dead already: Hurrah for the next that dies!
Cut off from the land that bore us, Betray’d by the land we find, When the brightest are gone before us, And the dullest are left behind. Stand!—stand to your glasses!—steady!
’Tis all we have left to prize; One cup to the dead already: Hurrah for the next that dies!
CHAPTER XI
HOW TO READ POETRY
In order to avoid the “singsong” habit, common to so many while reading poetry, let us remember to make but a very delicate pause at the end of each line. Of course, if the sense requires a decided pause, one should not fail to make it. Browning’s “My Star” is a splendid example of where but a very slight swelling of the voice is necessary to indicate the end of each line.
All that I know Of a certain star Is, it can throw (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, Now a dart of blue; Till my friends have said They would fain see, too, My star that dartles the red and the blue! Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled: They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. What matter to me if their star is a world? Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.
To illustrate the contrary to this let us refer to a few lines from Riley’s “The South Wind and the Sun,” noting that the poise of the tone is considerably longer at the end of each line.
And the humming-bird that hung Like a jewel up among The tilted honeysuckle-horns, They mesmerized and swung In the palpitating air, Drowsed with odors strange and rare, And, with whispered laughter, slipped away
And left him hanging there.
We can hardly overestimate the value of a careful study of the lyric to the student of expressive speech. It demands superior powers to render a lyric adequately. Bertha Kuntz Baker, the great American reader, thus suggestively writes on this subject:
To clarify the diction, go over the poem, word by word, conform each word carefully, repeatedly to your ideal of that word, giving the vowel its fullest possible value, tucking in the consonants as clear, light envelopes around and between the vowels.
PISGAH-SIGHT
B R B
Good, to forgive:
Best, to forget!
Living, we fret; Dying, we live.
Fretless and free, Soul, clap thy pinion!
Earth have dominion, Body, o’er thee!
Wander at will, Day after day,— Wander away, Wandering still—
Soul that canst soar!
Body may slumber:
Body shall cumber Soul-flight no more.
Waft of soul’s wing! What lies above?
Sunshine and Love, Skyblue and Spring!
Body hides—where?
Ferns of all feather, Mosses and heather, Yours be the care!
DAWN
B P L D
An angel, robed in spotless white, Bent down and kissed the sleeping night. Night woke to blush: the sprite was gone; Men saw the blush and called it Dawn.
FLOWER IN THE CRANNIED WALL
B L T
Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower—but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is.
THE WORKER’S GUERDON
B F P S
Expect nor fame, nor gold, nor any praise— The world puts not its meed in every hand; Work on and still be thankful all thy days If even one shall see and understand!
MY HEART LEAPS UP
B W W
My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The child is father of the man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.
When we think of melody in speech, we immediately think of the lyric. In form and in spirit it approaches nearest towards music, for it is “emotion all compact.” When we have stimulated within us a noble emotion, we begin at once to respond in some rhythmic action, a beat of our foot, sway of the body, or humming in a tuneful way. There is melody in prose as well as in poetry, only it is not so pronounced. Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” is a splendid example of prose-poetry. We are under obligation to James Raymond Perry in the North American Review for metrically dividing this oration:
Four score and seven years ago
Our fathers brought forth upon this continent
A new nation conceived in liberty And dedicated to the proposition That all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, Testing whether that nation, or any nation So conceived and so dedicated Can long endure. We are met On a great battle field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of That field as a final resting place For those who here gave their lives That this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper That we should do this But in a larger sense We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, We cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, Living and dead, who struggled here, Have consecrated it far above our power To add or detract. The world will little note Nor long remember what we say here, But it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here To the unfinished work which they who fought here Have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated To the great task remaining before us; That from these honored dead we take Increased devotion to that cause for which They gave the last full measure of devotion; That we here highly resolve that these dead Shall not have died in vain, that this nation, Under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; And that the government of the people, By the people, and for the people, Shall not perish from the earth.
Channing’s “Symphony” is another interesting illustration of musical prose:
To live content with small means, to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.
The most striking example of all is the following excerpt taken from Ingersoll’s oration entitled “A Vision of War”:
These heroes are dead. They died for liberty—they died for us. They are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willows, and the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or of storm, each in the windowless palace of Rest. Earth may run red with other wars: they are at peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death. I have one sentiment for soldiers living and dead: Cheers for the living; tears for the dead.
POETICAL SELECTIONS
Colloquial
Humorous
Humorous Dialect
Pathetic
Dramatic
Sublime
Lyric
Poetry is the highest, most beautiful and perfect verbal expression of thought allowed to man. The higher the poetry the more is it permeated with elevating human emotion.
COLLOQUIAL SELECTIONS IN POETRY
THE PESSIMIST
B B K
Nothing to do but work, Nothing to eat but food, Nothing to wear but clothes To keep one from going nude.
Nothing to breathe but air; Quick as a flash ’tis gone; Nowhere to fall but off, Nowhere to stand but on.
Nothing to comb but hair, Nowhere to sleep but in bed, Nothing to weep but tears, Nothing to bury but dead.
Nothing to sing but songs, Ah, well, alas! alack! Nowhere to go but out, Nowhere to come but back.
Nothing to see but sights, Nothing to quench but thirst, Nothing to have but what we’ve got; Thus through life we are cursed.
Nothing to strike but a gait; Everything moves that goes. Nothing at all but common sense Can ever withstand these woes.
