From Wagner to Murnau: The Transposition of Romanticism from Stage to Screen 0835718433

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rom Wagner to Murnau The Transposition of Romanticism from Stage to Screen Jo Leslie Collier

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Research Press

From Wagner to Murnau The Transposition of Romanticism from Stage to Screen

Studies in Cinema, No. 45 Diane M. Kirkpatrick, Series Editor Professor, History of Art The University of Michigan

Other Titles in This Series

No. 36

No. 37

No. 38

No. 39

No. 40

No. 41

No. 42

No. 44

Hitchcock as Activist: Politics and the War Films The Motion Picture Goes to War: The U.S. Government Film Effort during World War / Bernard Herrmann: Film Music and Narrative Marilyn Monroe: A Life of the Actress American Film Distribution: The Changing Marketplace The Cinema of Wim Wenders: From Paris, France to Paris, Texas

Sam P. Simone

Larry Wayne Ward

Graham Bruce

Carl E. Rollyson Jr.

Suzanne Mary Donahue

Kathe Geist

Hollywood’s Wartime Woman: Representation and Ideology

Michael Renov

The Family in American Horror Films: Society under Siege

Tony Williams

From Wagner to Murnau The Transposition of Romanticism from Stage to Screen

by Jo Leslie Collier

UMI

Research Press

Ann Arbor / London

W.3 AT?

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m Copyright © 1988 Jo Leslie Collier All rights reserved Produced and distributed by UMI Research Press an imprint of University Microfilms Inc. Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Collier, Jo Leslie, 1950From Wagner to Murnau : the transposition of romanticism from stage to screen / by Jo Leslie Collier, p. cm.—(Studies in cinema ; no. 45) Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 0-8357-1843-3 (alk. paper) 1. Murnau, F. W. (Friedrich Wilhelm), 1889-1931—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Moving-pictures and theater—Germany. 3. Romanticism—Germany. 4. Theater—Germany—History—19th century. 5. Theater—Germany—History—20th century. 6. Theatrical producers and directors—Germany—Biography. 1. Title. II. Series. PN1998.3.M87C6 1988 791,43'0233'0924—dcl9

87-28944 CIP

British Library CIP data is available.

Contents

Introduction

1

1

Richard Wagner

2

The Connecting Links 35 The Duke of Saxe-Meiningen Adolphe Appia

3

Max Reinhardt

4

F. W. Murnau 105 From Wagner to Murnau From the Physical to the Metaphysical From Theater to Film/From Illusionism to Anti-Illusionism

Afterword Notes

77

From Rapture to Rupture

161

Selected Bibliography Index

9

169

165

159

'

Introduction There is between narrative film and theater an obvious similarity: both forms use actors who portray characters involved in a narrative action provided by a script under the guidance of a director. However, aestheticians and historians in both fields have always claimed that the differences between the two arts are more significant than the similarities, so significant in fact that film and theater are often viewed as aesthetic opposites. To prove this point, the aestheticians and historians have frequently described the characteristics of the two arts in terms of antinomies. Arnold Hauser is one of many who state that film and theater differ in their use of time and space. In [film’s] world-picture, the boundaries of space and time are fluid—space has a quasi-temporal, time, to some extent, a spatial character. ... On the stage, space remains static, motionless, unchanging, without a goal and without a direction. . . . Time ... in the drama ... on the other hand, has a definite direction, a trend of development, an objective goal, independent of the spectator’s experience of time. . . . [But in film,] time . . . loses, on the one hand, its uninterrupted continuity, on the other hand, its irreversible direction. (4:239-41)

Therefore, he says, in film space and time are dynamic: “fluid, unlimited, un¬ finished.” Because of its inherent spatial and temporal flexibility, Hauser be¬ lieves film is naturally attracted to movement as a subject. “The film never feels so much in its element as when it has to describe movement, speed and pace” (256). Theater, Hauser implies, because of the fixed and limited nature of stage space, is better suited to depict reflection than action. Herbert Read agrees with Hauser. Film, in contrast to all the other arts in¬ cluding theater, is “the art of space-time: it is a space-time continuum.” Because of film’s spatial and temporal flexibility, Read says, its “only unity is continui¬ ty.” He also feels that movement is a natural subject for film and goes on to identify three categories of movement in film: that of people and objects, that of the camera, and that of light. Of the three, he says, movement of lights is the most cinematic. “The true plasticity of film, the plasticity which gives the film its uniqueness, is a plasticity of light” (167). Bela Balazs posits that theater is dominated by the word and film by the image (40). It follows, therefore, that

2

Introduction

the playwright is the primary artist in the theater while the director is the creator in the film. Balazs also claims that while the actor is always preeminent on the stage, nonhuman phenomena—both natural and cultural—have a significance equivalent to that of the actor in film (58). In the film, there is no opposition between artificial scenery and “real” actors; both the human and the nonhuman are, in film, composed of the self-same light and shadow. In consequence, the film unlike the theater always presents the human being in a particular context; it is film’s particular nature to depict the connections “between man and the world, the personality and the milieu, the end and the means” (Hauser, 4:257). The two arts differ as well, Balazs states, in the relations they effect between the perceiver and the work. In the theater, the physical distance between the au¬ dience and the performance (i.e., between the seat in the house and the stage) is fixed; but in film, the relationship is constantly changing as long shot gives way to close-up, high angle shot to low angle, and so on. The effect of this differ¬ ence is that the film audience has a greater degree of emotional involvement with the work than does the audience in the theater. “The permanent distance from the work fades out of the consciousness of the spectator and with it the inner distance as well, which hitherto was a part of the experience of art” (40). Another aspect of the film which, according to Balazs, brings about audience involve¬ ment is that it is experienced as part of, rather than apart from, the “reality” of the audience. [The theater] is a microcosm with its own laws. It may depict reality but has no immediate connection with it. The work of art is separated from the surrounding empiric world . . . by . . . the footlights of the stage. [But the film] disregards the principle of self-contained com¬ position and not only does away with the distance between the spectator and the work of art but deliberately creates the illusion in the spectator that he is in the middle of the action reproduced in the fictional space of the film. (49-50)

Working along similar lines to those of Balazs, Andre Bazin claims that the proscenium arch limits the stage space while “the basic principle ... [of film] is a denial of any frontiers to action. . . . The screen is not a frame ... but a mask which allows only part of the action to be seen” (1:101). Bazin concludes that “in contrast to the stage the space of the screen is centrifugal” (1:105). As Dudley Andrew aptly put it, for Bazin the stage was “an abstract and absolute universe” while the cinema was “a ‘sesame’ to universes unknown” (145). Sieg¬ fried Kracauer, that other important theorist of cinematic realism, claims that because of its rapid succession of visual and aural stimuli, it is the nature of film to have a visceral effect on the audience resulting in a “lowered consciousness.” With the moviegoer, the self as a mainspring of thoughts and decisions relinquishes its power of control. This accounts for a striking difference between him and the theatergoer, which has been repeatedly pointed out by European observers and critics. “In the theater I am always I.” a perceptive French woman once told this writer, “but in the cinema I dissolve into all things and beings.” (159)

Introduction

3

This quality of the film, Kracauer concludes, renders it like a dream (164). The writers cited above all claimed to be making formal distinctions between film and theater; but, in point of fact, they only distinguished between the modes of cinematic and theatrical presentation current at the time of their writing. As proof one need only refer to the number of instances in which the distinctions made rested upon a comparison of the film and the proscenium stage, a kind of stage that did not come into being until at least two thousand years into the histo¬ ry of theater. Each of the characteristics listed above as specifically cinematic can be found, at one time or another, in the theater; and, more to the point of this study, all of them together can be found in one particular theater movement, namely that which developed in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth cen¬ tury in reaction to the growing tide of realism, both dramatic and theatrical. This movement, a product of romanticism’s final phase, was primarily con¬ cerned with engaging the audience emotionally, mainly by means of increased sensory appeal. As a result, the production of a play gradually came to be seen as more important than the play as a written text, the action took precedence over the dialogue, and consequently the director emerged as the primary artist within this theater. As romanticists, the followers of this movement believed that ulti¬ mate human truth was invested in the inner world of the soul rather than the ex¬ ternal world of mundane activities. The soul manifested itself in the unconscious, not the conscious, experience; therefore, they tried to create a dream-like world upon the stage. To be dream-like meant to be infinite, open, variable. Thus, the proponents of this movement strove to do away with the stage as the locus of a self-contained microcosm, the arena of a closed composition. They sought to change stage space and stage time conceptually and perceptually, to make the dimensions fluid as they were in a dream. It became clear to the adherents of this movement that the proscenium arch stood in the way of their aims. They first broke through it and then eliminated it altogether. They even went so far as to abandon the theater as structure and present their theatrical events in castles and town squares and meadows. In this new space-time continuum which was the stage, movement became all-important. Movement had sensory appeal; it could engender a kinesthetic response in the audience that would increase the audience’s sense of involvement in the drama. Since the stage was now conceived of as a space to be filled with movement, the nature of scenery gradually changed from that of two-dimensional background to three-dimensional environment which could motivate that move¬ ment and serve as its context. Inanimate objects, in consequence, took on greater significance than they had hitherto had on the stage. The setting came to be seen as a participant in the dramatic action. However, the most important function given to the scenic investiture was that of expressing the emotional content (i.e., the mood) of the play. As a result, light, previously no more than a source of illumination, came to be seen as the most important expressive element in the mise en scene.

4

Introduction

Not only did the theater of this movement possess characteristics which, as was shown, are often deemed “cinematic,” but this movement flourished at a point in history just prior to the development of film art. These facts cannot but suggest a possible historical connection between the two forms; but historians, like aestheticians, generally make the claim that there is no real connection be¬ tween the two. Film histories consistently begin with a survey of the rise of film technology and then go on to detail the rise of film art without explanation of how the one derived from the other. Theater historians have been equally remiss by addressing film, if at all, only in terms of its commercial competition with the theater. A few writers knowledgeable in both arts have attempted from time to time to fill the void with an article or book. However, to date the only completely developed historically based study of the aesthetic connections between theater and film is Nicholas Vardac’s Stage to Screen. Vardac’s thesis is that the theater of the nineteenth century anticipated the film by its tendency toward realism. The realism of which Vardac speaks is not the dramatic realism of Ibsen and Zola, but the pictorially realistic—or, to use the most appropriate term, illusionistic— presentation of spectacles which were the staple of the popular theater. Vardac points out that starting in the eighteenth century and continuing into the nineteenth century, the popular theater was dominated by three dramatic forms—historical romantic spectacles, fantastic spectacles (such as harlequinades), and melodramas (237). Each of these dramatic forms made great demands on the technical resources of the theater to produce the sensational illusions upon which they were built. The historical plays required elaborate, historically accurate scenery and costumes; the fantasies, magical appearances, disappearances, and transformations. The melodramas made the greatest demands of all since central to them were physi¬ cal disasters. The works of Dion Boucicault, the most successful melodramatic writer of the third quarter of the nineteenth century, can be taken as typical: The Octoroon calls for a steamboat to explode and burn on stage, Pauvrette requires an avalanche, and The Streets of New York has a three-storey building engulfed in fire. The staging of the chariot race in the dramatization of Ben Hur affords a good example of how such incidents were handled on the stage: real chariots, horses, and drivers “ran” their race mounted on tread-mills before a moving panorama (Vardac, 79). By his many examples of the cumbersome and often lu¬ dicrous means used to stage such events, Vardac means to demonstrate that the theater was actually unsuited to their presentation. It was inevitable that film would appropriate these events to itself since film was more capable than theater of presenting them believably. When D. W. Griffith combined the techniques of the melodramatic theater in which he had been trained with the technology of film, Vardac concludes, a new art form was born. Vardac’s position is undeniably true; it is also undeniably incomplete. If he had claimed that a certain kind of film—namely, that which today we call the

Introduction

5

classical Hollywood film—had derived from the spectacle-dominated popular the¬ ater of the nineteenth century by way of Griffith, all would be well; but Vardac contends that film as an art form and, hence, all films so derive. He does not state that spectacle is a suitable subject for film, but that it is the only suitable subject for film. “Subjective emotional and spiritual experience, conflicts be¬ tween minds and moral codes, struggles of the soul—these the camera could not translate” (219). The problem with Vardac’s model of film is that it accommo¬ dates Star Wars and The Towering Inferno, but not Eclipse, Persona, or Aguirre, the Wrath of God. The error in Vardac’s thesis can be traced to his designation of Griffith as the sole progenitor of film art. Griffith was without doubt a semi¬ nal filmmaker, but he was not the only one. Film theory recognizes two tenden¬ cies in filmmaking. In the first, the creation of the film rests primarily on montage, the assembly of the individual bits and pieces of film into a meaningful whole. Griffith, along with Sergei Eisenstein, is said to represent this tendency in film. The justification for this approach to filmmaking came from Eisenstein who stated that the content of an individual shot was neutral (or, at best, ambiguous) and that a film’s meaning arose only from the pattern of succession of its shots.1 The other tendency in filmmaking depends upon long-take, deep-focus, and moving camera cinematography. This mode of filmmaking is traced to the German film in general but to F. W. Murnau in particular. Meaning in a film so made is said to emerge from the mise en scene (i.e., the complex of visual—and later auralelements presented in the sustained shot). The proponents of this approach, such as Andre Bazin, deny that the content of a shot is ever neutral but happily con¬ cede that it is ambiguous. They value it precisely for its ambiguity or metaphoric richness.2 It is the thesis of this study that Murnau, and by extension the long-take, deep-focus, moving camera approach to filmmaking he initiated, have their ar¬ tistic foundation in the theater, precisely in that romantic theatrical movement discussed earlier. If, as Vardac says, “The cycle of realistic-romantic theatrical expression which had ... its roots in David Garrick ultimately reached its peak with the work of David Wark Griffith,” this study will show that the cycle of anti-realistic-romantic theatrical expression which had its roots in Richard Wagner ultimately reached its peak in the work of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (243). Mur¬ nau’s long-take, deep-focus cinematography, his use of the moving camera, his preference for the long shot rather than the close-up, his chiaroscuro, his arrest¬ ing use of shadow and silhouette, the simplicity and suggestiveness of his set¬ tings, his preference for location shooting over studio shooting, his tendency to compose within the frame along a diagonal axis, his attempts to eliminate or at least minimize titles, and above all his unique violation of the film frame, viola¬ tion of spatial continuity, and opposition of the word and image will all be shown to have originated in the German theater movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During Wagner’s time, the ideal in German theater was illusionism, i.e.,

6

Introduction

a stage picture so complete, so plausible that it did not merely fool the eye, as in trompe I’oeil painting, but the very mind of the perceiver. The spectator was to become so caught up in the enacted event that he or she actually forgot it was an enacted event, forgot he or she was in a theater, forgot him- or herself. This goal did not begin with Wagner, of course; it can be traced to Lessing. “The tragedian,’’ he said, “should avoid everything that can remind the audience of their illusion, for as soon as they are reminded thereof the illusion is gone.’’3 In our era, we criticize illusionistic theater and the classical Hollywood cinema which grew out of it for succeeding too well in its goal. The sound film, far surpassing the theater of illusion, leaves no room for imagination or reflec¬ tion on the part of the audience, who is unable to respond within the structure of the film, yet deviates from its precise detail without losing the thread of the story; hence the film forces its victims to equate it directly with reality. . . . Those who are so absorbed by the world of the movie—by its images, gestures, and words—that they are unable to supply what really makes it a world, do not have to dwell on particular points of its mechanics during a screening. (Horkheimer and Adorno, 126-27)

Terms such as “spellbinding” and “enthralling” are often used to describe such theater and such film; and it is precisely because of the connotations of bondage inherent in these terms that we reject the works they describe. The theater and film of illusion have become a soporific. We prefer an anti-illusionistic, a self-reflexive art today, one that requires us to be aware of the aesthetic event and our part in it. We value those aspects of the event that remind us of itself: the gap, the discrepancy, the disruption, the disjunction. Most people would, if asked what theater artist best manifests those elements, no doubt name Brecht. But in point of fact anti-illusionistic theater did not begin with Brecht. The illusion wasn’t suddenly shattered or exploded by a first Verfremdungsejfekt; it was nibbled away at, little by little, quietly and almost surreptitiously. The tendency toward anti-illusionism can be found para¬ doxically even among those who are usually thought of as the foremost practi¬ tioners of illusionistic theater—the stage directors of the late romantic era. Romantic theater, founded on illusionism, slowly but steadily reversed itself and became the primary locus for the development of anti-illusionism. While presenting a seemingly seamless work, these directors began to introduce certain uncertain¬ ties into their mise en scene. These uncertainties and ambiguities shifted the ground beneath the spectator’s feet, and the resulting instability and insecurity prevented the seduction of the audience which had been illusionistic theater’s primary ob¬ jective. This study begins with Wagner because he was the undisputed leader of romanticism in the latter half of the nineteenth century both as an artist and as an aesthetician. In his many books and essays, and by the example of his operas, Wagner provided an ideal of romantic art. The next figures to be studied are Georg II, the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, who acted as the director-designer of

Introduction

7

his own court theater, and Adolphe Appia, who was a theater theorist and (all too infrequently) designer-director. These two artists are designated as “connecting links” because they began applying (and in the process transforming) the Wag¬ nerian ideals to the art of theatrical production, or mise en scene. This process culminated in the work of Max Reinhardt, the next figure to be examined here, who, as the most famous director in the world in the first decades of the twen¬ tieth century, popularized and promulgated this new conception of mise en scene. This study will conclude with an examination of how F. W. Murnau brought this conception of mise en scene to the film. The above-named theater artists were hardly the only ones involved in keep¬ ing the values of romanticism alive against the onslaught of realism and natural¬ ism. Many of their ideas are echoed in the work of Aurelien-Marie Lugne-Poe, Edward Gordon Craig, and Georg Fuchs, to name a few. However, the careers of Wagner, Saxe-Meiningen, Appia, and Reinhardt were chosen as best represent¬ ing the pattern of development within the late romantic theater that led most directly to Murnau’s work. The examination of each of these figures in this text, there¬ fore, does not purport to be a complete and comprehensive overview; instead, only those aspects of the career and thought of each which were germane to this study are included. To examine these particular artists necessitated consulting many different kinds of sources. Wagner and Appia, on the one hand, wrote books and essays setting forth their aesthetic ideas; Saxe-Meiningen, Reinhardt, and Murnau, on the other hand, rarely made statements about their artistic principles, requiring that these principles be inferred from their artistic work itself. This artistic work provides another difficulty. It is the nature of theatrical art to be ephemeral; therefore, only written accounts, inherently imperfect and incomplete, of the productions of these theater artists remain. Since the film is its own record, the works of Mur¬ nau should still be extant; but of the twenty-one films Murnau made in his short life, only twelve have survived; and of those twelve, only eight are in general distribution in this country. (For this reason, this study will confine itself to a close analysis of only those eight.) To make matters worse, each work that re¬ mains may be found in two or more versions (i.e., prints which contain different shots and even sequences). All these circumstances required that a certain amount of intuitive recon¬ struction be used in this study; but intuitive reconstruction is always the histori¬ an’s method and as applied here it brings to light a set of resemblances and correlations so definitive as to suggest that a major strand of film history, name¬ ly its artistic as opposed to its technological prehistory, has been overlooked. The existence of such a fundamental gap calls into question all current notions about the nature of film. It is hoped, therefore, that this study will serve as a starting point for a reexamination of film as an art form.

1

Richard Wagner The casual observer might well wonder why a study which purports to trace the influence of late nineteenth-century theater artists on an early twentieth-century filmmaker should begin with an examination of an opera composer; but in his own era Wagner was much more than just a composer. It was not without reason that for many of the most sensitive minds of the century his work signified the very essence of art, the paradigm that first revealed the meaning and underlying principle of music to them. It was certainly the last and perhaps greatest revelation of romanti¬ cism, the only form of it that is still alive today. (Hauser, 4:105-6)

Wagner was the romantic artist par excellence and for that reason he became a focal point for resistance to the tide of materialist and determinist thought that came to dominate the latter half of the century. That Wagner exerted a shaping hand on the theater in particular, especially in giving impetus to the emergence of the director as a creative force, has long been recognized by theater historians. Some attribute this influence to his aes¬ thetic ideas. Above all, Wagner is significant for his conception of the Gesamtkunstwerk (“unified art work”) in which all elements of composition and production are fused. If this synthesis of the arts ... is to be achieved, the same person . . . must control all the elements of stage production. ... It is primarily from this demand for artistic unity and its corollary—the all-powerful director or Regisseur—that Wagner’s enormous influence stems. (Brockett and Findlay, 29)

Others, however, find Wagner’s contribution to the theater in the themes and values inherent in his art works. Expression of the universal, elemental, inner man was . . . disclosed by Wagner as the theatrical motive in opposition to the naturalist’s rational exposure of selected segments of reality. ... In the absence of a social definition of what was universal or elemental, [the director] alone could define these qualities in the theatrical experience. (Chinoy, 40)

10

Richard Wagner

As well as being an artist of great magnitude, Wagner was a prolific (and, many would add, prolix) writer whose subjects were not limited to opera and the other arts but extended to all aspects of life: politics, religion, history, lin¬ guistics, cultural anthropology, and even vegetarianism and antivivisectionism. It is usual in evaluating Wagner’s position today to dismiss this nonaesthetic work as trivial and irrelevant, but there is in reality good reason not to do so. To set Wagner the Thinker over against Wagner the Artist, and then to judge the one immeas¬ urably inferior to the other, is a serious mistake; it is too much like an attempt to separate the inseparable. . . . Testing the truth or soundness of Wagner’s theories . . . seems . . . unprofitable business; but to see in them the play of an artistic personality, the ideal and credo of an artist to whom thought itself—as well as music or poetry—is a means of artistic selfexpression, seems well worthwhile. (Flaccus, 99-100)

All Wagner’s writings, however diverse the subjects, can be seen to form a con¬ sistent oeuvre; all are clearly the products of a man with a singular vision of the world. It is only here, in his complete philosophy, that Wagner’s influence can be found. What this world view consisted of was in effect a conflation of two different and in some ways opposing world views. The first of these is, not surprisingly, romanticism. That was, after all, Wagner’s heritage. As a romanticist, he be¬ lieved in the perfection of Nature. The human race did well as long as it followed Nature’s behests, he felt, but went awry whenever it tried to supersede them. Culture, in the form in which it manifested itself in Wagner’s day, he deemed unnatural and therefore wrong. What made it unnatural, according to Wagner, was that it was comprised of institutions (artistic, religious, political, judiciary, linguistic), all of which had lost touch with their natural foundations and had there¬ fore become codified and arbitrary. It is not surprising, then, that Wagner became involved in the political up¬ heaval of his day. Wagner’s writings that could be termed political date from 1848, that red letter year in the revolutionary annals of Europe; moreover, he participated in one of the many mini-revolutions that occurred that year, for which participation he suffered a lengthy exile (Gutman, 122). At first glance, his revolu¬ tionary principles seem to put him in agreement with his contemporary, Marx. Wagner’s slogan, “To Need alone, belongs what satisfies it" bears a close resem¬ blance to the Marxist edict, “From each according to his abilities; to each ac¬ cording to his needs’’ (Works 8:237). Wagner seems indeed to anticipate the proletarian revolt when he writes: See there, there stream the legions from the factories; they’ve made and fashioned lordly stuffs,— themselves and their children, they are naked, frozen, hungry; for not to them belongs the fruit of all their labour, but to the rich and mighty one who calls men and the earth his own. (Works 8:235)

Richard Wagner

11

Wagner s thought can be seen to diverge from that of Marx, however, when he continues: I [Revolution] will destroy the dominion of one over many, of the dead over the living, of matter over spirit. ... Be his own will the lord of man, his own desire his only law, his strength his only possession, for the only Holiness is the FREE MAN, and naught higher there is than HE. (Works 8:236)

Wagner was no materialist/determinist but a romantic idealist who saw the revo¬ lution as a means of liberating the individual, not a particular class. When Wag¬ ner turned his attention from revolutionary politics to revolutionary aesthetics, he prefaced “The Artwork of the Future” with a clear statement of the romantic ideal. Man will never be that which he can and should be, until his Life is a true mirror of Nature, a conscious following of the only real Necessity, the inner natural Necessity, and is no longer held in subjugation to an outer artificial counterfeit . . . [such as] Religion, Nationality, or State. (Works 1:71)

A term used by Wagner in the quotation just cited, “natural Necessity,” or more usually, “Nature-necessity,” is one of the key concepts of Wagner’s philosophy. Nature-necessity is the force that guides the universe, that holds it together, and instinct is one of its manifestations. This suggests an affinity be¬ tween Wagner’s outlook and that of his contemporary, Darwin, and in point of fact Wagner knew and admired the work of the great naturalist (Works 6:75). However, for Wagner, Darwin’s observations and theories did not signify, as they did for others, an amoral universe working through natural selection. While Wagner conceded that the biological instincts—what he called the Lebensbediirfnis (or “will to live”)—were one of the strongest forces in life, he posited a higher instinct that superseded all others which he called the Liebesbedtirfnis (or ‘ ‘need for love”). Flaccus has identified Siegfried and Briinnhilde as the respective representatives of these two forces in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, but it might be more correct to see Briinnhilde as the personification of love itself and to see Siegfried’s development in the work as a demonstration of the ascen¬ dency of Liebesbedtirfnis over Lebensbedurfnis (77). If in Darwin’s work nature is a force of biological evolution, Wagner’s Naturenecessity is a force of moral evolution. Wagner believed that the human being’s potential for moral action lay in his or her capacity for love. Axiomatically, in the Wagnerian cosmos the only truly immoral act is the abjuration of love. The action that sets the narrative of the Ring in motion is Alberich’s curse of love. Klingsor’s self-castration in Parsifal is another example of this ultimate evil. Herein can be seen the romantic’s definitive position: faith in the emotions over the in¬ tellect, and therefore of art over science.

12

Richard Wagner

Wagner believed that what science did at its very best was affirm to the rea¬ son what art (and religion) had long since proved to the heart. This it was that attracted Wagner to Darwin, for he saw in the scientist’s theory of evolution proof of the brotherhood of animals which the Vedas and St. Francis had already estab¬ lished (Works 8:392-93). The brotherhood of animals was a manifestation of the condition of the universe, which was “the harmonious connection of all . . . phenomena” (Works 1:70). To Wagner, the Vedic prohibition against the taking of life, even that of an insect, had its origin in the recognition of the unity of all that lives. . . . When the Brahmin pointed to the manifold appearances of the animate world, and said “This is thyself!” there woke in us the consciousness that in sacrificing one of our fellow-creatures we mangled and devoured ourselves. (Works 6:226)

The reference to the Vedas is not incidental; it is the Brahmin/Buddhist religion that forms the other current in Wagner’s philosophy. Wagner was well-versed in the primary Buddhist literature as evidenced by his unrealized operatic scenario, The Victors. It is the story of the love of Prakriti, a Chandala maid, for the Buddha’s favorite disciple, Ananda. Prakriti, an “untouchable,” discovers that in a former life she had been a Brahmin princess who spumed the love of the then lowly Ananda. Her present life as an untouchable (i.e., her having trans¬ migrated to a lower rather than a higher form) is due, in Wagner’s scenario, to that act, that denial of love (Works 8:385-86). It is significant that the original Buddhist story lacks this implication, for in it Prakriti’s father and not Prakriti herself had driven off the lover (Gutman, 453). What Prakriti learns through the Buddha is the meaninglessness of caste (i.e., all artificial, “cultural” constructs that divide humanity). In the end, she joins her beloved Ananda as a disciple of the Buddha. Wagner’s references to Buddhism do not end with this one scenario, however. When his sometime friend Liszt wrote to Wagner of his intention to compose music for Dante’s Divine Comedy, Wagner responded that the inferno and purgat or io sections would be easy enough but that the paradiso section would be problematic due to the trivial conception of paradise inherent in Western Chris¬ tianity. He offered the Buddhist Nirvana as a richer alternative. [The] act of “negation of the will” is the true characteristic of the saint, which finds its last completion in the absolute cessation of personal consciousness. . . . But the saints of Christianity . . . could not see this, and their limited imagination looked upon that much-desired stage as the eternal continuation of life, freed from nature. (Compendium 277)

To Wagner’s mind, there was nothing nihilistic about the quest for Nirvana. In Tristan und Isolde, he contrasts the negative romantic death-wish of the lovers in Act II to Tristan’s positive spiritual growth that leads to a true “negation of the will” in Act III. The nothingness of Nirvana is not an escape from life’s tor-

Richard Wagner

13

ments; it is the rest one deserves after facing those torments, recognizing them as emanating from within, and mastering them. Even without such overt references to Buddhism, however, the basic princi¬ ples of Eastern philosophy can be found throughout Wagner’s writings. Inherent in Wagner’s remark that nature “includes within herself the begetter and the bear¬ er, the manly and the womanly” is the principle of yab-yum, more commonly known in the West by its Chinese designation, yin-yang.1 It is a conception of the world as the union of complementary opposites (e.g., light and dark, positive and negative, male and female). There are two aspects of yab-yum in Buddhist philosophy, the first being epistemological. How can one know that something is light unless he or she knows what dark is? From this perspective, light alone is meaningless as is dark alone, but the two attract each other and together form a whole which does have meaning and, by extension, value. Throughout Wagner’s works the Good is equated with the Whole, the Com¬ plete, formed by an integration of opposites. “Now a human being is both man and woman, and it is only when these two are united that the real human being exists, and thus it is only by love that man and woman attain to the full measure of humanity” (Dauer, 14). This idea finds expression in Wagner’s artistic works in the complementarity of the lovers and the inevitability of their love: Senta and the Dutchman, Sieglinde and Siegmund, Briinnhilde and Siegfried, Isolde and Tristan. It can also be seen, for instance, in the character of Kundry who is simul¬ taneously Parsifal’s compassionate ally and scornful foe, nurturing mother and destructive seductress, equally his source of temptation and salvation. The best artists are yab and yum in Wagner’s estimation, containing both the receptive and imitative impulse Wagner designates as feminine and the gener¬ ative impulse he calls masculine {Works 1:286-87). Even the human being’s re¬ lation to God is one of yab-yum. “Man is the completion of god. The eternal gods are the elements of the begetting of man. In man, therefore, creation finds its end” (Works 8:357-58). It should be stressed that yab-yum is a quite different concept from that of Western dualism. Western thought also dichotomizes the world into opposing principles but associates half of each dichotomy with good, the other half with evil. In Western thought, light is good, darkness is bad; active is good, passive is bad. Whereas in orthodox Eastern thought, the desired state is the union of the two opposing principles, in Western thought the goal is for one to be expunged by the other. The question remains how Wagner could be both a romanticist and a Bud¬ dhist. These two world views, while similar in certain respects, are divergent on the key point (for Wagner) of the goal of the individual life. For the Buddhist, the highest attainment of the individual is the loss of individuality, that is, the loss of individual consciousness in the nonconsciousness of being one with the universe (Nirvana). Romanticism, on the other hand, puts a premium on the in¬ dividual. The archetypal romantic hero is quintessential^ self-assertive, one who follows the dictates of his own heart often to the death. It is the very nature of

14

Richard Wagner

the romantic hero to be an egotist. In other words, Buddhism, with its intercon¬ nected universe, its Nirvana, its yab-yum, emphasizes the whole, while romanti¬ cism stresses the single unit. The conflict between the needs of the group and the needs of the individual has exercised political philosophers for millenia. Most of them have come to the conclusion that a prospering of the community required a certain degree of re¬ striction of the individual. Wagner, however, took exception to the notion that the individual and the community must be at odds, that “the full effectuation of an Individuality” had to entail “an infringement of the individuality of others.” The ideal Wagner formulated in contradistinction was one in which individual realization strengthened the community and the community provided the environ¬ ment most conducive to individual realization. Only in the fullest of communion with that which is apart from him, in the completest absorp¬ tion into the commonality of those who differ from him, can [Man] ever be completely what he is by nature, what he must be, and as a reasonable being, can but will to be. Thus only in Communism [Fellowship] does Egoism find its perfect satisfaction. (Works 1:99)

This description is clearly another expression of yab-yum. Wagner’s war¬ rant for such a belief was, naturally, nature. He pointed to the five senses which are discrete and yet “agree,” overlap, depend on one another, so that the func¬ tion of the entire sensory organism is impaired by the disfunction of any one of the senses (Works 1:99). Another of Wagner’s unrealized projects was a work based on the life of Christ. In its scenario Wagner has Jesus base his teachings on such analogies to the human body. All men are members of the body of God: each moveth for itself, according to free will; if they strive against each other, however, the body will fall sick, and every several member sicken: but if each one doth bear, support and help the other, the whole body will bloom with living health. (Works 8:308)

Thus, the living organism demonstrates Wagner’s tenet that the healthy whole and the healthy part require each other, that the natural relation of the individual and group is one of mutual fulfillment. Just as the opposite poles are attracted to each other through the irresistible force of magnetism, so the group and individual are attracted through the irresist¬ ible force of love. Love, Wagner believed, is the unifying factor in the world, the element in human relations which exemplifies the interconnectedness of the universe. Love reconciles the individual and the group because it is the highest need of the individual and the basis of the group. For that reason, Wagner felt that even the best of religions, namely Brahminism/Buddhism, had erred by teach¬ ing “alienation from the world and its passions” (Aberbach, 351). “Freedom is the satisfaction of an imperative Need, and the highest freedom is the satisfac¬ tion of the highest need: but the highest human need is Love" (Works 1:97). The ultimate love is the love of the individual for all humanity. But the first act of

Richard Wagner

15

love that leads the individual out of himself, away from egoism and toward the community, is the love of man for woman. “The wife is . . . the completion of the husband, his giving to her is the first divestment of his egoism, without which his ascent into the generality would be impossible” (Works 8:319). Siegfried ex¬ emplifies this idea. Before he encounters Briinnhilde, he is impudent, high-handed, impatient, and completely self-centered. The fear he experiences when he first sees her is his first realization that he is not self-sufficient. Wagner, like all romanticists, abstracted and idealized Woman. He takes his model for the essence of Woman, again, from Nature. Since in the act of coitus, woman is biologically penetrated and receives the semen of the man, Wagner deems Woman to be by nature passive and receptive. “The woman gives not, but receives” (Works 8:319). Woman is in and of herself a cypher, “the Undine who glides soulless through the waves of her native element,” an empty vessel waiting to be filled (Works 2:111). But when that vessel is filled by the love of a man, Woman is transformed from a passive into an active being, a potent force. Man provides the semen, the catalyst, but it is Woman who conceives and bears, and in the loving suffering and self-sacrifice of childbirth, Wagner finds Wom¬ an’s characteristic action. This description could serve as a paradigm for the Wag¬ nerian heroine. The inactive Senta, the somnambulist Elsa, the sleeping Briinnhilde and Kundry are all passive figures awaiting vitalization through love. Once animated, they perform acts of self-sacrifice for the beloved. Senta throws herself off the cliff to prove her love for the Dutchman and, thus, set him free. Elisabeth offers her life to the Madonna in exchange for Tannhauser’s salvation. Briinnhilde accepts mortality (and therefore death) as the price she must pay for saving the unborn Siegfried by protecting Sieglinde. Such a description of Woman is hardly original with Wagner. The picture of woman as personified love, the characterization of woman as passive, the dis¬ covery of woman’s definitive action in suffering and self-sacrifice is age-old, used throughout history to honor and denigrate women simultaneously. What is unique in the Wagnerian cosmos is that these characteristics carry only unambiguously positive connotations. Wagner identified passivity, or receptivity, as the most important attribute of an artist (Works 1:286). As has already been shown, love is the primary force in the Wagnerian universe, self-realization through selfsacrifice the primary action. Woman, then, by her nature, is the most perfect manifestation of Nature-necessity. Toman, . . . woman is the ever clear and cognisable measure of natural infallibility, ... for she is at her perfectest when she never quits the sphere of beautiful Instinctiveness . . . to which she is banned by that which alone can bless her being,—by the Necessity of Love. (Works

2:111-15)

Man may be the active principle in the universe but no special significance at¬ taches to that fact because in a yab-yum world the active principle has no more value than the passive one.

16

Richard Wagner

Woman is nothing by herself; likewise, man is nothing by himself. Together, each in completion of the other, they reach fulfillment. The term Wagner uses for this fulfillment, and another of the key concepts in the Wagnerian philosophy, is redemption. For Wagner, however, “to be redeemed” does not mean to be saved from one’s sins.” He derides this Christian notion of redemption as he had derided the Christian notion of paradise. An understanding of Wagner’s mean¬ ing of the term can be found in his interpretation of the story of Christ. In his Christ scenario, Wagner has Jesus say: “I redeem you from Sin by proclaiming to you the everlasting law of the Spirit. . . . This law is Love, and what ye do in love can nevermore be sinful: in it your flesh is glorified, for Love is the Eter¬ nal” {Works 8:300). Wagner sees the life and teachings of Christ as an indictment of law, of the State (i.e., of Culture). Sin, he feels, is an unnatural concept. One sins when one breaks laws, but laws, being prohibitions, are wholly negative: “thou-shaltnots.” Christ’s replacement of the negative laws by the positive law, the exhor¬ tation to love, redeemed man not from his sins, but from sin, the very idea of sin, by cancelling it. The dramatic action in almost all Wagner’s operas revolves around an opposition of Nature and Culture, of Love and Law. Most often this opposition is expressed in terms of sexual mores. In Wagner’s cosmos, sex is a natural expression of love, that highest force in the universe; therefore, all cul¬ tural prohibitions against sex are depicted in Wagner’s works as having only nega¬ tive consequences. Love thwarted leads to love perverted. In his first mature opera, Das Liebesverbot, based on Shakespeare’s Meas¬ ure for Measure, Wagner presents a straightforward confrontation between Cul¬ ture and Nature, where Culture is represented by the puritanical hypocrisy of Friedrich (the Angelo of Shakespeare’s drama) and Nature by the joie de vivre of the people of Venice (Wagner’s setting and his favorite city) in the midst of Carnival season (another Wagner touch). The frank sexuality of all the Venetian characters, major and minor, is presented sympathetically in the opera, as a lifeaffirming principle. Only the puritanical hypocrite Friedrich is drawn without sympathy. It is clear that for Wagner puritanism and hypocrisy go hand in hand, that the one engenders the other. When Friedrich repressed his own and socie¬ ty’s natural life-and-love affirming sexual instinct, he ensured that that instinct would manifest itself in an insidious, perverted form, as it does when he attempts to blackmail Isabella into bed with him by promising to spare her brother’s life. Since the only evil in the Wagnerian world is the denial of love, and the greater love of humankind must begin with the love of woman, Friedrich’s assumption of sexual continence was equivalent to abjuring love and he was thus capable of all manner of evil. He is redeemed at the end of the opera by the only thing that can redeem him, namely the sacrificial love of the devoted Marianne. Mari¬ anne, disguised by her carnival mask (Wagner’s version of the bed trick), as¬ sumes Isabella’s place in her assignation with Friedrich. Thus Friedrich, believing himself to be deflowering Isabella, is in truth consummating his relationship with Marianne.

Richard Wagner

17

In Das Liebesverbot, Wagner presented a character whose self-inflicted sex¬ ual repression led to immoral behavior. In Tannhauser, it is society itself that abjures and condemns sex. As a romantic rebel, Tannhauser naturally goes to the opposite extreme in protest, giving himself up to sexual indulgence. But it is Culture, not Tannhauser, that Wagner finds guilty; Culture transformed his natural sexual instinct into lasciviousness by repressing it. Wagner undeniably condemns the debauchery of the Venusberg, but it does not follow that he ap¬ proves Wolfram’s sexual renunciation. If loveless sex is wrong, so too is sexless love. It is a poor society that has created an opposition between love and its most natural form of expression. That this is Wagner’s position in the opera is con¬ firmed by a small but significant action. There can be little doubt that Elisabeth is meant to be the moral center of this work’s universe. When she intercedes on Tannhauser’s behalf, both men and God accede to her prayers. Her moral instinct is unimpeachable. Therefore, when Tannhauser sings his first moderate verse stating the natural association of sex and love, and Elisabeth alone applauds, it is a clear sanctioning of his position. Tristan und Isolde is constructed on a reversal of values, dark for light, death for life; but what has been the cause of this displacement? What has turned a paragon among men and a nonpareil among women into illicit, back street adulterers? The answer is not in the nature of their love but in the world’s disal¬ lowing of that love. The world tells Tristan and Isolde that their love is wrong. That cannot be, so it must be the world that is wrong. The only logical action is to adopt a set of values opposite to the world’s. When Melot and Mark rush in, Tristan exclaims: “Daytime phantoms! / Morning dream-stuff! / Lying and vain! / Disperse! Dissolve!” (Tristan 97). They are not real, these apparitions of the light, since they wish to destroy his only reality, his love. Just as Tannhauser’s rebellion against the unnatural stifling of sexual love led him to the op¬ posite extreme of loveless sex, so Tristan and Isolde, confronted with a world that would condemn their love, turn to the dark side of love, to eros with its in¬ herent death wish; all other avenues of expression of their love are denied them. Tannhauser presented a Culture that denied sex its place. Parsifal’s Monsalvat is another such Culture, but more insidious, being a closed male society which enforces celibacy upon its members, so it is no wonder that “an air of homo¬ sexuality hangs heavy” over it (Gutman, 439). Wagner does not hold Monsalvat up as a model to be emulated; from the beginning of the opera, it is presented as unhealthy. The unsoundness of the community has its source in Amfortas’s wound, his guilt. However, his fall was inevitable in the unnaturally monastic society which is Monsalvat. By repressing his own sexuality, Amfortas made him¬ self vulnerable to sexual temptation of the basest kind. Gurnemanz’s description of Amfortas’s seduction makes this apparent: the king had sallied forth holding onto the spear, but had had to let go of it in order to hold Kundry. This “holding onto” and “letting go of” the spear-phallus is a clear image of sexual license engendered by sexual repression. That this problem is endemic to the communi¬ ty at large and not to Amfortas in particular is made clear by Klingsor’s state-

18

Richard Wagner

ment that the ranks of Monsalvat are being depleted daily, as knight after knight is seduced. All the Grail knights suffer from the same self-delusion, the denial of their own sexuality, and this blind spot in their self-perception accounts for their inability to recognize Kundry, their messenger, as the temptress. The only woman allowed on Athos-Monsalvat is one (wrongly) perceived to be, like the men, asexual. Parsifal’s duty as fisher-king hero is to reunite the Grail and the Spear, the female and male symbols. Wagner audaciously presents Easter as the grandest spring fertility ritual of all. Although he is critical of society’s laws, Wagner does not sanction law¬ breaking. The incestuous Sieglinde and Siegmund fail to be the force that can avert the Gotterdammerung, as Wotan had intended. The adulterous Tristan and Isolde fail to obtain the much-desired death until after their spiritual awakening in Act HI. In Wagner’s scenario, as in the actual Christian story, some of Christ’s disciples urge Him to fight the Law and State that He condemns. But Christ knows that fighting them would be tantamount to admitting their importance. By sub¬ mitting to them, He annulled them. In His voluntary death, Christ rejected the transitory Law and State “in favor of an inner Necessity, the liberation of the Individual through the redemption into God’’ (Works 2:59). Clearly, Wagner’s God is not the God in Heaven, but the God within. Wagner followed Feuerbach’s idea that God is the anthropomorphization of the human’s sense of community, of oneness with the universe (Works 1:260). Redemption, then, in the Wagneri¬ an cosmos, is the joyful divestiture of the ego in love for the whole. Not everyone, however, possessed this sense of community; it could be found only in das Volk. Wagner defined das Volk as “the epitome of all those men who feel a common and collective unit. To it belong then all of those who recognize their individual want as a collective want, or find it based thereon; ergo, all those who can hope for a stilling of their want in nothing but the stilling of a common want” (Works 1:260). It is clear from this statement that for Wagner das Volk is comprised of all who recognize the wholistic universe, but the term Volk, or folk, carries certain connotations—rural rather than urban, simple rather than com¬ plicated, traditional rather than modern, intuitive rather than educated. “The Folk gets its learning on a diametrically opposite path to that of the historic-scientific comprehender, i.e. in his sense it learns nothing. Though it does not reason (erkennt) still it knows (kennt)” (Works 6:77). The people of Nuremberg in Die Meistersinger von Niimberg, able to recognize the worth of Walther’s Act III song in an instant, are clearly meant to be representative of das Volk. Hans Sachs is the embodiment of folk wisdom. He gives up any claim he has to Eva and helps Walther to win her because he realizes it is more important that the com¬ munity be revitalized and continued by the young people than that he should ob¬ tain her for himself. Wagner believed that the original instinct for community was to be found in the legends, traditions, and songs of das Volk. It was for this reason that he drew upon them for his own creations. It was for him much more than the sentimental nostalgia for the quaint then in vogue. When doing his prelimi-

Richard Wagner

19

nary research before writing his operas, Wagner ignored the romanticized, sen¬ timentalized versions of the sagas and legends popular throughout the German world at the time, and sought out instead the oldest, and thereby purest, version obtainable. Wagner’s keen interest in the ancient past was actually motivated by his in¬ terest in the future. The society he lived in, Wagner felt, had lost all sense of real community, which was the only reason for a “society” to exist in the first place. The fact (in Wagner’s view) that the world had reached a point exactly opposite to its point of origin was proof that the time for change was at hand, for a move back in the other direction, a move guaranteed to bring about a better world. Wagner envisioned a reconciliation of the values of past and present or, to use Wagner’s own turn of phrase, the redemption of the present in the past. The pattern of movement from past to its opposite in the present to a merging of the two in the future clearly follows the Hegelian dialectical model. Despite his characterization of Hegel as a “charlatan,” Wagner had undoubtedly en¬ countered the thesis-antithesis-synthesis model in the works of Feuerbach, the philosopher who served as the link between Hegel and Marx, and Wagner’s favorite philosopher before he discovered Schopenhauer. In actuality, however, Wagner needed no philosopher to present him with this model; Nature provided it. When a man and his complementary opposite, a woman, join in love, the product of their union is a child who is the synthesis of the parents. Wagner con¬ tinually uses fecundating imagery to ratify the thesis-antithesis-synthesis model by demonstrating that it is natural, a manifestation of Nature-necessity. Just as the world was not to revert to the past but grow beyond both past and present, the individual was not meant to devolve to the bliss of ignorance. Wagner did not suggest that the human being should eschew ambition, intellec¬ tual development, or individualism. On the contrary, as had already been shown, he urged the full realization of the individual. What Wagner foresaw was that when the individual reached his full potential, he would realize that his own will was but a manifestation of the world’s will, of Nature-necessity, the aim of which was to maintain and propagate the bonds which kept the universe interconnected. The individual would then, logically, make a conscious choice of the unconscious by taking the path of loving self-sacrifice. In other words, the insight of the fully conscious, completely self-aware human is the Buddhist one that ultimate selfrealization is self-effacement. Wotan is the prime example of this moral develop¬ ment. After asserting his will upon the world relentlessly as the first of the gods, he becomes the Wanderer who, as he says, watches but takes no part in the ac¬ tion. After doing everything in his power to avert the Gotterdammerung, Wotan at last comes to realize that the Gotterdammerung is precisely what must come to pass. It must have been Wotan that Wagner had in mind when he wrote, “The Will, that fain would shape a world to its wish, at last can reach no greater satis¬ faction than the breaking of itself in dignified annulment” {Works 4:8-9). This conception is central to Wagner’s reconciliation of the individual and

20

Richard Wagner

the group, romanticism with Buddhism. It is possible to abstract from these processes of development of the world and the individual a Wagnerian law of Nature, one which is a modification of the Hegelian model: the condition antiX is the penultimate stage in the development of the condition X. According to this law, the perverted modern world is the penultimate step leading to the ulti¬ mate utopia; nationalism is the last logical phase prior to universal brotherhood; and the iconoclastic, self-involved romantic hero is the necessary precondition for the accepting, self-denying Buddhist saint. Another way of stating Wagner’s law is to say that the right path is the wrong path. To reach the desired goal, one must set out in the opposite direction. (Life, after all, is in Buddhism repre¬ sented as a wheel, a circle.) The attainment of the final stage of the moral evolution of the world and the individual is predicated on error, the necessary error. This paradox is easily comprehended when one examines the life of the Buddha. On his way to Enlight¬ enment, the Boddhisatva took many wrong turns; he became an adept of many false dharmas, each of which purported to lead to Enlightenment. Indeed, it was precisely by mastering and then rejecting these false dharmas that the Boddhisatva was able at last to discover the true dharma and become the Buddha.2 In Schopen¬ hauer’s conception of pity learned through suffering, Wagner believed he had found the equivalent of his own right-wrong path. If we take this great thought of our philosopher ... as guide to the inexorable metaphysical problem of the purpose of the human race, we shall have to acknowledge that what we have termed the decline of the race, as known to us by its historic deeds, is really the stem school of Suffering which the Will imposed on its blind self for sake of gaining sight,—somewhat in the sense of the power “that ever willeth ill, and ever doeth good.” (Compendium 245)

This throws light on Briinnhilde’s final utterance before leaping onto Siegfried’s pyre. She says that it had been necessary for Siegfried to betray her so that she through grief might grow wise (Ring 358). Wagner felt it perfectly logical that Christ had proclaimed he had come to the world to save sinners. Only those who sinned (i.e., only people who made mistakes, who followed false paths) were capable of moral growth through suffer¬ ing. Wagner’s operas are full of such “sinners” who follow the right-wrong path to enlightenment and redemption. The Dutchman believes Senta untrue and, there¬ fore, not the one destined to save him. As a result, he sails away which causes Senta to throw herself into the sea, proving her love and effecting his salvation. After he is refused absolution by the pope, Tannhauser seeks out Venus and eter¬ nal damnation only to find Elisabeth and redemption. Wotan works to prevent the Gotterdammerung but every one of his deeds actually helps to bring about the cataclysmic purification of the world. With this overview of Wagner’s philosophy, it is now possible to put his political activities in perspective. Wagner was never interested in Realpolitik for

Richard Wagner

21

its own sake. He did not believe that the socialist revolution incipient in the upheavals of 1848 would bring about his utopia, but rather that the socialist soci¬ ety would be the right-wrong path, the necessary error, the penult of that utopia. The strivings for better wages, better living conditions, more political control and the like were materialist strivings; Wagner felt it understandable, given the deplorable social conditions of his day, yet nonetheless wrong for people to be¬ lieve their salvation lay in material gains; Wagner knew such salvation could be found only in spiritual and moral change. What was needed was something that would divert the revolution from its material to its spiritual course and this some¬ thing was art. “It is for Art, . . . and Art above all else, to teach this social im¬ pulse [revolution] its noblest meaning and guide it towards its true direction” {Works 1:56). The moral evolutionary process of Nature-necessity, the right-wrong path, is a paradox. Only art, Wagner believed, was capable of resolving paradoxes. Wagner even called the final stage in the individual’s moral development “artis¬ tic manhood.” By this he did not mean to imply that in the coming utopia all people would be dilettantes dabbling in paint or verse, as some commentators have suggested; he meant that when the human being attained the final stage in his or her moral progression, all humankind would share the perception of the world that previously had been limited primarily to artists, a perception that was intuitive and synthetic. It was not, however, art as it existed in his own day but “The Artwork of the Future” that would perform the sacred duty of leading mankind to its moral fulfillment. Wagner felt that the art of his day manifested all the flaws of the society of his day. It was “cultural” rather than “natural,” deriving from other art rather than from life, dedicated (like society) to the perpetuation of dead forms. The art form that received by far the greatest share of Wagner’s vituperation was opera. For Wagner, grand opera was the epitome of the rationalistic inversion of real (natural) values described above. The proof that opera had reached a point opposite to its point of origin (ancient Greek theater) lay in the fact “that a Means of expression (Music) has been made the end, while the End of expression (the Drama) has been made a means” {Works 2:17). Opera was not the only art form Wagner criticized, however. The fact that painting, sculpture and architecture possessed a spatial but no temporal aspect, that they were, in other words, inherently static, rendered them incapable of ex¬ pressing life since the hallmark of life is change and, therefore, motion. “Plastic art can display alone the Finished, i.e. the Motionless; wherefore it can never make of the beholder a confident witness to the becoming of a thing.” Contem¬ porary music had erred precisely inasmuch as it had aspired to the condition of the plastic arts. “In his farthest strayings, the Absolute Musician fell into the error of copying plastic arts in this, and giving the Finished in place of the Be¬ coming” {Works 2:337). There was only one art capable of expressing life as a process. “The Dra-

22

Richard Wagner

ma, alone, is the artwork that so addresses itself in Space and Time to our eye and ear, that we take an active share in its becoming, and therefore can grasp the Become as a necessity, as a thing which our Feeling clearly understands.”3 The drama of which Wagner speaks is not the bourgeois drama of his own day. Contemporary drama, Wagner felt, had derived from neoclassic drama which had conformed to rules artificially imposed from without rather than those that emerged naturally from within the work itself. These artificial rules were the three unities. “To set the unity of the Drama in the unity of Space and Time, means to set it at naught; for Time and Space are nothing in themselves, and only be¬ come Some-thing through their being annulled by something real, by a Human Action and its Natural Surrounding” (Works 2:349-50). True art does not obey such artificial, culturally-imposed laws. Its chief trait is spontaneity, the artistic equivalent of instinct or Nature-necessity. Wagner lauded Beethoven as the greatest genius in music’s history and repeatedly referred to the Ninth Symphony as the most nearly perfect piece of music ever composed. Yet Wagner was absolutely sure that Beethoven’s free improvisations at the pi¬ ano, mentioned with awe by his contemporaries but by their very nature lost to posterity, were superior to any of the master’s formal compositions (Works 5:143). However, even such improvisation as Beethoven’s could not be completely natural. The transmission of the spontaneous impulse of the artist to an external medium, whether musical instrument or paint and canvas or clay, must deflect the improvi¬ sation to some extent. To find true improvisation, one must turn to the primary artist, the one who expresses the improvisatory impulse directly through his or her own being—the actor. Wagner did not mean to imply that all formal art should be replaced by pure improvisation; improvisation is the kernel, the essence of art, but not art itself. This genuinely reproductive force [i.e., mimetic improvisation] has failed in measure as the scene was to picture forth events of higher life, . . . sublimely distant from the eye of every¬ day. For here the mime’s improvisation fell too short, and needed to be wielded by the poet proper . . . ; and his genius had to prove its pre-election by raising the style of mimetic im¬ provisation to the level of his own poetic aim. (Works 5:144)

This should not be read as a call for a mere collaboration of actor and poet. To clarify the necessary relationship between the two artists, Wagner constructs a Darwinian analogy: the mime is to the true poet what the monkey is to man (Works 4:75). It is beside the point that Wagner’s analogy is based on a common mis¬ reading of Darwin’s ideas on human evolution. His point is clear: the dramatic poet must evolve from the actor. The play, the written text, can have artistic value only inasmuch as “the poet makes the improvising spirit of the mime his own, and develops his plan entirely in character with that improvisation, so that the mime now enters with all his individuality into the poet’s higher reason” (Works 5:143). If Shakespeare was the greatest playwright of all time, as Wagner believed, it was because he was

Richard Wagner

23

in Wagner s view the ultimate poet-mime. “The vital shape of a Shakespearean drama, and its sublime irregularity” which give it “the appearance of a naturescene as against a work of architecture” can be attributed to Shakespeare’s in¬ nate improvisatory impulse (Works 5:149). Wagner told Cosima that the works of not only Shakespeare but also Cervantes and Homer were based on the im¬ provisatory impulse and were, therefore, “created exactly like Nature.” Their art “was quite imperceptible; whereas ... the Greek tragedies, Schiller, Cal¬ deron, seemed like high priests and constructed their edifices, as it were, out of a single idea” (Gregor-Dellin, 460). Accordingly, Wagner defined the true artwork as “a fixed mimetic improvisation” (Works 5:144). As must already be apparent, just as the actor was for Wagner the primary artist, so theater was the primary art form. However, its claim to such a distinc¬ tion lay not only in its having the actor’s art at its root, but also because true theater was the only synthetic art form. True theater, however, had only been achieved once and that was in the theater of ancient Greece. Here and here alone had theater been everything it was meant to be, an all-inclusive art in which the separate arts met, united in single purpose; the theater of ancient Greece was comprised of poetry and music, performed by men who were at once actors, singers, and dancers, supported by the plastic arts in the form of scenery and costumes and masks and, not least of all, the architecture of the Theater of Di¬ onysus itself (Works 1:96). Wagner believed it no accident that Greek theater flourished during the hey¬ day of Athenian democracy. Wholistic theater was the perfect form for express¬ ing the unity, the cohesiveness of society in Athens prior to the Peloponnesian War. When that society began to disintegrate, it was only natural that the syn¬ thetic art form, theater, would disintegrate into the several arts. Poetry, music, dance, painting, sculpture, architecture—all began to go their separate ways, each believing egoistically that unaided it could express truth (Works 1:140). This was art’s necessary error, its right-wrong path. Each of the arts, while striving to achieve alone what theater had achieved, developed itself fully, strained the very boundaries of its being. Absolute Music (i.e., music alone) had culminated in Beethoven; Absolute Theater (that trun¬ cated version of true theater) had culminated in Shakespeare (Works 2:125-26). The two could go no further alone, nor could any of the other arts. They had reached that point on the continuum which was the antipode to their point of ori¬ gin. Logically, it was time for a reunion. Wagner prophesied the artwork of the future would be a Gesamtkunstwerk, a synthesis of all the arts in theater once again. “The highest conjoint work of art is the Drama: it can only be at hand in all its possible fullness, when in it each separate branch of art is at hand in its own utmost fullness” (Works 1:184). In speaking of art, Wagner reiterates his claim about society, namely, that there is no fundamental conflict between the individual and the group, that the fullest development of the part is requisite to the fullest achievement of the whole.

24

Richard Wagner

“In the art of the Theater the others converge, in greater or lesser degree, to so immediate an impression as none of them is able to produce alone. Its essence is association, with complete retention of the rights of the individual (Works 7:323). The separate arts, rather than having to subordinate themselves to the¬ ater, find their fulfillment in it. The Will to form the common artwork arises in each branch of art by instinct and unconscious¬ ly, so soon as e’er it touches on its own confines and gives itself to the answering art, not mere¬ ly strives to take from it. It only stays throughout itself, when it thoroughly gives itself away. {Works 1:150)

Self-realization equals self-effacement. A Gesamtkunstwerk presupposes a fellowship of artists. The first and truest fount of Art re¬ veals itself in the impulse that urges from Life into the work of art; for it is the impulse to bring the unconscious, instinctive principle of Life to understanding . . . and acknowledge¬ ment as Necessity. But . . . only from a life in common, can proceed the impulse toward intel¬ ligible objectification of this life by Art-work; the community of artists alone can give it vent. (Works 1:197)

Wagner does not have in mind some sort of art by committee. The work of art is not to be ruled over by a group of artists; the artists are to be ruled by the idea to be expressed in the work which Wagner termed the “poetic aim” {Works 1:253). Each individual artist is to express the poetic aim in his or her particular art to the best of his or her ability. Only on the fullness of the special gifts of an individual artist-nature, can that art-creative im¬ pulse feed itself; ... for this individuality alone can find in its particularity, in its personal intuition, in its distinctive longing, craving and willing, the stuff wherewith to give the artmass form. {Works 1:130)

The artistic community, like the social one, cannot prosper except by the offices of the individual engaged in the process of reaching his or her potential. This individual fulfillment is enhanced, not restricted, by the artist’s association in the fellowship. This poetic aim which will govern all the artists in the fellowship is to ex¬ press the truths of the unconscious, to reveal the “dream world.” As dreams must have brought to everyone’s experience, beside the world envisaged by the functions of the waking brain there dwells a second, distinct as is itself, no less a world dis¬ played to vision; since this second world can in no case be an object lying outside us, it there¬ fore must be brought to our cognisance by an inward function of the brain; and this form of the brain’s perception Schopenhauer . . . calls the Dream-organ. . . . As the Dream-organ cannot be roused into action by outer impressions, against which the brain is now fast locked, this must take place through happenings in the inner organism that our waking consciousness merely feels as vague sensations. But it is this inner life through which we are directly allied with the Whole of Nature, and thus are brought into a relation with the Essence of things that eludes the forms of outer knowledge, Time and Space. {Works 5:68-69)

Richard Wagner

25

It is the duty of the Gesamtkunstwerk to bring “the full shapes of the dreamvision, the other world before us life-like as by the Magic lantern” (Works 8:373). These images from the dream world Wagner calls das Wunder: This image of the phenomena, in which alone the Feeling can comprehend them, . . . this image, for the Aim of the poet, who must likewise take the phenomena of Life and compress them from their viewless many-memberedness into a compact, easily surveyable shape,—this image is nothing else but the Wonder. (Works 2:212)

Wagner then goes on to explain that by das Wunder (literally, “the wonder,” but in German usage also “the miracle” ) he means the opposite of a religious miracle. The religious miracle is something that being inexplicable must be taken on faith alone, but the artistic miracle is that which renders life immediately com¬ prehensible. The religious miracle is something which contravenes the laws of Nature (Works 2:213). The general interpretation of Christ’s miracles—walking on water, the loaves and fishes, and ultimately the resurrection itself— is as proof of the victory over Nature of the redeemed soul. But for Wagner, Nature was God. He wished to affirm, not deny, Nature’s laws. Das Wunder, the artistic miracle, is effected by the primary artistic opera¬ tion for which Wagner uses the verb verdichten, which the translator renders above as “compress” but most often as “condense.” The artist takes the phenomena of life and condenses or compresses them into art. Wagner clearly distinguishes between condensation and selection. “A mere abridging or lopping-off of lesser ‘moments’ of action would of itself but mar the moments kept” (Works 2:219). It may seem at first a mere rhetorical distinction but given Wagner’s belief in the essential interconnectedness of the phenomena of life, it is easy to see why condensation of the seemingly multifarious into the apprehendable unity seems a more truthful way of presenting life than a selection of some aspect and omis¬ sion of others. “Condensation” also connotes certain qualities that Wagner felt necessary to art. Wagner uses such words as “magnified,” “strengthened,” and “intensi¬ fied” to describe life when it is condensed into art (Works 2:216). However, con¬ sidering the contexts in which the word verdichten sometimes appears, Wagner must have had in mind another meaning of “condense.” Consider this example from the physical world: water vapor exists in the air, but cannot been seen until it condenses on the window pane. Here is a perfect homespun analogy for what Wagner says the artist does when, like the magician who conjures up an object seemingly out of thin air, he or she makes the inward dream-world materialize in the outer phenomenal one. The artist renders the invisible visible, the intangi¬ ble tangible, the metaphysical physical, and thus disproves the dichotomy. Since for Wagner the primary function of art was this condensation or materi¬ alization of the dream world, the artwork, he said, had to have Sinnlichkeit which his translator renders as “qualities appealing to the senses” (Works 1:26). There¬ fore, a work of art that possessed Sinnlichkeit was one that was concrete, tangi¬ ble, one that could be seen and heard. The human being, Wagner knew, formed

26

Richard Wagner

his or her perception of reality through the senses. Seeing (and hearing, touch¬ ing, smelling, but primarily seeing) is believing. As Wagner put it, “The first beginning and foundation of all that exists and all that is conceivable, is actual physical being” (Works 1:82). Therefore, the work of art must possess Sinnlichkeit in order to verify, to ratify, the metaphysical truths of the dream world it is presenting to the beholder. By way of contrast, Wagner pointed to the romances of the Middle Ages to demonstrate the flaws inherent in art that appealed to the imagination and not to the senses. “An artwork which merely appeals to Phantasy, like the be-read romance, may lightly break the current of its message; since Phantasy is of so wayward a nature, that it hearkens to no other laws than those of whimsy chance” {Works 2:129). Since imagination knows no limits, works of and for the imagi¬ nation are, in Wagner’s words, “unbounded.” By this he meant that the artist, encountering no boundary, no requirement of form, which would have forced him to turn inward, to reach within himself where he would have found truth, continued to reach further and further outward into the phenomenal world, result¬ ing in “extravagant combinations of incidents and localities” {Works 2:125). Even¬ tually, according to Wagner, there developed a sense of the impoverishment of this art form which promoted a desire to master the plethora of phenomena. Such an impulse, in Wagner’s mind, could have led in only one direction. This mastery of the outward stuff, so as to shew the inner view of the essence of that stuff, could only be brought to a successful issue by setting the subject itself before the senses in all the persuasiveness of actuality; and this was to be achieved in Drama and nothing else. (Works 2:126-27)

Shakespeare, Wagner says, was the culmination of this impulse: he condensed romance to drama to the degree that he invested human actions in human per¬ formers. It is obvious that for Wagner the Elizabethan theater in which Shakespeare flourished lay between medieval romance which appealed only to the imagina¬ tion and real theater (i.e., the Gesamtkunstwerk) which would appeal completely to the senses. The Elizabethan theater was, one might say, partially condensed, incompletely materialized. It was rich in the presentation of fully-developed charac¬ ters and in the rendering of their inner motivations through the medium of living actors who appealed to the senses of the audiences, but the Elizabethan stage was relatively poor in terms of scenic realization, which meant that environment and mood could only be described, and then reconstructed in the fantasy of the audience. Macbeth lived before the eyes and ears of the Elizabethan audience, but the key action of the movement of Birnam wood to Dunsinane had to be re¬ ported, could not be shown. The audience also had to rely on the words of Len¬ nox to call up in their minds’ eyes and ears the supernatural sights and sounds which presage Duncan’s death.

Richard Wagner

27

Shakespeare, who did not yet experience this one necessity, of a naturalistic representment of the scenic surroundings, . . . through his dramas being not shaped by that single aforesaid necessity, has been the cause and starting-point of an unparalleled confusion in dramatic art for over two centuries. (Works 2:130)

The confusion to which Wagner refers is that which ensued when Shake¬ spearean drama collided with the illusionistic, or pictorially realistic, scenic prac¬ tice mentioned in the previous chapter. Wagner traced this scenic practice back to the period of French neoclassicism. Unlike Shakespeare, the playwrights of the French Baroque did not build their theater upon the traditions of a folk stage, but instead modelled their drama in imitation of classical drama. In their ration¬ alistic search for laws which would facilitate imitation, French intellectuals codi¬ fied Aristotle’s thoughts on the drama into “the three unities.” Once the unities of time and place were acknowledged as the primary laws of dramatic form, Wag¬ ner stated, “the necessity of a representment of the scene in keeping with the place of action . . . could not for long remain unfelt” (Works 2:136). From this necessity, the scenic arts took their impetus and began to develop rapidly. By Wagner’s era, as Vardac has shown, pictorial realism was well-established. Trompe Voeil scenery and astounding technical effects were the order of the day. By making externals (i.e., time and place) the guiding principles of dramatur¬ gy, the French Academy had in effect shifted the emphasis in drama from the revelation of character and motivation to presentation of objects and actions. Playwrights such as Boucicault were writing plays with no other aim than to uti¬ lize the scenic and effects capabilities of the theater to best advantage. Aside from the sensational spectacles intended to titillate, there was the drama of realism which, according to Wagner, has thrown itself on the nakedest exhibition of the life of the present day; has taken this life by its most vicious social basis; . . . and, with its own completed unloveliness as art-work, has employed its literary artifice as a revolutionary weapon against this life-base.4

Wagner saw in this state of affairs a dilemma for the dramatist. If he chose to emulate Shakespeare, who “had given him the exalting impression of the most perfect poetic unity,” he could only be disappointed to see his work presented on the stage as “an unsurveyable mass of realisms or actualisms” (Works 2:139). Henceforth the Poet either renounced all wish to see his dramas acted on the stage, . . . i.e., he wrote literary-dramas for dumb reading;—or else, so as to practically realise his fancy-picture on the stage, he instinctively turned more or less towards the reflective type of drama, whose modem origin we have traced to the pseudo-antique . . . drama, constructed according to Aristo¬ tle’s rules of Unity. (Works 2:139)

Wagner, however, did not believe that such an either/or situation existed. He wanted to reconcile the two tendencies of theater history, adapting the techniques

28

Richard Wagner

of illusionist theater to a new drama of the stature of Shakespeare’s. He had not rejected realism and sensationalism because they used illusionism but because they used it unwisely, merely to present the surface of things, outer life. Pictori¬ al realism was theater’s necessary error. In the Gesamtkunstwerk, the full panoply of illusionistic theatrical technique would be used to give sensual form (Sinnlichkeit) to the dream world. The function of theatrical illusion for Wagner was to induce in the audience romanticism’s aesthetic ideal: complete emotional involvement in the work of art. This required a complete suspension of the critical, analytical faculties that would keep the audience conscious of the fact that it was engaged in an aesthetic experience. For Wagner an artwork that had any reflexive elements was not properly art. “Art ceases, strictly speaking, to be Art from the moment it presents itself as Art to our reflecting consciousness’’ (Works 5:162). For one to lose con¬ sciousness of the work of art as work of art entails losing consciousness of oneself. Thus the spectator transplants himself upon the stage, by means of all his visual and aural facul¬ ties. . . . The public . . . forgets the confines of the auditorium, and lives and breathes now only in the artwork which seems to it as Life itself, and on the stage which seems the expanse of the whole world. (Works 1:185)

A theatrical audience whose members had forgotten themselves as individual en¬ tities in their joint identification with the protagonist must have seemed for Wagner a manifestation in microcosm of the final evolutionary phase of the race: the sur¬ rendering of individual consciousness for communal consciousness. The uncon¬ scious “thoughts” of such an audience might have been as follows: “I am Oedi¬ pus. We are all Oedipus. We are all each other. We are One.” Put simply, pictorial realism, by confirming to the senses of the audience the authenticity of the world on the stage, would lead to a suspension of judg¬ ment, thus opening a pathway to the unconsciousness via the emotions. “Unity of form,” wrote Wagner, was an “emanation” of “united Content . . . which we can only recognize by its being couched in an artistic Expression through which it can announce itself entirely to the Feeling” (Works 2:343). The means of ex¬ pression of the artwork ‘ ‘must contain the poet’s Aim in each of its separate ‘mo¬ ments, ’ albeit in each of them concealing that aim from the Feeling,—to wit, by realizing it” (Works 2:345). This is the reason that Lennox’s description of the supernatural portents of Duncan’s death would not suffice: description can be intellectualized by an audience, but not felt, not experienced. It was an empathic response that Wagner wished to elicit from his audience. Pictorially realistic theater was, Wagner believed, the best means of eliciting such a response. The poet’s aim is in Drama the most completely carried from the Understanding to the Feel¬ ing,—to wit, is artistically imparted to the Feeling’s most directly receptive organs, the senses. The Drama, as the most perfect art-work, differs from all the other forms of poetry in just this,—that in it the Aim is lifted into utmost imperceptibility, by its entire realization. (Works 2:208)

Richard Wagner

29

Wagner said that “the complete ascension of the Aim into the Artwork” was “the emotionalising of the intellect," the means of which were to be found in the union of poetry and music (Works 2:208). The function of the Gesamtkunstwerk’s poem (libretto), since it would be comprised of language, or, in Wag¬ ner s terminology, “word-speech,” was to express the poetic aim on the conscious level, to speak to the intellect of the audience members. By itself, then, the dra¬ matic poem could not fulfill the aim of the Gesamtkunstwerk since it could not reach the unconscious. Something was needed that could reach through the emo¬ tions to the unconscious and that something was music. Music, or, in Wagner’s terms, “tone-speech,” can never express that which can be comprehended by the reason alone (thought); but it expresses the very thing word-speech cannot (emotion) (Works 2:316-17). Having the word-text sung rather than spoken, and having it underscored and commented upon by the orchestra, would give it emo¬ tional connotations language alone was incapable of having. Since music addresses the all-important unconscious, it might be asked why Wagner did not choose to dispense with the word-text altogether. But music is as incapable of expressing the poetic aim as is poetry. Even in her most infinite enchantment, [Music] still is but emotion; she enters in the train of the ethical deed, but not as that Deed itself; she can set moods and feelings side by side, but not evolve one mood from out another by any dictate of her own Necessity;—she lacks the Moral Will, (iWorks 1:123)

The poetry reaches the conscious and music the unconscious of the audience; both are needed to reach the whole human being. The arts of dramatist and com¬ poser interlock. This completion of the one art by the other is another example of yab-yum in Wagner’s thought. Although Wagner never ceased in his attempt to perfect the operatic form, in mid-career he came to believe that if he were to succeed, he must begin to pay as much attention to reforming the theater as the text. It would accomplish nothing for him to create a Gesamtkunstwerk on paper (which is to say as a poten¬ tiality) only to have it fail in realization due to the faulty theater production prac¬ tice of his day. I . . . became plainly conscious of how imperative a necessity it was to me ... to busy my¬ self about the formation of that artistic organ through which I might impart my aim to others. This organ was the theater, or better still: the Art of stage portrayal, which I recognised each day more clearly as the only redeemer of the Poet, who through it alone can see the object of his Will contented in the certainty of physically-accomplished Deed. (Works 1:350)

He began to write incessantly of the changes needed in production practice, and attempted, albeit most often unsuccessfully, to put such changes into effect whenever he had a measure of control over the production of one of his works. Wagner stipulated that full dramatic rehearsals must precede the choral ones, that not until the performer had mastered a role as an actor should he or she be

30

Richard Wagner

allowed to sing it (Works 3:172-73). Once in the musical rehearsals, Wagner insisted upon drilling the performers until a precise correspondence of gesture and facial expression with the orchestra, not merely in terms of synchronization but also in terms of tempo and duration, could be attained (Works 3:192). He wanted to replace the stylized acting of his day with simplicity and naturalness. During the first production of Rienzi, the tenor singing the title role expressed “indignation at Wagner’s demand that he should express in his acting the mean¬ ing of the words he was uttering” rather than striking the customary poses (Skel¬ ton, 36-37). Wagner did not see all this exacting rehearsal as contrary to the principle of the fellowship of artists but as a means to achieve it. The ultimate aim of re¬ hearsal was to make “the performer a fellow-feeling, a fellow-knowing, and fi¬ nally from his own conviction, a fellow creative partner in the production” (Works 3:192). What is suggested herein is that the poetic aim was not something the group of artists started from but something they worked toward. Not being an intellectual content, a “meaning” in the denotative sense, it was not something that could be articulated fully. Only the completed work of art itself could ex¬ press it. Rehearsals were the environment in which the performer could discover the poetic aim for himself or herself. Wagner’s interest in performers’ rehearsals was not limited to those of the principals; he deplored the customary treatment of the chorus whereby “the choir and supers march upon the stage in double file, draw the favorite serpentine curve around it, and take possession of the wings like two regiments of well-drilled troops in wait for further operatic business.” He sought a greater naturalness for the members of the chorus as well as for the leading performers, to be manifest in an increased degree of individuation. “The entry . . . must be so ordered as to thoroughly imitate real life, in its noblest, freest forms. . . . The more varied and unconstrained are the groups of oncomers, divided into separate knots, . . . the more attractive will be the effect of the whole Entry” (Works 3:193). Likewise, in Wagner’s mind, the scenery and costumes must not be mere superfluous trappings existing only to fulfill the requirement for spectacle, as was the practice of the day. The Dresden Opera thought Wagner highly unreasonable when he became infuriated at their plan to use a setting constructed for Weber’s Oberon to represent the Venusberg in his Tannhauser (Skelton, 42). Just as the word-poem and tone-poem must be married, so the scenery and costumes had to be the visual expression of the poetic aim. Wagner stated emphatically that a production would fail “unless the most punctilious carrying-out of every scenic detail makes possible a general prospering of the dramatic whole” (Works 3:192). Wagner was unable to put his ideas fully into practice until he acquired his own theater, mainly through the offices of the young King Ludwig of Bavaria, an ardent Wagnerite (Gutman, 326-30). This was, of course, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, a theater whose innovations in architecture and production practice have been adopted world-wide. Interestingly enough, what was radical about the

Richard Wagner

31

Festspielhaus’s architecture was its house (audience area), not its stage. Wagner was interested in modifying the audience space because he was interested in modifying audience behavior. At the time, women sat in the stalls eating their sandwiches, while the men generally stumbled into their seats after the second act had already started; the boxes had curtains across them which were drawn when their occupants wished to amuse themselves in some other way. (Amerongen, 28)

This is hardly a description of an audience likely to be receptive to the artwork of the future.The Festspielhaus is often referred to as the first modern classless theater, its fan-shaped, inclined seating arrangement, without the multiple levels of boxes and galleries that had been an indispensable part of theater architecture for centuries, being ascribed to Wagner’s democratic tendencies. Wagner was, without doubt, interested in insuring that his audience would be a united whole, a community, and so would have wanted to remove any barrier, architectural or socioeconomic, that might have undermined audience coalescence. However, the primary reason for the seating arrangement was Wagner’s desire to create a theater which lived up to its name— theatron in the Greek, meaning a place for seeing. The condition that Wagner placed on the Festspielhaus architects was that every seat should have an equally good view of the stage (Gutman, 339). The stage of the Festspielhaus, on the other hand, was not innovative, but a standard nineteenth-century proscenium-enclosed, raked affair. Wagner felt no need to alter this design since it served his function so well. The proscenium rakedstage theater was, after all, based on the Italian Renaissance optical trick of forced perspective, the object of which was to focus the attention of the audience on the center of the stage. The design of the Festspielhaus, rather than altering this plan, reinforced it. Wagner was ecstatic when one of his architects hit upon the idea of constructing not one but two proscenium arches, the one set within the other. This double proscenium emphasized the visual lines of force, strengthen¬ ing the focus of the audience on the stage. The design of the proscenium was then carried into the decor of the house itself so that the effect was one of multi¬ ple proscenium arches, which gave the viewer the sense of looking through a series of concentric openings, the cumulative effect of which was to draw the eye irresistibly to the stage. (Wagner no doubt hoped thereby to better hold the attention of an audience easily distracted.) This focusing of attention through op¬ tical means was aided by the simplicity of decor in the Festspielhaus, in marked contrast to the rococo omateness of most theaters of the day (Works 5:335). One of Wagner’s innovations in theater practice carried this notion of focus¬ ing the audience’s attention even further. The lines of the Festspielhaus house and stage might form a strong visual attraction toward the stage, but nothing at¬ tracts the human eye more surely than light. Therefore, during performances, Wagner simply turned off the lights in the house so that the only source of light would be the stage (Works 6:104). Modern audiences take this practice so very

32

Richard Wagner

much for granted that it would seem remarkable to them were the house lights not turned off during performance. Dimming the lights in the house, like having seats which afford a proper view of the stage, seems a basic prerequisite for a successful theatrical experience. However, the earliest theaters from the Theater of Dionysus to the Globe, had been built for outdoor performances to be given during the day when the sun shone on audience and actor alike. When theater moved indoors, the uniformity of the sun’s light was imitated in the artificial light¬ ing of the structure; whether torches, paraffin, or gas, it burned in the house as well as on the stage. To be sure, attempts were made to make the light on the stage stronger than that in the auditorium, but before Wagner no one it seemed had thought of turning the house lights out altogether. These conventions of the theater indicate the implicitly reflexive character of the theaters prior to the nineteenth century. The idea that the audience should be made to forget it was in a theater and should become totally absorbed in the event unfolding on the stage without the conscious awareness that it was an event unfolding on a stage was unheard of prior to the romantic era. So far, it has been shown that Wagner sought to create a compelling attrac¬ tion for the eye to the stage. Conversely, he wanted to eliminate anything which might distract the audience’s attention, break the illusion, and remind the audience where it was. This desire led to another of Wagner’s innovations which has be¬ come commonplace: the sunken orchestra pit. The audience could hardly be ex¬ pected to give its full attention to the action on the stage if in front of the stage there was a forest of gyrating, huffing and puffing musicians. It was not only the fear of visual distraction, however, that made Wagner adamant about hiding the orchestra from view; he feared that the sight of the orchestra in the process of producing the music would destroy the music’s intended effect. It will be remembered that the music was to work upon the emotions of the audience and thereby reach its unconscious. If the musicians were before the eyes of the au¬ dience, if the audience was constantly aware of the orchestra’s existence, the music could hardly be expected to fulfill its part of the poetic aim. By hiding the or¬ chestra, Wagner made the music disembodied, sourceless, and thus the emana¬ tion from the dream-world it was intended to be (Works 5:334). The introduction of the sunken orchestra pit meant that between the front row of seats and the stage itself there was a vast opening, a gaping hole in the floor. Wagner deemed this space fortuitous, christening it a “ ‘mystic gulf,’ be¬ cause it had to part reality from ideality” {Works 5:334). All of these innova¬ tions were intended to produce in the audience member a tremendous receptivity, the ideal aesthetic condition in Wagner’s mind. The success of this arrangement would alone suffice to give an idea of the spectator’s com¬ pletely changed relation to the scenic picture. His seat once taken, he finds himself in an actual “theatron,” i.e. a room made ready for no other purpose than his looking in, and that for look¬ ing straight in front of him. Between him and the picture to be looked at there is nothing plainly

Richard Wagner

33

visible, merely a floating atmosphere of distance, resulting from the architectural adjustment of the two proscenia; whereby the scene is removed as it were to the unapproachable world of dreams, while the spectral music sounding from the “mystic gulf,” like vapours rising from the holy womb of Gaia beneath the Pythia’s tripod, inspires him with that clairvoyance in which the scenic picture melts into the truest effigy of life itself. (Works 5:335)

The perfect aesthetic experience was not yet ensured, however. There was still the problem of interruptions during the performance, interruptions which would destroy the unity and break through the illusion. Therefore, at the Festspielhaus there was a prohibition against applause. It was the custom of the day for the audience to applaud a well-performed aria or even the first appearance upon the stage of a well-loved diva. Nor was this practice limited to the opera but pervaded all the performing arts. The nineteenth century was the era which saw the birth of the star system. That Wagner would have found such applause in the middle of a scene intrusive is understandable, but his prohibition extended even to the applause at the end of the performance and the curtain call it would normally accompany (Brockett and Findlay, 31). Wagner no doubt felt that al¬ lowing an ovation would have been a tacit admission that the performance had after all been only a performance. The audience, while expressing its admiration for the work and paying homage to the artists, would also be alienating itself from the aesthetic experience. Using Wagner’s own image, applause would dis¬ pel the mystic fumes and refute the oracular nature of the event. By denying the audience the opportunity of releasing its emotions, Wagner forced it to retain the mood induced by the work. Another form of interruption could not be solved with a simple prohibition. As has already been shown, Wagner felt that the only theater production worthy of the name was a fully-realized one, one with complete settings, costumes, and props. This meant that Wagner was faced with the disruption of scene changes. Obviously, he would not abide a break in the action while stage hands came out and moved things about before the eyes of the audience. The solution, however, was not simply to ring down the curtain and suspend the performance while the change was effected. The “caesura” caused by a lowered curtain would have destroyed unity no less than the appearance of a stage hand. Instead, Wagner challenged his designers to create a means of shifting the scenery that was as much a part of the aesthetic event as the settings themselves. In other words, scene changes were to be part of the dramatic action. This artistic shifting of scenery Wagner called “scenic dramaturgy” {Works 6:311). The orchestra would play the bridge composed by Wagner to mark mu¬ sically the change of scene; in perfect synchronization with this music, the old setting would disappear and the new one appear. An example of this is the sud¬ den disappearance of the Venusberg and appearance of the meadows in Act I of Tannhauser. To facilitate this scenic dramaturgy, Wagner had one unusual device installed on his otherwise commonplace stage: steam jets were scattered

34

Richard Wagner

throughout the stage floor (Brockett and Findlay, 31). When needed, great jets of steam could be expelled up onto the stage, not only masking the mechanics of the change, but also giving a misty, dream-like look to the action. With the help of this mist, then, the scenery would appear to dissolve and reform, or bet¬ ter, evaporate and condense. The audience would thus “be led quite impercepti¬ bly, as if in a dream’’ from one scene to the next (Compendium 272-73). In the final analysis, all of Wagner’s reforms and innovations, whether in the word-text, the tone-text, or production practice, had no other reason than to effect the poetic aim. By creating a unified, continuous and complete illusion on the stage, Wagner expected to elicit from the audience an absolute emotional in¬ volvement which would be the condition necessary for the recreation of the truths of the unconscious. He strived to fulfill Schopenhauer’s aesthetic demand that art eliminate the subject/object relationships in order to arouse in the audience member “an irresistible empathic response” which would impel him or her to the final stage of moral evolution (Brockett and Findlay, 31).

2

The Connecting Links Wagner died at the pinnacle of his career. Bayreuth had, in the few short years of its existence, become the cultural mecca of Europe. “The entire universe was seen and judged by the thought of Bayreuth. ’ ’1 But the era the composer epitomized was already fading away. A new world view and its concomitant aesthetic, di¬ ametrically opposed to those of romanticism, were rapidly replacing his. In liter¬ ature and the theater, this world view was expressed in the movements called “realism” and “naturalism.” What Wagner had often foretold and most feared for the theater was coming to pass. The appearance of Zola’s Therese Raquin predated the first full performance of the Ring by three years, and Parsifal received its first production in the same year Ibsen’s Ghosts was translated into German (Brockett and Findlay, 60, 71). In the remaining quarter of the century after Wagner’s death, new voices came to dominate the theater. Most prominent among them were Ibsen, Strind¬ berg, Zola, Hauptmann, Chekhov, Gorki, and Tolstoy. Their goal of exact dupli¬ cation of everyday life, their emphasis on heredity and environment as causal agents, their interest in the new field of psychology, and their concern with con¬ temporary social issues were in direct contrast to Wagner’s quest for the eternal, the metaphysical, the mythic, expressed in a synthesis of music and dramatic poetry; and so Bayreuth might have become the sarcophagus of Wagner’s ideas rather than the cradle of the “Artwork of the Future” he had intended had it not been for the work of two men—Georg II, the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, and Adolphe Appia.

The Duke of Saxe-Meiningen Little more than fifty miles to the northeast of Bayreuth lies the town of Meiningen, capital—in Wagner’s day— of the tiny duchy of Saxe-Meiningen, and there was frequent intercourse between its ruler and Wagner. The Duke had lent Wagner his highly respected court orchestra for the opening of the Festspielhaus; and he and his wife, the Baroness von Heldburg, attended the premiere (Koller, 20). In return, Wagner and Cosima made several journeys to Meiningen in 1877 where

36

The Connecting Links

they were warmly received by the Duke and Baroness (Gutman, 397). The rea¬ son for this exchange was in great measure personal affection: as a young wom¬ an, the Baroness, then Ellen Franz, had been a student of Cosima’s first husband, the conductor Hans von Biilow. During her study, she and Cosima had become close friends. Indeed, Cosima was among those who interceded with her parents on her behalf when she later chose the theater rather than music as her career (Grube, 24-25). In the years that followed, Ellen Franz established herself as an actress, play¬ ing in various companies throughout Germany. In 1867, she was persuaded to join the ducal theater company at Meiningen, lured not by a greater salary but by the high caliber of production in the duchy. It is safe to presume that she was surprised to discover that the person directly responsible for the quality of the¬ ater in Meiningen was none other than the Duke himself. It was hardly unusual for a prince to have a court theater; most in Germany did. Nor was it unusual for the prince to take an active interest in the work of his theater. It has already been shown that Wagner’s ability to accomplish his dream was due in large part to the unfailing support of his royal patron. But entirely without precedent was Georg II’s action in 1870: he appointed himself Intendant of his own theater, a position comparable to the artistic director of today (Grube, 27-35). Assuming this position was not the whim of a royal dilettante; the Duke car¬ ried out the duties of Intendant with much greater conscientiousness and, as will be seen, much greater artistic vision than could then be found in practically any German theater. But this dedication to his theater did not cause him to shirk his responsibilities as a monarch. Throughout his long life, he ruled his duchy ably, and participated with his fellow princes in the affairs of greater Germany. Dur¬ ing the Franco-Prussian War, for example, the Duke took his place as a general in the field. In this capacity—and to his credit—the Duke carefully negotiated the peaceful surrender of Chartres when his superiors had ordered the city shelled. But even at such a momentous point in history, the Duke’s heart was elsewhere. Bismarck had to reprimand him for using the field telegraph “to send messages anent the concerns of the state theater” (Koller, 62). To enable him to fulfill the duties of his two professions—the one inherited, the other chosen—the Duke maintained a rigorous schedule. After spending each day in affairs of state, he would begin to conduct rehearsals in the early evening and would not conclude them until late at night or even the wee hours of the morn¬ ing. He was thus often in the company of his actors, including the talented, intel¬ ligent, well-educated Ellen Franz. After several years of working together, the Duke and the actress developed an attachment for one another that led in 1873 to their marriage and one of the most successful collaborations in all art (Grube, 27). In the following year, the company made its first appearance away from home, presenting a short season of plays in Berlin. The German capital was as¬ tounded by the tiny provincial troupe (Grube, 58). By the time of the Wagner visits to the duchy, the Meininger, as the Duke’s company had come to be known.

The Connecting Links

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was the most famous company in the country; soon it was to be the most respected troupe in the world (Brockett and Findlay, 32). While the Wagners’ visits to the royal couple were prompted by the strong personal attachment between the wives, Wagner and the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen were doubtless drawn to one another by their common interests and, as will be seen, their common attitudes and methods. The Duke’s work at Meiningen, like Wagner’s at Bayreuth, was built on a desire to establish a unified art of the the¬ ater in the place of the slipshod practices then current. At that time, not only in Germany but throughout the Western world, the controlling factor in the theater as in opera was the “star system,” whereby a production was mounted for the sole purpose of displaying the talents and/or beauty of the leading actor or ac¬ tress. Roles were assigned according to the Fach book, whereby each actor had a right to any role which was deemed to fall under the category of his or her character specialization (e.g.. Youthful Hero, Innocent Naive, Sentimental Heroine). Once a role was in an actor’s personal repertoire, he or she might per¬ form it in theater after theater, with company after company. Yet it did not occur to anyone that this change in circumstance might call for a change in interpreta¬ tion. An actor played Othello the way he had learned the part—no matter who might be playing Iago. The supporting actors were expected to be self-effacing, and simply melt into the background. Some stars went so far as to have the effec¬ tive speeches and scenes of a secondary actor deleted so as not to detract from his or her own predominant position. As Roller states, “That drama was made up of an interplay of many characters, and that a smaller role might add to the effectiveness of the whole production, does not seem to have occurred to the aver¬ age management” (7). All elements of production were expected either to enhance the star or else be unobtrusive. There was no director in the modern sense of the word. “The Regisseur was nothing more than a ‘monitor,’ as he was known in the eighteenth century” (Grube, 16). Wagner’s careful rehearsals at Bayreuth were exception¬ al; the usual rehearsal was a “walk-through,” in which cues, entrances and exits were set but no acting occurred. Probably the most respected theater troupe in the United States at this time was that of Edwin Booth, and yet the diary of one of its young actresses reveals that a four-hour period was considered sufficient time to rehearse three of Shakespeare’s tragedies. After ten days of such rehear¬ sals, the company was deemed ready to perform.2 Acting was little more than a matter of effective line readings; stance, gesture, and facial expression were, as in the case of Wagner’s indignant Rienzi, a matter of convention. The arrange¬ ment and movement of actors on the stage was in no way related to the dramatic action, but merely served to present the star to best view. Antoine, the pioneer director of the realist school, complained of the habit of having two actresses, seemingly engaged in conversation, never once look at one another but only at the audience; of actors who would place themselves squarely downstage center in front of the prompter’s box to declaim monologues; and entrances and exits

38

The Connecting Links

that were made with no other thought than to elicit applause from the audience (Simonson, 282). Since many of the plays that held the German stage of the day were histori¬ cal pageants which contained many scenes requiring crowds, supernumeraries were frequently used. But in a theatrical situation where a Horatio or even a Polonius received scant attention, it is not to be wondered at that “extras” received almost none. Antoine describes the typical stage crowd of the day as being com¬ prised “of elements gathered at random from artisans, engaged only for the dress rehearsals, badly dressed, and little practiced in wearing bizarre or awkward costumes” (Waxman, 95-96). With little more instruction than when to enter and leave, where to stand, and otherwise to remain motionless, these extras were sent onto stage where, as the Duke noted, their most characteristic action was to stare self-consciously at the audience (Grube, 46). In other words, the mechan¬ ical extras of the theater bore a striking resemblance to the mechanical chorus of the opera about which Wagner had complained. But some producers dispensed with even this questionable element of verisimilitude and instead had the crowd painted on the backdrop (Grube, 14). The scenic elements fared no better. There were stock costumes thought suffi¬ cient to cover all needs. Stanislavsky was caustic in his description of the practice. There were only three styles in vogue at the costumiers’ shops: “Faust,” “Les Huguenots,” and “Moliere”. . . . “Have you some sort of Spanish costume? . . .” was the question usually asked. . . . “We have Valentines, Mephistos, and St. Bries of all colors,” was the usual an¬ swer. (198)

The stars, as could be expected, chose their costumes for attractiveness, no mat¬ ter the role. In romantic parts, men wore some sort of “Byron” shirt; women maintained the fashionable silhouette of the day at all costs, leading to the ludi¬ crousness of crinolines worn under a supposedly classical garment. It seems to have occurred to no one that it might have been appropriate to design a costume specifically for a character. “At best,” writes the distinguished American scene designer Lee Simonson, “the general effect achieved was that of the usual costume ball” (295). Scenery was given even less attention than the costumes. There was a com¬ mon stock of generic settings such as “the ‘wild’ and the ‘open’ forest scene, the ‘free tract of country,’ the Park, the ‘old German’ and the ‘modem’ city, the ‘hall of the knights,’ etc.” (Grube, 10). Wagner’s notion that the Venusberg required its own particular setting and could not be served by the same one used in Oberon would have met with as much incredulity in the theater as it had at the Dresden Opera. It never occurred to the director to have a set designed for a play or to make sure that a poetic work should have its own characteristic scenery. ... We all had to satisfy ourselves with a backdrop on which buildings were painted and with stock wings which were pushed toward the center of the stage. (Grube, 10, 115)

The Connecting Links

39

The backdrop and wings mentioned above were the standard components of the scenery of the day. The drop and wing setting was an outgrowth of scenic innovations introduced during the Italian Renaissance and had, in fact, changed little since the seventeenth century.3 The backdrop was painted in forced per¬ spective with its vanishing point almost always in the center. The design was then continued onto the wings, smaller pieces of two-dimensional painted scenery usually placed parallel to the footlights. These pieces were most often arranged symmetrically in pairs, one at each side of the stage, so as to form a pattern of regular intervals, closer together upstage, farther apart downstage, in order to emphasize the forced perspective of the backdrop. The stage picture was, then, comprised of a series of overlapping planes, much like the stereoscopic picture seen in a Disney “Viewmaster.” For interiors, the box set was sometimes used. In a box set, the pieces of scenery follow more or less the configuration of a room. The backdrop represents the main wall of the room; but instead of wings, two-dimensional pieces of scenery connect the edges of the backdrop to the sides of the proscenium to form the room’s side walls. In order to maintain perspective, however, these side walls intersect the drop at obtuse rather than right angles, opening out towards the downstage area. The fourth wall in a box set is, of course, the proscenium opening. Usable doors and windows can be cut into the wings or walls of such a set. Three-dimensional pieces such as a table and chairs could be brought on¬ stage when absolutely necessary. But the general rule was that any detail of scenery that did not have to be practical (i.e., usable by the actors) was painted. (This led to such absurdities as a rose bush painted on a flat with one plastic rose stick¬ ing out from it for the actor to pick.) Trees, rocks, and castles were painted on the drops and wings as were nonpractical windows, furniture, and bric-a-brac. The Duke of Saxe-Meiningen pointed out that these scenic practices necessitated that the playing area be confined to a rather narrow strip at the front of the stage, just behind the footlights, in order to maintain the illusion of perspective. If an actor moved too far upstage, he said, it would be seen that the door of a house was no taller than his hip and that he could with no difficulty touch its chimney. It was also important, said the Duke, that the actor not come into contact with the scenery lest he jar it and thereby destroy the trompe I’oeil illusion by betray¬ ing its flimsiness (Grube, 41-42). These were the conditions that compelled a prince, like the poet-composer, to try his hand at the reformation of theatrical production. At first glance, it might seem that the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen had less chance of success than Wagner who was, after all, a man of the theater. The Duke, needless to say, had no for¬ mal theater training; but his affinity for the theater was evident even in child¬ hood. He entertained his tutor’s children with his toy theater (Roller, 33). He also took part, with other members of the royal family, in plays produced pri¬ vately in the great hall of the castle (DeHart, 4). As a youth, his education in¬ cluded visits to most of the European capitals, where he was quick to seize the opportunity to visit the theater. He would then write his mother careful and high-

40

The Connecting Links

ly detailed descriptions of the productions he had seen, noting without hesitation what he approved and what he disdained. Even as a very young man, he had a very precise idea of what theater should be (Koller, 35). If the Duke received no formal training in the theater, the same cannot be said of art. His tutor early recognized his charge’s talent for drawing and wisely encouraged it. As he grew older, he was given advanced instruction by estab¬ lished painters. And just as he made a point of attending the theater in the cities he visited, he also eagerly studied the art and artifacts in Europe’s museums, galleries, and private collections. In visual design, the Duke was drawn to three very distinct styles. One was that of Dtirer and of the contemporary painter the Duke considered Durer’s equal and heir, Peter von Cornelius (Koller, 89). Another was that of the Italian High and Late Renaissance. And the final one was that of Japanese art which, after the exhibition at the Oriental Pavilion during the World’s Fair in Paris in 1867, had a profound impact on many of Europe’s ar¬ tists. These three influences were to prove decisive in the Duke’s theater work. Lacking practical experience in the theater, however, the Duke depended heavily on two professionals in his work as a director; one was his actress-wife, and the other Ludwig Chronegk, an actor in the company whom the Duke pro¬ moted to the post of Regisseur (Grube, 30). The directorship of the Meiningen the¬ ater was, then, tripartite in nature. Max Grube, a member of the company and the first to write its history, claims that each of the three had control over spe¬ cific aspects of production; but the recent studies of DeHart and Koller prove that the division of labor was not as rigid as Grube indicates. There is little dis¬ pute over Chronegk’s position: he was primarily an executor, carrying out the instructions of the Duke and Baroness. He was eminently qualified for this job, not only because he was an “old hand” in the theater having acted all over Ger¬ many for many years, but because he was an indefatigable worker with a talent for organization (Grube, 49). Moreover, he was highly appreciative of and com¬ mitted to the kinds of reforms the Duke was trying to institute. Although Chronegk held the title of Regisseur, he was in effect a combination stage manager, assis¬ tant director, and, later, tour manager. It was Chronegk who organized the re¬ hearsals and maintained them in strict discipline; but it was still the Duke who conducted them (Grube, 50). But while Chronegk may have been a lieutenant rather than a full member in a triumvirate, he nonetheless freely expressed his opinion about any and all matters pertaining to the theater, and his opinion was highly regarded by the royal pair (Koller, 77). More controversial is the question of the individual contributions to each production and to the overall success of the Meininger of the Duke and Baro¬ ness. Grube claims that the Baroness was in charge of all matters literary, that she in effect acted as the troupe’s dramaturge. The Duke’s responsibility, on the other hand, was to create the mise en scene in all its aspects. Grube goes so far as to say that the Baroness found the “soul” of a play and the Duke gave it a “body,” that she would reveal the dramatic significance of a play to her husband

The Connecting Links

41

who would in turn translate this significance into plastic terms on the stage (44). The Baroness did handle the textual research involved in mounting each produc¬ tion, corresponding with scholars to obtain their opinions on individual plays. And the Duke was, without a doubt, the creator of the mise en scene. He designed each setting, costume, and property himself; moreover, he conceived the arrange¬ ment and pattern of movement of the actors, or “blocking.” His strong visual sense and talent for pictorial composition were indeed the special gifts he brought to the theater. The Duke “saw the theater as an immense canvas on which he could reveal the most changing, the most beautiful, yet certainly the most transi¬ tory pictures” (Grube, 23). However, it is absurd to imply that the Duke needed the Baroness to explain a play to him. A boy who at sixteen had translated Mac¬ beth into German was hardly likely to be naive about dramatic literature in mid¬ dle age (Roller, 35). The Duke, as a matter of fact, began his reforms in the matter of the the¬ ater’s repertoire. The standard bill of fare in German theaters of the time con¬ sisted of farces, melodramas, inconsequential domestic comedies—pieces the Duke referred to as “bonbons.” These the Duke did not entirely eliminate from the Meiningen stage, recognizing, DeHart suggests, that they provided the company with a respite from the more rigorous demands of better plays (21). However, it was better plays—the finest in the world’s dramaturgy, both old and new—that the Duke sought for his stage. By far the playwrights best represented in the Meininger repertoire were Shakespeare and Schiller; but after these two came an eclectic mix which included Moliere, Sophocles, and Calderon, as well as such important German playwrights as Goethe and Kleist. A repertoire of the works of these writers, while laudatory for its high standards, would probably not strike a present day reader as particularly innovative. Roller points out, however, that the Duke displayed courage in basing his theater’s work so much on Shakespeare at a time (just after the Franco-Prussian War) when a rabid na¬ tionalism infected Germany (147). Even among the German playwrights, the Duke was innovative, often producing the least well known works of Schiller and Goethe; and Rleist’s works had all but disappeared from the stage at that time. It was less in the choice of individual plays than in the choice of the texts of those plays that the Duke proved himself a true innovator, however. The texts of the older plays in use on the German stage at that time were bowdlerized ones. The changes and omissions had been effected in some cases for political reasons. The ending of the version of Schiller’s The Robbers then in use, for example, had Hauptmann telling the bandits to go home and become good citizens (De¬ Hart, 91). But a great many of the changes had been made in order not to offend the acquired delicate sensibilities of a public which had given itself over to roman¬ ticism’s soft underbelly, sentimentalism. Scenes of violence, language considered crude or obscene, and the like had been struck or rewritten. The Duke of SaxeMeiningen was determined to restore these mutilated texts. But in this, he was not simply a pedant. He himself made free with texts during his career, rearrang-

42

The Connecting Links

ing scenes, cutting, adding, even assigning speeches to different characters. The difference is that whatever changes he made he did for the sake of the produc¬ tion, not for censorship. His one criterion in editing texts was “stageworthiness” (DeHart, 91-94). The Duke’s courage regarding texts is shown even more in his championing of the new drama of his day. Ibsen and his fellow Norwegian Bjornson were two of his favorites among the new generation of playwrights. In fact, Ghosts received its first German production on the Meininger stage at a time when it was refused a license elsewhere in the country because of its “immorality” (Grube, 50). The Wild Duck and John Gabriel Borkman (as well as the earlier romantic work, The Pretenders) were also undertaken by the Meininger. Not only the realist but even the more radical naturalist drama, such as Hauptmann’s Sunken Bell, Suderman’s Modest Happiness, and Tolstoy’s The Power of Darkness, were represented in the company’s repertoire (DeHart, 53). The Duke, having long since given up the reins of his theater, came out of retirement to direct Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra just months before his death (Roller, 187). This eclecticism was due, according to Roller, to the simple fact that the Duke “was one of the most liberal of German princes; besides, his curiosity was so intense and his interests so wideranging that he wanted to see everything old and new” (87). Although to this point the discussion has been of the Meininger repertoire, it would be more correct to refer to two repertoires: one when the company was in residence, another when it was on tour. The touring repertoire included almost none of the “bonbons”; but neither did it include very many of the newer pieces. An experimenter and risk-taker himself, the Duke was nonetheless determined that his troupe make a favorable impression on the general public, and so he care¬ fully selected showcase productions for the tours, eschewing any production that might be considered too unconventional either in text or in realization (DeHart, 37). This fact has no doubt contributed to the general but false estimation of the Duke as a romantic reactionary who staged only lavish productions of Schiller and Shakespeare. Another area in which there is disagreement about the relative contributions of the Duke and Baroness has to do with the coaching of actors. Grube states that while the Duke conceived the blocking, it was the Baroness who worked with the actors on individual characterizations, helping them to discover the moti¬ vations for their actions and the subtext of their lines. She would even, according to Grube, create a characterization in toto herself and then teach it to the actor cast in the part. Grube speaks of such an actor as the “speaking-tube” of the Baroness (43). However, Roller and DeHart both make it clear that the Duke took just as active a role in the work with the actors. “From the beginning of his theater activity, he entered into the closest association with the actors through reading and discussions . . . .Even after the baroness took up the work of school¬ ing the beginners, the duke never lost his interest in the actor as an individual” (Roller, 117-18). It was, for example, the Duke who recognized the extraordi-

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nary potential of the young Josef Kainz, who was to go on to become one of Germany’s greatest actors, and devised a program for him to help him overcome certain deficiencies of speech (Koller, 118). What is more to the point than whether it was the Duke or the Baroness who was most resonsible for the interpretation of roles in the Meininger productions is the direction that together they took in the matter of interpretation: they clearly went against tradition in their presentation of the grand romantic characters. Grube notes that prior to the Meininger production of The Maid of Orleans, the charac¬ ter of Joan was usually portrayed in a one-dimensional heroic mode. But the Meininger Joan, coached by the Baroness, “did not merely speak, a higher voice spoke through her. She walked forth as in a dream, and now and then ... she seemed to waken partially and be astonished at herself and to be frightened” (Grube, 106). She was, in other words, a fully developed three-dimensional charac¬ ter with changes of thought and emotion, sometimes enraptured by her mission, at other times uncertain. She was less a heroine and more a human being. The same can be said of the character of William Tell as the Duke directed Barnay to play him. In the Meininger production, Koller states, Tell was “an ordinary hunter,” without the “idealistic” and superhuman elements found in the usual interpretation of the role (163). The Duke frequently told the company that Tell was an ordinary man called upon to do extraordinary things—a description which could just as easily be applied to Joan (Koller, 120). The quality of the company’s productions can in part be attributed to the work¬ ing conditions established by the triumvirate at the court theater. Like Wagner, the Duke believed the “star system” to be antithetical to good production. He created an acting ensemble in which there was no hierarchy. During one season, for example, Amanda Lindner would portray Hermione in A Winter’s Tale one night but serve as a member of the crowd in William Tell the next (Koller, 214). When in later years, after the company’s reputation had been established, stars from outside Meiningen came to perform with the troupe, they were accorded no special treatment but were required to abide by the same rules that governed the permanent company. Therefore, when the well-established Ludwig Barnay became a guest member of the Meininger, he portrayed William Tell, Mark An¬ tony, and Orestes, “but he also carried a spear and cried ‘Fiesko, hoch!’ with the lowliest beginner” (Koller, 116-17). A production was never built around a star but grew out of the drama. Each character, no matter how small the role, was recognized as an integral part of the dramatic whole and therefore received as much thoughtful attention in rehearsals as did the protagonist. The Duke’s actual method of directing is worthy of note. It is clear that well before the first rehearsal, he had already realized the play in its entirety and in every detail—in his own imagination. For instance, at the bottom of his groundplan for the street setting of The Merchant of Venice, the Duke wrote several pages of notes which amount to a detailed scenario of the production’s action.

44

The Connecting Links On this side [i.e., downstage] of the dock is a beggar, who makes a profession of pulling the gondolas into the dock with a long stick with a nail in it. . . . Not far from him, a woman beggar, and two children. The children are cowering. Farther upstage across the canal are a woman water-carrier, who moves across the bridge, . . . and three citizens, who move . . . through the street .... Launcelot comes out of Shylock’s home— monologue as he approaches the bridge. During the last sentence of Launcelof s speech, [Old] Gobbo enters at (a) [a point marked on the groundplan] and comes slowly to the middle of the bridge. As he approaches it, it seems as if he does not know where to go. . . . (Koller, 124)

These notes do not concern themselves with the blocking only. The Duke spends quite some time on a digression concerning Shylock’s line, “My daughter . . . she hath the stones upon her, and the ducats!” Even if one thought of Padua instead of Genoa as the place where Tubal has been seeking Jes¬ sica, enough time would still have elapsed since the elopment . . . that this is NOT Shylock’s first return home since her departure. He has moved heaven and earth to find his daughter and, as we can see from the text, has even been to the doge. . . . Therefore, the words that he speaks as he goes out are not to be spoken as if he has just learned that his daughter is gone. . . . Since the departure of his daughter, these words come much more involuntarily to his tongue. . . . (Koller, 127)

The Duke’s carefully considered directorial “blueprint” was not written in stone, however. In the rehearsals, if a planned action or line interpretation did not seem to be working, alternatives would be tried. The Duke was open to sug¬ gestions from all members of the company, not only the Baroness and Chronegk. Barnay recalls impetuously arguing with the Duke in the middle of a rehearsal of Hamlet. The Duke had just given instructions for an entrance (with, it is in¬ teresting to note, an explanation of the reasons for his staging) when the actor burst out with a different interpretation of the dramatic situation. After consider¬ ing Barnay’s words, the Duke addressed the stage manager: “Herr Grabowsky, prepare the scene as Herr Barnay has described it. He is right and I am wrong” (Koller, 199-200). All rehearsals were acting rehearsals, not walk-throughs, and were conduct¬ ed until the Duke was satisfied, which meant that the rehearsal period often last¬ ed months with the Duke postponing the premiere time and again. Once the action had been established in the early rehearsals, the Duke only interrupted its flow to fix a serious problem. For the minor details, he took copious notes. He would discuss these notes with the Baroness after the rehearsal and she would expand them and pass them on to Chronegk who was to act upon them. Following is an excerpt from the notes taken during one rehearsal of The Prince of Homburg: Kainz is too well dressed. The duke wishes him to appear first without his sash; this, however, must be fitted with hooks, so that during the scene it can be quickly put on. . . . When Richard wakes him, Kainz is too quickly wide awake. He must say the words, “indeed, love,” as if still half-asleep, while he rubs his eyes. . . . Then he must realize he is not in his own room; he becomes excited, wild. . . . (Koller, 202)

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45

These notes show that no detail, no matter how small, escaped the Duke’s atten¬ tion. And again, as with the groundplan scenario, these notes go on for many pages. The Duke’s use of his most experienced actors as “extras” is indicative of the importance he placed on crowd scenes. He rehearsed his crowds with as much care as he did the other actors. Their movements were precisely choreographed; their utterances orchestrated. A prime opportunity for the effective management of a crowd can be found in the scene of Antony’s funeral oration. Every effect which the furiously inciting speech over Caesar’s bier was meant to exercise upon the mob was carefully planned and rehearsed. The gradual, attentive listening of the mob after the initial disinterest—for the warm, acceptable words of the honest Brutus continue to sound in their ears; the sudden swing to disapproval of the deed which Brutus had just defended suc¬ cessfully; the rising indignation, the emotion at the sight of Caesar’s bier, the wild greediness for the will; the frightening assent, “Yes!,” thundering from two hundred throats at the ques¬ tion, “You will compel me then to read the will?” ; the rebellion; the boundless fury of the aroused crowd—all this was carefully worked out. (Grube, 56)

It is no wonder the Berlin audience at the first Meininger performance, accustomed as it was to Forum mobs which were lifeless (either literally or figuratively), was astounded by this scene. It was not only as a means of making speeches more effective that the Duke employed his crowds, however; he used them as well to present the significance of actions in visual terms, as for example the murder of Caesar. When Casca stabs Caesar, the crowd around the Curia lets out a single, heart-shaking cry; then absolute silence follows. The assassins, the Senators, the masses stand for a minute as if under a spell, benumbed before the corpse of the mighty Caesar. Then a storm breaks forth, the movement of which must be seen, the roar of which must be heard, in order to realize to what height, to what power, to what profundity dramatic art can ascend. (Grube, 60)

In the coronation scene in The Maid of Orleans, the Duke used the crowd to build anticipation toward the climactic event. The activity and pitch of the mob rose in a crescendo as first one and then another dignitary arrives outside Rheims Cathedral, reaching its highest point when Joan appeared. At that point, “there broke out a frenzy of almost indescribable excitement, which irresistibly swept every member of the audience along with it” (Grube, 107). The attack of von Pappenheim’s cavalry in the third act of Wallenstein’s Death was likewise staged for its effect on the audience. Instead of a few extras marching on from the wings, as was the usual case, the Duke’s highly trained cuirassiers burst through the large doors in the upstage wall and rushed downstage, toward the audience, con¬ veying to them kinesthetically the sense of being overwhelmed as Wallenstein is overwhelmed (Grube, 95-96). The Duke was so convinced of the importance of well-orchestrated crowd scenes that he even created them where none were called for in the playwright’s

46

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text. For instance, the trial scene in The Merchant of Venice contained a crowd placed on a balcony upstage, whose job it was to respond to the various speeches of Portia, Shylock, and Gratiano with applause, hisses, and laughter as appropri¬ ate (Grube, 103). But often the crowd was added simply to give the impression of plenitude of life itself. In this same play, strolling mandolin players and sight¬ seeing Greeks—no doubt, refugees from Constantinople—intermingled with the play’s main characters (Koller, 156). In Romeo and Juliet, while Romeo talked to Benvolio about Rosalind, peddlers attempted to sell him fruit (DeHart, 29). When the curtain rose on Julius Caesar, the audience discovered a Forum full of Roman citizens and soldiers jostling for position, and the confrontation be¬ tween the tribunes and mob already in progress in their midst (Koller, 149). Although up to this point the discussion has been about “the crowd,” it should not be thought that the Duke treated it as a homogeneous mass. Quite to the con¬ trary, when he staged the Oresteia, the Duke chose the Wilbrandt translation in part because of its attempt “to individualize the chorus” (DeHart, 21). One of the novelties of the Duke’s mise en scene was that he broke up the crowd into a number of smaller groups. Each group contained one highly experienced actor whose job it was to train the younger actors and extras and lead them as the Duke’s lieutenant. The different groups would enter or leave the stage at different times and tempi. Care was taken that the members of each group did not stand in a line or adopt the same stance. “Soldiers” were warned against holding their lances at the same level since such a regular pattern would seem forced and unnatural (Grube, 45-46). The utterances made by the crowd were treated in like manner. Rather than speaking in unison, the crowd members spoke at different times and with different rhythms. The Duke sometimes wrote out separate lines for indi¬ vidual crowd members, and the order in which the individuals spoke was deter¬ mined according to voices—bass, soprano, tenor, or alto—so as to form a pattern of harmony or dissonance as the scene demanded. In sum, the Duke “brought to his crowd scenes such detail of characterization as was to astound the rest of the world” (Roose-Evans, 30). Rigorous rehearsals, ensemble acting, a disciplined corps de theatre—these methods of the Meininger resulted in a greater sense of unity than had been seen in the theater for quite some time. The Duke was equally careful in his design of the scenery and costumes. Each play required a new and distinct setting, one which would, as Wagner wished, be the perfect visual expression of the drama. But what was the unifying principle in the scenic investiture of a Meininger produc¬ tion? The one most often cited by historians is that of “historical accuracy,” refer¬ ring to the presentation of a play with a setting, costumes, and properties which are authentic replicas of items that would have been found in the era in which the play is set. The Duke, who had the temperament of a scholar, did indeed conduct extensive research before he executed his designs. If a particular known place was to be represented by a setting, such as the Forum in Julius Caesar, utmost care was taken to reproduce it exactly, using archaeological evidence as

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a guide. When Jacob Weiss produced his four-volume history of clothing, the first such work to be published, the Duke did not feel it was sufficiently compre¬ hensive. His concern went to the tiniest detail—the crest on a halberd, for example—as well as to the larger components (Grube, 47-54). The Duke was also adamant that authentic materials be used. At that time, brocades and other such heavy fabrics were usually simulated on the stage by light cheap materials, and fish net and glitter sufficed for “chain mail.” The Duke sent abroad for specially woven fabrics and had tinsmiths installed at the ducal palace to furnish armor and weapons. Once an accurate costume or prop was made, it still remained for it to be worn or used accurately. Each actor received detailed written instructions as to how a costume was to be worn. Actors were expressly forbidden to make additions or deletions or changes of any kind to their costumes (Grube, 50). All this attention to external objects helps to explain why the Duke of SaxeMeiningen is most often considered an aesthetic forerunner of the proponents of realism and naturalism in the theater. After all, Antoine and Stanislavsky ac¬ knowledged him as an inspiration. Not only did the authenticity of his settings and costumes seem in keeping with Zola’s demand for an environment reproduced from life, completely and objectively, but the Meininger’s restoration of graphic scenes and speeches to texts shares an affinity with the presentation of formerly taboo subjects by the realists. As has been shown, the troupe’s acting style antici¬ pated the psychologically motivated acting one associates with realism. It is not surprising, therefore, that an early commentator identified the two most notable qualities of a Meininger performance as “vitality” and iivraisemblance,'‘ (“Meininger” 501). There are those who agree that historical accuracy was the definitive quality of a Meininger production, but see in this the Duke’s flaw as an artist. The appli¬ cation of historical accuracy to theatrical production was, they say, based on a crucial misconception. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, for example, to mention one of the most frequently repeated plays in the Meiningen repertory, is not an historical document. Its reflection of manners is more Elizabethan than Roman. . . . The attempt to reproduce literally the sense of place so evoca¬ tively suggested in the verse can only strike a sensitive spectator as redundant, serving to limit rather than stimulate his imagination.4

The point is well taken; nonetheless, it is a mistake to characterize the entire oeuvre of the Duke as merely “accurate.” It is that kind of limited understanding of the work of the Meininger that prompted Chronegk to lament to Stanislavsky, “I brought them Shakespeare, Schiller, and Moliere, and they are interested in the furniture” (Stanislavsky, 197). As in the matter of textual accuracy, so in the matter of scenic accuracy: the Duke was not pedantic. His well-educated mind, it is true, preferred histori¬ cal accuracy to the anachronisms which so often found their sloppy way onto

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the stage of his day; but it was never an end in itself. He wanted only as much as would suffice to serve the drama, never so much as to obscure it. That had been his criticism of the work of Charles Kean, an English pioneer in the mount¬ ing of lavish, historically accurate productions of Shakespeare. As a young man the Duke had seen some of these productions and had written his mother that “he found the decorations excessive’’ (Koller, 52). The Duke, in fact, railed against the trend he saw in all arts towards exact duplication of the phenomenal world. “The most superficial naturalism now prevails,’’ he complained, “and our tasteless public allows itself to be bluffed” (Koller, 232). It should be remembered that the Duke’s artistic influences had been the Italian Renaissance, where he had learned harmony and balance; Durer, from whom he had learned restraint and honesty of emotion; and the Japanese, who had taught that less is more. Such a man is hardly likely to be the creator of extravaganzas which do no more than titillate the senses. And, in fact, not all Meininger produc¬ tions were noteworthy for a plethora of scenic details; on the contrary, every season contained what Grube calls “propless plays,” plays that were staged with a minimum of scenery and props (79). The Imaginary Invalid, The Learned Ladies, and Twelfth Night were so staged. Indeed, the latter “was given in a manner more simplified than anyone had ever seen before” (Grube, 62). Prior to this time, this comedy, as all of Shakespeare’s plays, was thought to require separate set¬ tings for all the indicated locations: seacoast, street, Olivia’s house, the court, etc. But, in the Meininger production, with the exception of two small rooms, put up quickly within the setting, the scene did not change during the whole performance. On the left stood Olivia’s house with a set of steps, over which honeysuckle entwined, leading to a second floor. Somewhat farther to the right in the background was a less prominent building, so that one seemed to find himself in a park intersected by a public road. (Grube, 102)

For The Imaginary Invalid, the Duke designed highly simplified sets and costumes with just a soup^on of the style of Louis XIV. This minimalist production, Frenzel said, “refuted the objection . . . that only the externals made the success of the Meiningen company” (Koller, 155). For him it seemed the paring down of the environment allowed the essence of the drama to reveal itself. Even the sug¬ gestion of period style was eliminated for some productions. The Duke mounted The Taming of the Shrew on a bare “Elizabethan” stage with one door and a small balcony (Koller, 171). And the Oedipus “trilogy” (i.e., Sophocles’ three plays dealing with the House of Laius) was mounted “without scenery, pauses, or scene changes; ... the staging was simple to the point of sparseness” (Koller, 60-61). The Duke’s restraint can also be seen in his subdued palette. He chose a single hue, a reddish brown known as Kassel brown, as the base tone of his sets. Against this bland wash, he would then place patches of the primary color. This allowed him to create dramatic significance rather than pretty pictures. For instance, in the courtroom scene in The Merchant of Venice, two areas of red

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stood out sharply: the judges’ robes on one side and Gratiano’s beret on the other (Koller, 96). In the case of A Winter’s Tale, although the mounting was lavish, any notion of historical accuracy was eschewed. This play was normally staged in costumes and scenery of the classical period because of the classical references in the text. This meant that the characters ‘ ‘were represented simply as statutes of the Glyptothek brought to life; rooms and clothing shone forth in cold whiteness” (Grube, 88). To the Duke’s mind, such a presentation did injury to the essence of the play; he saw it as “a tale in which an incredible plot demands an incredible world” (Koller, 169). The Duke set the play in the Middle Ages, not for any historical reason, but because he felt the fanciful and bright costumes of Botticelli best con¬ veyed the characters (DeHart, 35). For the Duke, ‘‘the important thing was that the eye feast on color” (Grube, 89). Indeed, if accuracy and authenticity were the Duke’s primary concerns, why is it that what the great realist director, Stanislavsky, remembered most about a Meininger production was its feeling? Recalling the scene in the Meininger production of The Maid of Orleans in which the English force the French king to do as they bid, Stanislavsky noted how forlorn the king seemed, his feet dan¬ gling from the too large throne; how the court gave the impression of desperately trying to maintain its dignity; how the arrogant English insinuated themselves; and how the movement of a single actor expressed the sense of loss and humilia¬ tion of an entire nation. When the unhappy king gives his demeaning order, which insults his own dignity, the courtier who receives the order tries to bow before he leaves the king’s presence. But hardly having begun the bow, he stops in indecision, straightens up, and stands with lowered eyes. Then the tears burst from them and he runs in order not to lose control of himself before the entire court. With him wept the spectators, and I wept also, for the ingenuity of the stage director created a tremendous mood by itself and went down to the soul of the play. (198)

The scene described by Stanislavsky is one created by a sensitive artist, intent more on ambiance than vraisemblance. The Duke created mood in his productions by a combination of many ele¬ ments in the mise en scene. One of these Wagner must have grudgingly approved: the reinforcement of the dramatic action by music. This was not the perfect mar¬ riage of literary and musical texts Wagner had called for, but an intelligent use of incidental music. Music was a regular feature of the theater of the day. It was the period of the melodrama, the original meaning of which was drama set to music. But as Grube says of the period prior to the Meininger, ‘‘In general, we then thought little of introducing music suitable to the characterizations of the play, let alone of writing a special composition for such a purpose” (114-15). The Duke’s “Wagnerian” use of music can be seen in this example from The Maid of Orleans. For the procession prior to the coronation, the Duke chose a small part of Brahms’s Variations on Haydn’s “Chorale of St. Anthony.” This

50

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melodic line, simply arranged, was repeated again and again, creating a sense of endlessness that heightened the tension of anticipation in the scene (Grube, 107). The Duke’s aural enhancement of the drama did not end with music, however. He was an innovator in the area of sound effects as well. The Duke would organize and orchestrate commotion backstage to suggest actions without actually presenting them, as in this description of The Massacre of St. Bar¬ tholomew. The ringing of the bells on St. Bartholomew’s night, the victorious song of the Hugue¬ nots . . . while nearby gay dance music rings out from the rooms of the Louvre—this chaos of sound was thrilling. The imagination painted all the terrors of the frightful night. (Grube, 65)

But the Duke possessed a sharper painter’s eye than musician’s ear. He re¬ lied, therefore, mainly upon the visual components of mise en scene to create mood. One of these in which he was a pioneer was light. The Duke was one of the first theater artists to consider light as an expressive element and not mere¬ ly as a means of illumination, and concomitantly one of the first to use shadow on the stage (Roose-Evans, 66). Today changing the intensity of light and con¬ trasting light and shadow are standard theatrical effects but in the Duke’s mise en scene they were “almost apocalyptic revelations of the possibilities of stage¬ craft at a time when every other stage was filled with a bland radiance and actors singed their trousers at the footlights in order to be seen” (Simonson, 289). An¬ toine noted the lighting effects of the Meininger, describing in particular how “a very beautiful ray from the setting sun . . . shone on the noble head of an old man dying in his armchair” and then suddenly “passed across a stained-glass window at the exact moment that the good man died” (“Antoine” 582). Gas lighting was at that time the main type of lighting in use, but electricity was spreading rapidly. The Duke primarily used a gas lighting system in his productions, but employed electric lights for special effects. One example of the Duke’s use of electric lighting can be found in Fiesko. The protagonist’s room was all black with gold appointments, its gloom an expression of his sense of confinement and dark discontent. But when he opened the drapes at the room’s large window, the city of Genoa could be seen brilliantly lit by electric light to simulate morning sun (Grube, 74). Hence, the object of Fiesko’s power lust was presented, quite literally, as a glittering prize. Gas and electric light differ not only in intensity; they differ also in quality, tonality. Since the light produced by gas or candles was the kind to which people were accustomed, it was used for natural and mundane lighting effects, while electric light was used as an other¬ worldly manifestation. An example of this can be seen in Julius Caesar. The set¬ ting for the scene prior to the Battle of Philippi consisted of the deep red tent of Brutus, lit dimly by candles. The actor portraying Caesar’s ghost, placed on stage before the scene began, was unseen because he wore a toga the same color as that of the tent and stood outside the dim light. At the moment that the ghost is supposed to appear to Brutus, an electric spotlight aimed at the ghost’s face

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was turned on (Grube, 61). What the audience saw was the sudden appearance of a disembodied spectral head, floating in a sea of (blood) red. From these examples, it should be clear that the Duke was concerned with the metaphoric, rather than the literal, value of the stage picture. That he created historically accurate sets is undeniable. But rather than insisting upon historical accuracy on all occasions, as many suggest, the Duke can be seen to have used the method selectively, for the quasi-historical plays of Shakespeare and Schiller, where such “realism” would serve to intensify the drama. When specific time and place were inessential to the drama, however, as in the comedic masterpieces of Shakespeare and Moliere, he chose a minimalist style. Thus, rather than being a director with one style (pictorial realism) as he is often portrayed, someone who forced a play into a scenic Procrustean bed, the Duke was, in fact, an artist who sought an appropriate individual style for each play he produced, and there¬ fore an artistic progenitor of the eclectic Reinhardt. Even in those productions which the Duke rendered historically accurate, authenticity was still not his first concern. The principle of historical accuracy was always adapted to the realization of the dramatic action, and never applied for its own sake. In Maria Stuart, for instance, he dressed the English court in the dark, stiff, heavy costume of the Elizabethan era while the French courtiers wore the pale, delicate clothing of their nation. This had the effect of creating a sharp visual contrast when both groups were on stage, symbolic of the basic conflict in the play. For The Merchant of Venice, the Duke created sets which were meant to recreate the Venice of the Middle Ages; but more importantly by filling his Jewish ghetto with “dilapidated houses” and “ragged washing hang¬ ing from lines,” the Duke gave a resonance to the character of Shy lock he had not had previously (Grube, 102). That the Jews were forced to live in such con¬ ditions explained, if not justified, Shylock’s cruelty. He could now be seen as a man rather than a monster. For the third act of Macbeth, the Duke designed an historically accurate set¬ ting which contained an anteroom in the downstage area that led through a large arch to the banquet room behind. The anteroom contained an opening in the floor for a staircase that led down into the traps, ostensibly to a lower floor of the castle. It was by means of this staircase that the murderer arrived to report on the mur¬ der of Banquo and escape of Fleance (Grube, 83). With the murderer half-revealed in the trap and Macbeth standing between the murderer and his guests upstage, it was plausible that Macbeth could have his conference with the murderer un¬ detected. But plausibility and historical accuracy were secondary to the symbolic power of this composition, which presented the murderer as emerging from a nether region, like some demon from hell conjured by Macbeth. Their place¬ ment on stage visually expressed their characters and relationship. Blocking, as well as scenic investiture, was designed by the Duke to signify the dramatic action. The opening scene of Hermannsschlacht calls for a Roman legion to enter a primitive German village.

52

The Connecting Links At royal theaters elsewhere it was the rule to send twenty or thirty supers, bright as tin Cae¬ sars, marching with the precision of Prussians on parade against a landscape backdrop. At Meiningen the invaders debouched through a narrow lane that barely allowed them to pass four abreast. . . . They entered down stage and disappeared up stage into the alley between the housefronts. What the audience saw most of the time was not a succession of faces but the sombre repetition of the backs of bucklers and helmets; the total effect was that of an almost imper¬ sonal, a relentless military machine. The power of an invader was dramatized as the play be¬ gan. (Simonson, 292)

It was this effect, and not the fact that the armor the Romans wore had been weathered as if by months of campaigning, that was the most important aspect of the mise en scene. Simonson believes that the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen’s claim to the title, “innovator,” lies in the fact that he revealed to the world that the life of a play did not become more real by imitating surfaces or by isolating the actor at the footlights, but by relating the actor so fundamentally to the backgrounds he moved in, to every object he touched, that these in turn refracted his presence and heightened his dra¬ matic importance. (306)

The interaction of setting and actors in motion to convey the dramatic action can be seen in the description of the taking of the harbor of Genoa in the last act of Fiesko. The obvious way of staging this scene is to show the harbour in moonlight and then bring on the usual soldiery from the wings to clash swords on an open stage for two minutes in fake fury. For the Meiningen production the stage was contracted to a shallow courtyard under the bastion wall, closed by an enormous iron-studded gateway. The stage was dim, faintly flecked with moonlight. The bottom of a tower was a guard-house; a few soldiers sprawled on its steps. Others dozed on a nearby fountain. Two narrow alleys led off stage. The night-watch passes. Silence of night. Peace. Suddenly from the other side of the gate the sound of distant alarmbells growing louder mingles with the ground-swell of an approaching mob. The guards pile out of the tower and grab their weapons as the attack on the portal begins. Thunder of weapons on wood. The iron ribs of the door hold up. The wood splinters. One sees the first besiegers, the moonlight at their back glittering on their pikes thrust through the breach. Hand-to-hand fighting through this narrow opening. A petard explodes. The gateway is sprung, the door tumbles. The attackers wedge the defending garrison into the narrow alleyways, where the melee con¬ tinues, and finally drive them off stage, where the noise of sword-play dies away. (Simonson, 292-93)

As described, this scene most assuredly possesses credibility as an engage¬ ment of arms. It also makes use of the same kinetic impact that was employed in Wallenstein’s Death—the movement of the attack is toward the audience. The success of the attackers is presented in concrete terms by having them drive the defenders off stage. But the most remarkable thing about this scene is that the stage picture itself serves as a metaphor for the action. Prior to the attack, the gate and wall stand intact, protective. During the attack, the gate is destroyed, allowing the harbor to be seen in the background. The hole where the gate had

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been serves as a frame for the harbor, “capturing” it visually, just as the men who had made the hole have captured it literally. Herein lies the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen’s contribution to the theater: he con¬ ceived of mise en scene not as pretty, not even as authentic, but as something that would signify. He sought to make the mise en scene bear the meaning of the dramatic action. By marrying dramatic action and pictorial composition, he created a moving picture. He gave to dramatic action the complete realization Wagner had called for but had lacked the requisite talent (i.e., visual) to effect himself. However, the Duke did not use his moving picture only to bring a dra¬ matic text to life; as will be shown, he took the first steps toward establishing the moving picture on the stage in its own right, independent of any literary text. And in doing so he laid the groundwork for the art of narrative film. If the scenery was no longer to be a background against which the actor stood out as in relief, but an environment in which the actors could actualize the dra¬ matic action, then the drop and wing setting would no longer suffice. As time went on, the Duke’s sets became increasingly three-dimensional. The Duke be¬ gan to conceive of stage space in architectonic terms; his sets, accordingly, were designed to motivate movement. Therefore, it was not that he gave his actors solid trees that could be leaned against without wobbling that made his use of three-dimensional pieces of scenery revolutionary; it was that he filled his stage with pieces that had to be climbed onto, or over, or around—steps and ramps, hillocks and fallen trees. These pieces, by necessitating vertical movement, by providing different levels upon which actors could be placed, not only gave the mise en scene more variety, but allowed the Duke to create visual metaphors for character relationships. By providing obstacles and confined areas within his set¬ tings, the Duke created the means by which dramatic conflict could be visually realized. The effect of this new conception of the stage space can be seen in Grube’s comparison of the Berlin and Meininger productions of Hermannsschlacht. The Berlin painter had pictured the Teutoberg Forest in a fitting manner with powerful tree trunks, but the ground on which these stood was level; it was plainly the stage floor. In the Meininger setting a giant fallen tree obstructed the narrow path, which the underbrush and bushes still left somewhat free. Varus and the Roman leaders were obliged to clear a pathway with great difficulty and to climb over the trunk. (72)

The difficulty the Romans have in the German forest anticipates the difficulty they will have with the German people. In Julius Caesar, the assassination was placed in a setting which made more emphatic use of vertical space. Its main component was a steep and wide set of steps. Caesar enters and begins to climb the steps, fending off each suitor (and visually overcoming him) as he climbs higher and higher. He is climbing, he thinks, towards the goal of his life—the imperial crown—but just before he reaches the top step, the assassins bar his way and Casca strikes the first blow. Caesar reels, and stumbles down a few

54

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steps. Then as blow after blow is inflicted, he falls lower and lower until his mutilated body lies at the foot of the steps.5 This mise en scene not only expressed Caesar’s rise and fall, but also the cowardice of the assassins who were shown striking their victim from above and behind as he was falling. The plastic stage may have increased the possibilities of mise en scene im¬ measurably, but it also exacerbated a problem with which the theater had been contending throughout its history—shifting scenery. Moving drop and wing scenery could be accomplished with relative ease. The wings were mounted on tracks in the stage floor which allowed scene changes to be effected by sliding one wing off and another on stage. The drop could also be mounted on tracks or it could be “flown” (i.e., raised and lowered from the space above the stage). Using the chariot-and-pole method of scene shifting devised by Torelli in the seven¬ teenth century, scene changes of wings and drops could be done smoothly (Brockett, 236). This was the way scenery was moved in most of the major theaters in Europe; it was the way scenery was moved at Bayreuth. In fact, Wagner’s “scenic dramaturgy” had consisted of adding music and mist to this old theater practice. However, solid step units, boulders substantial enough to be climbed, rooms filled with furniture, belongings, and bric-a-brac could not glide off stage as if by magic. They have to be broken down and carried off, after which equally solid pieces have to be carried on and assembled. This requires both time and manpower, and thus would seem to suggest that Meininger productions were frag¬ mented by those long intervals Wagner felt so destructive to the unity of a production. It would seem, then, that while Wagner and the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen were in agreement that unity was the primary aesthetic goal of production, they were not in agreement that continuity was requisite to that unity. But the Duke cannot be charged with disregarding continuity. What he sought was a workable compromise between what he (and, as a matter of fact, Wagner) considered two coequal needs of production—the need for full scenic realization of the environ¬ ment and the need for continuity of action. Therefore, the Duke designed his sets according to a principle already seen at work in the setting for Twelfth Night: a single setting should be general enough in suggested location to accommodate many scenes, diminishing the necessity for frequent scene changes (Grube, 82). For instance, the first four scenes of Macbeth were all played in one setting, “a rocky heath with a rather high knoll visible on the left” (Grube, 82). The same pieces of scenery that formed the rocks in this setting served as the super¬ structure for the various castles of the later scenes. Act III was played in the com¬ bination anteroom-banquet hall set already described. Such conflation is commonplace today, but not in the Duke’s period. Henry Irving, a contemporary of his known for his lavish productions of Shakespeare, was once constrained by a short preparation period to limit a production of The Merchant of Venice to only ten settings.6 Therefore, it should not be cause for surprise that the Berlin

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critic Frenzel, having identified seven separate sets used in the Meininger Julius Caesar, praised the production “above all else” for “the avoidance of frequent scene changes” (Grube, 52). The Duke was, in reality, an innovator in estab¬ lishing continuity in the theater, as Wagner had been; but where Wagner had used music to supply the continuity, the Duke used action. Between the acts of The Merchant of Venice, for example, the Duke created Italian street scenes of the hawkers, gondoliers, and tourists he had drawn from his extras so that the action of the play flowed almost without interruption (Grube, 103). The Imagi¬ nary Invalid was treated in a similar fashion. Between the first and second acts of this play, it is necessary that Argan’s room be set to rights. Nothing is easier than to ring down the curtain and have a stagehand perform this function, but the Duke sent Toinette, the maid, onto stage in full view of the audience to tidy the room so there would be no break in the action. The Duke, however, used this action bridge to accomplish more than a scene change; he made it part of the central action by having a pillow fight break out between Argan and the maid (Grube, 66). That this “scene,” which was not writ¬ ten by Moliere nor by anyone else, but created by the Duke and his actors of pure pantomimic action without recourse to dialogue, became one of the highpoints of the production was proof that the director was no mere “monitor,” but an artist, a creator in his own right. By interpolating into the text, for the sake of theatrical effectiveness, the Duke in effect placed the director on an equal (or nearly equal) footing with the playwright. The play was a work of art and the playwright its creator; but in the Duke’s hands the production also was a work of art, complete and unified, and he, the director, was its creator. Reinhardt, receiving his warrant from the Duke, was not only to proceed on the basis of this conception of equality between director and playwright, but was to go so far in some cases as to assert the director’s superiority over the writer, and there¬ by pave the way for cinema’s director-auteur. The methods and innovations of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen discussed to this point can be seen as the realization, refinement, or elaboration of many of Wagner’s theories. Most of these practices will find reinforcement and extension in the work of Appia and vindication in the productions of Reinhardt. However, there are other elements of the Duke’s mise en scene that, although quite pro¬ found in their effect upon the theatrical experience, have gone virtually unno¬ ticed by theater historians. The first of these elements might seem no more than the logical result of a plastic setting: composition in depth. The Duke arranged his actors in the center and upstage as well as in the usual downstage areas. But what is significant here is that the Duke used the plasticity of his stage as the painter that he was by education would use the fore-, middle-, and backgrounds of a picture. The groups or figures in the various “grounds” of the Duke’s mise en scene reverberated against one another and gained intensity and significance in the process. This interaction made the whole stage picture richer, more com-

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plex than it would have been had each group or figure been observed separately. This use of composition in depth can be seen in one of the scenes restored by the Meininger to the text of Macbeth, that of the murder of Lady Macduff and her son. For this scene, the Duke designed a setting which featured a long staircase along its back wall. Instead of having the murderers suddenly appear after the unknown messenger enters to warn of imminent danger, the Duke had them make their entrance at the top of the steps soon after Ross had left. Thus, during the whole interchange between mother and child, the murderers were stealthily approaching their victims from above and behind, creating a sense of dread in the audience that was accentuated by the appealing domestic scene in the foreground (Grube, 83). This scene is echoed in the staging of the first act of Fiesko. The Duke ignored Schiller’s stage directions which called for an in¬ terior setting and the business of Fiesko noting the suspicious movements of an intruding Moor in a mirror. Instead, the Duke set the action in a moonlit court¬ yard with two staircases leading up to the outer walls. As the main action of the scene proceeded downstage, the head of the Moor suddenly appeared on the top balcony, then disappeared, then reappeared again at a lower level “as the sinister guest, like a feline animal of prey, began little by little to creep down the steps” (Grube, 74). The Duke did not use composition in depth only to build suspense, however. In The Merchant of Venice, its use was ironic. Immediately after the scene in which Shylock gives his keys to Jessica and charges her to guard his house, Lance¬ lot Gobbo, having been sent on ahead to Bassanio’s, encounters a group of masquers. There follows a pantomimic scene in which the clown disports with them on the bridge over the canal. As this scene unfolds, a gondola comes into view passing from upstage right to downstage left. In it is the eloping Jessica (Grube, 102). In Maria Stuart, depth of field was used to convey the resolution of the drama. Both the first and final acts of this play were set in the throne room of the English court. The Duke had arranged this setting so that Elizabeth’s throne was placed stage left facing right. Thus, in the final act, as Mary stands before Elizabeth, the two queens face each other squarely, in profile, each commanding half the stage space. At the rear of this room on Mary’s side were two great doors, deeply recessed from the back wall. These doors had remained closed during the first act, but opened after the final confrontation of the two queens to reveal at an even greater depth a black foyer with a staircase leading down from the stage level into the traps. The finale of the production was the long, slow proces¬ sion of Mary through these doors, gradually receding from view, and then her equally slow descent down those stairs until she had vanished entirely (Grube, 100). Elizabeth remained in place on her throne, in her sphere of dominance, but where Mary had been was, quite literally, a black hole in space. The Duke’s use of depth of field was augmented by two other elements of his mise en scene: the use of diagonal lines, and the use of what might be termed

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visual synecdoche. Except for the work of certain early eighteenth-century Italian designers who composed the stage picture according to a principle they called scena per angolo, the stage picture had almost universally been composed with its lines of direction running parallel and perpendicular to the footlights. The Duke conceded that such rectangular composition was appropriate if one aspires to present a solemnly austere—one might even say ascetic—impression. . . . But the principal requirement of the stage is to reveal motion and the impetuous progress of action; therefore, in general, this arrangement is to be avoided, since it is stiff and retards the impres¬ sion of movement. (Grube, 40-41)

The Duke therefore used diagonal lines to make the stage a more dynamic space. The walls of an interior setting, such as the Macbeth banquet hall already described, were arranged so that the audience looked into a corner of the room with the two walls intersecting somewhat to the side of center stage in order not to form a symmetrical (and therefore static) picture. The diagonally com¬ posed setting and blocking for the first scene of Hermannsschlacht have already been discussed. The same principle was followed for the staging of the Battle of Philippi in Julius Caesar. The setting was of a dried-up river bed that divided the stage diagonally (Grube, 61). This gully served to separate the two armies and provided a suitably constricted location to make the hand-to-hand combat of a few actors appear a great battle. While the use of diagonals increased the dynamic potential of the stage and also enhanced and facilitated composition and depth, it should also be noted that it had another result: it extended the picture beyond the frame. The vanishing point of a diagonally composed picture is somewhere out of the view of the ob¬ server. The same effect was achieved by the Duke’s visual synecdoche, or the representation of a depicted object or location by a part, rather than the whole. The tops of the trees in the Hermannsschlacht forest, for instance, could not be seen, and only half of the cottage placed down right in the setting for the battle in The Prince of Homburg was in view; the other half was somewhere off stage right. The Duke specified that the temple in Iphigenia in Tauris should be placed downstage with its tall columns disappearing into the flies (Roller, 206). A par¬ ticularly striking use of this compositional technique can be seen in the Duke’s design for the coronation processional in The Maid of Orleans. This scene re¬ quires that Rheims cathedral be depicted. Before the time of the Duke, this was accomplished by painting the cathedral in its entirety on a backdrop, so that it seemed to be at some distance in the background from the action. But the Duke designed a setting that revealed only the great doors of the cathedral with its sides and spires continuing into the offstage areas. Once again this principle was ap¬ plied to the action as well as the setting. In his famous crowd scenes, the Duke always had the crowd extending offstage, giving the impression of greater num¬ bers (Grube, 70). The use of offstage sound effects and music already discussed

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likewise had the effect of carrying the action beyond the proscenium. In The Prince of Homburg he went so far as to stage the battle behind a hill and thus completely out of the view of the audience: the action was left to their imagination (Koller, 141). This continuation of the stage picture and action beyond the proscenium, like Caravaggio’s extension beyond the frame in painting, carries with it a radical change in the relationship between the perceiver and the work of art. Between the Renaissance and the time of the Duke, when it was the practice to depict the represented location in its entirety and to present all action before the eyes of the audience, the stage was a complete and self-contained world and the audience, therefore, omnipresent and omniscient. Such an audience could not but have had a feeling of certainty and security. Even the ambiguities of a Hamlet or Macbeth or Prince of Homburg must have been mitigated by such a stage realization. But the Duke’s mise en scene, like Wagner’s music, incorporates the unseen world, the unknown, that which is unverifiable by the senses. Much in it is suggested rather than actually revealed. The world presented may contain uncertainties and paradoxes. In such a theater, the audience may still sit “in the gods,”7 but it no longer has godlike powers of perception. The Duke of Saxe-Meiningen was no disciple of Wagner. He was, instead, an artist working independently to solve many of the same problems that con¬ fronted the poet-composer-aesthetician. It is interesting, then, that the two men of decidedly different temperaments and backgrounds came to many of the same conclusions. Therefore, it seems only appropriate that when theater historians write of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen’s work, they often draw an analogy to Wag¬ ner’s world, the world of music. Gorelik comments that “Meiningen seems to have visualized his productions as if each factor played its part like an instrument in an orchestra” (141). But it remains for Simonson to perceive the profound implications for the theater of the Duke’s mise en scene. The Duke’s productions were unified as no productions had been previously, but this was all the more remarkable because they were also more complex than productions had ever been. The unity achieved is not that of an outline, of the simple melodic line in duets and trias, in arias of oratorios answered by choruses. It is analogous to the less symmetrical pattern that characterizes all other forms of modern art, like the unity of painting that makes a richer whole of complex colour-contrasts and opposing forms, the unity of polyphonic musical composi¬ tions where the intricacies of counterpoint enrich simple harmony, where dissonance is related to melody and an immense range of timbres combines to make an orchestral whole. (307)

The final word on the place of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen is Wagner’s. Found inscribed in one of the poet-composer’s books in his own hand was this estima¬ tion of his princely neighbor: “There are many opinions— but only one Meinin¬ gen. No matter how many have crossed my path, I know only one Duke” (DeHart, 183).

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Adolphe Appia The Duke of Saxe-Meiningen was an artist, not an artist-aesthetician like Wag¬ ner. He did not write books or essays justifying his new conception of mise en scene. Perhaps for this very reason most people failed to realize the implications of his art and saw only “the furniture.” It remained for another to construct the theoretical underpinnings for the Duke’s art and to explain the revolutionary aes¬ thetic significance of his innovations. That person was Adolphe Appia. As Simon¬ son put it, “Appia expressed in dogmatic form much of what the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen had demonstrated pragmatically” (357). From this remark, one might be misled to think Appia some protege of the Duke who tried to codify his master’s work. In point of fact, the two men never met and, it seems, were unaware of each other’s work. Appia’s biographer, Volbach, notes with surprise that Appia seems never to have attended even one Meininger performance despite his ample opportunity; he studied at Leipzig, a city not far from Meiningen, and afterwards lived in or near many of the cities where the company toured (27). Yet Appia, who scrupulously documented all the productions he witnessed which had an influence on the development of his aesthetic ideas, is silent on the subject of the Duke’s world-famous company. It would seem that just as Wagner and the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen had developed independently their similar concep¬ tions of a unified theatrical art, Appia and the Duke, also independently, hit upon many of the same methods for achieving that unity in the mise en scene. In his books and essays, Appia may have unintentionally written an explica¬ tion of the Duke’s art; but what he had set out to write, intentionally, was an addendum to the works of Wagner. Appia was a young music student and de¬ voted Wagnerite when, in 1883, he set off on his first pilgrimage to Bayreuth (Volbach, 27). There he saw Parsifal, the last production staged by the master and the one in which he felt he had at last achieved his aims. But his young Swiss disciple went away sorely disappointed. The reasons for his disappointment are not hard to discover. The innovations at Bayreuth, it will be remembered, were in the house; the stage and the staging at the Festspielhaus differed in quality but not in kind from what could be found in any other opera house in Europe. The boat that bore Tristan and Isolde was rendered in the illusionistic style; the depth of the Rhine was a conventional painted back drop; and Siegfried found Briinnhilde in a cardboard cut-out forest before a painted sun (Volbach, 43). “In¬ stead of the mystical pictures conjured up in his mind’s eye by the music, [Ap¬ pia] saw a succession of conventional, literalistic stage scenes inappropriate to the Wagnerian mood.”8 The mise en scene at Bayreuth demonstrates the limits of Wagner’s vision; he failed to perceive that illusionism, the scenic aesthetic of the day which he had whole-heartedly embraced, was in actuality inimical to the presentation of the dreamworld his word-tone poems evoked. Appia bemoaned “the disparity

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between the score and its realization on the stage, . . . [which] . . . gives to the visual production an artistic value so inferior to that of the score that the drama loses its integrity in performance” (Music 108). The result of this disparity was a lessening of the work’s intensity, the quality Appia deemed most important in art. What are customarily called Wagner’s unreasonable demands regarding production of his works, the tours deforce he demands of the designer, the technician, and even the actor, are merely the result of an expressive intensity out of proportion in principle and in fact to the means of scenic representation. . . . Since the expression is much more intense than the means of visualis¬ ing that expression on the stage, the first always predominates, placing difficulties in the way of a unified production, which the existing methods of staging are incapable of overcoming. 0Music 112-13)

It was in an attempt to redress the failure of Bayreuth, the reality, to live up to Bayreuth, the conception, that Appia began to write. His first published work was entitled, appropriately enough, La Mise en scene du drame wagnerien (1893) (Volbach, 50). When this pamphlet did not have the desired effect of attracting the attention of Cosima, Bayreuth’s “regent” after her husband’s death, Appia wrote a second book, first published in German translation as Die Musik und die Inscenierung (1899), which expanded on the first (Volbach, 54). These books, and the books and essays that followed throughout Appia’s life, were marked by an absolute adherence to Wagner’s ideals. Like Wagner, Appia was convinced of art’s moral imperative: “to show man the way to greater fulfillment in life” (Volbach, 189). He called the new theater of his theories, therefore, the “cathedral of the future,” making explicit the reli¬ gious element inherent in Wagnerian aesthetics (Living 78). He reiterated the prin¬ ciple of the fellowship of artists. The move toward individualism in the arts was termed by Appia pernicious, while sacrifice was stated to be the most efficacious principle of the creative process. He echoed Wagner’s sentiments when he wrote, “The better one can obey, the better one can command. Mutual subordination will always remain the only substantial guarantee of the success of a collabora¬ tion” (Living 21). In Appia’s theories can also be found the Wagnerian idea of the unification of the audience through its common identification with the pro¬ tagonists and psychic absorption in the dramatic action. Our modern productions used to force us into such miserable passivity that we veiled our hu¬ miliation in the shadowy recesses of the auditorium. But now . . . our emotion is almost a frater¬ nal collaboration; we wish to be that body on the stage; . . . and the barrier between the stage and the audience now strikes us as an unpleasant and unfortunate dissociation, the result of our own egoism. (Music 5)

Appia concurred with Wagner’s opinion that to reach the communal soul of the audience, the art work must appeal to the senses. “To feel in common with others does not signify merely having the same pleasure with others (as in the concert

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61

hall, or at a spectacle), but being animated throughout one’s whole being—body as much as soul—with the same living and active flame” {Living 71). Some elements of Appia’s thought are common to both Wagner and the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. All three contributed to a shift in the place of the written text within the whole work of art. Wagner had gone to great lengths to show the inadequacy of language, and Appia shared his opinion. ‘‘In hours of vibrant hallucination the poet feels, though he may not always wish to confess it, how inflexible and powerless words are, even as the vaguest of symbols, to commu¬ nicate the imperious vision of his soul” {Music 99). Appia, therefore, gave tacit approval to any artist who (like the Duke) made a meaningful change in the text. Appia was perhaps the first to state the paradox of the sacrosanct position of the written text in the theater. The presence of plays and musical scores in our libraries is apparently enough to convince us that a work of dramatic art can exist without actual presentation. . . . The dramatic author chooses a form of art that is visual, that is meant for our eyes; yet when he writes it down on paper its fame and glory are assured. . . . We place words before life, and hence in dra¬ matic art, before the very essence of the art. (Living 49-52)

He goes on to liken the dramatist and his written text to a painter ‘‘if his still empty canvas were already hung in an exhibition, while his palette, covered with fresh colors, remained in his studio” {Living 38). In the Gesamtkunstwerk, however, the written text would take its rightful place, as one element among many. It would provide the “scaffolding,” the “skeleton” upon which the work could be built, but it would be the “living ex¬ pression” (i.e., the realization of the text on the stage) that would be the work of art. Appia felt that the writer would actually gain from this new arrangement. [The poet] will realize how many ideas and feelings he had once entrusted to words alone, when rightly they belonged to living expression. On the other hand, he will realize how many subjects worthy of his poetic attention he had refused literary expression. (Living 61-62)

Since the written text (verbal and musical) will be only a starting point, the word-tone poet can no longer be content when it is written; he or she must see it through to its realization, must become, therefore, a director. This was the conclusion Wagner had eventually come to. Appia proclaimed: When anyone says “Dramatist,” he says “Stage-director” in the same breath; it is a sacrilege to specialize the two activities. We may set up as a rule, then, that if the dramatist does not insist on controlling both, he will be incapable of controlling either—since it is from their mutual correlation that living art must be bom. (Living 44)

Indeed, since realization is the ultimate goal of artistic creation, Appia predicts a new artist to succeed Wagner’s poet-composer. “Enter the artist-musician, the

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artist who possesses the light and knows how to focus it—and suddenly all eyes will see!" {Music 191). This new artist, who combines within him- or herself so many talents, is “a painter whose palette should be living” {Living 137). Since production will no longer be an afterthought, but the realization of the poetic aim, it cannot be left to chance and whim. Appia, in effect, denied what many consider to be a fundamental quality of theatrical art: the variability of productions. No two productions of Hamlet are ever the same and that is precise¬ ly why people continue to go to different productions of the play. But Appia be¬ lieved that if a work were conceived properly, it could have one and only one realization. For Appia, production, and not the written word, was the absolute. The mise en scene should be the inevitable realization of the word-tone poem. Appia prophesied the development of a “production notation,” a system of graphic symbols similar to those used by the composer to signify musical notes, rests, etc. that would be incorporated into the written text to indicate “specifica¬ tions for the entire physical production, and particularly for the acting.” Such a sign language would facilitate the absolute mise en scene. In other words, be¬ fore the first rehearsal, the acting, the blocking, the entire production would already be planned to the last detail {Music 146). Although the symbols had yet to be invented, Appia demonstrated what he meant in his Wagnerian “scenarios.” These were production plans with scene designs that he created to accompany Wagner’s word-tone poems. The scenario described every aspect of the projected mise en scene. Each piece of scenery was minutely detailed. Every movement and gesture of the actors and each change in the lighting was indicated in precise correlation to the lines of the word-tone poem. The scenario was, in effect, a meta-text incorporating Wagner’s but elaborating upon it. The foundation of each scenario was an explication of the dramatic action in terms of emotions. Appia wrote from the perspective of the characters, sug¬ gesting what they were feeling and thinking. An excerpt from the Tristan and Isolde scenario will serve to illustrate. When Isolde enters she sees only two things: the absence of Tristan and the torch, ... the reason for his absence. The mild summer night gleaming through the tall trees has lost its meaning for Isolde; the luminous view is for her eyes only the cruel Space that separates her from Tristan. (Music 199)

Appia also wrote from the perspective of the audience, indicating its emotional identification with the protagonists. Like the two leading characters we see nothing and want to see nothing but their presence. What burns in their hearts appears to us, as to them, superior to their visible forms, and the . . . music carries us deeper and deeper into the mysterious world where their union is consummated forever.—A single anguish grips us: we still see them. (Music 200)

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The practical details specified in the text were all justified in terms of this primary emotional subtext. Appia’s explicit statements about the relative values of text and production, like the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen’s interpolations and changes in texts, laid the groundwork for Reinhardt’s work in which was implicit an assertion of the primacy of the director in the theater. Appia’s concept of “production notation’’ is real¬ ized in the symbolic annotations of text that make up the Reinhardt Regiebuch, and more definitively in the storyboards and shooting script of a film. Appia’s idea concerning an absolute mise en scene was never accepted in the theater; it is in film that the “production,’’ the “performance,” is fixed and invariable and the text (screenplay) is truly only a “scaffolding,” with virtually no claim to in¬ dependent existence as a work of art. At about the same time the Lumiere brothers were beginning their experiments with the new motion picture camera, Appia was anticipating the art that would arise from the new technology. As the comprehensiveness of his scenarios suggests, unity was for Appia, as it had been for Wagner and the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, the goal of the artis¬ tic process. However, Appia felt that Wagner had violated his own conception of the Gesamtkunstwerk not only by misprizing the mise en scene but by over¬ valuing the music and the actor. It is wrong to claim that Appia was “a typical fin-de-siecle Wagnerite who was overwhelmed by the intoxicating power of the music” and that Appia “revered the excessiveness of Wagner’s art” (Roth, 199). On the contrary, Appia believed that Wagner’s excessiveness (i.e., the inordinate intensity of his music) had served the purpose of shocking his audience out of its complacency, but that it should not be imitated because it threw the other ele¬ ments of the work of art out of balance. Appia actually calls for a decrease in the intensity and complexity of the music from that of Wagner since such music ‘ ‘paralyzes the effect of the visual elements of production and makes their har¬ monious interplay impossible” (Music 133-37). Appia also criticizes the inordinate emphasis Wagner had placed on the ac¬ tor, but again only because such emphasis unbalanced the Gesamtkunstwerk. Once the actor ceases to be the dominant element in production, ... he recedes into the back¬ ground to take his place among his co-workers, the various other poetic-musical devices. ... He thus becomes part of an organism and must submit himself to the laws of balance regulating this organism. (Music 21)

This statement could easily apply to the Duke’s notion of the acting ensemble, but it should not be taken to mean that Appia, like his oft-named counterpart, Edward Gordon Craig, felt the actor almost dispensable. Appia believed that, as in the case of music, the actor had been over-burdened with the responsibility of carrying the entire weight of the word-tone drama in the Bayreuth productions because of the paucity of the mise en scene.

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Appia recognized that the actor, while not holding a primary position in the production in any hierarchical sense, was still its point of focus. As he put it, does Siegfried present a forest with characters or characters who happen to be in a forest? This question was, for Appia, fundamental: We come to the theater in order to witness a dramatic action. It is the presence of the charac¬ ters on the stage that motivates this action. ... So it is the actor who is the essential factor in staging; it is he whom we come to see, it is from him that we expect the emotion, and it is for this emotion that we have come. Hence it is above all a question of basing our staging on the actor’s presence. (“Light” 142)

As Simonson points out, the actor was Appia’s Massgebend (i.e., his unit of meas¬ ure): “Unity could be created only by relating every part of the setting to him” (356-57). In this, Appia was in perfect agreement with the Duke of SaxeMeiningen who designed his settings for the actors. In terms of ideals, then, Appia never departed from his mentor, Wagner. His aim, however, was to fulfill those ideals better than their originator had. The first step toward this goal was an analysis of the conventional stagecraft to deter¬ mine why it failed to produce a unified mise en scene. The disparity between Wagner’s word-tone poems and their productions was, Appia came to decide, a function of the elements comprising the stage picture, which were themselves disparate. There was first of all the actor and then the two-dimensional painted scenery. Each of these has its own artistic integrity, but combined in the third element, the stage space, they are irreconcilable and nullify each other. The ad¬ dition of light, the fourth element, only exacerbates the problem, for if the light¬ ing is arranged to enhance the actor, it must necessarily do so at the expense of the scenery and vice versa (Music 17-24). The Duke of Saxe-Meiningen had dealt with the incongruity that occurred when living actors came into contact with painted scenery by the more frequent use of three-dimensional pieces of scenery, but he had not denied painted illu¬ sion its place on the stage. Appia went further; he reasoned that since the actor and painted scenery were irreconcilable, and since it was the actor that was Mass¬ gebend, it was painted scenery that had to be, if not totally eliminated, at least sharply deemphasized. “Once this is achieved the scenery will be brought into a more direct relationship not only with the actor but with the drama itself” (Music 25). In place of the painted scenery, Appia (like the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen) called for the use of solid, practical pieces of scenery. Most commentators claim that Appia’s reason for this was simple: since the actor was three-dimensional, the scenery should be also. This is a partial truth. Undoubtedly, between them the Duke and Appia made the stage space plastic, which fact, Simonson notes, had a profound effect on the aesthetic experience.

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The third dimension, incessant preoccupation of the Occidental mind for four centuries, de¬ fined by metaphysicians, explored by scientists, simulated by painters, was re-created in terms of the theater, made actual. The stage more completely than ever before became a world that we could vicariously inhabit. (359)

This plasticity was not the only, nor even the most important, quality shared by the actor and solid scenery, however. The actor is animate as well as plastic, whereas the painted scenery is static as well as two-dimensional. The immobility of such scenery had long been seen as a problem when its two-dimensionality had not and theater artists, as has been shown, had taxed their ingenuity to make the scenery move. Three-dimensional scenery is in and of itself as static as twodimensional scenery; however, Appia pointed out, three-dimensional scenery can participate in the mobility of the actor by providing the motivations for his or her movements. Again, as the Duke had before him, Appia thought of the stage in architectonic terms. As Simonson puts it, for Appia the stage was not only “consistently three-dimensional” but more importantly “infinitely malleable” (375). The use of steps, ramps, hillocks, rocks, and the like, by breaking up the stage space into several levels, solved what was for Appia another significant problem of the stage practices of his day. The center is the most dominant area in any composition. Actors knew that and vied for center stage. However, center stage is not the center of the stage picture since the stage is a volume, not a plane. When actors stood center stage on the flat stage floor, as was the custom, they actually stood at the bottom of the composition. How could the actor be the focal point of attention in such a situation? Beck relates that Appia likened performers who were restricted to the stage floor to “alpinists who made ascension of the Matterhorn by means of a flattened out relief map” (120). It was not just a formal consideration, however, that led Appia to fill his stage with a variety of levels. The emphasis on vertical space rather than horizontal space was, he felt, in keeping with the spiritual quality of the word-tone poems. “In this sense, the stage opening becomes an absolute dimension and, to our eyes, the point of intersection between our [material and spiritual life]” (Music 58). Despite this metaphysical justification of vertical space, Appia was quite aware of its practical import. By means of levels Appia, like the Duke, was able to cre¬ ate a dramatic division of space; that is, he used different areas within the volume of the stage space to express relationships within the drama. The Tristan und Isolde scenario once again provides an example. Appia’s setting for Act II was to consist of a terrace running diagonally from center left to up right where it was to disappear in the darkness. Behind this terrace was to be a wall of massive stone blocks and below it, center stage, a bench set in a recess of the terrace. According to his scenario, the interaction between Isolde and Brangaene at the beginning of the act and those actions that occur after Kur-

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venal’s entrance at the end of the act were to take place on the terrace while the main action between Tristan and Isolde was to be played at the bench (Music 201). The terrace, being open, was a vulnerable space, while the recess provided the lovers with a shelter encasing them in their own private world. The higher terrace presented the phenomenal world which Tristan and Isolde sought to es¬ cape and the lower bench, that world which is below the surface of phenomena. The renderings and scenarios as well as photographs of actual productions he designed and directed reveal more similarities between his mise en scene and that of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. Appia, like the Duke, understood the value of constricted space on stage as in his closed, tight, oppressive little setting for Mime’s cave, a setting that not only embodied Mime’s mean-spiritedness but served to underscore Siegfried’s frustration and restlessness at being confined in such a space. Like the Duke also, Appia could expand space. One of the defini¬ tive characteristics of Appia’s renderings is a light-filled infinite horizon, the ef¬ fect of which is to draw the observer’s eye deeper into the field. Appia’s depth of field, created from light, is vastly superior to that created by the forced per¬ spective of the Renaissance scene painters. Simonson points out: “There is depth here that seems hewn and distance that recedes infinitely further than the painted lines converging at a mathematical vanishing point” (359). Appia used depth of field on the stage as the Duke had, for the juxtaposing of figures for greater complexity. In the Ring staged by Appia in Basel in 1924, for example, as Wotan kills Hunding and mourns over Siegmund on a ledge up¬ stage, Briinnhilde leads Sieglinde to safety through a crevice downstage (Volbach, 155). Appia was as fond as the Duke of diagonal lines. (Note the call for diagonal lines in the description of the Tristan und Isolde setting previously described.) But, since vertical space was more important to Appia than horizon¬ tal space, his diagonals were most often placed in the vertical plane. For exam¬ ple, behind the forest in Parsifal there can be seen a portion of a mountain leading up from stage left. According to Appia, “the lines of the mountain imply a striv¬ ing toward a final resolution” (Living 94). Probably the most striking use of the vertical diagonal occurs in Appia’s setting for Briinnhilde’s rock, which is represented as an irregular outcropping that juts up into the stage space from stage right (Volbach, 118). This setting is the location for several of the most crucial scenes in the Ring; it serves for the final confrontation between Wotan and Briinnhilde, the meeting of Briinnhilde and Siegfried, and Siegfried’s betrayal of Briinn¬ hilde. Appia places these actions (appropriately) on a precipice, precarious and unstable, an unfinished geological form that stretches heavenward only to drop off suddenly into an abyss. The rock and mountain just described are also examples of Appia’s visual synecdoche; only a portion of each is rendered. This principle is applied to Klingsor’s castle, the setting for which is comprised entirely of the upper battlements; but the most notable application of synecdoche occurs in Appia’s design for Val-

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67

halla in Das Rheingold. Only the very base of Wotan’s mighty conception can be seen, the rest disappearing high above the gods (Volbach, 150). It hardly seems a fitting home for the gods for it is much too vast for them. Rendered in soft, misty lines, Valhalla seems insubstantial, unreal—Wotan’s glorious pipe dream. Das Rheingold's design is notable for another characteristic: one setting, with slight modifications, serves all the different scenes of the work. Appia, like the Duke, used the unit setting to solve the problem of continuity. But it was more than a technical matter to Appia; he felt the single setting was necessary for the theme of the word-tone poem. In Das Rheingold, Appia states, we witness a series of interdependent acts and yet, in the final glow that ends the marvelous ‘ ‘Eve, ’ ’ we preserve an impression of harmony comparable to Simultaneity: instead of turning the pages of the score one by one, we have glanced over one vast picture. (Music 213)

It is clear from these examples that Appia envisioned mise en scene, as the Duke had, as an extemalization of all that the drama contained: dramatic action, themes, motifs, characters. He expressed this attitude in his discussion of the sig¬ nificance of Briinnhilde’s rock. This setting, Appia noted, was used at the end of Die Walkiire, again in Siegfried, and once again in Gotterdammerung, and therefore served as a visual “connecting link” or unifier for the action. Appia, however, felt it should also embody within its design the crucial moments that occur in it. “This gives the setting the value of a dramatic role” (Music 218). Illusionism, historical accuracy, pictorial realism, verisimilitude, vraisemblance, or whatever one wished to call the principle of literal representation that had been the goal of scenic practice since the Renaissance, actually prevented the mise en scene from fulfilling its metaphoric function. Appia did not deny that realistic staging had its place. Having seen the work of Antoine in Paris, Appia agreed that the French director’s approach was appropriate to the genre of plays he was producing. The explicit, Appia stated elsewhere, “tends to impose one single meaning upon every object” (“Light” 142). Therefore, an explicit mise en scene was perfect for expressing the realist/determinist world view. But Appia ques¬ tioned the worth of such theater. Zola’s call for a slice of life was sound, but why did the realists cut it from the rind, rather than the core? Appia seems to be chiding Zola and his adherents directly when he writes: “Our inner life, its joys, its pains, and its conflicts, is entirely independent of our manners, even when these manners seem to be determining factors. The human passions are eternal—eternally the same” (Living 83). It is these eternal passions that the theater should reveal—the drama of the soul, the dream life, as found, according to Ap¬ pia, in the works of Wagner and Shakespeare (Volbach, 177). The drama of the dream world required a dream world mise en scene in which the external, the phenomenal, the topical, played only a small part. Appia felt, in other words, that the mise en scene, like the music, must ex¬ press the essence of things, not their surface. It was, in fact, from the music that

68

The Connecting Links

the mise en scene must proceed. By this Appia meant not that “music is . . . trans¬ ferred on to anything,” but that “it becomes space” {Music 53). Since, as Wagner had shown, music expresses emotions, then the mise en scene must also express emotions, i.e., it must create a mood. So, again, Appia and the Duke are seen to be in agreement. In his rejection of realism in all its manifestations, Appia might have chosen its opposite. As Macgowan states, “Appia might have offered abstract design free of any pretense at reality” (81). Such was the solution formulated by the innovator whose name is invariably linked with Appia’s, Edward Gordon Craig. Craig’s plan for a setting composed of a series of blank, neutral screens of vary¬ ing textures that could be moved about to form different configurations for different scenes is the prime example of scenic abstraction (Brockett and Findlay, 209). Or, Macgowan continues, Appia “might have put the actor against a background frankly theatrical” (81). This was the direction followed by William Poel who recreated the relatively bare stage and conventions of the Elizabethans for his Shakespearean productions and by Jacques Copeau who fused setting and stage into a permanent architectural background such as had been used at the Theater Dionysus, the Globe, and in the corrales of Spain’s Golden Age.9 While Appia did, like the theatrical reformers named above, reject the trompe I’oeil illusion of pictorial realism with its inherent element of deception, he did not, like them, reject theatrical illusion together. “The illusion created by a work of art is not to delude us regarding the nature of emotions and objects in their relationship to reality, but rather to draw us so completely into the artist’s vision that it seems to be our own” {Music 200). He, therefore, chose a principle of mise en scene that was neither representational nor presentational. As Macgowan states, “He chose to make the setting an atmosphere; to let the background of natural objects be refined, simplified, and made dramatic” (81). The mise en scene was to realize the poetic aim, which Appia called the “expression” ; but, he believed, it required elements of representation, which he termed “indica¬ tion.” Appia likened the elements of indication in a production to the signboard used in Shakespeare’s day to announce the time and place of a scene {Living 35). The function of the indication was to give the audience a point of reference. “Our eyes, like our ears, demand orientation” {Living 48). Appia felt, furthermore, that the tension between the literal and expressive aspects of the mise en scene was a dynamic of the proper aesthetic experience. “The life of the work manifests itself in this oscillation between Indication and Expression, which prevents it from crystallizing in a formal aesthetic code. The oscillation sustains attention; it stimu¬ lates emotion by the contrasts it sets up” {Living 63-64). The Duke of Saxe-Meiningen would have agreed wholeheartedly that indi¬ cation was a necessary component of the production; where he and Appia differed was in their opinion of the degree of indication necessary. Appia believed that the more concrete and complete the representational elements, the less the mise en scene would be able to express the life of the soul. The “intelligible ideas”

The Connecting Links

69

provided by the element of indication should, he stated, be a “simple ratifica¬ tion” of the metaphysical content of the work {Living 48). The indication, then, must be subordinate to the expression. It must, in Appia’s words, be no more than the “minimum intelligible signification” {Music 67). Elsewhere Appia said that “only the barest suggestion” or “a few powerful impressions” of the phenomenal world were needed {Living 36; Music 185). For example, if the staging happens to call for an artisan’s room, the gallery of a Moorish palace, the edge of a pine forest— or any other kind of limited setting—one will not achieve an expressive scene corresponding to the musical expression by piling up a variety of objects relating to the artisan’s particular vocation, or of Moorish designs, or the botanical charac¬ teristics of pine trees. . . . A simple indication suffices to place the action in the external world, and once this is done, the setting has only to express what there is in the place chosen by the dramatist that corresponds to the inner essence . . . —in other words, the eternal aspect with which all transitory forms are endowed. (Music 46)

The decrease in the representational element in the mise en scene, by allowing the expression (the source of which is the music) to come to the fore, must, Ap¬ pia believed, result in a corresponding increase in the work’s intensity, that most important of aesthetic qualities {Music 90-91). Appia did not concern himself with the mise en scene alone, however; he felt that the entire theater space, house as well as stage, had to be reformed so that the necessary audience/performer relationship could be effected. Wagner, too, it will be remembered, had been keenly interested in the theater architec¬ ture. In the Festspielhaus were certain structural elements whose sole purpose was to facilitate the total absorption of the audience into the dramatic action, ele¬ ments such as the series of proscenium arches and the mystic gulf. But these were the very elements Appia wished to expunge from the theater. He likened Wag¬ ner’s multiple proscenium frames to “an immense keyhole (pardon me!) through which we indiscretely surprise mysteries which are not meant for us” (Tallon, 497). And in a remark that seems to be aimed squarely at Bayreuth’s mystic gulf Appia says, “We have an obligation to diminish progressively the abyss which separates the spectator from the actor, to shake up our egotistical torpor, to take, little by little, an active part . . .’’in the production (Tallon, 500). The qualifier, “active,” is the key to understanding where the disciple diverged from the master. Wagner had wanted a stage that mesmerized the au¬ dience, one that acted as a whirlpool sucking the audience inexorably into its vor¬ tex. Wagner’s theater, by intention, rendered the audience passive, will-less creatures; but Appia posited an active, a participatory role for the audience. The kind of performer/participant exchange proposed by Appia was not active in the sense that either one physically entered the other’s space during performance. The performer did not intrude or encroach, he ‘entrained,’ invited; he created a magnetic attraction. The specta¬ tor responded directly, kinesthetically, to . . . the performer . . . moving rhythmically in for¬ mal, plastic space. (Tallon, 501)

70

The Connecting Links

Appia did not question the goal of audience/character empathy; however, he did not wish the empathic response to be of such a nature that the spectator forgot him- or herself, lost his or her own identity. He wanted an audience that was “entrained,” not enchained. Appia had the opportunity to put his ideas about theater structure and the audience/performer relationship into practice. When a patron of his close friend Dalcroze offered to build Dalcroze a theater where he could carry out his experi¬ ments in eurhythmies, he turned to Appia for advice. The resulting theater at Hellerau had no proscenium arch but an open, unframed stage, joined to the house by a staircase that ran the full width of the stage. Instead of a physical barrier, a mystic gulf, Appia provided stairs which would facilitate movement between stage and house, and thus act as a kind of architectural invitation. The stage was frankly a stage; it made no pretense at being another realm which the audience was seeing into by means of a keyhole or missing fourth wall. At the theater at Hellerau, the audience never lost its awareness of participating in an aesthetic event. This theater came close to approximating Appia’s ideal which was “sim¬ ply a space, oblong, bare and empty, ‘no stage, no amphitheater, only an empty room, waiting,’ a space ‘free, vast, and transformable’” (Tallon, 498). To this point in the discussion, only the spatial elements of Appia’s mise en scene have been considered, but he like Wagner recognized that it was a property of theatrical art to exist in time and space. Appia agreed with the poet-composer that the play was inferior to the word-tone poem since there was no integral com¬ ponent to control its time element in production, nothing to determine absolutely the tempi and rhythm. “Even if one were to measure the relative duration of speech and silence with a stop watch, this duration would be fixed only by the arbitrary will of the author or the director, without necessarily having its origins in the initial conception” (Music 17). A natural time pattern (i.e., one that springs from the poetic aim) is, Appia believed, indispensable to the proper aesthetic experience. “We must lose our¬ selves so completely in that time pattern that our entire personal life is trans¬ posed to respond to the emotions of the drama” {Music 16). Therefore, like his contemporary Einstein, Appia perceived his greatest problem as one of deter¬ mining the relationship of time and space. He expressed it thus: “We must suc¬ ceed in finding a visible form for the inner life which can be given a unified existence in time” (Music 139). Therefore, a “regulating principle” was needed which would govern the production’s “proportions in space and their sequence in time, each dependent on the other,” so that the mise en scene might become what it was meant to be, “a design in space with variations in time” {Music 17). This principle, not surprisingly, was music. “Musical duration is dictated by the original dramatic conception, so that from the point of view of theatrical production music not only regulates the time, but it is the time itself, since its pattern is an integral part of what it expresses” {Music 15). While it is clear,

The Connecting Links

71

then, that music could control the production’s “sequence in time,” it is not readily apparent how music could govern its “proportions in space.” Appia explained that in music’s “groupings in time” could be found the basis for its “kinship with space.” “The variable time-durations of these groupings are capable of an infinite number of combinations; accordingly, they are responsible for the phenomenon of rhythm, which is not only akin to space, but can be fused with it, through movement” (Living 21). Appia offered the Parthenon as a perfect ex¬ ample of a spatial construct which is rhythmic (hence musical) because it was conceived in terms of the human being in motion. An ever-present and all-powerful principle is at work there; space itself must submit to its dic¬ tates. . . . Invisible, it speaks to visible space; it animates forms, it develops lines. Its inter¬ preter is the human body—the living, mobile body; from this body it has absorbed its life. (Living

20)

As Appia succinctly put it, “Rhythm is the hyphen which joins time and space” (Living 128). The working method that can be abstracted from the above would go some¬ thing like this: music generates the rhythmic movement pattern of the actors which in turn determines the spatial arrangement of the setting. Yet a factor is missing which would allow this principle to be applied. Appia needed an element that would serve as a real link between the music on the one hand and the actor, set¬ ting, and blocking on the other, an element that had both a spatial and a temporal aspect. He found such an element in light. Appia noted that there was “a mys¬ terious affinity” between light and music, one which the ancient Greeks had recog¬ nized when they made Apollo the god of both. Light and music, Appia felt, would reinforce one another in the mise en scene (Music 72). Light, like the plastic components of the mise en scene, exists in space and is visible. Indeed, the plasticity of these elements is of no avail without the right kind of light. “An object becomes plastic for our eyes only by the light that strikes it—and its plasticity cannot be artistically produced except by an artistic use of light” (“Light” 140). The use of directional light to bring out the plasticity of the actor and setting has now become standard practice. It is usually considered that the main purpose of such light is to model the actor’s face, and thereby en¬ hance the play of emotions expressed in the changing facial expressions. In Appia’s mise en scene, however, the actor’s face was deemphasized or even obscured, the result of his marked predilection for back and rim lighting. In both back and rim lighting, the source of light is placed behind the subject to be lighted. In back light, the light source is approximately at the same height as the subject, while in rim lighting the source is above as well as behind the subject. Appia’s frequent use of strong light at the horizon of his setting has al¬ ready been noted. Often he would have this light-filled background as the only light on the stage, leaving the characters and setting in relative silhouette before

72

The Connecting Links

it. This can be seen, for example, in several of the photographs from the Basel production of the Ring (Volbach, 147). For the scene in Hunding’s hut, Appia created a similar effect by leaving the setting in almost total darkness except for a bright light that spilled through an open doorway upstage. Sieglinde and Siegmund are placed on a bench in direct line with this spill of light so that they are sharply outlined by it, but otherwise seem to float in a sea of darkness. For Hamlet, Appia called for the downstage light to diminish gradually as the drama progressed so that by the end of the play, the only source of light would be from the rear of the stage. Ophelia’s entrance after the famous soliloquy was to be along a path of light from the upstage to the downstage area so that her shadow would precede her and be the first indication Hamlet had of her presence (Volbach, 183). The Sacred Forest for Parsifal is another example of this kind of lighting. The dark trees of the forest fill the foreground of the composition while light falls into the forest from behind the shadowy hill in the background (Volbach, 69). Side lighting, on the other hand, was called for by Appia in Die Meistersinger, as in the first scene in the church where a beam was to fall from a window on stage left to Walther on stage right (Volbach, 180). In general, the silhouette caused by back lighting has the effect of isolating the character sharply from his or her surroundings, and can thus be seen to be appropriate to such soli¬ tary characters as Wotan and Parsifal and Hamlet; the effect of light from the side is to emphasize the plasticity of the subject and to integrate all the areas through which it falls, and therefore it is suited to the amiable Walther and the positive theme of Die Meistersinger.10 Appia felt that an artistic use of light not only brought out the plasticity of actor and setting, but justified the principle of simplification and suggestion which governs the mise en scene. For example, a forest was not best presented by a wealth of painted canvas trees, but by a few three-dimensional tree trunks, their foliage lost in the flies, from whence came light characteristic of the forest, the quality of which leaves to the imagination of the audience the existence of obstacles they have no need to see. . . . Thus the characters as well as the three-dimensional portions of the setting are immersed in an atmosphere suited to them. (Music 66-67)

Kernodle summarizes Appia’s conception of the interaction of light and setting thus: “The simpler the scenery was and the less specific detail it had, the more it could be changed by light for the changing mood and intensity of the music of the soul of the drama” (15). Like music, light has a temporal aspect (i.e., it has the capacity to change through time). It can change in intensity, in color, in direction, and in volume. Indeed, its range of possibilities is as limitless as is music’s, and since light possesses fluidity and mobility, it is a primary factor in making the mise en scene “living” art. “The mobility characteristic of any stage picture requires ... that fighting assume a good many of the functions which

The Connecting Links

73

color alone once gave to the painter” (Music 81). ‘‘Light is to space,” Appia said, ‘‘what sounds are to time—the perfect expression of life” {Living 31). Mov¬ ing through space, light can have all the temporal qualities of music: duration, rhythm, tempi. This is why, Volbach states, Appia referred to light as ‘‘luminous sound,” the visual equivalent of music (98). Light shares another of music’s properties. ‘‘Light is to production what music is to the score: the expressive element in opposition to literal signs; and, like music, light can express only what belongs to ‘the inner essence of all vision’ ” (Music 72). Simonson asserts that Appia’s “supreme intuition” was that light “can play as directly upon our emotions as music does” (365). Changing, surging, intensifying and subsiding light, like changing, surging, intensifying and sub¬ siding music, creates that most important quality: mood. Light, in short, is the factor that can achieve the unity Wagner had demanded. Only light can integrate all the disparate elements of the Gesamtkunstwerk so that the word-tone poem can indeed be realized on the stage. But what kind of light could achieve these effects? It was not the constant “bland radiance” of the foot and border lights then in use. For light to be ex¬ pressive, it had to assert itself, and it could do this only by means of its absence (i.e., shadow). “If there is no shade, there is no light” {Music 75). Appia’s call for shadow on the stage was unheard of at a time when the whole point of theatri¬ cal lighting was maximum illumination. To show the limitations of lighting used for illumination only, and to show the potentialities of light and shadow for ex¬ pression, Appia described the effect of unintentional shadow in the Bayreuth production of Parsifal. When the curtain went up on the scene of the interior of the Grail Temple, the painted scenery had to be sacrificed to the darkness necessitated by the scene change—imparting a marvelous life to the setting. As the lights started to come up, the illusion was continuously dispelled until finally, in the full glare of the border lights and the footlights, the knights made their entrance into a pasteboard temple. To be sure, the painted setting was then fully visible. (Music 23n)

What Appia wanted, Simonson points out, was to bring chiaroscuro onto the stage. The light and shadow of Rembrandt, Piranesi, Daumier, and Meryon was finally brought into the theater, not splashed on a background, as romantic scene painters had used it, but as an ambient medium actually filling space and possessing volume; it was an impalpable bond which fused the actor, wherever and however he moved, with everything around him. The plastic unity of the stage picture was made continuous. (358-59)

With light Appia solved not only the problem of unity but also that of con¬ tinuity. All the methods previously devised to handle the shifting of scenery dur¬ ing the disruptive scene changes proved cumbersome and awkward in the face of light’s unlimited fluidity. With light, Wagner’s concept of “scenic dramatur¬ gy” could indeed be realized: settings could seem to dissolve and condense as

74

The Connecting Links

if by magic. A comparison of Wagner’s and Appia’s methods for handling the forest-to-temple transition in Parsifal will serve to illustrate the efficacy and beauty of scene changes effected by light. Wagner’s text calls for continuous action dur¬ ing the change of scene. Parsifal remarks to Gurnemanz that they seem to be moving while standing still. Indeed, Wagner had the actors walk in place while a Wandeldekoration was used to simulate the passage through space (Volbach, 67). For the Wandeldekoration, or moving panorama, Brockett provides a defi¬ nition. For these, a continuous scene was painted on a cloth of enormous length, suspended from an overhead track, and attached at either end to an upright roller, or “spool.” When the spool was turned, the cloth moved across the stage. In this way, characters, ships, horses and car¬ riages, while remaining in full view, apparently moved from one place to another without any abrupt change in the setting, as would have been necessary had wings and drops been used. (387)

But Appia handled the transition in another way. The Sacred Forest, as has al¬ ready been described, consisted of only cylindrical pieces of vertical scenery meant to suggest tree trunks by the use of lighting appropriate to a forest. Appia called for a change of lighting that would, alone, transform the tree trunks into the columns of the temple.11 It was, after all, not the environment per se but the per¬ ception of the environment that had to change. “It is not a question of realizing a place, as it would be seen by those transported to it, but only as it is expressed by the poetic-musical text. . . . The place of action is not in itself flexible, only the way in which the dramatist wishes to view if (Music 69-70). Based on this idea of the scenic environment presenting an internal rather than an external land¬ scape, Appia expanded the concept of continuity beyond mere scene changes. He called for a constantly changing, a fluid environment, that would match the emotional changes inherent in the text, and only light could accomplish this task. Returning to the scenario for Tristan und Isolde, it is possible to see how Appia intended the flow of light to participate in the development of the drama. In the beginning of Act III, the scenario calls for Tristan to be lying in shadow, just out of reach of a beam of warm sunshine falling through an archway which separates the courtyard of his castle from the outside world. As he progresses (in his aria) from bitterness and denial to acceptance and self-realization, Appia calls for the light to move so as to fall on increasingly more of his recumbent form, starting with his feet and finally encompassing his entire body. Simultane¬ ously, the light was to become progressively warmer in tone. “As long as light is only a source of Tristan’s suffering, it must not fall on him directly. But as soon as he really sees it and associates it with blissful visions, it comes and il¬ luminates his face.” After the entrance of Isolde and Tristan’s ensuing death, the light continues to move until it casts the arch (through which the false Melot will come) in deep shadow. The fight scene was to be played in near darkness upstage (so that the audience could hear and imagine but not see it) while Isolde and Tristan’s body remained downstage in light that changed from the golden

The Connecting Links

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color it had at the time of Tristan’s moral and emotional breakthrough to the red of a dying sun, a fitting ambiance for Isolde’s famous Liebestod (Music 204-5). Tristan und Isolde, of course, presents a special case for the use of lighting since its dominant images are those of light and darkness. But Appia believed that such a play of light was appropriate to each of Wagner’s word-tone poems. When, for example, he designed settings for the Ring, he executed seven differ¬ ent renderings for Briinnhilde’s rock, each differing from the other only in terms of light and shadow (and thus mood), and the progression from one to the other was, as in the Tristan scenario, precisely integrated with the text. On each ren¬ dering was written the line of dialogue or action which was to serve as the cue for the change of light.12 Appia did more than introduce light and shadow onto the stage as an expres¬ sive element of the mise en scene; the Duke had done that. By equating light with music, he made lighting the primary element in the mise en scene. “The word-tone poet,” he said, “paints his picture with light” (Music 81). He spoke of the “sovereign power of light,” and prophesied that its possibilities, once mastered technically, would be limitless (Music 73). He was later to demonstrate to what extent he relied on light when he participated on the design for the theat¬ er at Hellerau. The walls and ceiling of this theater were covered with a trans¬ parent fabric behind which were placed 3,000 lighting instruments (Volbach, 88). When, in a work written nearly half a century after Appia’s time, the Ameri¬ can scene designer Robert Edmond Jones described the place of light in the modem theater, he demonstrated that Appia’s ideas, which had been nearly incompre¬ hensible to his contemporaries, had become the norm. Jones seems to be quoting Appia when he states that the most important quality of light in the theater is its “livingness, ’ ’ and that it possesses the capability of ‘ ‘animating the scene mo¬ ment by moment until it seems to breath . . . [and] . . . our work becomes an incantation. We feel the presence of elemental energies.” Appia would assured¬ ly have agreed with Jones that the play of light “turns the immediate into the ultimate, the moment into eternity.” Jones stated that the art of stage lighting “consists not only in throwing light upon objects but in throwing light upon a subject. . . . The subject to be lighted is the drama itself. We light the actors and the setting, it is true, but we illuminate the drama.”13 It was by means of light that Appia took a quantum leap beyond the work of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, whom he otherwise resembled in so many of his ideas, and altered the very nature of the stage space. With the introduction of living light, Appia put an end to the finite quality of the stage. While its actual dimensions remained constant, its perceptual dimensions became infinite. Distance, as far as the eye of the spectator is concerned, can be treated as effectively by the different intensities of intersecting volumes of light as by actual spacing measured in feet. An actor stepping from a brilliant funnel of light into half-shadow may recede far more percepti¬ bly than if he walked fifteen feet upstage through even radiance. . . . Light can contract the deepest stage, or extend a shallow one. (Simonson, 370)

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The Connecting Links

The ultimate implications of this change wrought by Appia are most succinctly stated by Styan: “If the earlier scene-painter diminished the world to the size of the stage, Appia showed how to expand the stage to become the world” (Drama 2:15).

3

Max Reinhardt From the evidence of the earliest portion of his career, Max Reinhardt seems a most unlikely candidate to assume the mantle of Wagner, Saxe-Meiningen, and Appia. As a young actor, he had been discovered and brought from Salzburg to Berlin by Otto Brahm (Carter, 36). Brahm, at the turn of the century Ger¬ many’s leading director, was of that theatrical generation which included An¬ toine and Stanislavsky. Like them Brahm had witnessed the Meininger transformation of the theater and had gone on to adapt the company’s psycholog¬ ically based acting and ensemble playing, as well as the more representational elements of the Duke’s mise en scene, to serve the new drama of realism and naturalism (Brockett and Findlay, 101). While an actor with the Deutsches Theater under Brahm, therefore, the young Reinhardt had acted in such plays as Hauptmann’s The Weavers and The Beaver Coat, Ibsen’s Ghosts and Rosmersholm, and Tolstoy’s The Power of Darkness.1 Moreover, when Reinhardt himself turned to directing, the production that propelled him to the forefront of German theater has been described as “the apothe¬ osis of naturalism” (Fuerst and Hume, 17). However, the production given such an epithet was not of a play by Ibsen or Gorki or Zola; it was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a play as far removed from the naturalistic movement as one could imagine. What accounts for the allusion to naturalism was the setting Rein¬ hardt gave the play. Veritable trees, not painted but plastic ones, were placed on the stage, and the space below was covered, not with a painted ground-cloth, but with what seemed palpable grass, in which the feet sunk among the flowers; while here and there were seen bushes and little beeches growing between the trees, and in the midst of all a little lake mirrored between two hills. (Fuerst and Hume, 16)

What the commentators meant then, by “naturalism” was in fact “illusionism.” In another description of Reinhardt’s “real” forest can be detected elements of the mise en scene of Saxe-Meiningen and Appia, and even Wagner.

78

Max Reinhardt When the curtain goes up, the scene is covered with screens. Through these silver screens the moon shines palely, and slowly the light increases. The screens are raised slowly one after another in individual trails of mist. Streams trickle. The scene is set with tall grass and many trees overhanging a clearing among them. At the back is a view of a high wooded hill which ends backstage. On the right is seen a lake glinting between the trees. On the left is the hillside. Past the lake on the left runs a fairly narrow path to the back of the stage. The trees are very tall. The tops begin high up, so that the fairies appear very small. The tree-trunks must be as thick as possible. . . . Moonlight, which falls in patches on the grass through the leaf pattern. The lake is lit from behind. (Styan, Reinhardt 55-56)

Here is a forest rendered plastically as both the Duke and Appia would have done (but in full detail as only the Duke was wont to do). Here, in the “narrow path,” is the constricture of space the Duke was fond of using. Here is visual synec¬ doche in the hill only partially seen. Here is light coming from behind, light which has the dappled quality of forest light as Appia had specified. Even Wagner’s scenic dramaturgy is here in the moving screens and mist. It was not verisimilitude, however, that Reinhardt had in mind when he created his forest. He had conceived of the “wood near Athens” not as a location, real or otherwise, where the action happened to occur, but as an environment that conditioned and in many ways effected the action, according to two of his col¬ laborators, Herald and Stern. In the beginning was the wood. ... It is [the dramatic action’s] nurse, its native soil; from it, everything flows, in it everyone is hidden, runs away, is mixed up, discovered, recon¬ ciled. ... It breathes, it is alive. It seems without beginning or end. It is inexhaustible, without visible limits, and yet, to sum up, it somehow represents every wood. (Styan, Reinhardt 57)

In order to render the active, fluid, multiform qualities of the forest, in order to make the forest seem the living presence he thought it to be, Reinhardt did something unique: he took his “real” forest and mounted it on a revolving stage. And now ... all this forest began slowly and gently to move and to turn, discovering new perspectives, always changing its aspect, presenting ever new images inexhaustible as Nature. And while the stage turned and changed, the elves and fairies ran through the forest, disap¬ pearing behind the trees, to emerge behind the little hillocks. These beings . . . seemed ... to form a part of the forest itself. (Fuerst and Hume, 16)

Nothing in the mise en scene was fixed and immutable and inevitable, as in the naturalistic theatre; all was ever-changing, ever-renewing. It was not for its verisimilitude that Reinhardt’s forest was remarked, but for its evanescence. It was a forest of constant surprises as befitted a world controlled by Oberon and Puck. No one could wonder at the bewilderment of Helena, Hermia, Lysander, and Demetrius in such a forest, nor at their radical changes of affection and charac¬ ter. As had the Duke and Appia before him, Reinhardt had devised a mise en

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scene that expressed the very heart of the play. Reinhardt had in effect taken the components of naturalistic mise en scene and turned them against naturalism. As Kommer puts it, “Reinhardt fought the royal battle against drab naturalism under the star of Shakespeare . . . [and] won the fight for romanticism of a new brand” (.Reinhardt and Theater 6). One of the qualities of this 1905 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that most impressed observers was its unity. “This was a revelation. Never had such unity between actor and stage decoration been seen. Never before, and in a manner so justified, had one seen the stage setting become an actor of such importance in the play. He was the first to reunite all the factors of the theater in a close collaboration for the purpose of creating a scenic equilibrium” (Fuerst and Hume, 16-17). His productions were “theatrical symphonies in which words and music, lighting and painting effects, and the art of acting were fused in an intoxicating whole which swept all along with it by the strength of its gripping qualities and its atmosphere” (Dietrich, 163). For Reinhardt, Kahane states, theater was “that higher unit wherein all the powers he utilizes coalesce in a process not of mere addition, but of multiplication” (Reinhardt and Theater 80). The result of such coalescing by Reinhardt, as the mathematical metaphor implies, was not only an increase in Wagner’s unity but in Saxe-Meiningen’s complexity and Appia’s intensity as well. Reinhardt’s art, as Carter says, “makes for unity with variety, and harmony of vibrative force” (245). Continuity was also a major concern of Reinhardt, as is apparent from the example of the revolving stage. Reinhardt did not invent the revolve, but he did make it his own, almost his signature, installing it in nearly every theater that came under his control (Styan, Reinhardt 115). All the settings necessary to a production would, with ingenuity, be mounted on the revolve so that a scene change could be accomplished by a quick turn of the machinery. Reinhardt had, thereby, solved what Wagner had perceived as the dilemma of staging Shakespeare; at last the bard’s works could receive full realization on the stage without the interruption of frequent and long intervals. It is no wonder, then, that Reinhardt used the revolve most often for his productions of Shakespeare and for other plays with multiple scenes in diverse locations, such as Faust. It must be stressed, however, that the revolve was not used just to change locations but also to unify those locations into a single environment. The differ¬ ent places represented on the revolve did not have sharp barriers between them but rather overlapped and flowed into one another. This method of mounting the scenery could even have thematic implications. For instance, the model of the revolving setting for Henry IV, Part I shows that the castle was represented by a crenelated tower much higher than anything else on the stage. The result of this was that whenever the stage was revolved, to whatever location, the tower was never totally out of view.2 Wherever Hal might be, in Mistress Quickly’s inn or on Gad’s Hill, the image of the crown always loomed above him.

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The manner in which Reinhardt revolved the stage shows the stress he placed on unity and continuity. No lights dimmed, no curtain came down to hide the transition from the audience. Instead, the action of the play would continue as the revolve turned. In Othello, the actors simply walked from one location to the next as the stage turned and in Twelfth Night, ‘ ‘the players prepared the spec¬ tator for the scene to come by a moment of brief pantomime as the scenic back¬ ground changed” (Styan, Reinhardt 53-54). Reinhardt even used the revolve when change of location per se was not called for, but change of perspective, in his mind, was. Kleist’s Penthesilea, for instance, has only one location: the plain before Troy, which was realized most economically by some hills with high grass, two cypress trees, and a bridge of cyclopean stone (Fuerst and Hume, 18). This pared down setting could easily have been designed by Appia; but Reinhardt mounted this simple setting on the revolve so that he could present those ele¬ ments in different spatial (and therefore different symbolic) relationships as the action unfolded (Carter, 191-92). Like Appia, Reinhardt knew that continuity within a scene was as important as continuity between scenes. Often, therefore, he turned the revolve as part of the action of the play. The chase scene in A Midsummer Night’s Dream was staged in this way, with the revolve turning continuously as the actors ran about in their muddle. In the pantomime play, Venetian Night, the turning stage figured as a part of the protagonist’s surreal dream that served as the superstructure of the narrative. The student dreams that he goes to the hotel room of his lady love only to discover another lover already there. He promptly kills his rival and takes the corpse “on his back and carries it painfully along a maze of dark corridors, down the stairs and out onto the bridge. All this as the stage revolves” (Styan, Reinhardt 31). Although the revolving stage was Reinhardt’s particular contribution to stage continuity, he did not use it indiscriminately or exclusively. Each play required its own means of making the play’s action continuous. Otto Preminger, who was an apprentice actor at Reinhardt’s Josefstadt Theater in Vienna, recalls that for Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters, Reinhardt choreographed the actors playing servants in a little dance during which they rearranged the furniture between the scenes, a technique reminiscent of that used by the Duke in The Imaginary In¬ valid. For his own production of Moliere’s play presented at Schloss Leopoldskron, Augusta Adler recalls that Reinhardt invented entr’actes with figures from commedia dell’arte who “floated past as in a colorful dream” (Festschift 15). For Buchner’s Danton’s Death, Reinhardt was to forego the revolve, instead using a unit setting such as the Duke and Appia had used with Appian lighting to create, for the highly episodic work, a fluidity of action. The setting consisted of two giant pillars that disappeared into the darkness above the stage and a large flight of steps that could serve as the Convention or the Revolutionary Tribunal or the Palais de Justice.

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The impression of tremendous plentitude and variety of life, the impression of passionate move¬ ment, was obtained by lighting up only one small part of the stage at a time whilst the rest remained in gloom. Only individuals or small groups were picked out in the spotlight whilst the masses always remained in semi-darkness, or even in complete darkness. But they were always there and they could be heard murmuring, speaking, shouting. Out of the darkness an upraised arm would catch the light, and in this way thousands seemed to be where hundreds were in fact. . . . The sound of singing, the whistling of “The Marseillaise,” the tramping of many feet, booing, the echo of a speech being delivered somewhere, applause out of the darkness. (Stern, 161-62)

In other words, by lighting only certain areas at a time and thus revealing only part of the scene, Reinhardt made use of visual synecdoche within the vast space of the Grosses Schauspielhaus. The audience was always aware that there was much more taking place than they could actually see. Reinhardt also anticipated cinematic editing devices, especially the dissolve, in his lighting for Danton’s Death. Scenes would flash up for a second or two. Lights would go out, darkness would persist for a fraction, then lights would go up elsewhere, and this rapid and often abrupt change rein¬ forced the rhythm of the piece. The last words of one scene were still being spoken when the first words of the next would sound and the light change to it. (Stern, 162-63)

As can be inferred from the above description of Danton’s Death, Appia’s prophecies about lighting had come to pass in Reinhardt’s mise en scene. When Reinhardt took over the Deutsches Theater, the technical renovations he insti¬ tuted there, with the exception of the revolve, had mainly to do with lighting. He had installed a lighting system based on the work of Mariano Fortuny (Styan, Reinhardt 118). Fortuny had worked with Appia in Paris and did much to de¬ velop the technology that made Appia’s ideas feasible (Volbach, 76-77). To control this system, Reinhardt introduced the lighting console which the operator “could ‘play’ as if it were a musical instrument,” turning instruments on and off, changing their intensity, creating special effects, just as Appia had envisioned (Styan, Rein¬ hardt 118). Reinhardt also developed the Kuppelhorizont or sky-dome. This was a curved plaster cyclorama at the back of the stage with a partial cupola above. Although it resembled the bandshell at the Hollywood Bowl, the purpose of the Kuppel¬ horizont was to reflect light, not sound. When diffused light was thrown upon it, the Kuppelhorizont presented “the illusion of space and infinite depth,” which had been such a prominent feature of Appia’s designs (Styan, Reinhardt 118). Concomitant to the use of the lighted horizon is the silhouette effect that Appia had been fond of. In Reinhardt’s 1909 production of Hamlet, for the scenes on the battlements, “shadowy figures moved almost in silhouette against a bleak and limitless North Sea of cold and forbidding aspect.” In the 1916 Macbeth, “rocks and battlements [were] darkly silhouetted against the cyclorama” and the

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witches were dressed in translucent costumes and then backlit against the Kuppelhorizont so that they appeared as “agile skeletons dancing” (Styan, Reinhardt 53, 64). It was not only in the Deutsches Theater that lighting figured so prominent¬ ly, however. In the tiny Kammerspiele, light was used to create an atmosphere on a stage too small to sustain an elaborate setting. Conversely, the gargantuan proportions of the Grosses Schauspielhaus necessitated that light become the primary scenic element since the great distances that separated the actors from the audience made the use of scenery of anything less than cyclopean proportions useless. It was also in the Grosses Schauspielhaus that the most pronounced use of side lighting in Reinhardt’s raise en scene occurred. For instance, the ability of light from the side to integrate figures in space and to emphasize plasticity made it both thematically and formally appropriate for the chorus in the famous production of Oedipus Tyrannus staged in that theater. In all Reinhardt’s work, lighting played the part delineated for it by Appia. Writing of Reinhardt’s raise en scene, Carter notes: “Lighting has . . . become an embodiment of emotion. It plays its emotional part in the drama, focusing and accentuating the emotions as they make their entrance” (12). If in 1905 Rein¬ hardt had created a palpable forest for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in 1913 he created one “that was almost nothing but light and shadow” {Festschrift 86). For Washburn-Freund, this light-setting evoked the feeling of “endless woods, now threatening, now sheltering, full of mysterious sounds and beings” {Rein¬ hardt and Theater 52). As in Appia’s work, Heine states that lighting was also the one element in Reinhardt’s mise en scene used to unify all the others. When Reinhardt began to . . . consider light the primary source of . . . his scenic effects, he laid the final stone to his edifice. Only by the synthesis and analysis of all form through light, did he achieve that highest form of expression which is his aim: the cooperation of all factors toward a common goal. (Reinhardt and Theater 111)

The result of the primacy of light in Reinhardt’s mise en scene was the creation of “limitless atmosphere” which “distracts the eye from the inconsequential de¬ tail to the infinite whole” {Reinhardt and Theater 111). A prime example of lighting used to create unity occurs in the London produc¬ tion of The Miracle, Reinhardt’s most successful pantomime play. The story con¬ cerns a young novice who runs away from the convent to find love and worldly fulfillment, and then eventually returns to the convent. Hofmannsthal remarked this production’s gigantic stained glass window modelled after the famous rose window of Notre Dame. It was through this window that the light which illumi¬ nated the drama’s action came {Reinhardt and Theater 25). All scenes, the baw¬ dy and the blasphemous as well as the holy, were bathed in the sacred light which came from this window, implying that while the nun had left the convent, she had never left God. Her sins and sufferings were not apart from, but a part of

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her spiritual growth. Likewise, in the London production of Oedipus Tyrannus, the “blinding white light beating down’’ relentlessly, inexorably upon the hero and the palace could be seen, Carter said, to function as fate (218). Not surprisingly, Reinhardt’s mise en scene, dominated as it was by light, depended on three-dimensional scenery. Fuerst and Hume credit Reinhardt with being the first to stylize his stage by plastic means (forgetting, it would seem, that Appia had done the same twenty years before) (21). Carter notes that the definitive quality of Reinhardt’s settings was their “massiveness,” that they ap¬ peared to be “scenes carved out of solid blocks, as by sculptors” (95). Sty an states, “At the Deutsches Theater the scene painter was replaced by the stage architect” (Reinhardt 53). The Grosses Schauspielhaus, in particular, required three-dimensional scenery. Borchardt said of the giant theater, “It sacrifices the scenery and the fly gallery, and breaks up altogether the old box arrangement. It is no more a cut-out; it has become a space. It is no more a flat surface, but has the dimensions of things that live” (Reinhardt and Theater 158). As with his predecessors, Reinhardt used plastic pieces of scenery to break up the stage volume into various levels and to motivate movement. The stairs which were to become so prominent a feature of German expressionist theater can be traced directly to Reinhardt. The setting for the London production of Oedipus Tyrannus is a case in point. It was comprised of a large flight of steps that filled the proscenium opening and led down into the orchestra—much like the theater at Hellerau—broken up by landings on each side and in the center. The background was no more than black screens with a massive pair of burnished copper doors set in the middle (Styan, Reinhardt 80-81). The settings for the 1908 production of King Lear and the 1911 Faust likewise consisted of little more than steps (Fuerst and Hume, 22). If light was to be the dominant element in the mise en scene, the setting had to be not only plastic but simplified and suggestive. While early in his career, as in the 1905 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Reinhardt had used a rich and detailed setting reminiscent of the Duke’s more representational produc¬ tions, as he matured, Washbum-Freund noted, he developed an approach to scenic environment which has been defined as “simplicity of representation, elimina¬ tion of details, and at the same time, deepening of substance” (Reinhardt and Theater 50). Such a description could serve equally well for Appia’s art. In Rein¬ hardt’s mise en scene, the environment was delineated by “a few characteristic traits” (Fuerst and Hume, 18). The setting for the 1910 production of Othello “merely suggested] a street, a canal, a bridge or a harbour” (Styan, Reinhardt 54). The aim was to create a few vivid impressions of Venice and Cyprus. A meeting at night in gondolas, in a narrow canal by the light of torches; a section of bare wall, a narrow street revealing at its end a patch of Italian sky—Venice is there, in all its beau¬ ty, a living thing. The port of Cyprus, but not a detailed description of the port—nothing more than an enormous dyke between two houses, behind which are seen some masts with their great

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Max Reinhardt sails. And the hall in Cyprus, with its colonnaded platform. The arcades open to the sky, lighted with torches, which are too crude for Venice torches, give the note of a Cyprus more bar¬ barous then Venice, placed in an Italian frame. (Fuerst and Hume, 18)

For a production of The Merchant of Venice, “the street before Shylock’s house was suggested by an angle of the building, an arcade carried by heavy columns, a little bridge and another wall’’ (Fuerst and Hume, 18). In some cases, the set¬ ting was reduced to a single element, much as in Appia’s designs. Simonson recalls that “in 1910 at Munich I saw Reinhardt stage Lysistrata on a single stairway that stretched across the entire stage and play most of Hamlet around a single column” (343). Osborne believes that Reinhardt’s mise en scene was influenced by the same forces then at work in painting and the other fine arts. The principles of modern art are strongly emphasized: commanding form . . . and isolating outlines; the flowing lines of the Pre-Raphaelites; ... an illusion of space, attained, not by crowding in as many details as possible, but by a few definite carefully selected features; con¬ trasting light effects, which did away with the stage as a panorama; and above all, a new and courageous use of color. (Reinhardt and Theater 55)

Often observers of Reinhardt’s art liken it to that of the impressionists. Carter writes, “His aim in the big theater is certainly that of creating impressionist sen¬ sations by the use of simple, big outlines, colour, and the use of light as the predominant factor in the scene” (129). Despite its veritable forest, the 1905 A Midsummer Night’s Dream was, according to Styan, noteworthy for “its deli¬ cate creation of atmosphere and generally impressionistic treatment” (Reinhardt 119). Reinhardt, however, had no need to turn to painting to find these princi¬ ples; they had already defined Appia’s mise en scene. Reinhardt did no more than follow in Appia’s footsteps when he gave “the scene a ‘feeling’ part instead of a ‘thinking’ part” in the production (Carter, 86). Reinhardt also subscribed to the principle implicit in Appia’s theories that each production must have a musical design. Dietrich has suggested that in look¬ ing for plays to direct, Reinhardt “picked only those works which possessed the same musical quality and atmosphere as his own ideas” (163). This notion is reiterated in Styan’s contention that Reinhardt was often drawn to plays such as Salome and Pelleas and Melisande not by their themes but by the opportunity they afforded “to experiment with the rhythms of sound and movement” (Reinhardt hardt 24). Washburn-Freund has suggested that Reinhardt’s great affinity for and success with Shakespeare’s works lay in his understanding that they were “basical¬ ly musical” (Reinhardt and Theater 163). The function of music in Reinhardt’s productions can be seen to have been based on Wagner’s thought. “Music is the subconscious element that runs and feels with the drama, now rising, now falling, as the dominant rhythm of the action demands” (Carter, 130). For Maugham’s Too Many Husbands, Kaper states

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that Reinhardt required the composer to create a musical subtext which was “to disclose ... the true characters . . . against the dishonest and false spoken lines of the play’’ (Festschrift 75). In the pantomime play, Venetian Night, Reinhardt specified a musical counterpart to the action to emphasize the surreal nature of the piece. “The hotel porters moved trunks to a delicate air, and the lovers made love to the blasts of a trombone” (Styan, Reinhardt 32). There was nothing in¬ cidental about the incidental music in a Reinhardt production; it was used, Nilson says, “not only as accompaniment, but also for another very important purpose: unification of the production” (Reinhardt and Theater 125). In prac¬ tice, Reinhardt sometimes chose music already in existence and at other times commissioned original scores, just as the Duke had, but always with the aim of creating just the right aural atmosphere for his conception. He carefully chose pieces of Mozart for The Servant of Two Masters and had works by Schumann arranged to his specifications for Faust II. However, he was more comfortable when collaborating directly with composers. Engelbert Humperdinck (Wagner’s pupil) was Reinhardt’s favorite musical collaborator, creating many scores for his productions including The Blue Bird and The Miracle (Dietrich, 168). Whatever the source of the music, it is clear that Reinhardt controlled it; he never allowed it to control him. This can be seen in his manipulation of Men¬ delssohn’s work for the 1908 A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Maintaining only the overture and wedding march as the composer had intended, Reinhardt di¬ vided up the rest of the music and inserted it wherever he felt it would best serve his own purposes. “Complete numbers were split up, accentuated, and allowed to be associated, after many repetitions, with particular characters and atmosphere. They lost their own intrinsic value and fitted in perfectly with Reinhardt’s con¬ ception” (Dietrich, 168). It is clear from this description that in Reinhardt’s mise en scene, music had lost the primacy it had had in Wagner’s thought and had become just another element to be used by the Regisseur; but it is equally clear that the Regisseur used music in a Wagnerian way, to create recurrent themes and leitmotivs. Reinhardt’s creation of a musical design for his works was not limited only to the use of actual music. As Bab’s description shows, the aural portion of the mise en scene included a careful orchestration of sounds. The Merchant of Venice begins with a wonderfully blended symphony of noises: this was the awakening of the town: animal sounds, tools rattling, the individual calls of the gondoliers, all the noises of the people of Venice, Queen of the seas, as they greet the new day. . . . This acoustic atmosphere runs through the whole play and, particularly in the street scenes, it some¬ times contrives to be in the air—a noise, a cry near or far-off, or actual music. (Dietrich, 169)

Reinhardt’s assistant Herald claims: “No one before him had any idea of the sig¬ nificance of different sounds as aids to characteristic atmosphere on the stage,” a statement which requires amendment to “no one before him, with the excep¬ tion of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen . . .” for it will be remembered that noise-

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music played its part in Meininger productions also {Reinhardt and Theater 127). Again expanding upon the work of the Duke, Reinhardt created choral effects in many of his productions. The speakers are divided into groups which correspond to the singing voices of a choir. By omitting several words, a given sentence of the text is shortened for that group which is to join in later, and so on from group to group, until, at a given moment, the entire chorus is heard in full, powerful unison. All this is no matter of mere chance, but is exactly graded as to the intensity and pitch of the tone. (Reinhardt and Theater 130)

In support of this, Dietrich points out the precision with which vocal changes are indicated in Reinhardt’s Regiebiicher (165). The musical quality of a Reinhardt work extended beyond its music, even beyond sound. Reinhardt accepted the Appian principle that the entire mise en scene must grow ‘ ‘out of the fundamental rhythm or note of the character or play, which slowly expands till it fills the frame and carried us beyond the theater” (Carter, 96). Hofmannsthal said that the definitive Reinhardt touch “con¬ sists ... in his remarkable ability to give to each . . . [play] ... its peculiar rhythm and by means of this rhythm to mold each one into a living breathing organism” {Reinhardt and Theater 23). This search for the characteristic rhythm of a scene extended to the blocking which, especially with a large group of ac¬ tors, approached choreography. The fairies from the 1905 A Midsummer Night’s Dream are described by Herald and Stern as “gliding, jumping, hovering in a dance, flying over bush, stream and hillock. . . . Their motion is music” (Styan, Reinhardt 58). Reinhardt was as noted for his crowd scenes as the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen had been, but for Reinhardt Massenregie (literally, “crowd direction”) was not just “assembling a mass of detail, as it had been with the Meiningen company and the theater of Otto Brahm: Reinhardt’s was an hypnotic touch, often some¬ thing magical” (Styan, Reinhardt 127). A crowd was composed of individuals, and Reinhardt was as careful as the Duke had been to individualize them, but in Reinhardt’s work a special status was conferred upon the crowd as a group. The crowd was a manifestation of some force of Nature, something primal. For Oedipus Tyrannus, Reinhardt transformed the stately chorus into a seething mob which was, in Carter’s opinion, the embodiment of “elemental passions” (219). Held stated that this chorus was a unit “of voice and movement, with several hundred arms stretching up together and a cry from several hundred throats” (Styan, Reinhardt 127). The audience was awe-struck by the chorus’ “animation and variety, its headlong rushes, its air of being some huge living organism” (Martin-Harvey, 393). In Danton ’s Death, Reinhardt turned Buchner’s background of Parisians into the personification of the French Revolution (Styan, Drama 3:10-11). At the end of Lysistrata, Reinhardt expressed the regained unity of the polis by having the previously opposed choruses interweave in a victory dance. “Colors race all over

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the scene, lines . . . advance and recede, entwine, break, and joyously melt away. There are shouts of laughter, singing, and every expression of pent-up emotion” (Carter, 220). In his biography of his father, Gottfried Reinhardt presents an over¬ view, in appropriately musical terms, of the uses to which the director put the crowd. These crescendi of mass ecstasy, these huddling diminuendi, the ritardandi of dawning, slowly paralyzing horror, the breathlessly expectant accelerandi, the catatonic rests and vivaciously surging alla-breve passages, the muted fade-outs of predestined doom were symphonic. But Reinhardt was not only the conductor of this unwritten symphony. He was its composer. (364)

Even when he did not deal with large groups, Reinhardt created rhythmic move¬ ment patterns. His ability to create ‘‘with gestures and movement of the actors a visible but inaudible inner music which filled the auditorium with its harmonies and dissonances” was such a definitive quality of his work in the small theaters such as the Kammerspiele that the effect came to be referred to as Kammerspielstil (Dietrich, 166). In this respect, Reinhardt’s art can be seen as the realization of Appia’s search for the integration of space and time, as is suggested by the remarks of his frequent collaborator, the playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal. ‘‘A strong rhythmic faculty forms the essential effectiveness in this great stagemanager’s poetics; his unusual sense of space is the natural correlate to this: for the rhythmic is the attempt to grasp and organize time like space” (Reinhardt and Theater 204). Reinhardt did not share only techniques with his predecessors, but also’ philosophy. The Wagnerian ideals are manifest in Reinhardt’s sparse writings on the theater. Modern society, Reinhardt states, is marked by atrophy of the spirit. ‘‘We exercise daily to strengthen our muscles and sinews that they may not grow feeble. But our spiritual organs, which were made to act for an entire lifetime, remain unused, undeveloped, and so, with the passing years, they lose vitality” (“Enchanted” 296). Reinhardt deemed the theater alone capable of providing the spiritual exercise which is a prerequisite of true fellow-feeling. “We can telegraph and telephone and wire pictures across the ocean; we can fly over it. But the way to the human being next to us is still as far as to the stars. The actor takes us on the way” (Reinhardt and Theater 299). Reinhardt even uses imagery similar to Wagner’s to convey his ideas. Note the references to fecunda¬ tion and resurrection (with its connotation of redemption) in the following passage. [Theater’s] task is to lift the word out of the sepulcher of the book, to breathe life into it, . . . and thus to bring it into living contact with ourselves, so that we may receive it and let it bear fruit in us. . . . Life is the incomparable and most valuable possession of the theater. Dress it up in any manner you wish, the cloak will have to fall when the eternal human comes to the fore, when, in the height of ecstasy, we find and embrace each other. The noble dead of a hundred, of four hundred, of a thousand years ago, arise again on the boards. It is this eternal wonder of resurrection which sanctifies the stage. (Reinhardt and Theater 257)

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In Reinhardt’s mind “primitive human passions” were “the binding cords” which could transform “vast heterogeneous masses of human beings” into a communi¬ ty; it was theater’s duty, therefore, to evoke those passions (Carter, 10). Reinhardt believed that the theater was the most democratic of the arts. Every other art presupposes that he who receives has a certain amount of knowledge, a musi¬ cal ear, a well-trained eye, and so forth. Every other art, therefore, appeals chiefly to the in¬ dividual, while the theater presupposes nothing and, in its best productions, addresses itself both to the most cultivated individual and to the great masses. (Reinhardt and Theater 57)

This general appeal was due to the fact that “neither letters nor tones, neither stone, nor wood nor canvas, are its medium, but man himself. ’ ’ Being built upon the actor, theater was the most powerful and direct art, which is to say, the one best suited to effect a strong emotional bond with and thereby among the perceivers. Reinhardt believed with Wagner that people attended the theater out of “an elementary and passionate desire” to relinquish the self or the will. “All who are present in the theater . . . strive, consciously or unconsciously, to en¬ hance themselves, to forget themselves, to rise above themselves” {Reinhardt and Theater 58). Reinhardt, in other words, wanted to return theater to its an¬ cient purpose of providing “community ritual” with “its shared expansion of feeling and understanding, its power to enlarge the imagination and intelligence, its gift of a special kind of delight to our lives” (Styan, Reinhardt 8). Reinhardt and Wagner were, then, in perfect accord as to the purpose of theater. They even used similar means to attain the new communal theater. Rein¬ hardt, like Wagner before him, was concerned with the theater as a structure. He built the giant Grosses Schauspielhaus as a people’s theater, “The Theater of the Five Thousand,” a modern Theater of Dionysus (Carter, 121). Later he instituted a festival at Salzburg which was, significantly, referred to as the Bay¬ reuth of theater {Reinhardt and Theater 5). His search for a drama appropriate to the communal function of the Salzburg Festival led him, like Wagner, to popular sources. In Reinhardt’s case, these sources were the miracles, moralities, and mysteries of the Middle Ages. Like Wagner’s beloved Teutonic myths, these works had arisen from the people, had developed as a folk tradition. With their “simplicity and clarity,” they served as a model in the “attempt to revive ritual drama in modern times” (Styan, Reinhardt 87). However, Reinhardt knew, as Wagner had known, that merely imitating a form of drama found in the communal theater of a past epoch would not result in modern communal theater. The aim, then, in producing a work like Everyman, was “not to bring forth an empty old play as a curiosity for a few people interested in historical things, but . . . consisted in making this old folk-play really alive, filled with the spirit of today, and once more a com¬ munity possession for the people” {Reinhardt and Theater 15). If communality was theater’s purpose, it was also thought necessary by Reinhardt to its pro-

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cesses. Reinhardt’s theaters were perfect working examples of Wagner’s “fel¬ lowship of artists.’’ There was a tripartite directorship, as at Meiningen, but under Reinhardt the duties were divided somewhat differently. There was a dramaturge (or playwright, scenarist, or adaptor-translator, depending on the production), a scene designer, and the director, who was served by a veritable army of Chronegks (Reinhardt and Theater 81-88). Everyone in a Reinhardt company was expected and encouraged to make his or her individual contribution to the whole. Handl claimed, “The group of artists around Reinhardt is a growing unit of free, independent individuals. Common work binds them” (Reinhardt and Theater 108). Indeed, Reinhardt’s theaters upheld Wagner’s principle that only through full realization of individual potentiality could the total artwork prosper. If, in the following passage written about Reinhardt, the phrase “poetic aim” is substi¬ tuted for “Will of the Theater,” it becomes a statement of Wagner’s ideal. The new and significant thing in the theater is the expression of the Will of the Theater by co-ordinated minds, each artist taking the keenest interest in promoting the artistic work of the theater, each artist desiring to attain the best effort, not only for his own sake, but also for that of his fellow-artists. (Carter, 20)

The one aspect of Brahm’s work that Reinhardt did not rebel against, but incor¬ porated into his own work, was the acting ensemble. Reinhardt persuades the actor of his own free will to surrender to the ensemble; this power of suggestion springs from the conciseness with which every figure stands before his eyes as an effective part of the total picture which he has worked out with untiring zeal. (Reinhardt and Theater 112)

However, it was the sense of personal freedom within the group that character¬ ized the Reinhardt ensemble. He went beyond Brahm, and by extension returned to the practice of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, by “affording an opening to im¬ pulse” in his work (Carter, 121). Reinhardt, like Wagner, realized that the germ of all theatrical creativity lay in the actor’s impulse, his or her ability to improvise. Reinhardt, however, again like Wagner, did not use the term “actor,” in a narrow, literal sense. It is to the actor and to no one else that the theater belongs. When I say this, I do not mean, of course, the professional alone. I mean, first and foremost, the actor as poet. All the great dramatists have been and are to-day born actors, whether or not they have formally adopted this calling, and whatever success they have had in it. (Festschrift 1)

Not only the playwright, but all theater artists were, in essence, actors and, most important of all, the audience members were actors. “We all bear within us the potentiality for every kind of passion, every fate, every way of life. Nothing

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human is alien to us” {Festschrift 295). It was, then, in the empathic ability of the audience that its role as actor was found. To activate the empathic potentiali¬ ty of the audience, Reinhardt sought what he called “intimacy” between the per¬ former and the audience. Like Wagner, he wanted to sweep the spectators into the very heart of the production. True theater was to be found in the relationship between the actor and the spectator; all the elements of mise en scene were of no avail unless they contributed to this relationship, this “intimacy,” by which was meant “that psychological relationship which makes dramatic values rele¬ vant to an audience” (Brockett and Findlay, 215). Light became Reinhardt’s primary element of mise en scene in great part because nothing could engage both the attention and (save music) the emotions of the audience better. The use of the revolve eliminated those breaks in the ac¬ tion that could dispel the fragile connection between audience and actor; but it also produced a kinesthetic effect that would draw the audience in. All the ele¬ ments of Reinhardt’s mise en scene inherited directly or indirectly from his predecessors served to effect this intimacy. Moreover, the experiments and in¬ novations which are Reinhardt’s particular contribution to theater history all had as their impetus Reinhardt’s desire to involve the audience as completely as pos¬ sible in the theatrical event. Reinhardt was concerned with space, with the total theater space which in¬ cluded house and stage, as had been Wagner and Appia. Just as the scenic en¬ vironment conditioned the dramatic action, so, Reinhardt knew, the total theatrical environment conditioned the aesthetic experience. [Reinhardt] considers place in the highest degree important. For months and sometimes for years he has dreamed of how a room will shut an audience in, whether with solemnity of height as in a church, or with solemnity of breadth as in the ancient theater, or mysteriously, as in some grotto, or agreeably and socially, as in a pleasant, peopled salon. (Reinhardt and Theater 24)

In the earliest part of his career, Reinhardt thought that intimacy could best be effected by proximity. His very first theaters, the cabarets Die Brille and Schall und Rauch, were “not much bigger than a hotel room” (Styan, Reinhardt 109). In these, he directed works such as Strindberg’s chamber plays The Stronger and The Bond, central to which are very subtle psychological changes which require fineness of acting. He continued this kind of work, in close-up as it were, in his first real theater, the well-named Kleines (Little) Theater (Styan, Reinhardt 18-19, 128). Even after he had acquired the Deutsches Theater, then the best theater in Berlin, Reinhardt still felt the need for a tiny theater which could bring the actor and audience almost face to face. He, therefore, had built the Kammerspiele, the ultimate little theater. It seated only 292 (in comfortable leather chairs) and its front row was only three feet from the edge of the stage. The acoustics and sight lines were excellent (Styan, Reinhardt 109-10). Reinhardt’s aim in the Kam-

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merspiel, according to Herald, was “to intensify the contact” between actor and audience, “to erect a broader and stronger bridge between the two” (Reinhardt and Theater 149). Later, however, he regretted this direction in his career, say¬ ing “the small size of the theater, the proximity of the stage, the extra comfort of the seats, were all a mistake: the quality of an audience grows with its quanti¬ ty” (Styan, Reinhardt 110). He turned his attention from the very small to the very large theater. After experimenting with staging in circuses, Reinhardt had constructed the Grosses Schauspielhaus, the “Theater of the Five Thousand.” It was a vast domed arena, a sort of Houston Astrodome of the theater. Here Reinhardt wanted to capture the awe-inspiring magnitude of the Theater of Di¬ onysus which he felt necessary to the kind of presentation which would, accord¬ ing to Kahane, fuse an audience of disparate individuals into a community. Under the influence of these mighty spaces, these big-severe lines, all that is small and petty disappears, and it becomes a matter of course to appeal to the hearts of great audiences with the strongest and deepest elements. . . . This theater can only express the great eternal elemental passions and the problems of humanity. In it spectators cease to be mere spectators; they be¬ come the people; their emotions are simple and primitive, but great and powerful, as becomes the eternal human race. (Carter, 122-23)

As has already been mentioned, the great space of the Grosses Schauspiel¬ haus required the very elements of mise en scene that had been passed on to Rein¬ hardt by Saxe-Meiningen and Appia. The first law of the new theater is utmost simplicity. . . . All accessories are superfluous; they cannot possibly be noticed, or, if they are, they are a source of distraction. . . . The elabora¬ tion of details, the emphasizing of nuances disappear; the actor and the actor’s voice are truly essential while lighting becomes the real source of decoration. (Carter, 122)

However, Reinhardt was not, in the Grosses Schauspielhaus, subscribing to Wagner’s notion that audience involvement required distance; there was no mys¬ tic gulf in the “Theater of the Five Thousand.” Quite to the contrary, the actors in the Grosses Schauspielhaus were brought into the very midst of the audience. The standard proscenium stage was here replaced by a giant thrust stage. “No small, strongly circumscribed, impassable frame separates the world of the play from the outer world” (Carter, 124). The removal of the proscenium barrier and with it the elimination of the stage as a recessed box engendered a different kind of aesthetic experience in the Grosses Schauspielhaus than could be had in the standard proscenium theater, according to Breuer. Looking at the framed stage is somewhat similar to looking through a telescope or a micro¬ scope. On lifting your head, you are back in the world of reality. In the Arena, the spectator himself undergoes a transformation; he becomes an actor. The drama has broken through the wall that separated it from real, everyday life; it has stepped right into the center and radiates a magnetic power of attraction that draws everything toward it. (Reinhardt and Theater 151-52)

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Once Reinhardt had crossed the proscenium line, he saw no limits to the place¬ ment of the action. The performers were not confined to the thrust, but roamed throughout the aisles as well. The chorus arises and moves in the midst of the audience; the characters meet each other amid the spectators; from all sides the hearer is being impressed, so that gradually he becomes part of the whole. . . . This close contact (intimacy) is the chief feature of the new form of the stage. It makes the spectator a part of the action, secures his entire interest, and intensifies the effect upon him. (Carter, 124)

Reinhardt began to burst out of the proscenium frame, not as Saxe-Meiningen had, by extending the mise en scene into the invisible wings and flies, but by having it spill over into the house, almost into the laps of the audience. Yet the thrust of the Grosses Schauspielhaus was not the first manifestation of this ten¬ dency in Reinhardt’s art. When he took over the Deutsches Theater, at the same time he was installing the revolving stage, the Kuppelhorizont, and a state-ofthe-art lighting system, Reinhardt had the apron of the stage extended further toward the audience (Styan, Reinhardt 109). Furthermore, when he staged the pantomime play Sumurun, Reinhardt adopted the Kabuki theater’s hanamichi or “flower ways,” raised runways which extend out from the stage into the house upon which the actors make their entrances and exits and play scenes (Styan, Reinhardt 28). That Reinhardt succeeded in making the audience actors (i.e., emotional par¬ ticipants) in his thrust stage productions can be seen in descriptions of the Lon¬ don production of Oedipus Tyrannus. Not only did Reinhardt convert the Covent Garden Opera into a thrust theater, but he added hanamichi-style gangways that stretched to the back of the stalls (Styan, Reinhardt 81). The crowd-chorus surged into and out of the audience by means of these gangways and back and forth in the choric circle created in front of the stage with the result, according to the (London) Observer, that their actions “swept the audience into the movement and produced an overwhelming impression of one’s being part of the excited crowd.” As the crowd raised their white arms—a sea of white arms it was— in agonised supplication, we felt their agony. When they ran in confusion before the door on the other side of which . . . such dread things were happening, we shared their anticipatory, conjectural terror. (Styan, Reinhardt 83)

During Danton ’s Death in the Grosses Schauspielhaus, the audience was moved to participate. The respectable, middle-class theatergoers took to hooting and jeer¬ ing along with their counterparts, the crowd of revolutionaries. When Danton presented his spirited defense before the Tribunal, “the audience was so carried away . . . that it joined with loud shouting and handclapping in the stage-crowd’s demonstration of sympathy and approval” (Styan, Reinhardt 50).

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In one way, the use of such devices as the thrust and the hanamichi was no more than an extension of the Duke’s kinesthetically conceived blocking. Whereas the Duke had had his crowds rush at the audience, always stopping at the prosceni¬ um, Reinhardt intensified the effect by having his crowds actually rush into the audience. Yet kinesthesia was not the only result of Reinhardt’s thrust staging. Implicit in this innovation was a conception of audience involvement quite different from that of Appia or Wagner. It will be remembered that they wanted the au¬ dience to identify with the protagonists, but in the accounts of Reinhardt’s thrust productions cited above, Bakshy says that it is clearly the chorus with which the audience empathizes. In a Reinhardt performance the world of the play remains imaginary, whilst the spectator is transformed into a member of a real crowd living in that world and witnessing the events there proceeding. The effect of unity in this case is, therefore, based not so much on an illusion of reality of the play enacted, as ... on an illusion of “reality of onlooking.” (Reinhardt and Theater 337-38)

The audience which identifies with the chorus is emotionally involved in the work, and yet it is allowed a perspective other than that of the protagonist’s alone, a perspective of the whole. It is precisely because we are not Oedipus, but recog¬ nize that we could be, that we realize the full implications of his fate. Reinhardt’s adoption of the thrust stage was not the final development of this tendency, which was called Sprengung des Biihnenrahmens (bursting the stage frame) (Styan, Reinhardt 83). The use of the thrust, after all, results in only an overlapping of audience and acting areas; Reinhardt was not content until he had fused the two. A prime example of this can be found in the London production of the pantomime play, The Miracle. For this work, Reinhardt engaged not a theater, but the Olympia, the largest exhibition hall in the city with four times the space of the Albert Hall. He then set his designers the task of transforming the interior of the huge building into the nave of a Gothic cathedral, replete with columns, arches, architraves, vaults, gargoyles, tracery, and, of course, stained glass windows. This was not to be a scenic environment in the usual sense of the word, set up at one end of the building for the actors; it encompassed the whole space, surrounding the audience as well as the actors and thereby making them one (Styan, Reinhardt 96). The audience was not looking at a cathedral; they were in a cathedral. To be sure, actors and audience had specific designated areas within the space, but even this separation was planned to enhance the illu¬ sion of being in a cathedral. In place of the usual audience and stage configura¬ tion, Reinhardt had tiers of seats set up along both of the long walls of the Olympia with a long and relatively narrow aisle (in which the action occurred) in between, in imitation of the arrangement of a church (Styan, Reinhardt 94-95). The au¬ dience was thus transformed into a congregation; they were truly witnesses in the religious sense.

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Along the same lines as his work in the Olympia, Reinhardt turned Maria Theresia’s ballroom in Vienna’s Imperial Palace into a theater; but whereas the Olympia was in essence a big, empty, characterless space that Reinhardt could fill with whatever atmosphere he chose, the Redoutensaal was a rich, baroque room resplendent with crystal chandeliers and Gobelin tapestries. The problem here was not to create an environment, but to make use of one already in exis¬ tence. Reinhardt had erected an open platform stage at one end of the ballroom, backed by a permanent curved wall, upon both of which was continued the decor of the room. This wall served as a permanent background for the action on the stage. As in the Olympia Miracle, in the Redoutensaal there was no barrier be¬ tween actor and audience; both were enfolded in the atmosphere of the room, equally partakers of its sensibility. This kind of environment was, of course, not suited to all kinds of drama, as Macgowan was quick to note. Plays for the Redoutensaal must have some quality of distinction about them, a great, clear, [sic] emotion free from the bonds of physical detail, a fantasy or a poetry as shining as crystal, some artificiality of mood, or else an agreement in period with the baroque. You can imagine Racine or Corneille done perfectly here, Euripides only by great genius, “The Weavers” not at all. (Reinhardt and Theater 167)

The implication of the above passage is a reversal of the usual practice of the¬ ater; instead of choosing a play and then devising an environment for it, here is the suggestion that one starts with the environment and then matches a dramat¬ ic action to it. This is the principle that marked the next phase of Reinhardt’s work. The transformation of the Olympia and the adaptation of the Redoutensaal served as a transition to the next phase in Reinhardt’s work: he began to go out¬ side theaters and into the world to stage his works. Whereas he had previously sought to create an environment first on the stage and then in the auditorium and stage combined, he now began to seek out environments, natural or man-made, into which he could pour theater like a liquid which assumes the shape of the vessel that contains it. These environments had to meet two requirements: they had to contain actor and audience together and they had to carry their own at¬ mosphere. Turning the world itself into a theater was the final and full realiza¬ tion of Reinhardt’s most deeply-rooted belief: the world was theater for Reinhardt. Stella Adler recalled how the director would give a ball at his home, Schloss Leopoldskron, and then, rather than mingle with the guests, would secrete him¬ self at the top of the darkened staircase and watch the proceedings, never putting in an appearance (Festschrift 25). Reinhardt’s perspective, personal and artistic, was, Marek says, in accord with the medieval conception of the theatrum mundi. To him all the stage was the world, and he saw almost everything—politics, science, economy, nature,—in terms of a rising curtain. Many years later, when he was in Hollywood, he wrote . . . that Hitler was “a perfect piece of casting for the role of history’s most execrable villain” but that he too would “be furnished with an exit line.” (Festschrift 91)

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When the Nazis robbed him of his theaters and drove him out of Berlin, Rein¬ hardt returned to the temporary safety of his home, Salzburg (Styan, Reinhardt 9). It was there that he found the greatest number of his world theaters. Indeed, his idea for the Salzburg Festival contained within it the conception of the beauti¬ ful city itself as one vast theater. This idea found its fullest expression in the produc¬ tion which was the keystone of the festival, the Everyman presented in the Domplatz. A platform was erected before the great cathedral which, with the steps of the edifice, served as the stage, while the cathedral became the skene. The audience was seated in the square, surrounded by all the baroque buildings, secular and ecclesiastical, that formed the center of the city. Nor was just the facade of the cathedral incorporated into the mise en scene; the music of the cathedral’s choir and organ emanated from the invisible interior of the church, as did the sonorous voice of God {Festschrift 10). The mise en scene extended even further, beyond the square itself. For the recurring voices that call out, “Everyman,” Reinhardt placed actors in the towers of various churches through¬ out the city, the effect of which deeply impressed Marek. Who can forget the cries which, coming from invisible distances and undiscernible locations, warned Everyman of his approaching death? One of these speakers had been placed in the highest tower of the medieval castle built far above the city, and his voice, ghostly and gruesome, sounded seconds after the others, as if it originated from a cloud. (Festschrift 84)

The bells of the city were also made to ring “at decisive moments in the produc¬ tion” {Festschrift 10). It seemed to some observers that nature had become Reinhardt’s willing col¬ laborator. A gust of wind would cause the folds of Faith’s cloak to billow in such a way as to lend her an ethereal quality; clouds passing over the sun would seem apt intimations of mortality; and the pigeons that roosted in the cathedral eaves would fly up “always, so it seemed, at a point in the dialogue which gave some¬ thing symbolic to their flight” {Festschrift 10). Not all these occurrences were fortuitous. Reinhardt might not have been able to control wind and clouds, but he did instruct an actor to slam shut the lid of a chest so as to put the birds to flight at just the right moment {Festschrift 82). The director also carefully chose the time of day to begin the performance to take advantage of the natural change of light. The production began in the late afternoon and continued into the eve¬ ning, allowing the fading light of day to reinforce Everyman’s growing aware¬ ness of approaching death (Styan, Reinhardt 91). Reinhardt, having staged one production before a church, staged his next one within a church. Calderon’s morality play, The Great World Theater, was rewritten by Hofmannsthal for Reinhardt and presented in Salzburg’s Kollegienkirche, considered a masterpiece of baroque architecture. As in the Redoutensaal, the decor of the church was continued in the scenery. Six free¬ standing niches served as frames for the six allegorical characters, so that they

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appeared as sculptures come to life. The chancel and high altar, along with a platform erected across the width of the church, became the stage. Actors por¬ traying angels and the all-important figure of Death were placed in little loges in the cupola. Thus, the scenes involving the human characters were played out, appropriately enough, under the gaze of the supernatural ones. “The stage struc¬ ture was conceived to convey the dual perspectives of the world and the spirit. . . . The whole stage of life is made visible, not merely a visible world haunted by an invisible order, as in Everyman” (Styan, Reinhardt 103). In his exploration of Salzburg to discover “theaters,” Reinhardt also hit upon the Summer Riding School. The primordial gray rock into which it was set, its three tiers of galleries (which must have struck Reinhardt as a ready-made tiring house), and the expanse of sky above all demanded to be turned into a theater. It seemed obvious to Reinhardt that this was the setting for Faust. Onto the exist¬ ing structure he had built what came to be known as the Fauststadt (“Faust-city”) (Styan, Reinhardt 72). This was a large setting that integrated all the locations indicated by Goethe into a compressed town, using the same principle that had governed the mounting of sets on the revolve. Here, however, the spatial con¬ tinuity was linear rather than circular. This arrangement allowed Reinhardt many possibilities for composition in depth. Throughout the play, things would be hap¬ pening at different places simultaneously, creating a visually and hence themati¬ cally rich mise en scene. This description of the opening of the play gives a sense of how he used this complex setting. Evening is drawing on. The town is falling asleep. There is light in the windows. A bell tolls. Servant girls at the fountain. Songs, Night-watchmen. Barking dogs. Human voices sing. A horn. Students stagger home bawling from a tavern. A woman’s voice. A window, a door shuts. A bolt and chain. The lights gradually go out. (Styan, Reinhardt 72)

It should not be inferred from the above examples that Reinhardt’s use of world theaters was limited to morality plays. The director perceived his own home, Schloss Leopoldskron, as the perfect environment for The Imaginary Invalid. The performance began as the audience members arrived. Argan met them at the front door, welcomed them to his home, acquainted them with his ailments, and led them up the stairs into the Marble Hall where he sank exhausted into an armchair before a blazing fireplace. Only then did the action of Moliere’s text begin, but Reinhardt had already drawn the audience into the world of the work by making them the protagonist’s guests and confidants (.Festschrift 15). On another occa¬ sion, he staged Twelfth Night at the south end of the park surrounding Schloss Leopoldskron to take advantage of the view that location afforded of the lake and forested mountain beyond. As the action began, Viola and Sebastien were seen in a boat on the lake, making their way to shore, and when it began to rain, the Clown took the opportunity to jump his cue and sing, “For the rain it raineth every day ...” (Festschrift 12-14). There were even peripatetic productions of

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which the audience followed the actors about, from meadow to forest to hall as the action demanded (Festschrift 117-18). Outside Salzburg, Reinhardt continued along the same lines. He presented The Merchant of Venice on an actual canal in that city and A Midsummer Night’s Dream everywhere: in the Boboli Gardens in Florence, in the amphitheatre at Berkeley, and on the campus of Oxford University (Styan, Reinhardt 4; Fest¬ schrift 100). For the production at Oxford, “he chose not some convenient col¬ lege garden, but the great meadow at South Park, ... a great sloping field set with elm, and beech, and may, with a line of trees behind it through which a further meadow could be seen, and a wood and bushes on either side.’’ The en¬ tire expanse of this setting was used, causing one witness to remark that the director had conceived his mise en scene in terms of acres, not square feet (Styan, Rein¬ hardt 59). Titania and the contested changeling boy danced into view from far away across the meadow. The mechanicals also could be seen making their separate ways across the meadow until the lights of their lanterns converged at the place appointed for their rehearsal. At one point, Puck carried off one of Titania’s fairies. As they receded into the distance, they were followed by a diminishing spot of light, like an iris shot in a film. Lights were concealed in trees and grass, enabling fairies to appear and disappear by magic. The whole production was in actuality seen as “a unique exercise in the use of space and light’’ (Styan, Reinhardt 61). The question might well be asked if this move of Reinhardt’s toward world theaters was not a surrender to pictorial realism. Surely Antoine and Brahm and Stanislavsky, who had only tried to simulate parts of the real world, had never gone so far. Antoine had hung actual loins of beef on a set representing a butcher’s shop; but he had stopped short of taking the actors and audience to such a shop. Yet according to witnesses, A Midsummer Night’s Dream was never “more lovely to the eye, nor has it ever partaken more fully of the nature of a dream’’ than in its real setting at Oxford (Styan, Reinhardt 60). For Reinhardt, the concept of a simple, evocative environment modulated by light—an atmosphere—could encompass even the phenomenal world. Reinhardt once called himself a “negoti¬ ator between dream and reality.” Thomas Mann repeated this idea when he said of Reinhardt’s theater that it was what all art should be: “a coupling, moonlit and magic, between heavenly and earthly spheres” (Festschrift 93). When Reinhardt turned to the phenomenal world as his theater, it was to make it reveal the dream world hidden within it, and thereby to realize Wagner’s aspiration better than the painted drops at Bayreuth had ever done. Witnesses of Reinhardt productions again and again speak of their dreamlike quality, and not only in productions of works (as above) in which dream is a central motif. Everyman existed “in the limbo between dream and reality” (Styan, Reinhardt 89). The novice’s spiritual progress through the flesh in The Miracle was presented as a “feverish dream” (Styan, Drama 2:62). Even the commedia dell’arte farce of The Taming of the Shrew seemed part of a dream.

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Max Reinhardt Throughout the play there are intentionally confused relationships of figures and space, such as result from states of fever or dreams. . . . Groups of servants emerge from the earth, be¬ come harlequins, eccentrics, snake-like men, make foolish faces, beat one another, disappear into cupboards and through walls. (Dietrich, 170)

Reinhardt, Dietrich concludes, “was a magician of the stage, inexhaustible in finding ways of staging the vision of his dreamworld” (163). Yet a nagging question remains: how could it possibly have been Reinhardt’s own dream world that he materialized on the stage when he took as his sources dramas from so many different epochs and cultures? Wagner had attempted to create a drama of the soul compounded of romanticism and Buddhism; Appia had subscribed to the view (at least in the first half of his career) that only Wag¬ ner’s works were worth producing for that very reason; and the Duke of SaxeMeiningen had, with very few exceptions, directed works that could be accom¬ modated within the romantic mold. Reinhardt, however, in his long career directed works of not only romanticism, but also classicism and neoclassicism, and even realism and expressionism. This very eclecticism for which he is best known is surely proof of the absence of any personal artistic vision, especially a personal vision in accordance with that of Wagner. Nonetheless, Reinhardt’s art is always described in terms which echo the Wagnerian ideal. Gertrud Eysolt, one of Reinhardt’s chief actresses, attributed his artistic success to “the intensity of his sensory vision which reaches far be¬ yond the limits of the merely visible out to dimensions where, in art as well as in life, the mysterious realm of the infinite rises out of the gloom” (Festschrift 102). Reinhardt himself proclaimed: The art of the stage affords liberation from the conventional drama of life, for it is not dissimu¬ lation that is the business of the play but revelation. . . . The supreme goal of the theater is truth, not the outward naturalistic truth of everyday, but the ultimate truth of the soul. (“En¬ chanted” 298-99)

The truth is that whatever play of whatever genre, period, or ism he chose to direct, Reinhardt transformed it into a romantic work. Gorelik makes the point that Reinhardt’s manner with the classics was romantic. “He saw the colors, the tonalities, the atmosphere” (217). One of the qualities of Reinhardt’s Oedipus Tyrannus was that it engendered “the power of affectionate sympathy” for Oedi¬ pus, the man (Styan, Reinhardt 84). Likewise, The Miser was noted for its emo¬ tional quality and the humanizing touches with which Harpagon’s character was delineated. When the son leaves the father at the end of Act I, Fiedler reports Harpagon “wiped tears from his eyes, his nose watered, he pressed his purse to his heart, and groaning and sighing laid his forehead on the lattice-window and stared out” (Styan, Reinhardt 76). The same can be said of Reinhardt’s work with realistic drama. When the works of Buchner had been rediscovered in the early part of this century, he was

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hailed as a proto-realist because of his supposed concern with social problems. However, when Reinhardt directed Woyzeck, he stressed the personal, not the social aspects of the play (Styan, Drama 2:145). Woyzeck was a soul in torment and the causes for that torment were secondary to the suffering itself. Yet the most striking proof of Reinhardt’s spiritual and romantic approach to works of realism came in his production of Ghosts. This play had long been a mainstay of the realistic stage. It seemed to those of the realist/determinist world view clearly a piece a these concerned with such social causes as woman’s place in society and venereal disease. Reinhardt may have been the first director to realize that Ibsen did not fit Zola’s model of the sociopolitically-engaged naturalistic writer, as his later symbolist works were to prove. In Reinhardt’s then revolutionary conception of Ghosts, Jacobsohn said “the accent falls not on the spirit of revolt, but on the mother’s suffering’’ (Reinhardt and Theater 324). Instead of the usual realistic setting for Mrs. Alving’s drawing room, Reinhardt astounded those around him by asking Edvard Munch to provide the designs. Ernst Stern recalls that Rein¬ hardt was very excited by the rendering he received from the painter while Stern himself saw only a painting of a black chair and little else, and said as much to the director. Reinhardt then replied, “Maybe, but the heavy armchair tells you all you want to know. The dark colouring reflects the whole atmosphere of the drama. And then look at the walls: they’re the colour of diseased gums. We must try to get that tone” (Stern, 74-75). That he succeeded can be deduced from the description of the production left by Washburn-Freund. We had a scene that used outward forms only for the purpose of deepening the central mood of the play by the way in which it . . . repealed] the play and clash of ideas ... in a play and clash of lines. Symbolic also was the way in which the room, although it looked out on a fjord, was shut in like a prison by sharply pointed, threatening mountains, piercing and almost expelling the sky, and, with it, freedom and hope. Every line, every mass of space, height, width—all played their appointed parts in this relentless modem drama of fate. (Styan, Rein¬ hardt 21)

Nevertheless, the inclusion of expressionistic works in Reinhardt’s oeuvre seems most damning, for expressionism and Wagnerian romanticism are diametri¬ cally opposed. There are, to be sure, some parallels between the two movements: both were revolts against the corruption and hypocrisy of contemporary society, and the aim of both was the presentation of dreamscapes. In expressionism, however, the dream is always a nightmare. If romanticism revealed the soul, ex¬ pressionism revealed the id. Expressionism was naturalism carried to its logical conclusion of reducing the human being to its lowest terms, without naturalism’s saving grace of a faith in science’s ability to keep the creature in check. Both romanticism and expressionism had an emotional rather than an intellectual base; but in expressionism, emotions were the manifestations of the human’s lowest instincts, not of his or her highest aspirations. In expressionism, there was lust, but no love; violence, but no purification and redemption; self-hate, but no self-

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realization. In painting, both impressionism and expressionism presented not an object, but a perception of an object, the difference being that the implied perceiver in an impressionist painting possesses the soul of a romantic, while the implied perceiver in an expressionist work bears within him or her the warped, twisted mind of a psychotic. The soft, blurring lines of a Monet synthesize the world’s phenomena; but Kokoschka and Rouault used thick, dark, emphatic lines to isolate and demarcate their subjects from the usually dark and empty void which is their background. The form of expressionistic drama is likewise inimical to the values of romanticism. If the approach to language and movement in roman¬ ticism was musical, in expressionism it was mechanical. Instead of the emphasis on continuity and fluidity which marked the later romantic artists, the expres¬ sionists composed their plays of highly disjointed episodes, emphatic staccato replacing flowing rhythm. Expressionistic drama, then, seems irreconcilable with a romantic interpre¬ tation and mise en scene; yet that is precisely what Reinhardt gave it. Wedekind’s Spring’s Awakening, which deals with adolescent sexuality in a sexually repres¬ sive society, contains a scene in which the teenage protagonist meets a young girl in the woods. As they become aroused in each other’s presence, she begs him to beat her with a stick, which he does with growing violence until she screams. In Reinhardt’s production, the violence was eliminated and the encoun¬ ter ended with a tender kiss (Styan, Reinhardt 34). When he directed Sorge’s The Beggar, Reinhardt imposed upon the fragmented play a fluid rhythm, main¬ ly by the play of light. Describing this production, Gusti Adler notes: “Things happen simultaneously through a gauze, scenes glide into one another” (Styan, Reinhardt 42). Reinhardt’s alteration of texts to suit his purposes, as above, was a manifesta¬ tion of an attitude implicit in the work of Saxe-Meiningen and explicit in the theories of Appia, namely that it is the director who is the primary artist in the theater. For Reinhardt, the play was a framework upon which to build his work of art as Appia had said it should be. The text was the director’s pretext, neither more nor less. Not everyone was pleased with this shift in hierarchy within the theater. Reinhardt was often criticized for making “his method of production more obtrusive than the theme and intention of the author,” which is to say, for presenting his own artistic vision of the world rather than the interpretation of someone else’s (Styan, Reinhardt 2). The Neues Wiener Tageblatt reported: We have reached the point where the director, who ought to serve the author, has become his master. He introduces new scenes, even an additional character, he adds music, he changes rhythm, color, and character, he reorders, compresses, inflates, he hardly respects more than the poor skeleton of thought. (Dietrich, 173-74)

The discomfort of those accustomed to thinking of drama as literature and the¬ ater as a sort of moving illustration can be seen in the words of E. J. Dent who,

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after lavishly praising Reinhardt’s staging of the Urfaust as a series of tableaux vivants set inside a tall, narrow tracery frame, added uneasily, “I cannot help feeling that the play was performed as an excuse for the pictures, instead of the pictures being designed as background to the play” (Reinhardt and Theater 141). Reinhardt’s assertion of control over the play (and the playwright) took differ¬ ent forms. For plays from previous periods, he often commissioned new ver¬ sions. These were not merely translations or even modernizations, but complete reworkings of the texts to make them accord with Reinhardt’s own conception. Vollmoeller, a frequent Reinhardt collaborator, made such a revision of Gozzi’s Turandot for the director (Carter, 245). Sternheim rewrote The Miser to include pantomime dream scenes (Styan, Reinhardt 76). Reinhardt exerted such a strong influence over contemporary playwrights, Lederer says, as to be considered the true creator of their works. “He worked in close collaboration with some of the greatest playwrights of his time, molding their plays, suggesting changes which always resulted in success” (Festschrift 82). Some regretted this influence be¬ cause it prevented the playwright from reaching his full potential. Seeing how much “life, music, atmosphere and soul” their works acquired when staged by Reinhardt, claims Beer-Hoffman, some playwrights were content to sketch out¬ lines and write dialogue, leaving it to the director to “supply what is wanting in poetry” (Reinhardt and Theater 105). Reinhardt did indeed become a poet when staging his pantomimes. The Miracle can be taken as an example: “It was all Reinhardt’s idea; for him Karl Vollmoeller conceived a detailed scenario,” according to Marek (Festschrift 84). Reinhardt found his most perfect collabora¬ tor in the playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal who wrote for him the versions of Everyman and The Great World Theater presented at Salzburg. It is easy to understand the affinity of the two men. Hofmannsthal sought to write “lyrical plays” which would fuse music and drama; the essay in which he lays out his aesthetic ideas is entitled “The Stage as Dream Image” (Styan, Reinhardt 13-14). The real success of the collaboration, however, no doubt lay in Hofmannsthal’s attitude toward his art. The dramatic text is a thing incomplete; and the greater the dramatic poet, the more incomplete the text. . . . The works of dramatists like Shakespeare and Calderon, . . . with all their won¬ derful completeness, still retain a certain sketchiness; how well these masters knew when to stop and what to leave unsaid! (Reinhardt and Theater 70)

Hofmannsthal was perfectly content to let the director complete the work he had begun. At the end of The Great World Theater, the playwright specified merely that Death should come to lead away each of the characters; but Rein¬ hardt presented the play’s climax as a danse macabre. The actor portraying Death had stood motionless on a high pedestal above the stage throughout the produc¬ tion, appearing to be just another piece of sculpture in the great church. When he received his signal from God, he began an ominously slow descent, beating

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an invisible drum with two long bones as he went. (The sound was actually produced by a kettledrum hidden in the organ loft.) When the king was approached by Death, he suddenly seemed to lose control over his body and began to follow Death against his will. “He no longer walks as a living creature, . . . but as though his soul had gone out of him and is now part of the drumbeats” (Dietrich, 163). One by one, each of the six characters was compelled to execute a contorted dance—balletic death throes. The effect of this scene, according to Hofmannsthal, was such that . . . a half-audible cry of horror went up from the large body of spectators. . . . For a moment one feared that the impact would be stronger than the nerves of the audience could stand. . . . The medieval cry of “Timor mortis me conturbat” (the fear of death confounds me) seemed to rise up and get stuck in their throats. (Dietrich, 164)

Reinhardt’s art began precisely where words failed, Beer-Hoffman claims: “Reinhardt’s activity consists . . . in giving form to things which do not receive their form through words or reveal their life between these words—things, there¬ fore, of a visual, musical, and spiritual nature” {Reinhardt and Theater 328). That explains his frequent choice of inferior scripts and plays that required a great deal of mime (Styan, Reinhardt 24). Reinhardt was so convinced of the superi¬ ority of action, expression, and gesture that he regularly cast actors for the sup¬ pleness of their bodies rather than the fineness of their speech. Moissi, a longtime Reinhardt actor, spoke German with a heavy Italian accent (Carter, 182). In the Oxford A Midsummer Night’s Dream Titania was played by a Swedish dancer chosen for the grace of her movements, but assuredly not for her command of English (Styan, Reinhardt 60). It was never the dialogue that was remembered from a Reinhardt production. Dieterle, writing of the Hollywood Bowl A Mid¬ summer Night’s Dream, said the mise en scene was so overwhelming “that one totally forgot the words” {Festschrift 39). Reinhardt exerted as decisive an influence on actors as on playwrights. Most of the German actors of the prewar generation came out of a Reinhardt com¬ pany. It is difficult to say with precision how a director shapes an actor’s por¬ trayal, but one of his actresses, Gertrud Eysolt, has left a poetic description of the way in which Reinhardt transmitted his artistic vision to his actors in rehear¬ sal. “With all his senses vibrating with conscious life, he frees the senses of the actor. Full of emotion, he passes on to us light, form, color, and sound; and he rejoices at the echo he finds in us. It is his joy to recreate in us his own self, multiform, protean.” She likened Reinhardt’s presence in a performance to a child’s picture puzzle which asks the child to find the face or object hidden in the design. “Where is Reinhardt?” He is there, make no mistake! In ethereal form, between the figures on the stage, hidden in the trunk of a tree, or in a cloud, in the outlines of a Moissi, a Wegener, a Hoflich [leading actors in Reinhardt’s company], . . . They materialize him. (Reinhardt and Theater 102-3)

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An actor himself, Reinhardt considered the actor his primary medium. Dieterle says, “What marble means to the sculptor, the violin to the violinist, the actor was for Reinhardt” {Festschrift 43). Reinhardt also shaped and directed the work of his design-collaborators, but his manner of dealing with the design work differed from project to project and from artist to artist. Sometimes he would merely hand the script to the designer, giving him a free hand to create the scenery. At other times, he would provide the designer with a rough draft of his scenic ideas and expect the designer to elaborate upon them. At still other times, Herald says, the scene designer would discover his work already done, “with the form of every chair designed by Rein¬ hardt himself’ {Reinhardt and Theater 119). Reinhardt did not always feel the need to be his own designer, as Saxe-Meiningen and Appia had. However, he chose designers whose work reflected his own ideas and, by extension, bore a close resemblance to that of his predecessors. Stern, his most frequent scene designer. stylized by eliminating and reducing the stage setting to a few suggestive and significant fea¬ tures. A section of hedge represents a garden; the comer of a house, a street; a column against the sky a public place; and, as in the case of “Faust,” two columns against a background mounting upward, to be lost in the shadow, suggest the church in its entirety. (Fuerst and Hume, 81)

Strnad, another designer with whom Reinhardt often collaborated, would create the illusion of a large room by building a comer set, allowing the audience to imagine that the main area of the room was just beyond. . . . His use of impressionistic wellselected dramatic detail created an architectural illusion of space. . . . His setting became dis¬ play platforms for actors, rather than submerging them in an abundance of scenery. (Festschrift 54)

Nothing better illustrates Reinhardt’s complete control over a production than the celebrated Regiebuch. Kahane said that when planning a new work, Rein¬ hardt would go off to work alone for several weeks, at the end of which period, he would return with what could be termed the first draft of the Regiebuch, in which he had endeavored “to give physical form to the text, describing in the most minute details and in a continuous series all situations, positions and ex¬ pressions. Thus, by the very reality of his technical means, he remodels and re¬ works the entire drama” {Reinhardt and Theater 85). Through the rehearsal period, the Regiebuch would grow voluminously, as more and more details of the production were set. By opening night, Marek relates, the annotations would be so profuse that each page of the Regiebuch might have room for only one or two lines from the playwright’s script {Festschrift 85). Every movement and gesture of each actor was described; every bit of blocking was sketched onto the ground plan. The emotion of each character at any given moment was indicated. There were exact instructions concerning the intonation, inflection, and duration

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of lines. Pauses were as precisely specified as in a musical score. There were minute descriptions of each piece of scenery, costume, and prop, together with sketches showing the arrangement of each. All changes of light intensity, color, or direction were indicated. The volume and duration of each piece of music were noted, as was its thematic purpose. The same held true for the sound effects. In other words, Herald explains, the Regiebuch served as the plan for creating “the atmosphere of every scene, of every conversation in that scene, of every sentence in that conversation” (Reinhardt and Theater 118). Here indeed is a refinement of Appia’s scenario, a realization of his call for a production nota¬ tion. Moreover, here was proof that the director had risen from the status of be¬ ing a production’s monitor to being its auteur.

4

F. W. Murnau From Wagner to Murnau Having begun with Wagner, this study now reaches its end—end both as terminus and as objective, F. W. Murnau. There is much that separates Murnau from Wagner. Apart from the substantial differences between the forms of art in which each chose to work, there is much that separates the two as human beings, as historical beings. Nearly two generations passed from the time of the poetcomposer to that of the filmmaker, and these intervening generations had seen the world change more radically than in most comparable periods of time—or so, at any rate, it seemed. Belief in a basic stability to the cosmos, already questioned in Wagner’s day, had by Murnau’s completely disintegrated. God was long since dead, space and time were in flux, human history had been reduced to a battle for control over the means of production and human personality to a battle for control over libidinal urges. A radically altered world required a radically different art. The various movements that had begun to spring up in response to this challenge prior to World War I were, after the armistice, in the ascendancy. Expressionism, futurism, cubism, symbolism, and all the other isms which were the many facets of modernism made up the new artistic sensibility. This being the case, it is rather remarkable to what a degree the tenets of romanticism are to be found in the films of Murnau. Here is a concern with the individual, not the social group; here is a special emphasis on Nature (and definitely with a capital “N”); here is conflict presented in the traditional romantic terms of an opposition between Nature and Culture; here is a fondness for Nature’s own—the earthy peasant and the noble savage; here is the idealization of Woman; and here most particularly is the privileged place afforded to emotions. From such a description it might be assumed that a reactionary nostalgia was the quality that most informed Murnau’s works, that he was, like that other seminal filmmaker D. W. Griffith, essentially a man out of touch with his time. Even more remarkable—and from one perspective damning—than the existence of certain general romantic precepts in Murnau’s works is the very particular resemblance of his works to those of Wagner. At the center of the cosmos of both Wagner and Murnau is love, primarily the love bond of a man and a woman. When Guillermo describes the paradigmatic

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action of a Murnau film as the “characters’ alienation and their attempts to resist the encroachments of the world outside,” he might as easily be describing Wagner’s operas (“Shadow” 153). In the lovers of both Wagner and Murnau, it is the woman in whom awareness resides; the man is in some way incomplete, in¬ adequate. The deeper consciousness of Nina can sense the threat of the vampire miles away while Harker ignores the warning signs even when standing next to the monster. Briinnhilde can sense her lover Siegfried while he is still in Sieglinde’s womb; but Siegfried’s characteristics are his ignorance and innocence which make him vulnerable to the Gibichungs. The dominant recurrent theme in the works of both Murnau and Wagner is the redemption of the male by the loving sacrifice of the female. This is as true of Nina, Elmire, and Reri as it is of Senta, Elisabeth, and Briinnhilde. The road to redemption in Murnau’s works is often Wagner’s right-wrong path, as in the case of the bullrushes in Sunrise. The man takes them on the trip across the lake to save himself after he pushes his wife overboard and then capsizes the boat to make it seem an accident; but after his reconciliation with her, he uses the rushes to save her life in the storm. Nature also pervades the works of both artists as a living force, usually in terms of weather or of the animal kingdom. Wagner uses storms to mark great metaphysical events in The Flying Dutchman and the Ring while Murnau uses the wind to do the same in Faust and Sunrise. There is little difference between the birds who warn Siegfried of Mime’s murderous intent and the dog in Sunrise who tries to warn the woman of her hus¬ band’s similar plan. In fact, the resemblances between the works of the two artists are so pronounced that it is possible to find a correlate for each of Wagner’s operas among Murnau’s films. An examination of the striking narrative similarities between the word-tone poems of Wagner and the films of Murnau will serve to indicate the strong continuity of romanticism into the modem era; but the equally striking dissimilarities can be taken as an illustration of the transmutation roman¬ ticism had undergone as it made its way into the twentieth century. Murnau is a romantic but his romanticism is of a decidedly revisionist cast. He accepts many of the basic assumptions of the romantic world view but not all. Indeed, it will be shown that often he introduces a particular romantic element into his works for the purpose of undermining it. The world of the works of both Wagner and Murnau turns, as has already been noted, on love. But whereas Wagner’s stories usually begin with the meeting of the male and female protagonist and lead on to their formation of a couple (i.e., a bonded pair), the story of a Murnau film most often begins with an already established pair, frequently husband and wife, leading what appears to be a happy, even idyllic life together. There is then some intrusion into the couple’s life which creates a rupture between them. (In point of fact, the film may begin after the disruption has taken place with the preintrusion period being presented in terms of a flashback.) The first response to the intrusion is usually flight, by a single member of the pair or both together. There follows a reunion, but it proves only temporary: flight has served to postpone the crisis engendered by the intruder, but

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not avoid it. The intruder catches up with them and reasserts itself even more forcibly into their lives, forcing them to confront it, sometimes successfully, some¬ times not. There is one other element that must be added to this outline: at a point more or less midway through this sequence of events, there is presented a wish fulfillment dream, fantasy, or subplot. The foregoing describes a simple structure, one that could serve—and has served—melodrama well. But if the nature of the intruder is carefully considered, it will be seen that in Murnau’s hands this narrative paradigm is used to much greater effect than that of romantic melodrama. As in Wagner, redemption is a key concern of Murnau. For the filmmaker, as for the poet-composer, redemption means growth, a gain in self-knowledge, the intrusion acting as a catalyst of such development. In Murnau’s works, the process of growth is often presented in the appropriate terms of the progression from childhood to adulthood. Before the intrusion, the couple is shown living in a carefree, innocent, edenic state, as happy children—significantly nonsexual children, despite their marital status, even despite the baby in Sunrise. But the articulation of this edenic state renders it somehow unsatisfactory. It is as if the characters are trying so hard to convince them¬ selves/each other/the spectator of their happiness that it cannot possibly be so. The essential fallaciousness of what is presented is usually compounded of several elements, one of which is almost sure to be a high degree of kitsch—something for which Murnau is often criticized by those who do not perceive its purpose. The childhood state, then, is not valorized but repudiated. Maturation must occur. Where it does (Sunrise), a “happy” ending is possible; where it does not (Nosferatu), there is no happy ending. As if to confirm this model of child to adult progres¬ sion, there is the wish fulfillment which suggests the working of the consciousness of an adolescent, that stage between the infant and the adult. Sometimes it is a protagonist who has the juvenile fantasy (The Last Laugh)-, at other times the wish fulfillment is displaced onto a subsidiary character or characters (The Haunted Castle). When the wish fulfillment is a projection of the character’s fears, it is presented as a nightmare; but when it is a positive desire that is projected, then the presentation is comedic. As in the case of the use of kitsch, Murnau is often chided for his low comic relief. But the comic treatment serves to signal the lack of suita¬ bility of the wish fulfillment as a solution to the crisis. As the falseness of the couple’s edenic state would tend to suggest, the intru¬ sion is not really from the outside but from within. It is the eruption of that which has been denied, repressed, and the intruder, therefore, is the double of the protagonist—usually the male and not the female because in Murnau as in Wagner it is the male who is incomplete, who is defined by a lack. This doubling accounts for the frequency of mirrors and other reflecting surfaces in Murnau’s films. (But this is true of German films of the period in general. In Murnau’s films, however, the double and mirror do not function as a straightforward Doppelgdnger as in, for example, The Student of Prague.) It goes almost without saying that that which has been repressed has to do in some fashion with sexuality. This is always implicit and

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often very explicit in Murnau’s narratives: the disruption in the life of the couple is clearly sexual in nature, and just as clearly this lack of sexual relations is given a negative valence. Murnau, again like Wagner, affirms the centrality of sexual intimacy to love; and in Murnau and Wagner alike, the denial of the sexual com¬ ponent of love leads to the eruption of evil into the world. That sexuality is the real locus of a Murnau film has long been recognized. Wood sees the sexual dynamics of the films as an expression of Mumau’s changing attitude toward his own homosexuality, from fear and suppression in Germany to acceptance and even celebration in uninhibited Polynesia. Hence, he sees the films as progressing from a fear of the id (the vampire in Nosferatu) to a fear of the Superego (Hitu in Tabu).1 However, Mumau’s films do not follow such a neat line of development. In The Haunted Castle, for example, the earliest of the films under consideration, a husband comes under some sort of religious influence which causes him to decide that he and his wife should no longer have sexual relations. (That this narrative segment had significance for Murnau is indicated by the fact that he later grafted it onto Tartuffe.) The eventual consequence of the husband’s decision in The Haunted Castle is murder. From beginning to end, in fact, the Murnau oeuvre presents sexual abstinence and axiomatically the denial of one’s sexuality in negative terms. In Nosferatu the vampire/plague can be seen to arise not from the unchecked release of the libido but precisely from Harker’s denial of it. More problematic is the question of how the filmmaker’s homosexuality relates to the presentation of sexuality in his films in terms of a heterosexual couple. Wood again sees this as essentially negative, especially in Sunrise which, “with its . . . celebration of the family and its systematic degradation of the erotic, is one of cinema’s most extreme acts of self-oppression.”2 But as Bergstrom points out (in an article significantly titled “Sexuality at a Loss”), Murnau’s focus on the heterosexual couple was in no way a refutation of other modes of sexual experience. For one thing, his male and female protagonists do not project the traditional male and female images. With more than a grain of truth, she describes the typical Murnau heroine as an “asexual madonna” (196). They are tradition¬ ally feminine in their actions of nurturing and sacrificing, but they have been desexualized. Clothes and hair in particular seem to have been chosen to deflect rather than to stimulate sexual desire (as in the case of Janet Gaynor’s wig about which everyone complains). “The woman’s body is at a loss literally in that it has a reduced physical presence, lacking a sexual dimension; metaphorically, the symbolic function of the woman’s body in establishing sexual difference is greatly diminished” (189). The traditional image of female sexuality has, in fact, been dis¬ placed “onto the body of an aestheticized male-gendered character” (194). It is the male character, and not the female, whose image is presented for the spectator’s scopophilic pleasure. Moreover, the typical Murnau male character is passive rather than active, another traditionally feminine trait.

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The result of this violation of conventional gender identities in Murnau’s films is that underneath the explicitly heterosexual narrative the filmmaker is able to sug¬ gest a more complex image of human sexuality—not one that is merely homosexual in contradistinction to the heterosexual, but one that appeals to what Freud iden¬ tified as the human’s predisposition to bisexuality:3 Through Murnau’s displacement of sexual investment in the image from its narrative position as melodrama (the drama of the heterosexual couple as centerpiece for narrative and symbolic conflict), sexuality as a denoted presence is, in a sense, lost to abstraction. But by the same tech¬ niques or strategies, sexuality is gained in a more general and all-pervasive sense for the spec¬ tator. For not only is the spectator encouraged to feast his or her eyes on all the carefully composed sequences of images . . . but the spectator is also encouraged to relax rigid demarcations of gender identification and sexual orientation. (Bergstrom, 202)

This is accomplished by a “system of triangulation” whereby the intruder serves as a mediator of the couple. As Bergstrom notes, this is necessary so that the sub¬ text can remain a subtext. It is partly this overlay of conventional systems which masks the indirect sexual substitutions that make narratively unacceptable representations of desire possible on another level. In Murnau’s case, the systematic complication of the way sexuality is represented allows for sexual investment in semi-conventional terms, with aesthetic references used as the basis for the presentation of im¬ ages that might or might not be called homoerotic. (Bergstrom, 194)

From a feminist perspective, the absence of the conventional male role and the dissolution of conventional categories of sexuality is surely welcome; but the neu¬ tering of the female cannot but elicit condemnation. One might be tempted to ascribe Murnau’s tendency to create female eunuchs to his homosexuality, reason¬ ing that he could be expected to have a conceptual blind spot regarding woman’s sexuality and woman as an object of sexual desire. However, such a reading would be difficult to reconcile with several presentations of the female in Murnau’s works that prove forceful exceptions to Bergstrom’s rule of the asexual madonna. Chief among these is Elmire in Tartujfe. This film is filled with close-ups of her bare ankle, bare shoulder, bare throat, and voluptuous decollete, moving Fieschi to comment that these shots are “doubly privileged in that they exhibit erotic mobile objects: loci of carnal provocation. The eroticism is not so much presented to view; rather it occupies the locus, transforms it: an eroticized space” (714). There is also the close-up of a part of Kate’s thigh (City Girl) protruding above her stocking, glimpsed by the men at the lunch counter when she climbs on a stool to change the coffee filter enabling them to see up her skirt. And there are other instances, ranging from Reri’s sweetly sensuous hula to the Woman from the City’s violently erotic shimmy. Therefore, it is not correct to say that Murnau was unable to present a sexually desirable image of woman.

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Yet it is the asexual madonna that predominates in his work. But let us con¬ sider what the madonna is: not a woman who is inherently undesirable because un¬ attractive, unfeminine, but one whom man perceives as morally wrong to desire. She is woman who so embodies the ideal of conventional womanhood, who is so perfectly feminine and femininely perfect, that to have sexual intercourse with her could only be a sacrilege, a profanation. This is, of course, the romantic image of woman. According to romanticism, Woman is a Higher Being, more spiritual than man and hence closer to Nature and/or God. She is Goethe’s Eternal Feminine ever leading men on (consider the implications of the phrase) to their Greater Good. She must be forever pursued and never attained.4 Romanticism thus created a paradox¬ ical situation for the man: the woman he most desired was the one he could never, must never have sexually; and should he ever have her, she must cease to be his ideal. But if the situation was paradoxical for the man, it was wholly untenable for the woman. To be good, she could not be sexual; if she was sexual, she was bad. For man, woman as sexual partner now had to be separated from woman as familial partner. He married a madonna but went for his pleasure to a magdalene. Husband and wife engaged in sex for the sole purpose of procreation. Neither could take pleasure in the act, however. If the man found it pleasurable, that was tantamount to a perversion: pleasure gained from the degradation of a saint. If the woman found it pleasurable, then she was no saint. Sex was the bourgeois wife-saint’s mar¬ tyrdom; she earned her sainthood by suffering it to be performed on her necessarily passive body. The asexual madonna, with all its ramifications, is, therefore, not an image specific to Murnau but one he inherited. The important question then becomes what use he made of that inheritance: whether he accepted this conception of sexual roles and relations or challenged it. Since it has already been suggested that the repres¬ sion of sexuality was portrayed as a destructive force throughout Mumau’s oeuvre, the answer is not in doubt. One structure that can be abstracted from the various Murnau narratives is the attempt by the male and/or society to impose the romantic ideal on the female, and her resistance to such an imposition. The Murnau woman wants to shed the halo that has been thrust upon her and regain her position as active and co-equal sexual partner. As a homosexual living in an unliberated society, Murnau could be expected to have been in sympathy with any group which received strong cultural pressures towards the suppression of its sexuality. But this may not be the only explanation for Murnau’s use of the narrative and subtext described. It might be fruitful not to think of the couple in a Murnau film as a couple at all, but as a single personality, with male and female characteristics. From such a perspective it becomes possible to see the attempted suppression of the female aspect of the personality by the male aspect and society as a whole as representative of the experience of the homosexual. This general groundwork having been laid, it is appropriate to proceed to an examination of the narrative of each film in the Murnau oeuvre using the correlative word-tone poem of Wagner as a touchstone of mainstream romanticism. This

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examination will be limited to the eight films of the surviving twelve which are available in this country.5 These are, in order of their production, Schloss Vogelod (1921); Nosferatu—Eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922); Der letzte Mann (1924); Tartuff( 1925); Faust (1926); Sunrise (1927); City Girl (1929); and Tabu (1929). For the sake of convenience, however, the titles which will be used throughout this text are those under which the films are in distribution in the U.S. Hence, Schloss Vogelod is The Haunted Castle; Der letzte Mann is The Last Laugh; Nosferatu— Eine Symphonie des Grauens is known simply as Nosferatu; and Tartiijf reverts to the French spelling Tartuffe. The Haunted Castle bears a resemblance—admittedly slight—to Parsifal. Both works center on the solving of a mystery at the heart of which is a great sin. The sin of Amfortas (having failed to maintain his celibacy) is known from the outset of the word-tone poem, but not the means by which Klingsor tempted him to his fall (Kundry) nor the implications of action. It is for Parsifal to discover this secret, enabling him to restore order to Monsalvat not by restoring sexual abstinence but by refuting it: he reunites the male and female symbols of spear and grail. In The Haunted Castle, a murder is known to have taken place but the murderer and the circumstances of its commission are uncertain. Although the murdered man’s brother was accused of the crime, the charges were never proven; however, he remains under a cloud of suspicion. When Count Getsch learns the truth—or rather has what he believed to be true confirmed—he is able to bring about a resolution of the tension in the castle. In both works, a key figure (Kundry in one. Count Getsch in the other) has two identities, accomplishing his or her objective by means of a disguise. But beyond these few elements, there is little to suggest a correla¬ tion. The Haunted Castle surely has no pure fool; the urbane, ultra-sophisticated and cynical Count is the polar opposite of Parsifal. And while the Baroness is a somewhat interesting character with her guilty secret and means of atoning for it (marrying and shielding her husband’s murderer because she feels responsible for the murder), she cannot compare to the richly ambiguous Kundry who is both helpmate to the grail knights and the temptress who destroys them, who attempts to seduce Parsifal by presenting herself to him as his mother. Nor is there in the film Wagner’s complex fusion of Christian and pagan mythology. But, then, that is not surprising: Parsifal was Wagner’s final work and, some would argue, his greatest achievement, while Murnau made The Haunted Castle in what might be called the journeyman phase of his career. The Haunted Castle is little known and rarely written about, in sharp contrast to a Nosferatu or a Sunrise. One cannot fault a critic for preferring to expend his or her energies on these later works, for The Haunted Castle could not be described as other than pedestrian. It is filled with long static shots of people simply sitting around and talking to one another. Murnau, it seems, had not yet learned to charge these still, empty frames with the emotional intensity he was later to be known for. Nor does the film’s story conform very well to the narrative paradigm described above. What can be identified as the usual Murnau narrative, in fact, exists almost

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wholly in the film’s two brief flashbacks. The rest of the film’s story seems like the leftover and unwanted pieces of a puzzle. (Indeed, the very complexity of this film’s narrative sets it apart from that of other Mumau films in which the story is fundamentally clear and simple.) And yet this film is worthy of examination for the light it throws on the others. Several structures and images well-known from the later films are anticipated here. Moreover, never again was the filmmaker to be so explicit about the relationship of sexual denial to evil—never again, that is, except in Tartuffe for which, as has already been stated, he borrowed the kernel of story from this one. The film begins with the arrival of an uninvited guest to a castle where a shoot¬ ing party has been arranged. Since this intruder is the man suspected of his brother’s murder, his arrival causes an uneasy atmosphere to fall upon the house¬ hold. But it does not become clear that he is the intruder in the life of a couple until the Baroness and her second husband arrive. Seeing the Count, she tells her hostess that she cannot possibly stay with him present; but the hostess dissuades her from leaving by reminding her that Father Faramund will soon arrive. The Baroness has a great desire to see the priest to, as it turns out, reveal to him the truth she has sup¬ pressed for four years. But it is Count Getsch disguised as Father Faramund who actually hears her confession regarding her first husband. She begins by telling him that their marriage had initially been a happy one. This, the edenic state of the couple, is then presented in a flashback. The Baroness is seen through a window on a veranda arranging flowers. The husband is then shown gaily vaulting over the rail of the veranda to rush to embrace his wife. She is then shown seeing her hus¬ band off on a journey and running after him in her sorrow at being parted from him. (These events will be nearly duplicated in Nosferatu.) But then, the Baroness continues her narration, things changed. In another flashback, the Baroness is shown eagerly bursting through the door to the room where her husband sits reading to embrace and kiss him. But he responds by fending her off, telling her that true happiness comes from the renunciation of everything worldly. The Baroness then tells Father Faramund of her reaction to his rejection: “I am long¬ ing for—seeing evil—wanting evil.” At this point, she is unable to continue and breaks off the narrative. When sometime later in the film she continues her story, the character of the Baron is introduced. In another flashback, husband, wife, and Baron are all seated together. The converted husband is trying to proselytize the Baron; the Baron is watching the wife intently; and she is in an agitated state, staring off into space and digging her fingers into her seat. As her husband talks, she suddenly bursts out that she would like to see something evil. The Baron, she tells Father Faramund, misinterpreted her remark and “burning with passion” for her took it as his cue to kill her husband. Once he had disclosed the murder to her, she felt bound to sacrifice herself to him—by marrying him—and to protect him, even to the point of accusing her husband’s brother of the murder. She and the Baron were, she says, tied by guiltiness. But even before this revelation, Count

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Getsch has told the Baron that he knows his secret, which leads to his eventual suicide. For once, it is the man’s death which frees the woman. There are many deviations from the usual Murnau narrative here, chief among them being the fact that the husband is a minor character. It is Count Getsch who is the protagonist. And the Count is not a double for the husband, despite the fact that he serves as his brother’s second by revenging both of them on the man who had wronged them. The Baron is the actual double in his manifestation of the sexual desire that the husband had eschewed. In one respect, however, The Haunted Castle is an archetypal Murnau film: it contains excellent examples of both types of wish fulfillment, each displaced onto a minor character. In the interim between the two halves of the Baroness’s confession, a crisis arises when it appears that Father Faramund has vanished. The host suspects that the Count is responsible for his disappearance. This piece of news causes the already uneasy mood in the house¬ hold to turn to one of outright fear. One guest, who had previously been shown to be a cowardly fellow, is shown asleep. Suddenly, a monstrous hand (resembling that of the vampire in Nosferatu) thrusts through his window, seizes him, and begins to drag him out. He then abruptly wakes from what now appears to have been a nightmare. But this short and simple sequence serves as a perfect metaphor for the wish for and dread of the return of the repressed. This sequence is immedi¬ ately followed by one involving a young kitchen scullion. Earlier in the film the boy had been punished by the chef over some whipped cream. Now he is having a dream in which he stands at the kitchen work table flanked on either side by the chef and Father Faramund. In a mechanically repetitious sequence, the boy alter¬ nately beats the chef and is fed the cream by the priest. In this scene, unbridled violence as a response to societal constraints is ridiculed as a particularly juvenile reaction, as is the notion of entitlement: that he has (in his mind) a right to the cream is shown by the fact that it is being fed him by what is for him the supreme moral authority figure in his immediate environment. Nosferatu shares many similarities with The Flying Dutchman. As the first mature works of their artists, both works serve as a model for those that will follow. In Murnau’s film and Wagner’s opera, a curse is destroyed and a man saved by a woman’s loving self-sacrifice. Both paradoxically combine the quest for love and the death wish; and both end with the redemption of sunrise. In Nosferatu, the evil that Nina destroys is the vampire and the man she saves is her husband, Harker, while in Wagner’s work the accursed and the beloved are one: the Dutchman is both nosferatu and husband. When Nina offers herself to the vampire, she brings about his death and (ostensibly) Harker’s redemption; when Senta throws herself off the cliff, she brings about the Dutchman’s death which is his redemption. Nina and Senta both possess special psychic abilities. In Senta, it takes the form of prescience: she recognizes the Dutchman as her destined lover as soon as she sees his portrait. Nina is telepathic: she reaches out to the vampire’s castle to save Harker. Nina also seems to be the only one who realizes the plague

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decimating the town is connected to the vampire’s presence. Harker and the Dutch¬ man can both be seen as having committed acts of hubris. The Dutchman’s curse, to wander the seas forever, was laid upon him by the powers that be when he swore to round the Cape despite Heaven or Hell. Similarly, Harker defies the meta¬ physical world by ignoring his wife’s presentiments, the explicit warnings of The Book of the Vampire, and the peasants’ concerns. However, Harker is more like later Wagner heroes such as Siegfried and Parsifal in his ignorance and innocence, his lack of self-awareness. The dark, awesome, ruthless, yet pitiable Dutchman is closer to the nosferatu than to Harker. (The image of the hideous vampire look¬ ing out his window longingly at Nina is both terrifying and heart-rending.) In terms of the narrative paradigm, Nosferatu begins with the presentation of Harker and Nina in their Eden.6 Harker is shown dressing. He then turns and looks about a window. The film then cuts to what he sees: Nina playing with a kitten in what appears to be a window box full of flowers. After returning to the first shot to complete the glance-object formula, the film next shows Harker outside picking flowers. (In many of the films, Eden is characterized by an abundance of flowers.) That shot is followed by a short sequence in which Harker enters the room where Nina is sitting by a window, they run to embrace in the middle of the room, and he presents her with the bouquet. The falseness of this lovers’ paradise is conveyed not only by the saccharine quality of that which is depicted but by Nina’s look and gesture when she takes the proffered bouquet. The blissful tone is abruptly dispelled as Nina, with a sorrowful expression, draws the flowers to her and cradles them tenderly. (The wife in Sunrise also cradles the flowers given her by her husband after the aborted murder attempt.) The sudden change of mood and the excess of emotion invested in the simple action indicate that the flowers are for Nina an unsatisfactory substitute for something else, something she longs for but does not receive from Harker. The problem in paradise is also suggested by Harker’s eagerness to leave it. When he receives his commission from Renfield to go to Transylvania, he rushes home and quickly, even gleefully, packs. There are two flights in Nosferatu. Harker first flees Nina by going to Transylvania; he then flees the vampire’s castle with all its unpleasant revelations by returning to Bremen. But it is clear that Harker is always fleeing from rather than moving towards. It is his main characteristic to believe that running away is the way to solve a problem. “Wait, young man,’’ Van Helsing calls to him in the street, “you cannot escape destiny by running away.” That it is his destiny Harker is trying to elude—the destiny of being himself—that his flaw is his lack of self-recognition, especially in terms of his sexual identity, is conveyed by that very first shot of him already alluded to. Harker is looking into a mirror, fixing his cravat. Encoded in this first image is the general concept of self¬ recognition (seeing oneself) and a specific marker for sexuality (neckwear as phallic symbol). It is also conveyed to the spectator that there is something wrong. The mirror is too small. It and Harker are in a cramped comer of the room, pushed to the left of the frame. Repression is signalled by this constriction of space. By

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contrast, the shot that first presents Nina associates her with windows, not mirrors—windows for seeing out, seeing beyond. Moreover, the framing of Nina in this window is roomy, open. Throughout the film, as Mayne notes, Nina will be associated with windows and Harker with mirrors (34). He carries a small hand mirror in his satchel when he travels to Transylvania. When he wakes after the vampire’s first attack, he examines the telltale marks on his throat in that mirror, but fails to heed the message communicated to him by the inherent iris shot of the mirror’s tiny reflected image. When Harker does look through windows—from his room at the inn, from his room in the vampire’s castle—they are small, constricted ones that overlook alarming views: a jackal on the prowl, vertigo-inducing steep¬ ness, the supernatural machinations of the vampire. The repressed is also presented in terms of overcompensation. There is a sense of excess about everything Harker does: his gestures are too big (as when he throws down The Book of the Vampire in the inn); his laugh is too big (as when he joins in the mad laughter of Renfield in the office); his pace, as has already been men¬ tioned, is too quick. Harker’s lack of self-knowledge is presented in terms of an immature personality. This is nowhere clearer than in the scene in which the vam¬ pire glides into Harker’s room in the castle to attack him and Harker’s response is that of a child: he pulls the covers over his head. Once back in Bremen, even after his experience in Transylvania, he continues his primary action of denial, of refusing to face the problem (himself). He makes Nina promise not to read The Book of the Vampire. But it is not simply Harker but the town (society) that responds to the problem by closing down, denying, as can be seen when the towncrier announces the plague and the citizens all shut their windows and retire. The price of denial, in the town’s case, is presented in the Dionysiac fury with which they chase the escaped Renfield—the inversion of the vampire—and tear him (in the form of the scarecrow they take for him) to bits. (This sequence also serves as the film’s displaced wish fulfillment.) The price for Harker’s denial is the loss of Nina, but not before she has made an attempt to bring him to self-knowledge. When he finds her reading the forbidden book, she goes to the bedroom window that looks onto the vampire’s window directly opposite, and says, “Look. Every night, in front of me. . . She tries to make him confront himself through the window/mirror, to make him recognize his double. But Harker’s response is to rush to the window, turn his back on it, and shake his head quickly while smiling his perpetual too-bright smile meant to convince her that everything is fine. This action is, of course, another denial. Having failed, Nina leaves the room, wearing her perpetual expression, one of deep sadness. Once she is gone, Harker throws himself on the bed, buries his head, and weeps, indicating that his self-deception is wearing thin. Nina’s final decision to sacrifice herself to the vampire occurs while Harker is sleeping. While this is another presentation of his lack of awareness, it is equally important where he is sleeping: in a chair on the other side of the crucial window from Nina, not in bed with her. In this scene, Nina awakes with a start, makes her

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way to the window, recoils from the image of the vampire she sees across from her. Then she holds out her hand toward Harker in one last feeble attempt to reach him. But she gives it up and turns quickly to throw wide the windows, signalling to the vampire that she will receive him. It is only after that that Harker awakes. After the obviously sexual attack of the vampire, and his subsequent dissolution, Nina awakens and raises her hands in perfect imitation of a baroque madonna. She then immediately dies in Harker’s arms. Since Harker, by his constant refusal to acknowledge his own sexuality has denied hers, she lives and dies the role he had wished upon her. Husband and wife are at last united in the conjugal bed. But like a good post-Breen Code Hollywood husband, Harker keeps one foot on the floor. Even from Nina’s self-sacrifice he has learned nothing. The similarities between The Last Laugh and its correlate, Die Meistersinger, seem at first glance much more tenuous and superficial by comparison. It is true that both works stand apart from the rest of the oeuvre of their creators.7 Each is centered around an old man rather than young lovers. Both do contain an auxiliary pair of lovers but here is where the comparison is most strained; Hans Sachs is deeply involved in the love of Walther and Eva, but the couple in Mumau’s film serves only as context for the plight of the doorman. In fact, it seems impossible to find any substantive connection between Wagner’s wistful yet celebratory comedy and Murnau’s pathos unsatisfactorily relieved by an ironic epilogue. Yet what are both works about if not the difference between real, inherent, natural worth and the false image of worth imposed from without? The uniform of The Last Laugh finds its equivalent in the song form imposed on Walther by the guild. When he fails to meet its formal requirements, the guild rejects his song and him. Only Hans Sachs, that epitome of folk wisdom, recognizes the natural worth of Walther’s song and demonstrates it to the rest of Nuremberg. Comparing The Last Laugh with Die Meistersinger is fruitful. It points to the fact that the real tragedy in the film is not that the doorman had his uniform taken from him, but that he was given it in the first place. This external image of a questionable prestige prevented the doorman from developing a true sense of self-worth. The doorman is not Hans Sachs, but a Walther who has grown old without encountering a Hans Sachs who might have shown him his own value. That which makes The Last Laugh unique in the Murnau oeuvre also makes it difficult to accommodate within the narrative paradigm. One strains to find the essential couple which is intruded upon; but as in a child’s picture puzzle, the couple is there, only hidden. It is the doorman and his uniform. (This interpreta¬ tion gives further credence to the idea of the couple as representing a single personality.) Starting with this “couple,” it can be seen that the events which unfold fit the narrative paradigm quite well. The edenic state is presented in the film’s opening sequences in which the doorman enjoys what he perceives as the respect he and his uniform command at the hotel and the adulation they receive in the tenement courtyard. But unbeknownst to him, the manager had taken note of him sitting down and out of breath after the exertion of carrying a heavy trunk, and

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when he arrives at work the following morning, he finds his true double—a young, virile, handsome version of himself—in his place, wearing a duplicate of his uniform. They pass each other in the revolving door, one rotating in as the other rotates out, enhancing the image of replication. The old doorman is then led away to the manager s office where he is stripped of his beloved uniform and sent below stairs to become the lavatory attendant. There is, then, a rupture between the man and his beloved effected by an in¬ truding double. And the man’s first response is flight: he steals the uniform and flees with “her.” (One might recall, in this regard, Matahi carrying off Reri, also in the dead of night.) Back home in the tenement, “they” are toasted at the noisy, drunken wedding celebration and the doorman begins to relax, thinking that flight has solved the problem. Once all the guests are gone, he has his drunken wish ful¬ fillment dream. He sees himself back in front of the revolving door. Then he sees a large number of men, mechanically identical in baldness and dress, trying without success to lift one trunk. He enters the frame and motions them aside. Then with one hand, he lifts the trunk high above his head. After that, he passes through the revolving doors and begins tossing the trunk high into the air and then catching it, again all with one hand, which performance is met with applause by the large crowd of people gathered in the lobby. Despite the doorman’s ostensible age, here again is the scullion’s dream of revenge through reversal. (The entitlement aspect of the wish fulfillment is presented later, in the epilogue, where the old doorman is transformed into a millionaire.) The slapstick element of the action and its ren¬ dering by means of lens distortion and a highly erratic hand-held camera indicate the unsuitability of the wish fulfillment as a solution to the old man’s problem. When he returns to work, he finds the double still in place. The final crisis begins when his neighbor (and apparent in-law) discovers the truth about the old man. Finding the new doorman when she arrives at the hotel with lunch for the old one, she is shown to the lavatory where she reacts to his new position with horror and disgust. She returns to the tenement to inform the daughter and the news is spread by eavesdropping gossips. Once home again in his stolen uniform, he is ridiculed by his neighbors and spurned by his family. He, therefore, returns (sacrifices) his beloved uniform with the help of a sympathetic night watchman. The doorman’s crisis, like Harker’s, revolves around the question of selfknowledge and again this is signalled by mirrors. Although an old man, he is quite vain about his appearance. In the opening section of the film, after the rain has abated allowing him to take off his slicker and reveal his precious uniform, he reaches into a pocket, extracts a small mirror, and begins to preen. The next morning, he is first shown engaged in the same activity: preening in a mirror while his daughter goes about the apartment making preparations for the wedding. (Both these mirrors, in size and shape, recall the ones in Nosferatu.) And it is his moustache—an exclusively masculine characteristic—that he is most at pains to get right. This concern with his external image, particularly his external image as male, embodied in the uniform, is indicative of his lack of any real self-image, of his

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insecurity. He is, he believes, nothing without the uniform. It is the uniform that confers upon him an identity, one that carries connotations of power and authority. It makes of him a chivalrous knight who offers his protection to vulnerable young ladies (by walking them to their cab under his umbrella) and who rescues a dam¬ sel in distress (in the form of the little girl who is knocked down by other children in the tenement courtyard). The doorman, of course, fails to see the fallaciousness of these connotations he ascribes to the uniform. He sees it as the outward form of the active, forceful, decisive, self-determined military man. He is unaware of the historical derivation of the quasimilitary character of his uniform. It is an anachronistic and empty holdover from a time when the keeper of the gate was indeed a soldier, not, as now, a menial whose function is mostly decorative. Ironi¬ cally, the old man is unaware that the uniform in which he takes so much pride actually connotes passive servility. The uniform, like the madonna, is a false image, seemingly a mark of honor, in fact a degradation. But, again, since he does not comprehend this fact, the old man perceives loss of the uniform as loss of identity. That is why, once he is “demoted” (to his mind) to keeper of the lava¬ tory with its huge expanse of mirror he does not look into it— not, that is, until the moment before his unmasking. He is cleaning the sink after a patron has left, when his eyes slowly rise to the mirror and he stares intently at his own image; and then, as if prescient of what is about to befall, he turns his gaze toward the grating that lets onto the street. The film then cuts to the neighbor/in-law, who will be the agent of the destruction of the last shred of his image, walking along that street. The doorman pays the price of investing himself completely in the uniform and of basing all his relations upon it. Once he has lost it, he also loses family and friends. Once the pride and focal point of the tenement community—they seem to await his return before going to bed, as if it were the culmination of their day— he is now an object of derision and contempt. In this, of course, the inhabitants of the tenement prove to be as shallow in their values as he. They are equally guilty of worshipping the uniform. As in Nosferatu, it is society as a whole and not just an individual who is blind. Only one person, another old man, offers him compas¬ sion and understanding. The night watchman returns the uniform for him and then guides him to the one place left him: his chair in the lavatory. In this regard, The Last Laugh comes as close as any of Murnau’s films to an explicitly homosexual subtext.8 Stripped of his traditionally masculine persona, he is rejected by society and even family and is succored only by another man. He is even relegated to a place—the men’s room—perceived by society as the locus of homosexual acts. This is made explicit in the wish fulfillment epilogue where the doorman-turnedmillionaire places roses on the plate set for this expected luncheon companion, causing the waiters to give each other a knowing look. They presume a newly ac¬ quired mistress will soon come through the door but it is the little night watchman who does. He is the “lover,” wined and dined and showered with gifts. This epi¬ logue has led to much controversy, but whether the film ended before or after it, the effect would ultimately be the same: the doorman has learned nothing, has made

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no gains in self-knowledge, just like Harker at the end of Nosferatu. Without the epilogue, the doorman is seen to fully accept that he has no identity without the uni¬ form, as objectified by the black empty space of the lavatory. With the epilogue, he is seen to have traded one uniform, one external image of self, for another— from doorman to grand bourgeois. The regal wave he gives as he pulls away in the carriage in the film’s final shot is exactly the same as the one he gave his adoring neighbors at the beginning. Murnau’s Tartuffe finds its correlate in Wagner’s early work, Das Liebesverbot, the adaptation of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. Both Wagner’s and Murnau’s works are based on masterworks of drama but nonetheless bear the unmistakable imprint of their creators. The young Wagner lightened Shakespeare’s disquieting play by eliminating the paradoxical character of the Duke; Murnau deepened Moliere’s play by eliminating a host of characters (but mainly by means of his mise en scene). Both works center around a falsely pious figure who secretly tries to seduce the heroine. In both, the hypocrite is unmasked by a trick involving the heroine’s pretense of submitting to his desires. Murnau’s film contains many differences from Moliere’s play. The filmmaker eliminated all characters other than Tartuffe, Organ, Elmire, and Dorine, and thereby eliminated what is in effect the central strand of Moliere’s work: the prevention of Orgon’s plan to marry off his daughter to the hypocrite. Instead, Murnau makes the relationship between husband and wife the axis upon which the action turns, in marked contradistinc¬ tion to the play in which the relationship between Orgon and Elmire is not only inessential, but almost nonexistent. In the original work, the two characters do not even share a scene until near the end and then there is no sense of intimacy between them. For Murnau, however, Tartuffe’s evil lay in his disruption of the intimacy between man and wife. In this film, the edenic state is not presented but implied. As the film-withina-film begins—the frame tale will be discussed later—Elmire is seen eagerly awaiting the return of her husband after a long absence. She makes sure of her appearance and carefully sets a romantic table for two while servants festoon the hall with great garlands of greenery. Her anticipation and the intimate table suggest the lovers’ paradise. When Orgon’s coach is announced, she flies out the door and throws open her arms to receive him; but Orgon, now under Tartuffe’s influence, takes her outstretched hands and draws them together as in prayer, saying, “To kiss is to sin.” (Here, of course, is the repetition of the narrative kernel from The Haunted Castle.) Later, when Elmire has come to realize that Orgon is serious, another image is used to suggest the past. Elmire sits on the bed and opens a locket containing Orgon’s picture, smiling brightly, not wearing the zombie-like stare he has returned home with. As the camera gazes at this picture, a tear suddenly splashes onto it. The tear, of course, indicates Elmire’s sorrow; but it also acts to distort, and thus call into question, this image of happiness. The trip Orgon is returning from represents his flight from the false paradise. Thus, the Tartuffe story begins at a late point in the narrative paradigm, one comparable to the moment

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when Harker returns from Transylvania, bearing the vampire in his wake. But Orgon establishes his double in the household, not across the street. After waking up alone the next morning, without Orgon by her side, Elmire sets about to save her husband from the intruder. She first attempts to establish a reconciliation with her husband. She goes out to where Tartuffe is lying in a hammock with Orgon ministering to him. She tells him he looks unwell, strokes him, and he immediately collapses on her breast. But she then notes the passage in the book he had just been reading: “the love you feel for your wife . . . shall run counter to the love that you are obliged to feel for me.” Elmire angrily throws the book aside, causing Orgon to break away from her to retrieve it. She then tries to reach him again, by asking him to recall how happy they used to be, and again Orgon falls into her embrace and allows himself to be smothered with kisses. But a moment later, when Tartuffe stirs, Orgon rushes to his side, abandoning his wife. Elmire’s error—atypical here in being the female character’s rather than the male’s—is simply trying to ignore the problem, to return to the way things were, i.e., the unsatisfactory edenic state. She tried to avoid Tartuffe; now she must deal with him. Moliere has his hypocrite unmasked in the commedia dell’arte farce of the tea scene; but in Mumau’s film, the tea party fails in its purpose when Tartuffe catches sight of Orgon’s face reflected in the teapot. (This scene is the film’s wish fulfill¬ ment: a solution to the problem which is unacceptable because too easy, requiring no sacrifice and hence no growth.) Elmire is then forced to take more drastic mea¬ sures. She goes to Tartuffe and tells him she “craves” him, causing him to estab¬ lish a rendezvous with her in her bedroom for that night. When he enters her room, he reveals how truly gross and repulsive he is. He strides about, gulping and spewing wine; he lasciviously eyes the bed; he tears the lace wrap from Elmire, baring her shoulder, leaving her totally vulnerable. Moliere’s Elmire is never in any real danger; Mumau’s Elmire clearly is. She is Nina once more, offering her¬ self to a monster in order to save her beloved. And Tartuffe, like the vampire, is an image of rapacious, dehumanizing lust, the inversion of Orgon’s abstinence. Both positions are equally destructive of the true erotic. The evil that erupts into the world when love is denied is embodied not only in the corrupt Tartuffe but also in Orgon’s maniacal frenzy when he discovers the truth. There is a frenetic quality to Orgon’s assault on Tartuffe and to the movements of the camera which records this event that makes the scene deeply disturbing. Having suppressed his sexuality, Orgon has made himself capable of murder (just as Friedrich, in Wagner’s word-tone poem, having chosen self¬ abstinence, is capable of ordering the execution of Isabelle’s brother). Orgon is in the act of strangling Tartuffe with his bare hands when Elmire intervenes and Tartuffe runs out. Despite Orgon’s attempt to re-repress his double (the stran¬ gling)—which Elmire prevents in the nick of time—it would seem that Elmire has succeeded where Nina failed. With Dorine’s able assistance, she has gotten Orgon

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to look through the keyhole—another window/mirror—and confront the obverse of his ideal image. Orgon has learned what Harker and the doorman did not. Murnau’s film based upon Goethe’s masterpiece, Faust, could find its corre¬ late among Wagner’s operas only in the Ring. Both works have an enormous scope, covering as they do the moral evolution of the human being. Each work contains a prologue that establishes the opposing forces of good and evil which will con¬ tend within its body. Wagner’s work traces its theme through a number of charac¬ ters; but Faust presents itself entirely through its single protagonist. The Faust of the beginning of the film is like Wotan. Both desire to do good in the world—Faust wants to end the plague (Murnau’s interpolation); Wotan, to establish Valhalla— and both are prepared to sin in order to attain their goals. But the later Faust who abandons Gretchen is more like the Siegfried who betrays Briinnhilde. At the mo¬ ment of his death, Siegfried gains full awareness and realizes the value of Briinnhilde’s love. At the moment of Gretchen’s death, Faust realizes that only her love and not his quest for experience, knowledge, and power has meaning in the world. For Faust, awareness comes through suffering brought about by sin, which is also a statement of Wagner’s basic tenet. Even Murnau’s change of Goethe’s ending strengthens the film’s resemblance to the Ring. The final image of the film, Faust and Gretchen kissing in the flames, is the Gotterdammerung of Siegfried and Briinnhilde which will purify the world. As in the case of Tartujfe, in making his Faust Murnau altered his source material fairly substantially. Not only does he limit himself to Part I of Goethe’s work (although there is a sense in which the film’s conclusion encapsulates the theme of Part II), but from all the material in Part I, he chooses to focus on the Gretchen episode almost entirely. Missing are such scenes as the Auerbach’s Keller and the Walpurgis Night. By his choices, Murnau makes Goethe’s story conform more closely to his own. Mumau’s Old Faust is not Goethe’s restless overreacher; he is presented as a man who has dedicated his fife to the service of humankind (and thus to self-denial), mainly through study. Note that in the film, Satan begins his temptation of Faust by inflicting a plague upon the town, knowing that Faust will try to counteract its effects. In despair over the misery around him and his impo¬ tence in ending it, Faust conjures Mephistopheles and signs the pact with him on condition that he be granted the power to stop the disease. He then goes out to heal the afflicted, but when the townspeople see that he is stopped by the crucifix, they turn on him (much like the tenement dwellers in The Last Laugh) and stone him. And like the doorman, once he is stripped of his image of benevolent authority figure (it is not for nothing that Old Faust resembles an Old Testament patriarch), Faust believes he is nothing and starts to take poison. Mephistopheles knows that having lost one image of self, Faust is now ripe for the substitution of another. Into the bowl of poison he floats the image of a beautiful young man who, he tells Faust, is his youth. By offering youth, Mephistopheles is in actuality offering Faust sensual pleasure. Why do you seek death, he asks, when you have not yet lived?

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Faust, after a moment’s hesitation, eagerly accepts the offer. Heretofore, Faust had concentrated solely on intellectual development and had ignored the other spheres of human experience—the sensual, the emotional. He is another truncated, incom¬ plete Murnau hero, one who has denied his sexuality. But now, in the form of his youthful double, he will give full vent to his carnal desires, beginning with the seduction of the Duchess of Parma. Faust, however, soon tires of constant pleasure. Self-indulgence, it turns out, is as unsatisfactory as self-denial. He makes Mephistopheles take him home where he immediately falls in love with the child-like madonna, Gretchen, just outside the cathedral. Now the couple has been established. Their edenic state is shown in the bower scene where they are presented with and as children, playing children’s games. This image of paradise is further undermined by the cynical cross-cutting between the courtship of Faust and Gretchen and that of Mephistopheles and Marthe, as well as by a more than usually pronounced quality of kitsch in the bower with its overabundance of flowers. Mephistopheles, the intruder, spying the young lovers from Marthe’s door, now begins to plot their rupture, not, in this case, by preventing their sexual consummation but by staging the public revelation of their relationship. He knows what the consequences of this revelation will be. Gretchen’s mother dies from the shock, Valentin is killed in a duel with Faust (although by Mephistopheles), and Faust flees the scene.9 The next several sequences are Gretchen’s, not Faust’s, and they are used to effectively indict the romantic conception of woman. Since Gretchen is no longer a madonna, she is now a whore. This image of woman is displaced from the usual male protagonist to Valentin, who, as he lies dying, brands his little sister, his darling of a few scenes earlier, a strumpet. The community pillories her and then casts her out. The little madonna of the snows, seeking shelter for her infant, is rejected by one good Christian after another. In her weakened condition, she imagines a warm cradle for her baby and places it in a snowdrift. It promptly dies and she is promptly arrested for murder. Here is the basic hypocrisy of the roman¬ tic image of woman: by turning her into an ideal, men deny her humanity and with it the due of all human beings—compassion. In her despair, Gretchen calls out to Faust who hears her on his mountain top and begins to make his way back to her, to confront what he has tried to ignore. While Faust flies to her rescue, Gretchen in her cell hallucinates that the baby is still alive and then that she and Faust are together again in the bower (the wish fulfillment). Mumau has Faust arrive as she is being led to the stake. Seeing this, he curses the illusion of youth which has brought her to this fate, causing Mephistopheles to smash the mirror in which he had held the image of Old Faust. When he does, Faust reverts to his former self. The intruder and double have now been dispelled by his self-knowledge as indi¬ cated by his acceptance of responsibility for his actions. Faust, therefore, joins his Gretchen in her pyre, where they kiss as the flames consume them. Sunrise is Mumau’s Tannhauser. Both present a man tom between a good and evil woman. The men in these two works have not, like Harker, denied their

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sexuality but instead have done the reverse by giving themselves up entirely to their libido (like young Faust). Tannhauser luxuriates with Venus; the man has a torrid affair with the vamp. The pure women, Elisabeth and the wife, wait for their men to return. The purity of these women is established by their association with Chris¬ tian symbols. Elisabeth is seen at the shrine of the Virgin. The wife is shown with the shadow of the cross thrown upon her by the light coming through her bedroom window. Venus and the vamp, on the other hand, are associated with purely car¬ nal pleasures. The vamp is even able to conjure up a Venusberg in the marsh as part of her plot to lure the man to kill his wife. These two images of woman, good and evil, are irreconcilable; in both works, the women cannot exist in the same space. The invocation of the Madonna’s name in Act I and of Elisabeth’s in Act III causes the Venusberg to vanish. Likewise, the vamp is careful to remain out¬ side the space the wife inhabits until she believes the wife dead. Only then does she enter the frame, thinking to take the place of the wife. After their initial error, both Tannhauser and the man in Sunrise repent—the man in church, Tannhauser before the shrine of the Virgin. Both then seek a recon¬ ciliation with the pure women. There follows a time of celebration: the city sequences in the film, the feast in the landgrave’s hall in the opera. However, in both cases, the sinner has gotten off too easily. Some new trouble arises that leads to a penitential search. Tannhauser goes to Rome to seek absolution; the man searches for his missing wife. In both cases, absolution seems denied—the Pope refuses Tannhauser’s request, the man believes his wife dead—causing the men recklessly to turn back to evil. Tannhauser tries to find Venus once again and the man attempts to murder the vamp. However, at the last moment, each protagonist is saved, the film’s hero by his wife’s resurrection and the opera’s hero by Elisabeth’s death (which is associated with rebirth as can be seen in the papal staff which bursts into bloom). Indeed, it is in Sunrise that Murnau echoes Parsifal by mixing Christian and fertility imagery: the wife and husband are at last united in the conjugal bed amid Easter lilies with the sign of the cross upon them. Sunrise represents perhaps the fullest articulation of Murnau’s narrative paradigm. It begins after the intrusion on the couple with the edenic state presented again in flashback. As the husband goes off for his nightly tryst with the vamp, the servant tells her friend, “They used to be like children, carefree—always happy and laughing.” There follows a shot in which the wife is sitting in a sunny field, holding the baby on her lap. Into the frame comes the husband, behind an ox plow. He stops, goes over to them, picks up the baby whom he tosses and shakes, and then returns to his plowing. The denoted blissful paradise is here undermined by its all too quaint pastoral mise en scene, by the ostensibly playful but actually dis¬ turbingly mechanical way in which the man handles the child, and, of course, by the servant’s characterization of the couple as children. Moreover, this entire scene is presented in long shot which is to say at a distance which facilitates emotional detachment. The result of this combination of elements is the sense that the senti¬ ment depicted is not genuine.

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The Woman of the City, the intruder who disrupts the life of the couple, is again a projection of the unacknowledged problem in that life. Sunrise is unique in having a female rather than a male intruder. But it would be less than correct to say she is the double of the wife; she is, more precisely, the double of the man’s image of his wife. This film makes a clear presentation of the devaluation of female sexuality inherent in the romantic ideal of Woman: the vamp, who is extremely sexually alluring, is monstrously evil; the wife is sweet and pure and hence (to the man’s way of thinking) untouchable. (In her tight blond wig, Janet Gaynor looks very much like Gretchen; she is another little madonna.)10 When the man returns from the swamp, he enters the bedroom and gazes at his wife whom he has just agreed to murder. There is, as has already been pointed out, the shadow of a cross over her sleeping form, which serves as a strong interdiction against the taking of her life; but it serves equally well to deter him from getting into bed with her. It is from this, his image of his wife as asexual saint, that the problem has stemmed. The zombie-like movements of the man show that he is completely under the control of the vamp (just as Harker was under the vampire’s and Orgon, Tartuffe’s). The man in Sunrise, like almost all Murnau males, has a desire to be passive, to be controlled, to not have to take responsibility for his actions—most simply, to not grow up. In the swamp, the vamp cradles his head in her arms just as, in the next shot, the wife is shown cradling her child. The man, in other words, wishes to relinquish the conventional masculine role of the sexual aggressor to the woman, but this is something he feels he cannot do with his child-madonna of a wife. It is to satisfy this need that he has turned to the Woman of the City. Unable to reconcile his need for the madonna with his need for the magdalene, he believes that one or the other must be eliminated. He first attempts to strangle the vamp, when she suggests the murder of the wife. But she is able to convert his violence into sexual passion by asserting herself over him sexually. She forces her body onto his and, when he struggles to turn away, grabs his hair with both hands, pulls his head back hard until he winces with pain, and then forces her mouth on his. She then conjures up images of a city which in their rhythm express the sex act itself. Afterwards he agrees—or, rather, fails to refuse—to kill his wife. But he is not a monster, and the thought torments him. As he lies in his bed, staring fixedly at the ceiling, waters begin to fill the bottom of the frame and slowly rise to engulf him entirely. (This is effected by a very long, slow dissolve.) In this simple but extremely effective presentation of the wish fulfillment, a single image serves to simultaneously express his guilty fixation on the planned murder (the water in which he will drown the wife) and his desire and dread of relinquishing control (it is he who is presented as dissolving into the water). The next morning, he has another wish fulfillment fantasy. As he sits on the side of the bed, deciding whether or not to proceed, the space around him fills with multiple images of the vamp, one a giant close-up of her face. He is, as he wishes to be, overpowered by her. To carry out the murder, the man suggests an outing to his wife, which offer she interprets as an attempt towards reconciliation. Together they start off across

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the lake; but midway, he stops rowing and approaches his wife menacingly. At first she shrinks back but then begins to cry more in grief than in fear. He stops and covers his face with his arms, unable to look at the image of himself reflected in her reaction. This is the first stage of several in the man’s progress toward self¬ recognition. At this point, he has recognized the monster within him, i.e., his capacity for violence. Now, in an effort to escape this monster, he rows frantically the rest of the way across the lake. Once on shore, his wife flees from him, up the embankment and onto the trolley, keeping her head averted so as not to have to look at him. Once they reach the city, he attempts to force a reconciliation by revert¬ ing to the conventional masculine role: he becomes the strong protector and provider, first physically carrying her through the threatening traffic and then offer¬ ing food and flowers. But these traditional postures fail to have the desired effect on her. They then enter a church where a wedding is taking place. There is a remarkable disjunction between word and image (not for the first or last time in the works of Murnau) in the scene that follows. The words of the ceremony affirm the conventional masculine and, by extension, feminine roles in a marriage. The minister tells the groom that God is giving him a trust, that it is his duty to keep and protect his bride. (But keeping and protecting, the film has just shown, does not work.) The man’s reaction to the minister’s words is to begin to cry and then to collapse into his wife’s lap. In other words, the exhortation to be strong and active causes him to become weak and passive. It is at this point that the wife takes over the active role in the relationship. She soothes him and then raises him up and guides him out of the pew. In the next shot, set it seems in the foyer of the church, the man is shown standing with his back to a wall, his face averted from hers. The roles have been reversed: she is now trying to coax him to look at her as earlier he had attempted to get her to look at him. Still turned away, he asks for her for¬ giveness. Her response is to smile, and then with her hands firmly but gently turn his face towards her so that she can kiss him full on the mouth. In other words, she duplicates the actions of the vamp in the swamp but without the vamp’s violence. A woman, the man discovers, can be sexually active without being evil. The couple, having revised their marriage in a second ceremony, now leave the church as partners, each bearing an equal share in the relationship. He is no longer carrying her (as he had done through the street) and she is not carrying him (as she had done in the church); each now bears his or her own weight as they walk side by side. And now, for the first time, they look directly into each other’s faces, no longer prevented from doing do by false images of male and female roles. In their newly discovered happiness, the city around them dissolves into a pastoral scene where they kiss—only to discover that they are standing in the middle of the street causing a traffic jam. That there is still a bit of the kitsch of Gretchen’s bower about this shot indicates that the process is not yet complete. First there is a ritual purification (the barbershop) and a ratification of their new images of themselves and their relationship (the photographer’s studio.) Then there is the celebration in the Luna Park. Here their new found equality is marked in several ways. There is

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the give and take about what to do—he wants to knock little black piggies down in a ball pitch game while she wants to enter the ballroom. There is the folk dance they do for the city dwellers in which, unlike ballroom dancing, they each perform different steps which are, however, coordinated. And finally there is the meal: when the bill is presented, the man discovers that he does not have enough money to pay, and the wife happily—even with a sense of pride—makes up the difference from her purse. Even now, however, the process is still not complete. As the reunited couple float home across the lake a storm comes up, the boat is capsized, and the couple separated. For imagining the murder of his wife, the man must suffer the grief of her imagined death. (This can be thought of as therapy as much as punishment.) Her being lost and found again is also the symbolic death of the madonna image, the woman as Ideal, and the birth of the woman as woman. At the end of the film, the wife’s long hair—traditional sign of femininity and hence female sexuality—is no longer confined in the tight little bun, but is free and full, spilling over the pillow of the bed. Mumau’s City Girl corresponds to Wagner’s Lohengrin. In both, a white knight arrives from outside to save a lady in distress. Elsa has been calumniated by the charge that she murdered her own brother. A mysterious Swan Knight appears to be her champion and prove her innocence. Kate’s life is drab, dull, mechanical and inherently destructive of her spirit. Lem seems to her, as Hyde has noted, a knight in shining armor who will save her from this situation (17). Both women believe that all their problems will be over when the men enter their lives; instead, they find their problems continue. Mumau’s film and Wagner’s opera deal with the problem of images, of perceptions. Both Lem and Lohengrin are restricted in their actions by images of themselves they feel compelled to live up to. These images set up a barrier between them and the women they love. The women, for their part, are equally restricted by their images of their men. Elsa wants the Swan Knight to become a man; Kate wants her man to be a White Knight. Neither is possible. Elsa tries to make the ideal into a real human being when she asks him his name; but Kate’s error is in failing to recognize that Lem is a human being and demanding that he act according to her ideal. The errors of both women lead to the failure to consummate a wedding night, and thus to ratify love. Lem in the city is Lohengrin: the outsider whose purity confers upon him special powers. Lem defends Kate’s honor in a physical duel, as Lohengrin does Elsa’s, which in both cases leads directly to the marriage of hero and heroine. However, in City Girl the couple does not remain in the woman’s world, but returns to the man’s. Kate on the train is being carried to Monsalvat which she envisions as a blissful Arcadia, as shown by her wistful look at the bucolic scene on the calendar. But in the country, it is Kate who becomes Lohengrin. She is the outsider whose motives are suspect. Pa, like Ortrud, plants doubts in the mind of the spouse. Since Lohengrin really is a White Knight, a demigod rather than a man, his marriage to Elsa (like that of Zeus and Semele after which Wagner modelled the opera) is doomed. He cannot become a human being for her; she cannot accept

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his godhead. But Lem is a man and Kate has only to accept that fact for a true marriage between them to be possible. City Girl's, primary variations on the paradigm are twofold: it does not begin with an already established couple and it centers more on the woman’s precon¬ ceived notions about the male role than on the man’s preconceived notions about the woman’s. Lem is a fairly typical Murnau hero in his lack of maturity and selfpossession; the difference is that he does not have a persona carefully constructed to hide his deficiency like the other Murnau men. He is an overgrown child, who even on a business trip to the city is under strict parental control (the notes from his parents). He is flustered by a male authority figure (the conductor) and oblivious to temptation by a female (the flirt across the aisle in the train), and he thus resem¬ bles Harker and Orgon. Kate, however, is no madonna, worshipped from afar. She slings hash at a busy lunch counter where she is overworked and under rewarded. Her life away from work is equally bleak. She lives by herself with only a mechani¬ cal canary and dying plant for company, in a dingy one-room cold water flat with a view of the El and some flashing electric signs. Little wonder that she is seduced by the pastoral images she encounters daily—the calendar at work, the billboard at home—with their promises of a happy, carefree life in fresh air and sunshine. But it is not simply the city and its drudgery that Kate wishes to escape; it is her independence and its responsibilities that she wants to relinquish. When Lem first appears at her lunch counter, she finds him no more than a quaint and amusing bumpkin. She takes no special interest in him until she notices his postcard to his mother with its syrupy sentiment. When he next stacks his dishes because, as he tells Kate, he always does so at home to make his mother’s work easier, Kate is deeply impressed by this special treatment of a woman, something she has obviously never known. In the next scene in the lunch counter, this regard shifts from the mother to her. He presents her with the flower he is wearing and then defends her honor against a lecher. After some hesitation on his part due to his boyish insecurity, Lem asks her to marry him.11 When the two get off the train, Kate believes she has found Arcadia. The couple’s edenic state is presented in the next sequence: their glorious romp through the wheat, made even more exhilarating by the tracking shot that presents it. But before they begin their playful running and tumbling, Kate stands at the gate and tells Lem that it is wonderful to have a home, a mother and a father, and “a real two-fisted guy to take care of me.” Kate, in other words, wishes to be a madonna. She is ready, or so she thinks, to trade the questionable benefits of freedom for the pleasures of being taken care of (and thus, controlled) by not only a husband but a mother and father as well. She wishes, like the usual Murnau male, to revert to childhood. And her wish is fulfilled: at the end of the wheat scene she encounters Pa, the ultimate patriarchal authority. He is the intruder who disrupts the life of the couple almost before it has begun. Kate, who had hoped to be treated like a madonna in her new home, finds that Pa is convinced she is a whore. He had made up his mind about her even before meeting her. The word ‘‘waitress had

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jumped out of the telegram at him in a way that made it clear it was for him synonymous with “prostitute.” Finding her hat on the Bible only confirms his preconceived notion. He immediately attacks her and tells her to go back to Chicago. When Kate stands up to him and fights back, he grabs her roughly, she bites him, and he slaps her. Kate then waits for her White Knight to spring to her defense as he had at the lunch counter with much less provocation. But this time the offender is his own father and Lem is too much under the patriarch’s control to be able to fight him, especially when his mother dissuades him. Hurt and dis¬ illusioned, Kate locks him out of the bedroom. The next morning, rather than strolling through sheep pastures or water-skiing on a clear lake (the scenes depicted in the calendar and billboard), Kate finds herself doing what she has always done: serving food to men—men who grab and taunt and insinuate. In this case, they are the crew hired by Pa to bring in the crop and their leader, Mac, is particularly insistent in his attentions to her. His swaggering insolence towards Pa and his open sexual advances mark him as Lem’s double. In the evening, Lem attempts a reconciliation by going to her room. He says they cannot go on this way, and concludes: “Let’s forget and be happy.” Lem, the Murnau male, wants to ignore the problem rather than face it. He then tries to kiss her but she breaks away from him and runs from the room—directly into Mac. Nothing is resolved. Kate runs back into her room and locks the door against both men. Later that night, a storm arises causing Pa to rouse the hired crew. They must work all night, he says, to save the crop. While working, Mac cuts his hand and comes up to the house where Kate bandages it. Pa comes upon this scene and interprets it as a lovers’ tryst. He informs Kate of his intention to tell Lem. When Lem comes to see for himself, he is swayed by his father’s preconceptions: when he looks at the table on which sit a bandage, a bottle of iodine, and Mac’s cap, he sees only the cap. “I guess our marriage was a mistake,” he tells Kate, causing her to give up hope of wresting him from his father. She decides to leave, but as she gets ready, she is nearly raped by Mac who also informs her that he has sabotaged the crop to get even with Pa for the way he has treated her. (Violence is once again the result of sexual denial.) Here is Kate’s wish fulfillment: the logical culmination of her desire for a two-fisted guy to take care of her. Kate is able to get away from Mac, and starts out on the road to return to the city. But in the mean¬ time, Lem at last confronts his doubles: he has a fist fight with Mac and a verbal one with his father. In this film, with its many reversals from the usual paradigm, it is Lem, the male protagonist, who is sacrificed—albeit symbolically rather than literally. Like the wife in Sunrise, he does not die but is thought to have done so. Pa, making good on his threat to shoot the first man who tries to leave the farm before the crop is in, fires his rifle at the approaching buckboard, unaware that it carries Lem. Although Lem in unhurt, Pa (and the spectator) momentarily believe that he has murdered his own son. And again as in Sunrise, this death and resurrection sig¬ nal the end of one image and the beginning of another. His own man at last, he sets

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out to find Kate. When Lem catches up with her—moving, as it happens, in the wrong direction thus indicating her real wish to stay—she refuses his help into the buckboard but gets in on her own. She is no longer looking for a man to take care of her. The image of the white knight has been dispersed, and with it the twin images of madonna and magdalene. Finally, Tabu could be no other than Murnau’s Tristan and Isolde. In both works, a pair of lovers desperately defy the world’s attempt to prohibit their love. Reri is declared tabu, untouchable, when she is selected to become the tribe’s high priestess; Isolde is also chosen for a position of high honor, that of becoming King Mark’s wife, which makes her unapproachable by Tristan. However, prior to these events, the couples in both works were already in love, as Act I of the opera and the delightful romp in the water in the opening sequence of the film make clear. Both couples make an attempt to stay apart and follow society’s demands, but their love for each other is irresistible. Tristan and Isolde begin a clandestine love affair and Reri and Matahi run off together. However, the respite for both is temporary. Tristan and Isolde are caught by Melot and Mark, and Hitu catches up with Reri and Matahi. Tristan does battle with Melot to bring about his own death, but fails. Matahi does battle with the shark to continue his life with Reri, but finds her gone. Isolde rushes to her beloved in a boat in an attempt to save his life; Reri rushes from her beloved in a boat in an attempt to save his life. The two couples are at last united in death. Isolde sings her Liebestod and expires over Tristan’s body. Matahi drowns after his valiant effort to retrieve Reri from Hitu’s ship while she is on her way to face certain death for defying the tabu. Although physically apart, both are presented as under water—the drowned Matahi literally and Reri below the water¬ line in the hold of the ship—and thus together. The Edenic state of the couple is in Tabu presented in a more positive light than in any other film in the oeuvre. Not relegated to a brief prologue or flashback, its presentation is a fully developed section of the film. And instead of the usual cloying kitsch, this Eden is comprised of the real sparkling sea, waterfalls, and lush vegetation of Polynesia—long the European’s image of a natural paradise. Yet despite its charm there remains the fact that its lovers are presented as children, playing childish games. Theirs is no more than the puppy love of adolescence. Into this idyll comes the intruder Hitu, bearing the news that Reri, because of her superior feminine qualities, has been chosen the tribe’s new vestal virgin, which action obviously effects a rupture in the sexual life of the couple. The declaration of the tabu makes explicit the prohibition of sexual contact with the madonna figure. “No law of the gods is more to be feared than that which guards the sacred virgin. Man must not touch her or cast upon her the eye of desire for in her honor rests the honor of us all.” In this film, it is clearly society that is trying to impose the madonna image on the female protagonist. The male does not subscribe to this image, and, in fact, actively defies it. While still unaware of what has transpired on the ship, Matahi throws the love token of the lei upon Reri. Then in the ceremony to mark the “honor” being bestowed on her and her island, he trans-

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forms the dance from one of religious ritual to one of courtship ritual, driving off all the other male dancers until he alone is dancing with her and to a quickened and decidedly more sexual rhythm. Finally, he steals her from the ship and together they flee. Matahi is then a strong exception to the usual passive Murnau male, desirous of being controlled. In their new island home, the couple believes they have escaped their problem. But a ship bearing Hitu arrives (presented in an image that strongly recalls the entry of the vampire’s ship into Bremen). They determine to flee again, but are prevented from doing so because they have been tricked out of the money Matahi has earned as a pearl diver. It is at this point that Matahi has the wish fulfillment dream, one which centers on the other locus of tabu, the lagoon. Over Matahi’s face are superimposed the bills he has naively incurred. The image resolves further until the Chinese store owner can be seen holding the bills, presenting them to him one after another. There is another slow dissolve until the word “tabu” fills the screen over the bills which in turn dissolve to the lagoon. Then the ghostly “tabu” fades away, leaving only the waters sparkling in the moonlight. This image slowly dis¬ solves to one of the sea bed below which itself dissolves to one of a single oyster shell, in the center of which a pearl can be seen. In another dissolve, the pearl comes to fill the entire frame. Then, within the image of the pearl, the Chinese man can be seen again, now with assayer’s scales. He examines the pearl and then rips up the bills. That image then fades leaving the extreme close-up of the pearl which dissolves back to the profile of Matahi’s face. As in all the wish fulfillment se¬ quences, the problem is overcome easily and painlessly—too easily and too pain¬ lessly. There is no real confrontation, no coming to terms with the problem that would signal growth. But outside the fantasy of wish fulfillment, both Matahi and Reri face their monsters. Reri agrees to go back with Hitu in exchange for his promise to spare Matahi’s life. In this she is a typical Murnau female, sacrificing herself in order to save her beloved. But Matahi also makes a sacrifice: he risks his life for her by fighting the shark (a projection of Hitu’s inherent destructive¬ ness) as he dives for the pearl that will set them free. It is in this, their capacity for sacrifice each for the other, that the love of Matahi and Reri is seen at last as a mature love. But the patriarchal imperative is too strong for Matahi to overcome. Individuals may progress, but society as a whole does not. As the foregoing comparison makes clear, although Wagner’s and Mumau’s narratives seem to be constructed along the same general lines, it can be seen that Mumau’s works transcend the limitations of the world view of the poet-composer and by extension of romanticism itself. Murnau’s works point to the dangers—to both genders and the relationships between them—inherent in the ideal of the Eternal Feminine. Furthermore, in Murnau, there is no simplistic romantic equation of good with Nature and evil with Culture. Nature may be, as in the opening shots of Nosferatu, kittens and flowers, but it also reveals itself to be Venus fly-traps, predatory polyps, plague-ridden rats and, ultimately, vampires. Often, in fact, it seems that Murnau sets up romanticism’s opposition of Nature and

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Culture, so prominent in the works of Wagner, in order to demonstrate its fallaciousness. In City Girl, both Pa and Kate are victims of images founded on the Nature/Culture dichotomy. Pa is convinced the city is a place of corruption and therefore views Kate as a whore simply because she comes from the city. (One wonders how he justifies to himself trading with the devil; it is, after all, to the evil city that he sends his sacred wheat.) Kate pins her hopes on her fantasy of the pastoral life only to discover she must serve the same leering, aggressive men in Arcadia that she had in Babylon. Both must be disabused of their preconceptions. In Tabu, there is established a contrast between the purity of the island untouched by civilization and the degeneration of the one contaminated by it. Yet the real threat to the noble savages comes from within their own tribal society, not from that of the Europeans. Sunrise, in particular, seems to be predicated on the opposition of Nature and Culture. All was fine in the country paradise until the Woman of the City arrived. And the city she conjures up in the swamp with its frenetic rhythms and overpower¬ ing sensations seems to confirm the romantic’s worst fears. When the couple ar¬ rives in the actual city, however, they find it a place of marvels and delights. Whatever perils it affords—whizzing cars, barbershop mashers, and vampy manicurists—are easily overcome. The people in the city turn out to be no differ¬ ent than those in the country. They fall in love, as shown by the couple dancing dreamily cheek to cheek in the Luna Park ballroom. They get married with solem¬ nity and ceremony. Finally, the people of the city disclose their worth by the way in which they are charmed by the couple from the country. What, then, of the vamp, the Woman of the City? In fact, she never was of the city at all. Despite her high heels, bobbed hair, and cigarettes, all her associations are with Nature. Her whistle to the man to get his attention is the call of a wild animal. When the villagers are searching for the missing wife, the vamp is presented watching the scene from above, on the branch of a tree, like some wild cat ready to pounce. The vamp is in reality a product of the swamp, the dark side of Nature. But Murnau’s revisions of the romantic ethos do not end with the narrative. Just as the values implicit in the work of Murnau go beyond the conceptual (and hence ideological) limitations of the Wagnerian cosmos, so Murnau’s filmmaking, like the theater¬ making of Saxe-Meiningen, Appia, and Reinhardt, went beyond the limitations of the Festspielhaus with its cardboard cut-out scenery and illusionistic sleight of hand. The remainder of this chapter will examine the relationship of Murnau’s manner of articulation to that of the theater artists already discussed with the specific aim of demonstrating that his work represents the culmination of roman¬ ticism’s transmutation from illusionism to anti-illusionism.

From the Physical to the Metaphysical There are film historians (few though they be) who have acknowledged a general relationship between the German theater and the early German cinema. Rhode

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notes that the films of Germany’s Golden Age are indebted to Max Reinhardt and the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen (161); and in The Haunted Screen, Eisner describes Reinhardt’s legacy to the new art, concluding that a great many of the mediocre films of the period were “based on more or less forgotten memories of productions at the Deutsches Theater’ ’ (77). However, no one to date has recognized the work of Murnau as the direct and particular culmination of the German romantic theatri¬ cal tradition which has been the subject of this text to this point. This failure is understandable. The facts of Mumau’s life in no way make such a connection self-evident. He was bom five years after Wagner’s death, and while no German of the period could have been unaware of the work of the poetcomposer, the only evidence to suggest the filmmaker had any particular interest in the Wagnerian oeuvre is his unrealized project to make a film based on The Flying Dutchman (Eisner, Murnau 142). Murnau grew up in Kassel, a town just a few miles from Meiningen, but there is no mention of his ever having attended a Meininger performance.12 At any rate, by the time Murnau would have been old enough to be taken to the theater, the Duke had retired as Intendant and his com¬ pany was in decline (Grube, 111). A pilot in World War I, Murnau was shot down and interned in Switzerland where he engaged in theater activities that garnered him substantial notice in that nation; however, there is no record of his having come into contact with Appia (Eisner, Murnau 18). Murnau did serve an apprenticeship with Max Reinhardt, but the same is true for a great number of German cinema’s first artists. The fact that directors as diverse as Brecht, Lubitsch, and Preminger trained with Reinhardt demonstrates that contact is no proof of resemblance. Yet the evidence of the period in Murnau’s life which he spent with or near the great director of the Deutsches Theater suggests the possibility, at least, of a substantial formative influence. Murnau went to Berlin to begin his university studies in 1905, the year of the seminal production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which means he would have had the opportunity to witness Reinhardt’s de¬ velopment from its beginning. At what point in time Murnau actually joined the Reinhardt company is uncertain; the filmmaker’s brother recalls only that the fa¬ mily discovered he was appearing on the Deutsches Theater stage around 1909 (Eisner, Murnau 10-11). Murnau’s mother reports that her son had been given a scholarship by Reinhardt to attend his theater school after the director had seen him in an amateur production and that Murnau remained with the company until he was conscripted. She further remembers her son writing to her that he was acting in both The Miracle and the Henry IVplays at one time (Eisner, Murnau 17-18). It can be surmised, therefore, that Murnau was a member of the Reinhardt compa¬ ny for a minimum of four years and perhaps substantially longer since these plays were together in the Deutsches Theater repertoire only during 1912 and 1914 (Styan, Reinhardt 137-40). During this period, as well as acting, Murnau is known to have directed at the theater school. In all probability, he also served as one of Reinhardt’s many assistant directors whenever the opportunity arose. His deter-

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mination to observe the director at work is more than surmise. Murnau is known to have hidden on the floor of a stage box in order to eavesdrop on Reinhardt’s closed rehearsals (Eisner, Murnau 18). After the war, Murnau did not return to the theater but instead embarked on a career in the new art form, film. Rather than being a rejection of Reinhardt and the theatrical tradition he epitomized, Murnau’s move to film might better be seen as his attempt to extend that tradition into the new form. Such an extension seems no more than the logical conclusion to Reinhardt’s own work since his explorations of theatrical space were in essence quests to discover the boundaries, physical and aesthetic, of theatrical experience. It is clear that at the outer reaches of his con¬ tinually expanding conception of theater, Reinhardt had anticipated the film. By experimenting with theater size, for instance, Reinhardt had made actor-audience distance an aesthetic issue, thus looking forward to the variability of field size possible in film. The Kammerspiele was a theater in close-up; the Grosses Schauspielhaus, a theater in extreme long shot. Yet Reinhardt could not ask his audience to move from one house to the other between scenes, with the result that each production was, so to speak, limited to a single camera set-up. This could not but undermine the effectiveness of his work. For instance, while the forum and bat¬ tle scenes in Julius Caesar were remarked for their tremendous power in the Grosses Schauspielhaus, it was regretted that the vast arena robbed the scene of Brutus’s garden reverie of its delicate nuances (Styan, Reinhardt 112). Likewise, Reinhardt had “liberated” the theater by taking it into the world in his many productions staged outside theaters proper; but a mise en scene conceived in “acres, not square feet” was difficult for an audience to take in from one fixed seat. The film, of course, has the capability of moving between the close-up and the long shot and it can traverse great distances for the audience, either by means of actual camera movements or by means of montage. However, it was not merely technological ease that film offered the kind of mise en scene developed by SaxeMeiningen and Appia and Reinhardt. This would be no more than Vardac’s argu¬ ment repeated. Murnau’s insight was that film offered this mise en scene a range of possibilities for realization that actually deepened and enriched it. The film¬ making techniques which comprise Murnau’s particular style have prototypes (or at least analogues) in the work of his theatrical predecessors. He preferred the long shot and the long take which together produce a continuous distanced image that corresponds to the one received in the theater. He composed in depth and along a diagonal line, as had Saxe-Meiningen, Appia, and Reinhardt. He made frequent use of the dissolve, that cinematic equivalent of Wagner’s scenic dramaturgy. And he is best known for his use of the moving camera which accomplishes in cinematic space what Reinhardt’s use of the revolve had done on the stage. Moreover, an examination of these techniques will reveal that they reinforce each other in the operation of establishing continuity. Whenever the camera moves forward or back¬ ward, it proves the depth of space. The diagonal axis facilitates composition in

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depth. Only the long shot allows for composition in depth and only the long take allows the complexity of that composition to be perceived. The moving camera and the dissolve both provide fluid means for joining images. Taken together, these techniques form a cinematic sensibility based on the in¬ tegrity of space and opposed to the fragmentation of space inherent in montage. Therefore, Murnau’s style of filmmaking appears on the face of it much less ob¬ trusive than does the style founded on montage. The camera passively watches for a long time and at a distance what unfolds before it. One would logically deduce that such a style is neutral and thus best suited to the presentation of factual mate¬ rial, as in a documentary film. The historical evidence seems to bear out this con¬ clusion. Long-take, deep-focus filmmaking was the style used by Robert Flaherty, the first great director of documentaries and it was the style advocated by Andre Bazin, the most significant proponent of cinematic realism. This style, according to Bazin, has the power to “lay bare the realities” (1:15). Furthermore, Mumau’s clear, sharp cinematography and use of natural locations seem to align him with the realist filmmakers. Yet, for all the increased directness, all the unyielding photographic naturalism of these scenes, something, one senses, remains elusively beyond what the camera can capture. The physical world, placed almost tangibly before our eyes, is still somehow distant, inscrutable, ghostly. (Guillermo, “Shadow” 153)

Murnau’s cinema is characterized by “feeling that surpasses fact” ; analyzing the raw data of Mumau’s images, one finds that “nothing . . . quite accounts for their disturbing intensity” (Guillermo, “Murnau” 14). It would be reasonable to expect the moving camera to produce such an effect since by its nature a moving camera confers a sense of vitality or flux or disorder on the material it surveys. Moreover, the nature of Murnau’s camera movements was unusually slow and smooth, and, as Durgnat points out, whenever the move¬ ments of the camera depart from the realm of the spectator’s normal perceptual experience, he or she “becomes vaguely conscious of a certain uneasiness.”13 With respect to Mumau’s mise en scene, Guillermo points out that the long shot initially promises to reveal everything, but in fact the long shot is imprecise because “no object stands out, there is nothing solid our eyes can grab, no place for our gaze to rest upon, and we are vertiginously thrown back upon ourselves”; furthermore, whereas in a close-up people and objects appear solid, in long shot they become “mere patches of light, ghosts without bulk” (“Murnau” 14). This lack of con¬ creteness is disturbing. Likewise, the effect of the long take of an image is to allow the spectator to “imagine its unlimited aspects” (Kracauer, 66). Bazin makes a similar claim for deep focus cinematography: “Depth of focus [introduces] ambiguity into the structure of the image. . . . The uncertainty in which we find ourselves as to the spiritual key or the interpretation we should put on the film is built into the very design of the image” (1:36).

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The long-take, deep-focus, long-shot filmmaking of Murnau serves to prove not the reliability but the very unreliability of the phenomenal world of space and time it presents. According to Hauser, simultaneity as an aspect of a work of art (such as exists in the elements under discussion) is a manifestation of “a struggle for the recovery of that inwardness of which physical space and time deprive us” (245). Over and over again, critics have noted the fact that Murnau’s images go against the viewer’s sense of scale. In The Last Laugh, comments Rhode: The camera drifts among the moving actors in such a way that it sometimes makes them loom forward, sometimes shrink back against their background. ... By disrupting any sense of scale, Murnau encourages his audience to identify with the disequilibrium of his central character. (184)

For all its seeming spatial continuity, a Murnau film always denies its audience a sense of spatial relationships. At the end of the camera’s prowl through the marsh, as Wood has noted, the moon is not where the viewer expects it and the man enters the frame from the “wrong” side (13). Andrew explains the implications of this. The essential meaning of the film is displaced—it is always elsewhere, and cannot be bound to specific spatial and temporal signifiers. . . . In effect, the temporal and spatial signifiers of the film medium are being used to construct the absolute narrative—outside of space and time. (“Gravity” 366)

This gives Murnau’s films the feeling of dreams. As Langer notes: One of the aesthetic peculiarities of dream, which the moving picture takes over, is the nature of space. Dream events are often spatial, often intensely concerned with space—intervals, end¬ less roads, bottomless canyons, things too high, too near, too far—but they are not oriented in any total space. (203)

In Mumau’s films, then, Wagner’s dream world found its final and complete reali¬ zation. This feeling of uncertainty which Murnau’s films generate is manifest in the most definitive aspect of his art: the violation of the integrity of the frame. Solo¬ mon claims that the purpose of framing in a film is to exclude the irrelevant, but this does not apply to Murnau.14 In his films it is what is outside the frame which is most important. (He once defined the filmmaker’s art as that of “masking,” which is to say, concealing [Eisner, Murnau 62].) Critics have long noted this aspect of his art. In Nosferatu, “space, fluid in nature and not likely to be contained within sharp limits, palpably extends all around the frame” (Guillermo, “Shadow” 151). In Sunrise, “we must constantly run our eyes around the perimeter of the screen in search of the unknown” (Andrew, “Gravity 366). The oppressive city of City Girl “lurks just beyond the edges of the frame” (Hyde, 16). In Tabu, there is the “constant implication of movement beyond [the frame’s] edges” (Wood, “Tabu ” 20). In Murnau’s films, “the frame is not sovereign” ; there is always

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something that “hovers by its edges’’ (Andrew, “Gravity” 365). This quality is even inherent in his dependence on the moving camera which in itself “implies the continuousness of a visual field outside the frame of the film” (Sarris, 68). There are many ways in which Murnau implies the world beyond the frame within the frame. At times the frame is literally invaded from without. The prow of the vampire’s ship pierces the peace of Bremen’s harbor, an image that is re¬ peated by the boat that carries Hitu into the world of Reri and Matahi. Tartuffe’s hand suddenly juts into Elmire’s frame in the bedroom, a prelude to the assault he intends to perform on her body. As the husband in Sunrise is attempting to hide the bullrushes, a horse’s head suddenly pushes its way into the frame, catching him in his guilty action. Not only the filmic frame proper, but also internal frames are violated. When the man proposes a trip to the city to his wife, she is so emphati¬ cally framed in the doorway that his outstretched hand (which he means her to see as attempted reconciliation) seems a violent intrusion into her space and thus expresses his true intent. At other times, the frame is suddenly emptied of its content. Orgon’s shock when he looks through the keyhole is expressed by his suddenly standing up and out of the frame. Likewise, when Pa (in City Girl) believes that he has shot his own son, his horror is conveyed by his fainting and falling out of the frame. The superimpositions Murnau used so frequently are another kind of invasion and evacuation of the frame. Mephistopheles materializes out of thin air in Faust’s study as the vamp materializes in the husband’s bedroom. Conversely, the removal of the threat in Nosferatu is marked by the dissolution, the dematerialization, of the vampire. The world beyond the frame is sometimes manifested by the camera’s remain¬ ing outside the place of the crucial action. In The Last Laugh, after the demoted doorman has been found out by the woman from his tenement, he is unable to per¬ form his duties as a lavatory attendant, angering one of the hotel guests, who storms out the swinging doors to complain. The camera waits not with the doorman but at the top of the stairs which lead to the lavatory. Time passes. Then the guest returns with the manager and they pass back through the swinging glass doors and into the lavatory. The camera stays where it is. More time passes. Then the two men reemerge, obviously satisfied, and walk away. The manager has doubtless berated the poor, humiliated doorman severely, but this is not shown. When, upon his return, Orgon is disdainful of Elmire, she rushes up the stairs and into his room in an attempt to elicit a warm and loving response from him. The camera waits out¬ side the door, seeing nothing but the empty landing. Eventually Elmire comes out again, downcast. In both cases, the action is implied, not presented. It is left to the spectator to fill in the gap. The sense of that which is beyond view is also conveyed by the absence of a character where he or she should be present. In the first half of Nosferatu, the figure of the vampire is prevalent. However, after he arrives in Bremen, after he magically disappears into the wall of the house opposite Nina’s, it is as if he had disappeared altogether. He is not seen again until the climactic end of the film. Yet his presence is felt in every frame by means of the plague. The

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vamp also seems to exert her power most when least seen, when outside the frame; and the wife is never more at the center of attention than when the husband and villagers are searching the lake for her but cannot find her. The effect of all these different manifestations of Murnau’s refusal to recog¬ nize the frame as a boundary is that there is a “diffuse presence of an irremediable something” in his films (Astruc, 71). His characters are surrounded with an in¬ terminable Angst “as if the ground below their hesitant feet was never quite sure, as if Destiny might tear away from them every last feeling of security” (Eisner, Murnau 155). The inherent instability of each image in Murnau is due to its refusal to be framed, fixed, or set. “Each image is . . . the destruction of a stable equi¬ librium brought about by its own elan” (Astruc, 71). Each image, then, is a visual Valhalla whose very creation sets in motion the process that will end in the Gdtterddmmerung. Murnau’s tendency to violate the frame reminds Astruc of the works of Velazquez and Caravaggio (70). But it is also an enrichment of the Duke’s and Appia’s visual synecdoche and Reinhardt’s Sprengung des Buhnenrahmens. The goal of all these directors was to create an open, boundless mise en scene. The open composition was desirable to these artists because by its very incompleteness it engages the audience. The open composition allows for the unexpected and the unknown, the existence of which robs the audience of its security and hence its complacency; the audience members are like the characters, vulnerable and there¬ fore in a defensive state of alertness. This open composition is appropriate to the world view of romanticism. The open form implies the multiplicity of possibilities, which has both a positive and a negative aspect. If on the one hand the individual may be assaulted from without at any time by forces beyond his or her control, that individual on the other hand is free to choose how to react to such assaults. If there are no boundaries to offer protection, there are also no boundaries to limit growth and self-fulfillment. The Wagnerian hero who yet possesses a fierce romantic free will within a universe ordered by Nature-necessity could be presented on the stage or screen only in the open mise en scene. There is, finally, no intrinsic contradiction in seeing Murnau’s mise en scene as the model for Bazin’s and Kracauer’s realist cinema and as the realization of late romanticism’s anti-realist theater. The reality that Bazin and Kracauer wanted the cinema to present was none other than the one Wagner wished to bring forth in his works. For Bazin, reality is defined by its ambiguities (1:15). For Kracauer it is characterized by its “puzzling indeterminacy” (47). Bazin did indeed want the phenomenal world to be fully depicted in film, but not as an end in itself. It is a little as if, having been led to this degree of interest in appearances, we were now to see the characters no longer among the objects but, as if these had become transparent, through them. I mean by this that without our noticing the world has moved from meaning to analogy, then from analogy to identification with the supernatural. I apologize for this equivocal word; the reader may replace it with whatever . . . term . . . expresses the hidden accord which things maintain with an invisible counterpart of which they are, so to speak, merely the adumbration. (2:88)

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Wagner would have had no disagreement with this estimation of the relation of the phenomenal and noumenal worlds, nor with Kracauer’s belief that the reality of the photographic image presents “the outer aspects of inner life” (280). In Murnau, it is the outer aspect that suggests the inner life, but not by becoming transparent. With Murnau, the surface, the visible image, unable to encompass the whole, is yet bound intimately to it. Appearances are not deceptive, they are simply opaque, inherently incomplete; and precisely by our sense of their opaqueness and their incompleteness they make us aware of the whole, aware of the invisible. (Guillermo, “Shadow” 153)

The task Bazin assigned to film was to present the world “in all its virginal purity to my attention and consequently my love” (1:15). Kracauer’s position was that film’s duty was the redemption of physical reality. Thus, in the works of the major theorists of realist cinema are found the key Wagnerian concepts, love and redemption. The realism of Bazin is not the realism of Zola which has its ‘ ‘meaning and morals a priori"', the realism which Bazin finds in Welles, Renoir, the Italian neorealists, and, of course, Murnau, “knows only immanence” (2:64-65). Although he may not have been familiar with Appia, Bazin reiterates his very ideas on mise en scene in his critique (coincidentally) of Lang’s film of Die Nibelungen. “The complete forest . . . may well pretend to be an infinite expanse. We do not believe it to be so, whereas the trembling of just one branch in the wind, and the sunlight, would be enough to conjure up all the forests of the world” (1:111). Wagner proposed that the purpose of mise en scene was to make the metaphysical world seem to condense (i.e., materialize) in the physical one. Murnau did some¬ thing even more astounding. There are no such things as the Wandeldekoration and fly-apart scenery in Murnau; the metaphysical world maintains its mystery in Murnau’s films by rarely “condensing” in his images but by always being there, just out of view. Murnau used a visual medium to present that which is expressly denied to vision. Thus, while Murnau’s long takes and long shots, his moving camera, his dis¬ solves and superimpositions suggest a cinema of emphatic spatio-temporal continuity and by extension of seamlessness and transparency, it was paradoxically the edited style of the Hollywood film which resulted in the cinematic equivalent of Bayreuth with its numbing effect on the spectator. As Bergstrom has noted, not Murnau’s cinema alone but all Weimar cinema serves as a seminal alternative to the film which bases its delusional illusion on the rules of continuity editing. The use of space ... is markedly different here [in Weimar cinema] from the way it developed in the Hollywood cinema. The 180-degree rule, for example, is one of the fundamentals of the classical American continuity style. The camera is supposed to remain on one side of an imagi¬ nary line in the different positions it may occupy to film a scene. Although it is an oversimpli¬ fication, one could think of the spatial arrangement of a traditional [i.e., proscenium] theater and its audience. The purpose of the rule us to help the viewer maintain spatial orientation with respect

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to the scene to help build the illusion that it is a real space (and a real story) before one’s eyes. The more general principle that applies is the “rule" of invisible editing: . . . the spectator should follow story and characters, and should not notice style, particularly editing or camera as such. However much the phrase occurs in the critical literature, it does not make sense to talk about violations of the 180-degree rule in the context of the Weimar cinema, because either one would have to say that it is routinely violated, or one would have to observe that it is not a convention of editing in Weimar films. (190-91)

However, in the case of Murnau, it does not seem to be enough to say that certain conventions did not exist for him. The spectatorial disorientation that occurs in viewing a Murnau film cannot be attributed simply to an omission or an absence; there is, as will be seen, an unmistakable quality of intendedness (and nothing rou¬ tine) about his violation of the “logic” of space. From Theater to Film/From Illusionism to Anti-Illusionism At first glance, Murnau’s career (like that of Reinhardt) seems characterized by the eclecticism of his subjects. He made films based on dramatic masterpieces (e.g., Tartuffe, Faust) and on cheap detective fiction (e.g., Abend . . . Nacht. . . Morgen); he created works that seemed to fit into the tradition of realist films known significantly as Rammerspielfilmen (e.g., Der Gang in die Nacht, The Last Laugh) but also films modelled on horror tales which were the common materials of the expressionist filmmakers (e.g., Nosferatu, Der Januskopf). Indeed, during much of his career, Murnau worked closely with the leading writer of film expres¬ sionism, Carl Mayer, but then in his final film, Tabu, he collaborated with the father of the documentary film, Robert Flaherty. Yet in Murnau’s oeuvre, as in that of Reinhardt, there is “a true imaginative unity, a singleness of spirit behind the variety of surface” (Guillermo, “Murnau” 13). Murnau’s aim was always “to make a film a total work of art”—a Gesamtkunstwerk in other words—and he therefore involved himself in every aspect of the filmmaking process (Eisner, Murnau 72). His working method clearly resembles that of Reinhardt. Murnau was everywhere and did everything himself when he was making a fdm. The preparation used to take up all his time for a year beforehand. All this while he would keep aloof from any distraction. . . . He used to live each part, experiment with every possibility of the plot, draw up a mental picture of the sets, and perfect each detail of the whole with the greatest care, always asking him¬ self what was the best way of presenting it by means of the camera lens. (Eisner, Murnau 86)

Out of this preparation period would come the shooting script which, like Rein¬ hardt’s Regiebuch, contained every detail of production: notes on costumes and props, sketches of furniture, the placement of titles, time of day (and thus light¬ ing), camera angle, and duration of shot (Eisner, Murnau 27). Although he worked

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out everything in advance with his collaborators, during the shooting of the film Murnau was open to impulse and improvisation. Like Reinhardt in the Domplatz Everyman, he was quick to take advantage of what came his way: “the shadow of wind-stirred leaves on water, the ripple of waves on a lake after a boat has gone by, the glitter of the sun on the lake’s surface” (Eisner, Murnau 79). Murnau worked closely with his collaborators, especially his scenarists and cameramen in the kind of tripartite relationship that had served Saxe-Meiningen and Reinhardt so well; but Murnau was clearly at the apex of the triangle. He had great respect for his fellow-artists and always treated them with consideration, but nonetheless he considered their work the raw material of his own. This is nowhere clearer than in his treatment of the scenarios supplied him by his writers. Eisner points out that the surviving scripts of Murnau’s films contain—as well as the specific details of filming—amendations, elaborations, and alterations of the story in his own hand. Significantly, the sections of the scripts to receive the fullest elabo¬ ration by Murnau were their dream sequences (Eisner, Murnau 27). Mumau’s in¬ terpolations would frequently change the focus or even the meaning of the work. The original script for Faust, for example, ends with Gretchen in despair outside the cathedral where Mass is being said for her mother and brother while Faust is pursued by 'uries (Eisner, Murnau 53). The martyrdom of Gretchen and the redemption of Faust at the moment of her death are Murnau’s additions. As this example implies, all Mumau’s changes, like those made by Reinhardt, had as their purpose the transformation of whatever material he was given into a romantic work. In his romanticism, Murnau clearly stands apart from his compatriots and colleagues of Weimar cinema, both the expressionists such as Lang and the realists such as Pabst and Pick. Since, as was suggested previously, expressionism was an extension of naturalism, the boundaries between these two tendencies in German film were never fixed and sometimes overlapped. It was conceivable, then, for Carl Mayer, an expressionist writer, and Lupu Pick, a realist director, to collaborate on films such as Sylvester and Scheruben which embodied (in the director’s words) “the curse which weighs upon humanity: to be subject to the condition of the beast and yet to be capable of thought” (Eisner, Haunted 186). These films presented dismal slices of life that Zola would no doubt have approved. Mayer had planned a third film to complete a trilogy on this theme, but when he and Pick had a dis¬ agreement, the script was given to Murnau (Rhode, 182). The result was The Last Laugh. In Mumau’s hands, Mayer’s script became not the story of social brutality and indifference but a portrait of individual suffering (reminding one of Reinhardt’s transformation of Woyzeck or Ghosts). Murnau raises the vainglorious doorman to a figure of near tragic proportions. The same can be said of Sunrise which was based on “A Trip to Tilsit,” a short story by Hermann Sudermann. Sudermann was a writer of the naturalist school; the peasants of his story are, therefore, closer to the subhuman beasts of Tolstoy’s The Power of Darkness than to romanticism’s

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natural man. The husband is a rather nasty and brutal clod with a sly streak. Over a period of time, he actively plots the murder of his wife with his paramour, a ser¬ vant in the house, not, as in the film, a tourist from the city. Sudermann ends his story with an ironic twist: on the way home across the lake after their reconcilia¬ tion, the husband drowns in the act of saving his wife. In Murnau’s work, however, the husband is presented in a sympathetic light, as a basically good and kind man who is seduced into the murder plan but unable to carry it through because of a sense of self-revulsion—a sentiment beyond the limited capacity of the short story’s protagonist. Here, as in all Murnau’s films, the focus is personal and private, never social and material. Murnau and Mayer may have been drawn together, as Haskell suggests, by their common interest in the unconscious; but, whereas Mayer, who (as an expressionist) saw the unconscious as “pathological and destructive,’’ produced scripts that were “morbid and suicidal,” Mumau’s films seem “to move constantly towards the light of grace and redemption” (Haskell, 17). Murnau’s changing of scripts is also indicative of the tendency to devalue spoken and written language that was manifested in the work of his predecessors. His treatment of titles is another example of this attitude. Although his early films, as all films of the day, contained numerous explanatory titles, Murnau tended as time went on toward their elimination. He once wrote, “Screen art ought, through its unique properties, to tell a complete story by means of images alone; the ideal film does not need titles” (“Ideal” 41). The Last Laugh was an attempt to make such a film; it contains only one title, the introduction to the film’s ironic epi¬ logue.15 All Murnau’s later films, such as Tabu and Sunrise, contain few titles. When titles were deemed indispensable, Murnau attempted to make them part of the film’s visual design. When the vamp in Sunrise says, “Couldn’t she get drowned?” the words of the title slip into the blackness of their background as if into water. When Lem in City Girl shouts out “Father!” the written word recedes, suggesting visually the dying away of the sound. The scarcity of titles in Mumau’s films is not, however, synonymous with the absence of words. Murnau was not averse to including the written word in his films if he could incorporate it into the narrative proper. The audience is frequently presented with information by means of a log, diary, letter, or newspaper that a character in the film is reading or writing. This might be interpreted as a manifesta¬ tion of Murnau’s desire to eliminate disruptions in the continuity of the action of the kind his predecessors had feared would destroy the emotional involvement of the audience. However, in reality, the use of such items in Mumau’s films has the opposite effect. In the beginning of Nosferatu, the spectator is informed by inter¬ title that what he or she is about to see is “from the diary of Johann Cavalius, able historian of his native city of Bremen.” Although Bram Stoker’s novel upon which the film is based is itself composed of diary and journal entries, they are all the products of characters who play an active part in the story: Harker, Mina, Seward, Van Helsing, etc.

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What Murnau has done by creating Cavalius is not only to give the film a sin¬ gle narrator but one who is invested with authority; he is an able historian and thus an observer and evaluator of events upon whose emotional detachment and criti¬ cal judgment the spectator can rely. His account will be the “objective” truth. This idea is reinforced by the film’s first image: the town square presented in a high angle long shot, often referred to as the cinematic equivalent of the omniscient point of view. But as the film progresses, the narrator proves more and more untrust¬ worthy. “He” frequently interrupts the action with information that is, as Mayne has noted, absolutely redundant of that contained in the image or otherwise irrele¬ vant (33). It begins to seem that the narrator’s function is to interrupt, to provide a rupture in the flow of images, to counteract the building of tension towards a cli¬ max. But the narrator even goes so far as to state information that is clearly con¬ tradicted by the images. The sequence in which Nina telepathically saves Harker from the vampire’s attack is presented in terms of cross-cutting between her bedroom in Westenra’s house and Harker’s in the vampire’s castle. The vampire’s shadow rises menacingly over Harker’s unconscious form; Nina sits bolt upright, moves to the foot of her bed, extends her arms to the left, and calls, “Jonathan. Hear me.” The vampire’s shadow begins to retreat from Harker; then the vam¬ pire himself, facing left, turns to look over his shoulder; Nina is shown again with her arms still reaching towards the left; the vampire turns and leaves the room; Nina relaxes. The narrator then informs the spectator that Nina had sensed the menace of the nosferatu and “Harker far away had heard her cry of warning.” Clearly, however, Harker heard nothing; it was the vampire with whom Nina com¬ municated. As in the sequence in Sunrise discussed previously, Murnau has created a disjunction between word and image. Ultimately, the “able” narrator is dis¬ credited. Nosferatu also contains another journal: the ship’s captain’s log, another os¬ tensibly official, objective account of events. When read by Westenra after the un¬ canny docking of the ship, it provides another disjunction in the film by presenting information about what happened in the first part of the voyage after the end of the voyage has been presented in images. It also demonstrates the untrustworthiness of the captain as an observer. In one entry, he notes that a man has fallen ill and in a later one that three more are sick and that he suspects the plague. But an in¬ tervening entry states, “Mate reported stowaway hiding below decks. Will inves¬ tigate. ’ ’ But it seems the captain never did investigate nor did he make a connection between the stowaway and his crew’s illness. It is not that his interpretation of events is wrong; it is incomplete. He does not see the whole picture even when it is there for him to see. In both these cases, Murnau has refuted the notion of an objective point of view and demonstrated the limitations of any one subjectivity. In Tabu, he uses journal entries to much the same effect. Here the ship’s captain’s log does seem to exist to provide important expository information: Reri, Matahi, and Hitu all face death

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as a result of the couple’s defection. However, the film’s other log is another matter. After Reri and Matahi wash up on the shore of the “civilized” island, a new character is introduced. He is wearing the white jacket and pith helmet of a French colonial officer and is seen to be writing in a journal, obviously in his offi¬ cial capacity. He writes that the couple has recovered and that Matahi has proven to be the best pearl diver the island has ever seen, “but it seems only play to him. He evidently does not realize what money means. ” Again Murnau has presented what seems to be a detached, objective, authoritative narrator. But immediately after writing this last entry, the man is drawn to a window where he sees Matahi being carried on the shoulders of the islanders. Upon seeing this, the man quickly trades his uniform for a straw hat and squeeze box and runs to join the party. Immediately his image of authority and objectivity is undermined, and it further deteriorates when he performs the comic belly dance. Later, after the ship bear¬ ing Hitu has arrived, he appears in his uniform again at the hut of Matahi and Reri. There he reads them the notice of the reward that is being offered for them but accepts a bribe rather than arrest them.16 So much for the detached observer. As for actors, Murnau seems to have been blessed with Reinhardt’s (and the Duke’s) talent for shaping performance. Although one might argue that the actors with whom he worked in Germany (for the most part members of Reinhardt’s com¬ pany) needed little help in creating their roles, Murnau’s work with the nonprofes¬ sionals in Tabu is proof that his talent as a director lay in more than his visual conception. A contemporary who observed Murnau at work in the studio has left an account of Murnau’s influence over his actors. Only by being there could one realize how two characters can shed all personal life and become simply artistic material shaped under the creator’s hand; how that hand can bring forth life and expression and draw from the body of the actor the deepest and most delicate nuances, transform¬ ing the interpreter’s own psychology into a living, changing mould. (Eisner, Murnau 34-35)

Murnau always sought understatement from his actors, a quality difficult to attain at times with an actor such as Emil Jannings. During the filming of The Last Laugh, the director and actor were in conflict over how a scene should be played. After the doorman has been ridiculed by his neighbors, Jannings wanted to have the character enter his apartment and burst into tears; Murnau wanted him to do no more than slump in a chair.17 After arguing to no avail, Murnau shot the scene both ways. When he showed the rushes of both to the actor, Jannings admitted that the director had been right. Hansen, who was one of Murnau’s assistants, suggests that this is characteristic of Murnau’s insight into acting. He could analyse feelings as well as show how they should be conveyed. The actors and actresses in his films had a profound inner life, and he could get the best out of them, even those who were mannered or over-stylized. He created characters who came to life and were not mere stereo¬ types. (Eisner, Murnau 153)

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F. W. Murnau Murnau’s influence extended to his designers as well, as one of his frequent

collaborators, Herlth, attests. I had always designed the sets first and drawn in the figures afterwards. But under the influence of Murnau I now began to sketch the people first; that is to say, I would begin by drawing what happened in the scene and then the appropriate space seemed to grow out of it. (Eisner, Murnau

60)

From this remark it is possible to see that Murnau, like his predecessors, thought of the setting as an environment for characters and their action. He also knew (like Reinhardt and Appia) that in order to meet this requirement, the setting had to be pared down. Herlth continues: “In this way the interiors became more and more simple and more and more empty. It was the actor who had to fill them’ ’ (Eisner, Murnau 60). In this respect, Murnau differed from his compatriots, the German expressionist filmmakers. They created a “cinema of objects, and mists, and obtrusive sets, of space obsessively filled”; but Murnau’s was “primarily a cinema of empty space” (Guillermo, “Shadow” 151). Even the settings which seem full and busy, like the hotel lobby in The Last Laugh or the Luna Park in Sunrise, give this impression more by means of move¬ ment and people than by objects and decor. Murnau seems to have followed Ap¬ pia’s principle of “minimum intelligible significance” in the design of his sets. The native huts in Tabu are, of course, intrinsically bare, but the studio settings are no less reduced. A climactic moment of The Haunted Castle (when the Baron con¬ fesses to the wife that he murdered her husband) occurs in a room with no furni¬ ture or elements of decoration. The street down which the undertakers carry the plague victims in Nosferatu is forbiddingly empty of anything but them. The white¬ washed town in Faust contains not a single decorative detail that might have given it some sense of period or national character. In Tartuffe, Murnau gives a flavor of Moliere’s period with a soupgon of detail—the delicate curve of the molding, the graceful sweep of the staircase, the tracery of the wrought iron balustrade— but in essence the setting is a starkly empty space which lays bare the power strug¬ gle of the characters. An historically accurate setting with a wealth of baroque de¬ tail would have undercut the urgency of the action. An examination of one of the settings in Sunrise will disclose the effectiveness of this minimalism. The bedroom of the estranged couple contains very little more than their two beds pushed to op¬ posite sides of the room and, even more pathetically, set diagonally from each other. The existence of two beds when there should be only one is an immediate¬ ly accessible image for their relationship. However, if the room had been filled with other furniture and bric-a-brac to give it vraisemblance, the metaphoric aspect of the setting could have been lost. As Murnau once wrote: One of my dreams is to make a motion picture of six reels, with a single room for setting and a table and chair for furniture. The wall at the back would be blank, there would be nothing to

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distract from the drama that was unfolding between a few human beings in that room. (“Films”

218)

Just as Reinhardt would sometimes reduce a setting to a single element, Murnau would reduce the environment of a shot to a single object. The scene in which Elmire baits the trap for Tartuffe is placed in a dark room which is empty except for a giant brass lamp. This severe composition embodies the essence of the drama. The shape of the lamp duplicates the silhouette of Elmire’s gown, both curving gracefully from top to bottom. Tartuffe’s shape is emphatically straight. The sculptural detail of the lamp echoes the folds and ruffles of the gown and both reflect the light, while Tartuffe’s black suit contains no detail and absorbs all light. This one shot contrasts Tartuffe and the objects of his lust: Elmire and Orgon’s estate (as symbolized by the lamp). His presence in the frame with them destroys the unity of the composition just as his presence in the household has destroyed its unity. Tartuffe also presents an example of Mumau’s use of stairs. The Duke of SaxeMeiningen and Reinhardt had frequently created settings of staircases, it has already been shown, because staircases afforded motivation for movement and enhanced a metaphorical division of space. The primary setting in Tartuffe is the grand staircase that connects three different levels of Orgon’s home. It prompts movement (of both actors and camera), but it also expresses the hierarchical struggle of the drama while its twists and turns seem an apt image for Tartuffe’s deceitful character. Likewise, the cramped, twisting alleys and steps of the town in Faust “provoke movement,” as Eisner says, while at the same time it seems to reflect Faust’s circuitous, tormented road to salvation (Murnau 115). In Mumau’s works, as in those of his predecessors, the simplified settings suggested in them¬ selves the theme of the dramatic action. Despite Mumau’s effective use of studio settings, his heart was always else¬ where. During the filming of Faust, he told his designers, “All the things you’re doing now with artificial sets I shall do one day in a natural one” (Eisner, Mur¬ nau 62). As Guillermo remarks, his studio films evince a “longing for the open air” (Guillermo, “Murnau” 15). Murnau was drawn like Reinhardt out into the world to create his mise en scene, to discover what a location had to reveal in terms of mood. This is what he did in Nosferatu. It was almost unprecedented in Germany to make a film on location at a time when the film which served as a model to the world was the quintessential studio film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. In this film, the filmmakers had attempted to create a sense of horror by means of painted and architectural distortions; but to Murnau’s mind, the streets of the little German town, with their buildings which look like empty-socketed skulls, needed no dis¬ tortion to convey the terror of the vampire. Likewise, the Carpathian Mountains through which Harker rode on his way to Transylvania in their hostile barrenness seem to presage danger. The monster is all the more dreadful for seeming to be the “distillation” of the natural world around him (Rhode, 183). As Guillermo points

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out, the horror of Nosferatu is “the horror and mystery [the camera] discerns in that actual world on which [it] lingers. . . . Caligari constructs a nightmare, Nosferatu discovers one where it lay unsuspected” (Guillermo, “Murnau” 12). Nosferatu was not Murnau’s first excursion into Reinhardt’s world theater. Two years earlier, Der Gang in die Nacht had been remarked for showing “how nature can be brought to life by the subtle and diverse gradations of a Stimmung [mood]” (Eisner, Murnau 140). It is safe to assume Murnau wanted to work on location more often than he in fact did. It is known, for instance, that he originally intended to shoot the city sequences of City Girl in Chicago and that he bought an Oregon wheat farm for the country sequences; but in this case, as in many others, financial considerations forced him to go against his inclinations (Eisner, Murnau 187-88). It was not until his final film that he was able to fulfill the prophecy he had made during Faust. For Tabu, Murnau used the natural surroundings of Tahiti and its neighboring islands. There is not a single studio shot in the entire film. Tabu presents in its opening images an idyllic Polynesian world of constant sunshine, clear skies, and sparkling waters. Yet all too soon that world reveals a threat that all its loveliness does nothing to dispel. It is “an atmosphere at once open and airy, and violent” (Eisner, Murnau 204). Lighting, as might be expected, was an important feature of Murnau’s mise en scene. As one of his collaborators notes: “For Murnau the lighting became part of the actual directing of the film. He would never have shot a scene without first ‘seeing’ the lighting and adapting it to his intentions” (Eisner, Murnau 62). However, by that point in time (due to Reinhardt’s influence), a concern with light¬ ing was hardly remarkable in a filmmaker. What distinguished Murnau’s mise en scene from that of the German expressionists was the predominance of light in it. “There are none of the arbitrary contrasts, over-accentuated contours, or artifi¬ cially serrated shadows found in so many German films. The forms come through the misty light gently, opalescent” (Eisner, Haunted 286). Indeed, opalescence is the quality Eisner attributes most often to Murnau’s images, quite appropriately since everything vital in his frame seems to be composed of light. As Rhode says, “He dissolves the obdurate world into an experience of light and movement” (184). His was a cinema more of light than of dark, and in this he is a true fol¬ lower of Reinhardt, who “created his magical world with light, darkness serving only as a foil” (Eisner, Haunted 56). Murnau does not use light and darkness as standard images of good and evil; rather, he has the quality of light convey the moral tone. Nosferatu may be the only horror film in cinema’s history in which the action is played in light; but it is a cold, hard light that informs this film’s world. The good and bad women in Sunrise are both surrounded by an aura of light. The wife’s, however, is a halo while the vamp’s is what Haskell calls a “miasmal mist” (19). The infernal light in Faust’s study is quite different from the heavenly light that streams from the cathedral and prevents Faust from following Gretchen inside. Murnau was fond of silhouetting his figures against the light, as Appia and

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Reinhardt had done. In Phantom, the convict is shown sitting before a brilliantly lit window. This image, which emphatically isolates him and reduces him to a shadow, is appropriate to his condition: obsessed by an unobtainable love, he has lied, stolen, and murdered, effectively setting himself apart from his fellow beings. Eisner reports that the now lost Der Januskopf used the same device for its JekyllHyde protagonist, another character who removes himself from society by his actions (Murnau 32). The Haunted Castle uses a variant of Appia’s technique from the Basel Ring of placing characters in front of lighted doorways so that they have an internal frame of light. In Mumau’s film, there are two such doorways, one for each lover, because they are not only isolated from the rest of the world (like Siegmund and Sieglinde) but also from each other by the man’s having murdered the husband of the woman. However, the most memorable use of the silhouette tech¬ nique in Mumau’s oeuvre (and arguably in all of cinema) occurs in Nosferatu. The camera looks up from the hold of the ship to see the vampire framed against the infinite sky. Nowhere else in the film is his supernatural power better evoked than here where the silhouette combines with the camera angle to magnify, distend, and isolate him. More often than he used the silhouette, however, Mumau used a similar device of representing a character by his or her shadow. Appia and Reinhardt had both anticipated this device, but film allowed Murnau to develop it fully. He used it always at the most terror-filled moments of his films. It is the shadow of the nos¬ feratu that approaches Nina’s room, the shadow of his hand that clutches her heart. Dorine, looking down from the landing of the staircase, sees Tartuffe’s shadow pass into Elmire’s room. When the husband in Sunrise returns home after the vamp has implanted the idea of killing his wife in his mind, his shadow falls across her sleeping form, just as Hitu’s shadow falls across the sleeping Matahi in Tabu. In Murnau, shadows do not anticipate the threat; they are the threat. Their very immateriality makes them inescapable. Nina might have prevented the vampire’s hand from touching her, but she is powerless to stop his shadow. This is of the essence of Mumau’s world. “Evil . . . cannot be warded off by vigilance. There are no boundaries to protect” (Andrew, “Gravity” 368). Another feature of filmmaking technique for which Mumau is known is depth of field. Murnau is generally recognized as the first filmmaker who consciously composed his mise en scene in deep-focus. “Like Velazquez,” notes Guillermo, “Murnau looks past the foreground and into the background” (“Shadow” 151). Composition in depth is a method of direction that Mumau inherited directly from his theatrical predecessors. In this case, he had no need to perform an operation of abstraction, as from the revolving stage to the moving camera. The Duke’s depth of field was ready-made for the film. The pathos of the doorman’s situation is effectively expressed by presenting him in deep focus on his lonely stool at the far end of the long lavatory. Likewise, Harker’s terror of the vampire is given by the shot representing his view out his bedroom door: the vampire is seen on a dais at

148

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the end of a long hall. As the husband contemplates his plan to murder his wife, he looks up and sees her outside in the sunlight feeding the chickens. This is presented by deep-focus shot through the door of the house. His alienation from her is expressed in terms of the distance, the barrier (the door), and the different tonal quality (the sunlight). Murnau’s composition in depth is not merely a formal aspect of his art; it serves a narrative function. In the beginning of the frame-tale in Tartuffe, the camera observes a pair of shoes on the floor in a hallway. Because of their proximity to the camera, they appear quite large. Deep in the visual field, the housekeeper appears at the end of the hall. She walks toward the camera, grow¬ ing larger as she gets nearer. When she reaches the shoes, she kicks them violently aside. This has the feeling of a real assault, not because the shoes belong to the grandfather (since the spectator does not know that yet) but because their place¬ ment in the frame has invested them with significance. Murnau does not need the obvious gestures the housekeeper uses in the next scene, such as sticking out her tongue at the old man behind his back, to convey her character. The scene with the shoes had expressed much more than hypocrisy; it had expressed her murderous capacity. Murnau, also like his predecessors, frequently composed his mise en scene in terms of diagonal lines. The Duke’s favorite piece of blocking, movement from one downstage comer to the opposite upstage comer, is often echoed in Mumau’s work. Instead of armies, however, it is modes of transportation that most often follow this line in Murnau. The ship bearing the vampire to Bremen enters the frame in the lower right corner and passes diagonally through it. The train in the opening section of City Girl rushes diagonally into the frame as do those in the beginning of Sunrise. Murnau does not use the diagonal only for movement into the depth of the field, however. When the hand-walker at the fair in Faust becomes the first victim of the plague, his body falls diagonally from the right across the board and trestle stage upon which he has been performing. A tent pole, uprooted in the wind, falls into the frame from the left and reinforces the line of the tumbler’s corpse. Diagonal lines give Murnau’s images, as they give any pictorial design, a dynamic component. The vamp’s walk along the fence set diagonally to the plane of the screen gives her a “driving and perverse energy” (Andrew “Gravity” 364). Deep-focus composition is inevitably associated with the long take. The power of the final moment in Tabu derives, Wood notes, from the filmmaker’s decision not to create tension by crosscutting, but by sustaining shots (“7a6w” 27). Matahi desperately swims after the boat carrying Reri away, but when he catches up to it, Hitu cuts the rope Matahi is using to hang on to the boat. The boat continues on its way and Matahi slips under the water. Only the sustained shot could have con¬ veyed the desperate struggle as Matahi disappears and reappears when the ship (upon which the camera is mounted) bobs up and down on the waves. When the doorman receives notice of his demotion, the scene is presented in long take and

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long shot. The camera is set up in the lobby looking into the manager’s glass office. The manager sits at the desk on the left, his back to the doorman. The doorman stands at the right, hat in hand. The two are emphatically separated by a vertical cross bar in the glass wall which bisects the frame. The manager finishes writing, crosses to the doorman and hands him the paper, and then returns to the desk and resumes his former position. The old man stands for a moment with letter in one hand and hat in the other, unsure what to do. He then slowly turns around look¬ ing for a place to put his hat. When he finds one, he puts the hat there gingerly as if its presence might offend the manager’s office. He then laboriously reaches into a back pocket from which he produces a glasses case. He slowly pulls out the glasses, slowly puts them on, slowly unfolds the letter and begins to read. The unrelenting long take which observes every detail of this process and the unsym¬ pathetic long shot that refuses to overdramatize it are what gives this scene its power. Yet all in all, Murnau’s shots are not held for a particularly long duration. As Henderson explains, the designation of Murnau as a long-take director rests not on shot length per se, “but quality of shot, and the relations between shots.’’ What makes it appropriate to consider Murnau a long-take filmmaker is that in Murnau, “everything happens within the sequence” (318). Guillermo uses the same kind of reasoning when he asserts that Murnau is a director who composes in long shot. Murnau, he grants, makes use of the close-up, but without for a moment losing sight of the rest of the visual field. ... An object ... is effectively in close-up if it draws attention to itself, to a peculiar quality and meaning all its own; effectively in long shot if it becomes virtually meaningless when disengaged from the rest of the visual field. (“Shadow” 151)

There are few close-ups in Murnau of the type used by Dreyer in The Passion of Joan of Arc to remove her face from any context and present it as its own universe. Murnau’s preference was for long shots, a preference which is a cinematic applica¬ tion of Reinhardt’s abandoning the Kammerspiele for the Grosses Schauspielhaus. It is because the vampire in Nosferatu is almost always shown in long shot that “he appears, disturbingly, as somehow merged with the physical environment” (Guillermo, “Shadow” 151). Music was another important aspect of Murnau’s mise en scene. This state¬ ment might at first seem a paradox since Murnau was a filmmaker in cinema’s silent era. However, films in Germany (and elsewhere) regularly had scores written for them and Murnau is known to have worked closely with his composers (Eisner, Murnau 66). More importantly, Murnau knew as Reinhardt had known that a per¬ formance could (and even should) be musical whether or not it contained music. Murnau conceived of his films in musical terms as can be seen from the subtitles he gave some of them: Nosferatu is A Symphony of Horror and Sunrise is A Song of Two Humans. He strived as his theatrical predecessors had before him to create

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a visual equivalent of music. The critical reactions to one film, Sunrise, attest to his success. One viewer said the film “evoked music” (Lipkin, 351). Another described it as “a symphony of shadows, mists, and long traveling shots.”18 And still another went so far as to identify the individual movements of this filmic symphony: here a scherzo, there an andante amoroso (Eisner, Murnau 137). Murnau gave each film a musical design by means of many of the same elements used by his predecessors for that purpose. For example, the filmmaker used the movement of actors and objects within the frame to establish rhythm and tempo. The opening sequences of Tabu might have been conceived to illustrate Hauser’s assertion that movement is natural cinematic material. The camera seems to delight in the depiction of all kinds of movement: running, swimming, climb¬ ing, rowing. Through these exhilarating images, Murnau immediately establishes the joie de vivre of the villagers. All this vibrant motion comes to an abrupt halt, however, when the islanders reach the boat and Hitu announces that Reri has been chosen to become the tribe’s vestal virgin. There is an uncanny stillness that set¬ tles on all present at that moment. The only vestige of the previous vitality comes when Matahi, who has not heard the proclamation, throws a lei over Reri’s head, shattering the stillness as he will soon break the law. Murnau regularly presents the conflict in his films in terms of an opposition between movement and stasis. The Last Laugh contrasts the energy of the door¬ man (epitomized by the revolving door) with his heavy inertia when demoted to washroom attendant. There is a great deal of bustle in the opening of Tartuffe as Elmire has the servants make ready for Orgon’s return; but the household comes to a dead stop under Tartuffe’s influence, as is conveyed by the image of his huge bulk stretched out in the hammock. Faust contrasts the stasis of the old alchemist’s study as he tries to pry the world’s secrets from books with the delirious movements of the young Faust pursuing Gretchen around the tree. The alternation of these periods of stasis and activity contributes to the creation of each film’s rhythm and marks its changes in tempo. Murnau himself used musical terms to describe the function of blocking, which he said was to convey the film’s “tonal chords” or “dramatic chords in space” (Eisner, Murnau 137). Characters and objects are not the only things that move in a film, however. It is, as already stated, for the moving camera that Murnau is primarily remem¬ bered in film history. He considered the mobility of the camera the single most important aspect of filmmaking. When asked in a magazine interview once what he would like Father Christmas to bring him, he replied “a camera that can move freely in space, . . . one that at any moment can go anywhere, at any speed” (Eisner, Murnau 84). Murnau, therefore, often used the moving camera to establish a film s characteristic rhythm. This is not as self-evident as it might seem. Dupont was another German filmmaker noted for his moving camera, but his produces a mechanical effect or one which works upon the viscera of the spectator. Mumau’s camera, on the other hand, dances sometimes in presto, as in the ride down the

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elevator in The Last Laugh or the psychic trip through space in Faust, but most often in adagio as in the marsh in Sunrise. There is a certain quality to the move¬ ment of Mumau’s camera not to be found elsewhere, something Astruc calls its “hieratic slowness” (71). Like a boat gliding through water (which is one of Murnau’s favorite images), the camera moves effortlessly through space and the very smoothness of its movements makes it seem an emanation from the dream world. The establishment of a musical design for the film was not the only nor even the primary effect of the moving camera in Murnau’s films. It was used to effect audience involvement in his works. In one respect, Murnau’s moving camera was the equivalent of the Duke’s and Reinhardt’s rushing crowds; like them, it created a sense of kinesthesia. The high-speed, roller-coaster tracking shot which is im¬ posed over Gretchen’s cry to Faust not only establishes the distance between them; it expresses the great emotional stress of the moment. Similarly, the doorman’s shock at seeing his double in front of the hotel on the morning after the wedding party is conveyed by a rapid dolly in. Yet there is more to the moving camera’s ability to establish emotional involvement than kinesthesia. Involvement requires identification, empathy; but the question is, with whom? For Wagner, it was the protagonist. Reinhardt, however, felt audience-hero identification unsatisfactory and therefore induced the audience to identify with the crowd-chorus. Conceiving of itself as part of the crowd, the audience would be involved and yet would have a perspective different from that of the protagonist, one that would let the audience sympathize with the protagonist without losing the ability to evaluate his or her actions. Murnau, however, had no need of the crowd-chorus; he had the moving camera. It is the camera, especially when it moves, with which the audience iden¬ tifies in a Murnau film. To some degree, this is true of every film. As Langer notes, “The percipient of a moving picture sees with the camera; his standpoint moves with it, his mind is pervasively present” (201). However, Murnau enhances this inherent effect. The camera moves in other films but only in Murnau’s films do those movements suggest it is a sentient creature. This special quality of a Murnau camera was noted immediately by his contemporaries. When Sunrise was first released, one critic commented that the real acting was done by the camera and Photoplay gave its “Best Performance of the Month” award to the film’s camera (Lipkin, 351). Mumau’s camera does not simply follow along beside or behind or before the film’s characters; it prowls, it searches, it goes off on its own. This independence of the moving camera has often been noted by critics. Guillermo points out that when the young couple romps through the wheatfield in City Girl, the camera “doesn’t quite keep up with their running, and eventually it stops to take the scene in long shot” (“Murnau” 14). Hyde describes an earlier moment in the same film: when Lem leaves the restaurant, the camera dollies back with him but when he stops on the street corner to read a paper, the camera continues on its way, aban-

152

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doning him to his fate in the city (19). In Sunrise, as the vamp sets off for her meet¬ ing with the husband, the camera sees her in long shot emerging from the house where she is lodging. She begins to walk down a path set at a diagonal to the plane of the lens. After she has taken a few steps, the camera begins to pan with her. But after she has passed the camera and begun to recede, the camera itself moves out onto the path and begins to follow her, as if curious to see where she is going. After following her for some time, the camera overtakes her and reaches the stone wall in front of the couple’s house before she does, as if it had guessed her destination. Later in the same film, after the seduction in the marsh, the camera looks down at the ground where, it would seem, the vamp and the man had just been lying. As if wondering where they had gone, the camera begins to slowly track left, still look¬ ing down. Eventually it discovers their footprints and begins to track parallel to them until it finds one in the making: the vamp’s high heel is seen withdrawing from the ooze. One can almost hear the sucking sound. This is without doubt the most sexual image in the film. It expresses perfectly the end of the sex act (penis withdrawing from vagina) and in unquestionably negative terms (the muck). It should also be noted that the phallus is invested in the woman. Having observed this action, the camera tilts up her legs and follows her progress until her legs meet the man’s. The camera never rises to their faces, keeping low in its furtive obser¬ vation of the guilty pair. In The Last Laugh, the camera seems to become the old man’s co-conspirator in the theft of the uniform. When the doorman stealthily emerges from the manager’s office with his prize, he looks around to screen left to see if anyone is about. The camera pans with his glance and in the process eliminates him from the frame. It continues to pan along the wall and comes to stop before the front desk where the night clerk and two bell boys are observed sleeping. Suddenly the form of the doorman rushes close in front of the camera from right to left. In this shot, the camera acts as a scout for the old man, going before him to check that the coast is clear, and then standing lookout while he makes his break to freedom. The per¬ spective of the camera is as independent as its movement. Sometimes the camera sees the character, sometimes it sees what the character sees—both conventional points of view—but sometimes it sees what the character does not. Its independence makes of it an invisible character in which “awareness resides, and in which the process of discovery is initiated. The camera’s orientation is neither that of any one character nor is it totally objective” (Haskell, 19). Even more than in the case of Reinhardt’s crowd-chorus, the spectator by means of Murnau’s camera is able to be both participant and observer, like the dreamer who both engages in action and watches him- or herself doing so. And Mumau uses this identification with the sentient, animated camera to keep the spec¬ tator, like the dreamer, unsettled, off balance, in a perpetual state of tension. Perhaps the most noteworthy example of this in the entire oeuvre is one already alluded to: Sunrise’s long track through the marsh. The camera begins by following

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the man as he walks into the misty landscape, a full moon in the upper left of the frame. As man and camera move forward, the moon disappears from view. After some time, the man crosses a bridge and turns right. The camera moves in quickly, as if afraid to lose him with this change of direction, and then continues to follow him. When he passes under the branch of a tree, the camera chooses not to follow but begins to track parallel to him, keeping its distance, peeking through the foliage at him. The man next comes to a fence which he must climb over, thus slowing his progress. But the camera continues on at its own pace so that now it is in front of the man, looking back at him at a diagonal. After negotiating the fence, the man begins to approach the camera. But as he gets nearer, the camera slowly pans left, leaving the man behind. For a moment, as the camera continues to pan, all that can be seen is the heavy mist, so there is no way to tell through what size arc it turns. Finally, it comes upon some foliage and begins to dolly in toward it. The foliage parts, revealing the vamp standing in front of the lake, the full moon again in the upper left of the frame. She waits impatiently, looking off right, then left. Hear¬ ing something, she prepares for his arrival by touching up lipstick, powder, and hair. Then she looks out of frame left just as he enters from that spot. Not only is this another example of the camera as character, but in this shot space is totally con¬ fused. There are few landmarks to define the space, and the twisting and turning of man and camera keep the perceiver from placing the ones there are. The moon seems to have moved. Time is equally confused: the man enters the frame with the vamp not only from an unexpected location—when last seen, he was to the right of the camera—but also much later than would have been expected. The specta¬ tor as well as the man loses his bearings. Mumau’s moving camera can be thought of as the cinematic equivalent (and elaboration) of Reinhardt’s revolving stage which was itself an extension of the Duke’s unit setting as refined by Appia’s light¬ ing, which in turn can be traced to Wagner’s conception of scenic dramaturgy. Yet in this process of derivation, the function of movement has been reversed. Wagner had conceived scenic dramaturgy as a means to maintain spatio-temporal continui¬ ty; Murnau moves the camera to violate it. Murnau’s preference for the moving camera (and for long-take, deep-focus cinematography) does not, of course, mean that his films are free of montage. No film, not even Hitchcock’s Rope, can exist without editing. Murnau could, and did, use the kind of editing developed by the masters of montage to good effect. In The Last Laugh, the intercutting of scenes of the demoted doorman eating his lonely meal from a single bowl in the lavatory with scenes of the hotel guests eating sumptuously in the dining room is an example of the thematic montage used by Eisenstein and Pudovkin. A less obvious example occurs in Tartujfe. The shot in which the frame-tale’s housekeeper kicks the slippers has already been described. Sometime later, as the grandfather sits at his desk, apparently writing a will in which he leaves everything to her, two shots of the scattered slippers are intercut with close-ups of her face as mute reminders of her true attitude toward the grand-

154

F. W. Murnau

father and her capacity for violence. The parallel editing of Harker’s trip by land with the vampire’s sea voyage and with Nina waiting in Bremen recalls the defini¬ tive type of Griffith’s montage, which builds tension by cutting ever more quickly between some impending peril and the hero (or, occasionally, heroine) riding to the rescue. However, the slow pace of Mumau’s sequence actually works against the building of tension. The climax of such a sequence in Griffith’s works is always the arrival of the hero in the nick of time to avert the catastrophe; but Murnau goes against the expectations of his audience by having his sequence climax with the arrival of the agent of the catastrophe, the vampire. It is, in fact, more usual for Murnau not to follow the formulas established by Griffith or Eisenstein. When he cuts between two shots set in different (i.e., spa¬ tially discontinuous) locations, Murnau often creates a link between them that makes them seem spatially continuous. Murnau’s editing establishes what might be termed psychical continuity where spatial continuity is impossible, or as Hen¬ derson puts it, he attempts “to treat widely-spread subjects as though they were in the same frame’’ (317). In City Girl, for example, Pa is seen working on the farm’s accounts. After writing a list of figures, he draws a sumline. At that point the image dissolves to a panning shot of the sign in Chicago which reads, “Board of Trade.” This pan actually picks up and continues the movement of Pa’s pencil in the previous shot, the effect of which, as Hyde points out, is to make the two shots seem like one moving camera shot (17). The primary example of this tech¬ nique is the sequence in Nosferatu already described in which Nina telepathically saves Harker from the vampire. The two locations are joined by conventional edit¬ ing but it is as though Harker and the vampire were present in her space and that she was present in theirs. Nina reaches out left, the vampire turns and looks right, and the effect is clearly that they are looking at one another. Spatial continuity is maintained, but in the metaphysical rather than the physical world. Faust contains a similar moment when the suffering Gretchen calls out to Faust and he “hears” her although far removed in space by means of the high-speed aerial tracking shot over a vast landscape. This shot emphasizes the emotional connectedness where there is no spatial connection. Even this psychologically or metaphysically motivated montage is, however, not outside the “rules” of editing developed by Griffith and upon which Holly¬ wood cinema is founded. But there are other instances in which the editing in a Murnau film seems a purposeful subversion of those rules. At times, Murnau seems at great pains to establish a conventional pattern of editing, even to the point of overstatement, only to violate its logic in the end. For example, the moment when the hotel manager sees the old doorman sitting down and out of breath is presented in what starts out as a highly conventional glance/object sequence. In long shot, the manager, who has just seen some hotel patrons off in a taxi, begins to reenter the hotel through the revolving door. Halfway through, he stops, look¬ ing out of the frame to the right. The film then cuts to what he sees: the doorman

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155

being tended by a bellboy. This long shot is clearly presented as a point of view shot by the fact that a vertical piece of the revolving door is prominently in the fore¬ ground. The film then cuts to a medium shot of the manager who is seen to open a notebook and make a notation. The film then cuts back to the shot of the door¬ man, still with vertical bar. The film returns to medium shot of the manager, cuts again to the POV shot of the doorman, and then cuts back to the original long shot of the manager in the revolving door. He completes his entry, puts his notebook away, finishes passing through the door, and crosses out of the frame at left. The sequence is now logically complete. Yet the film cuts once more to the shot of the doorman and bell boy, complete with its POV-establishing vertical bar. But the character whose view this was is no longer present. A point of view is suddenly disengaged from its ostensible subject and, as it were, set loose. The very conven¬ tion of the glance/object is undermined thereby. Even more remarkable is a dislocation that occurs in Nosferatu which could almost be described as surreal. In the beginning of the film, in the sequence which presents the Edenic state, Murnau carefully—even laboriously—establishes a pre¬ cise spatial orientation through conventional editing. Harker is presented in long shot out of doors picking flowers. Then Nina is shown in medium shot sitting in a chair. On the left is a window; on the right in the wall behind her is the open door of the bedroom. The film then cuts to a closed door. It opens and Harker’s head appears. There is a cut back to the shot of Nina who looks up in the general direc¬ tion of the camera, smiles, and puts down her sewing. The film cuts back to the shot of Harker who now fully enters and passes out of frame. There is then a reverse angle long shot of the room, showing Nina moving down right from which direction Harker enters the frame moving up left. They meet and embrace in the center of the room, framed in the bedroom doorway, and Harker presents her with the flowers he has just picked. This sequence establishes unambiguously that the door which leads to the outside is across the room from the one leading to the bedroom. Indeed, it seems that all this cutting back and forth has no other purpose than to establish this fact. The scene could easily have been presented in Mumau’s preferred long shot and long take. The sequence that follows is set in Renfield’s office where Harker receives his assignment to go to Transylvania. At the end of it, Renfield tells him to go home straight away and pack so he can begin his jour¬ ney immediately and Harker is seen to agree. There is then a shot of Nina that duplicates the one from the first sequence. Again she is sitting in the chair by the window with the bedroom door (now closed) behind her on the other side. Her at¬ tention is attracted to something out the window. She looks out, smiles warmly, rises, and arranges her shawl. She has obviously seen Harker returning home and is making ready to greet him. The viewer expects her to look or move towards the door across the room where Harker had entered previously. But instead she turns toward the bedroom door and Harker bursts through it. This makes nonsense of the space so carefully constructed in the editing of the earlier sequence. And in do-

156

F. W. Murnau

ing so, it acts as a signal that this narrative should not be taken on a literal level. It also establishes the centrality of the bedroom in the action; it is clearly the bedroom, that locus of sexual activity, that Harker is gleefully running away from on his journey to Transylvania. The disorientation effected in the spectator by the editing and the moving camera, the rupture in the text caused by the disjunction of word and image, all work against illusionism. But the most anti-illusionistic of elements is an art work’s self-reference. Tartujfe is such a work. In the frame-tale, when the grandson (who is described as an actor) discovers that the housekeeper has gained control over his grandfather, he addresses the camera directly and tells of his intentions to set things right. It turns out that he plans to use cinema as a corrective. In a disguise that makes him look very much like Bergman’s Magician, he returns to his grand¬ father’s house, again like Bergman’s character, with his travelling magic lantern show, or, in this case, the magic lantern’s grandchild—the movie projector. He uses cinema’s ability to flatter and delude to gain access to the house and then projects his film-within-a-film, the Tartuffe story, in order (like Hamlet) to catch the conscience of a housekeeper. Although the reflexive element is most explicit in this film, it can be found in other of the films as well, centering, as here, on the projector rather than on the camera as in many contemporary works. The projector is, after all, the cinematic apparatus with which the spectator is most familiar; it is the projector that serves as his or her most direct link with the film. In his Faust, Murnau presents not Goethe’s “Prologue in the Theater” but a prologue in the cinema. The film’s first image is not an image at all, but a swirl of light and shadow—the very stuff of cinema. Then, after the horsemen of the Apocalypse, there is a shot of complete blackness except for a round aperture through which a blaze of light comes—exactly what one would see if facing a film projector in operation. This disc of light grows larger until it resolves into the archangel of “The Prologue in Heaven.” The cinema, as in Tartujfe, is thus presented as an agent for good. The Last Laugh contains another such reference. In it there is a shot that begins like the one described above with a projector’s disc of light emerging out of the darkness. It is only after some time that we are able to see that this cinematic apparition is in fact the night watchman with his lantern. He is not only the projectionist, turning his light on the doorman in the lavatory and “projecting” his final image; he is also, as watchman, the spectator’s surrogate and so, ap¬ propriately, the only character who shows any compassion for the protagonist. There are other ways in which Murnau’s films refer to themselves as films. For one thing, as Fieschi puts it, all Mumau’s villains are metteurs en scene (720). He means that they are all manipulators; they control other characters and events. But some of them are literally metteurs en scene. The vamp creates a city in the swamp and Mephistopheles conjures up the Duchess of Parma in Faust’s study. If they do not all make images, they are all able to control them. (When one considers the importance attached to a character’s image in Mumau’s narratives, one can see

F. W. Murnau

157

why power over images would be significant.) Mephistopheles’ power over Faust is represented by his ability to keep his image imprisoned in a mirror. And the vampire takes possession of Nina by first taking control of her image in the form of a locket Harker carries. As Elsaesser has noted, control over her image is presented in blatantly commercial terms. Harker and the vampire are engaged in a business transaction when the locket falls out of Harker’s bag and the vampire picks it up. Nina’s picture is traded between the two male figures like some hard currency (“Social” 25). But the image does not have to be in a tangible form to be controlled. Characters who are able to see especially without being themselves seen have, in Murnau’s works, great power for good or evil. His films are filled with peeping toms. The vampire and Nina watch each other through their respec¬ tive windows. The vamp spies on the activities of the villagers from her perch in the tree. (In her first walk down the path to the man’s house described earlier, the vamp is seen to peep into the windows of the houses she passes.) Mephistopheles watches Gretchen and Faust in the bower from a small peephole-like window in Marthe’s door. Orgon discovers the truth by performing the classical operation of a peeper—looking through a keyhole. It should be noted that in Moliere’s version of tea scene, Orgon is placed under the table where he can eavesdrop but not see what transpires. But Murnau places Orgon behind some curtains where he can spy on the scene as if in the theater—until the moment when he is himself seen by Tartuffe in his reflection in the teapot. And in the frame-tale, the grandson sees the housekeeper putting poison in the grandfather’s drink when he plays the peeping tom through a crack in the door. These voyeurs whose power and/or pleasure is invested in the act of looking refer the spectators to themselves as spectators and thus shatter the illusion.

Afterword

From Rapture to Rupture The elements of the German romantic theater were an objectification of the values of romanticism. The demand that the theatrical production be a unified work of art, as in Wagner’s conception of the Gesamtkunstwerk, was the logical expression of romanticism’s belief in the unity of all creation. The steady shift toward a greater emphasis on the visual elements and a corresponding deemphasis of the verbal were the result of the romantic belief that truth was apprehended directly through the senses, not indirectly by means of the intellect. The creation of an increasingly detailed mise en scene (which led to the excesses of historical accuracy) was the result of romanticism’s valuation of the particular, the specific, in revolt against the neoclassic age’s valuation of the generic. Finally, the creation of a spatially selfcontained and temporally continuous theatrical event was an attempt to attain in the theater the same rapture one experienced when communing with Nature. And yet there were those—not from outside but from within the romantic movement—who questioned these goals almost from the first. They came to the conclusion, usually after years of experimentation in the theater, that an illusionistic theater was in fact inimical to the tenets of romanticism and so they set about not to reverse this course of development but to deflect it. They had no quarrel with the notion of unity in the theater nor with the idea that theater should be a place for primarily sensual (especially visual) experience. But without foregoing representation altogether, they moved towards a mise en scene that was ever more simplified, and hence sug¬ gestive rather than blatant, metaphoric not literal. They did not challenge the objective of inducing spectatorial identification, but they did displace that iden¬ tification from the protagonist. While not denying the necessity for temporal continuity in the performance, they worked towards creating a discontinuous, boundless space by attacking (from various directions) the proscenium arch. These deflections had the effect of breaking the trance created in the Festspielhaus by engaging the spectator’s imaginative and critical faculties without, however, diminishing his or her pleasure in the rich sensual and emotional stimulation. There was then, by the early twentieth century, a tension among the elements which comprised the romantic theater in Germany. It is the same tension that Fieschi notes as the definitive quality of Murnau’s works.

160

From Rapture to Rupture At a time when specific orientation codes (eyeline matches, matching screen direction, continuity in movement and lighting) were established to support a “flowing,” “realistic” texture, Mumau was undoubtedly one of the first to use this texture while at the same time perverting it to ensure a screen space no longer reassuring in its settled landmarks, but an imaginary (dynamic) space composed of modifications, metamorphoses, subsidences. . . . In his art a constant equilibrium is maintained between stylization and transparency, abstraction and incarnation. (706-7)

Murnau himself once said, “It is important that the mechanical factor should not stand between the spectator and the film” (Eisner, Haunted 269). This might seem to indicate the filmmaker’s commitment to Wagner’s notion of theater and by extension film; but the operative word here, I think, is “mechanical.” As his films indicate, it is not that Murnau eschewed any kind of rupture in his works but that he wanted the rupture itself to be an organic part of the work, something subtextual rather than supra- or extra-textual—as in the usual Verfremdungseffekt. His attitude toward his art and his audience is perhaps best expressed in the following. For many years the “movies” . . . have not developed a great deal. People said, “we must do this and that because we have always done this and that. ” The audiences learned exactly what to expect. Pictures in the past have too often been made by a formula, so much scenery, so much love making, the good rewarded, the villain punished, everything finished off neatly. Too often the pictures have made the world banal instead of revealing new heights and depths of life. (“Film” 217)

By altering formulas, by thwarting audience expectations, by refusing to resolve paradoxes, dispel mysteries, gloss over ambiguities, finally by refusing to reduce human experience to a simplistic system of binary oppositions (romantic or other¬ wise), Murnau succeeded in creating a complex body of works which can be plumbed again and again and never exhausted. This present study is, therefore, in no wise intended as a last word on Murnau. It was undertaken to call attention to his usually overlooked relation to the tradition of German romantic theater, a tradi¬ tion out of which he grew and which eventually he outgrew as he contributed, more than most, to the development of a new art form—the cinema.

Notes Introduction 1.

Eisenstein develops his ideas on montage in a number of essays, particularly “A Dialectic Ap¬ proach to Film Form' and ‘ ‘Methods of Montage’ ’ which appear in Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, ed. and trans. Jay Leyda (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Flarvest Books, 1949), pp. 45-63 and 72-83 respectively.

2.

Bazin’s ideas on this subject are best presented in his essays, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” and “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema,” both of which are found in What Is Cinema?, vol. 1, pp. 9-16 and 23-40.

3.

G. E. Lessing, Hamburg Dramaturgy, trans. Helen Zimmem (New York: Dover, 1962), p. 127.

Chapter 1 1.

Works 2:20. For a discussion of yin-yang (yab-yum), see Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 170.

2.

Richard H. Robinson, The Buddhist Religion: A Historical Introduction, The Religious Life of Man, series ed. Frederick J. Streng (Belmont, Cal.: Dickenson Publishing Co., 1970), pp.

10-20. 3.

Works 2:337. It should be understood that when Wagner refers to drama, he means drama real¬ ized on the stage (i.e., theater).

4.

Works 2:149-50. Although this description seems an excellent statement of the intent of naturalist dramatists such as Zola and his compeers, it was in fact written decades before the naturalist Zola or even the realist Ibsen appeared on the theatrical scene. Wagner would have been refer¬ ring to his contemporaries, the protorealists such as Dumas fils and Augier, whose dramas, like those that would follow, dealt with social problems presented in realistic settings, but without the commitment to revolutionary social change of a Zola or the keen psychological insight of an Ibsen.

Chapter 2 1.

Romain Roland, Musicians of Today (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1915), p. 253.

2.

Katherine Goodale, Behind the Scenes with Edwin Booth (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1931; reprint ed., New York: Benjamin Blom, 1969), pp. 11-12.

3.

For a full discussion of the development of stage scenery from the time of the Renaissance, see Oscar G. Brockett, History of the Theatre (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1968) and Richard

162

Notes for Chapter 3 Southern, The Seven Ages of the Theatre (New York: Hill & Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1961).

4.

John Gassner and Ralph G. Allen, Theatre and Drama in the Making, 2 vols. (Boston: Hough¬ ton Mifflin Co., 1964), 2:631-32.

5.

Grube, 55. Roller describes a different version of this scene (151). However, this can be at¬ tributed to the fact that over the years the Duke mounted new productions of his favorite plays which differed from the earlier ones. He was always seeking to improve on his work.

6.

Bram Stoker, Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving, rev. ed. (London: William Heinemann, 1907), p. 55.

7.

Those who could afford only the cheapest tickets offered for sale by a Parisian boulevard theatre were relegated to the uppermost balcony in the house. Since these working class patrons looked down onto the stage from a great height and since they were quick to express their pleasure or disdain for what was presented there, both this segment of the audience and the part of the theater they occupied came to be known as ‘the gods.’

8.

Gassner and Allen, 2:686.

9.

Brackett and Findlay, pp. 198-99, 222-23. In point of fact, Appia’s ideas did turn toward presentationalism later in his life. He was a frequent visitor at Copeau’s Theatre du Vieux Colombier and the French director acknowledged Appia as his mentor (Volbach, 101-6). The clearest proof of Appia’s aesthetic change of heart are the designs he executed for the Basel production of the Ring (1924-25). Although these follow the renderings he had made in the 1890s in terms of mass and general configuration, whereas the earlier designs called for rocks, trees, and other natural phenomena, in the Basel designs there was no attempt to make the pieces of scenery resemble natural forms; they were unabashedly ramps, steps, and platforms (Volbach, 144-57).

10.

For a discussion of the effects of directional lighting, see Willard F. Bellman, Lighting the Stage: Art and Practice (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Co., 1967), pp. 233-49.

11.

Volbach, p. 67. Besides the improvement in continuity, Appia’s technique had thematic ramifi¬ cations. By using the same scenery to present both trees and temple columns, Appia set up an analogy between them. The Sacred Forest and the Sacred Temple (i.e., the secular and clerical) were not conflicting worlds, as the knights thought, but different manifestations of God’s one world.

12.

These annotated designs are reproduced in Appia’s Music and the Art of the Theatre. Even more than the groundplan scenarios of the Duke, these designs anticipate the storyboard and shooting script of filmmaking.

13.

Robert Edmond Jones, The Dramatic Imagination: Reflections and Speculations on the Art of the Theatre (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1941), p. 113.

Chapter 3 1.

Carter, pp. 37-38. The Deutsches Theater had, in fact, been founded as a copy of the Meiningen theater by Adolph L’Arrange with one Meininger actor, Bamay, as his partner, and another, Kainz, as the principal actor. Later, when Reinhardt had taken over the theater and was making a name for himself, the Duke despatched someone he trusted to attend a performance and report on it. He was informed that “Reinhardt was doing everything as he would have done himself” (DeHart, 60-64).

2.

A photograph of this model can be found opposite p. 155 in Reinhardt and Theater.

Notes for Chapter 4

163

Chapter 4 1.

Robin Wood makes this argument in various of his writings on Murnau’s films but most suc¬ cinctly in his entry on Tabu in The International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, edited by Christopher Lyon (Chicago: St. James Press, 1985), 1:463.

2.

Ibid.

3.

Bergstrom, 201. The German filmmakers, and those of German extraction, seem to have been more astute in this regard than others. Consider the ambi-sexual characteristics of Pabst’s Lulu and of Dietrich in Sternberg’s films.

4.

In the ballets of the romantic era, the prima ballerina’s roles were regularly those of sylphs, wilis, enchanted swans, and other such mystical creatures whose very incorporeality made them both desirable and unattainable to the male character. It was not until this period that the ballerina—and only the ballerina—went en pointe, which was intended as an objectification of the ethereal quality of the female. More spiritual than physical, Woman was not bound to the earth but floated above it.

5.

See the introduction of this study, page 7. A complete filmography with the significant produc¬ tion credits can be found in Lotte Eisner’s Mumau.

6.

Because Nosferatu was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, when the film was first released the characters were given different names than those found in the novel. However, in the prints currently in distribution in this country, the original names have been restored with the inexplicable exception that Stoker’s Mina has been renamed Nina. Equally without explanation is the fact that in Mumau’s film based on Tartuffe, Moliere’s Elmire is called Delmira.

7.

It is one of the ironies of film history that Mumau is most widely known for this his least typical film.

8.

Although the homosexual subtext may be most pronounced in The Last Laugh, homosexual ele¬ ments can be found in many of the films. There is a sado-masochistic tension between both the vampire and Harker and Tartuffe and Orgon. Old Faust is presented with Young Faust as an object of desire. In Nosferatu, City Girl, and Tartuffe, a male and a female contend for another male. Tartuffe is especially interesting in this regard because of its two stories, the frame tale and the film-within-a-film. In the older story, with its roots in High Culture (Moliere), the woman wins out; but in the contemporary story, grounded in popular culture (film), it is the man who wins. In the final image, the young man enfolds his grandfather exactly as Elmire had enfolded Orgon.

9.

In Mumau’s film, all guilt is placed onto Mephistopheles. Not only does he kill Valentin, but it is he, not Faust, who plants the necklace in Gretchen’s room, and it is he alone who brings about the mother’s death, whereas in Goethe’s work, Faust is somewhat culpable.

10.

It is interesting to note how often the Mumau male is substantially larger than the female, no¬ where more so than in Sunrise where the petite Janet Gaynor seems a child indeed next to George Brent. This physical difference is another objectification of the man’s image of the woman as sexually inviolable.

11.

Actually Lem never proposes marriage but, in keeping with his boyish insecurity, indirectly suggests it by saying to Kate, “If we get married right away, we can be home by morning.”

12.

Coincidentally, this is the same Kassel which designates the shade of brown used as the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen’s base tone.

164

Notes for Chapter 4

13.

Raymond Durgnat, Films and Feelings (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1971), p. 56.

14.

Stanley J. Solomon, The Film Idea (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), p. 254.

15.

This intertitle states, “Here the story should really end. For in real life, the forlorn old man would have little to look forward to but death. The author took pity on him, however, and has provided a quite improbable epilogue.” As well as the obviously ironic tone of this text, the very fact that it is the only intertitle in the film makes it a pronounced distanciation device. This “happy ending” is undercut every bit as much as the one that occurs in Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera.

16.

It is open to question how much of a villain this action makes of the Frenchman. It is probable that at the time the pearl with which Matahi bribes him was worth less than the 500f reward, making his acceptance of it a kindness of sorts. But whether villain or benefactor, the French¬ man is surely not detached and objective.

17.

In the print presently in distribution, neither occurs. After the old man enters his apartment, there is a shot representing the man’s point of view which scans the dark room with its pile of dirty dishes.

18.

Roger Manvell, gen. ed., The International Encyclopedia of Film (New York: Crown Publish¬ ers, 1972), p. 422.

Selected Bibliography

General Works Andrew, J. Dudley. The Major Film Theories: An Introduction. London: Oxford University Press, 1973. Balazs, Bela. Theory of the Film: Character and Growth of a New Art. Trans, by Edith Bone. Lon¬ don: Dennis Dobson, 1952; reprint ed.. New York: Dover Publication. Barlow, John D. German Expressionist Film. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982. Bazin, Andre. What Is Cinema? Trans, by Hugh Gray. 2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. Brockett, Oscar G. History of the Theater. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1968. Brockett, Oscar G., and Robert R. Findlay. Century of Innovation: A History of European and American Theater and Drama Since 1870. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973. Chinoy, Helen Krich. “The Emergence of the Director.” In Directors on Directing: A Sourcebook of the Modem Theater, pp. 3-77. Ed. by Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy. Rev. ed. Indianapo¬ lis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1963. Elsaesser, Thomas. “Film History and Visual Pleasure: Weimar Cinema.” In Cinema Histories, Cinema Practices, pp. 47-84. Ed. by Patricia Mellencamp and Philip Rosen. Frederick, Md.: Univer¬ sity Publications, 1984. -. “Social Mobility and the Fantastic: German Silent Film.” Wide Angle 5.2 (1983): 14-25. Fjelde, Rolf. “Peer Gynt, Naturalism, and the Dissolving Self.” Drama Review 16 (Winter 1968): 28-43. Fuerst, Walter Rene, and Samuel J. Hume. Twentieth Century Stage Decoration. London: Alfred A. Knopf, 1929; reprint ed., New York: Benjamin Blom, 1967. Gorelik, Mordecai. New Theaters for Old. N.p.: Samuel French, 1940. Hauser, Arnold. The Social History of Art. Trans, by Stanley Godman. 4 vols. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, n.d.; reprint ed., New York: Random House, Vintage Books, n.d., Vol. 4. Hockheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans, by John Cumming. New York: Herder and Herder, 1972. Kernodle, George. “Wagner, Appia, and the Idea of Musical Design.” In Total Theater: A Critical Anthology, pp. 9-19. Ed. by E. T. Kirby. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1969. Kracauer, Siegfried. Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality. London: Oxford Universi¬ ty Press, 1960. Langer, Susanne. “A Note on the Film.” In Film: A Montage of Theories, pp. 199-204. Ed. Richard Dyer MacCann. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., a Dutton paperback, 1966. Macgowan, Kenneth. The Theater of Tomorrow. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1921. Macgowan, Kenneth, and Robert Edmond Jones. Continental Stagecraft. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1922. Read. Herbert. “Towards a Film Aesthetic.” In Film: A Montage of Theories, pp. 165-70. Ed. by Richard Dyer MacCann. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1966.

166

Selected Bibliography

Rhode, Eric. A History of the Cinema from Its Origins to 1970. New York: Hill & Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1976. Roose-Evans, James. Experimental Theater: From Stanislavsky to Today. New York: Avon Books, 1970. Simonson, Lee. The Stage Is Set. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1933. Southern, Richard. The Seven Ages of the Theatre. New York: Hill & Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1961. Styan, J. L. Modem Drama in Theory and Practice. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Vardac, A. Nicholas. Stage to Screen: Theatrical Method from Garrick to Griffith. New York: Ben¬ jamin Blom, 1968. Richard Wagner Aberbach, Alan David. The Ideas of Richard Wagner: An Examination and Analysis of His Major Aesthetic, Political, Economic, Social, and Religious Thoughts. Lanham, N.Y. : University Press of America, 1984. Amerongen, Martin van. Wagner: A Case History. Trans, by Stewart Spencer and Dominic Cakebread. New York: George Braziller, 1984. Bentley, Eric. The Playwright as Thinker: A Study of Drama in Modem Times. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967. Dauer, Dorothea. Richard Wagner’s Art in Its Relation to Buddhist Thought. Supplement to Ken¬ tucky Foreign Language Quarterly, Vol. 7. Lexington, Ky.: Scripta Humanistica Kentuckiensia, 1964. Flaccus, Louis W. Artists and Thinkers. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1916. Gregor-Dellin, Martin. Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century. Trans, by J. Maxwell Brownjohn. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. Gutman, Robert W. Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. James, Burnett. Wagner and the Romantic Disaster. New York: Midas Books, Hippocrene Books, 1983. Knapp, J. Merrill. The Magic of Opera. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1972. Millington, Barry. Wagner. Ed. by Stanley Sadie. The Master Musicians series. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1984. Skelton, Geoffrey. Wagner at Bayreuth. New York: George Braziller, 1965. Wagner, Richard. Richard Wagner’s Prose Works. Trans, by William Ashton Ellis. Vols. 1-8. Lon¬ don: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1893; reprint ed. St. Clair Shores, Mich.: Scholarly Press, 1972. -. The Ring of the Nibelung. Trans, by Andrew Porter. Folkstone, Kent: William Dawson & Sons, 1976. ——. Tristan and Isolde. Trans, by and with an introduction by Stewart Robb. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1965. ——. Wagner on Music and Drama: A Compendium of Richard Wagner’s Prose Works. Ed. and with an introduction by Evert Sprinchorn and Albert Goldman. Trans, by William Ashton Ellis. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1964.

Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen “Antoine and the Meiningen Crowd Scenes.” In A Sourcebook in Theatrical History, pp. 580-82. Compiled by A. M. Nagler, New York: Dover Publications, 1952. [Original title, Sources of Theatri¬ cal History]-, reprint ed., New York: Dover Publications, 1959. DeHart, Steven. The Meininger Theater: 1776-1926. Ed. Bernard Beckerman. Theater and Dramat¬ ic Studies: No. 4. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1981.

Selected Bibliography

167

Grube, Max. The Story of the Meiningen. Trans, by Ann Marie Koller. Ed. by Wendell Cole. Books of the Theater Series, no. 4. General Editor, H. D. Albright. Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1963. Koller, Ann Marie. The Theater Duke: Georg II of Saxe-Meiningen and the German Stage. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1984. “The Meininger in London.” In A Sourcebook in Theatrical History, pp. 498-502. Compiled by A. M. Nagler, New York: Dover Publications, 1952. [Original title. Sources of Theatrical History]; reprint ed., New York: Dover Publications, 1959. Stanislavsky, Constantin. My Life in Art. Trans, by J. J. Robbins. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1925. Waxman, Samuel M. Antoine and the Theatre-Libre. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926. Adolphe Appia Appia, Adolphe. “Light and Space.” Trans, by Joseph M. Bernstein. In Directors on Directing: A Sourcebook of the Modem Theater, pp. 138-46. Rev. ed. Ed. by Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1967. -. Music and the Art of the Theater. Trans, by Robert W. Corrigan and Mary Douglas Dirks. Foreword by Lee Simonson. Ed. Barnard Hewitt. Books of the Theater series, no. 3. General edi¬ tor, H. D. Albright. Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1962. -. “The Staging of Tristan and Isolde." Trans, by Walther Volbach. In Music and the Art of the Theater, pp. 198-208. Foreword by Lee Simonson. Ed. by Barnard Hewitt. Books of the Theater series, no. 3. General editor, H. D. Albright. Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1962. -. The Work of Living Art: A Theory of the Theatre. Trans, by H. D. Albright. And “Man is the Measure of All Things.” Trans, by Barnard Hewitt. Ed. by Barnard Hewitt. Books of the Theater series, no. 2. General editor, H. D. Albright. Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1960. Beck, Gordon. “Adolphe Appia: His Life and Work.” Players Magazine 33 (January 1962): 118-21. Roth, Marc. “Staging the Master’s Works: Wagner, Appia, and Theatrical Abuse.” Theater Research International 5 (Spring 1980): 138-57. Tallon, Mary Elizabeth. “Appia’s Theater at Hellerau.” Theatre Journal 36 (1984): 495-504. Volbach, Walther Richard. Adolphe Appia: Prophet of the Modem Theater, a Profile. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1968. Max Reinhardt Carter, Huntly. The Theater of Max Reinhardt. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1914. Dietrich, Margret. “Music and Dance in the Productions of Max Reinhardt.” In Total Theatre: A Critical Anthology, pp. 162-74. Ed. by E. T. Kirby. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1969. Martin-Harvey, John. Autobiography. London: n.p., 1933. Max Reinhardt and His Theatre. Ed. by Oliver M. Sayler. Trans, by Mariele S. Gudernatsch and others. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1924; reprint ed., New York: Benjamin Blom, 1968. Max Reinhardt 1873-1973: A Centennial Festschrift of Essays and Interviews on the One Hundredth Anniversary of His Birth. Ed. by George E. Wellwerth and Alfred G. Brooks. Binghampton, N.Y.: Max Reinhardt Archives, 1973. Reinhardt, Gottfried. The Genius: A Memoir of Max Reinhardt by His Son. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979. Reinhardt, Max. “The Enchanted Sense of Play.” In Actors on Acting: The Theories, Techniques, and Practices of the Great Actors of All Times as Told in Their Own Words, pp. 294-95. Rev. ed. Introductions and biographical notes by Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy. New York: Crown Publishers, 1970.

168

Selected Bibliography

Stern, Ernst. My Life, My Stage. Trans, by Edward Fitzgerald. London: Victor Gollancz, 1951. Styan, J. L. Max Reinhardt. Directors in Perspective, general editor C. D. Innes. Cambridge: Cam¬ bridge University Press, 1982. F. W. Murnau Andrew, Dudley. “The Gravity of ‘Sunrise’.” Quarterly Review of Film Studies 3 (1977): 356-81. Astruc, Alexander. “Fire and Ice.” Cahiers du cinema in English 1 (January 1966): 69-73. Bergstrom, Janet. “Sexuality at a Loss: The Films of F. W. Murnau.” Poetics Today 6.1-2 (1985): 185-203. Eisner, Lotte H. The Haunted Screen. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973. -. Murnau. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973. Fieschi, Jean-Andre. “F. W. Murnau.” Trans, by Tom Milne. In Cinema: A Critical Dictionary of the Major Film-makers. Ed. by Richard Roud. New York: Viking Press, 1980, 2:704-20. Guillermo, Gilberto Perez. “F. W. Murnau: An Introduction.” Film Comment 7 (Summer 1971): 13-15. -. “Shadow and Substance: Mumau’s Nosferatu. ” Sight and Sound 36 (Summer 1967): 150-53, 159. Haskell, Molly. “Sunrise.” Film Comment 7 (Summer 1971): 16-19. Henderson, Brian. “The Long Take.” In Movies and Methods: An Anthology, pp. 314-24. Ed. by Bill Nichols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. Hyde, Thomas. “City Girl: Murnau’s Art of the Silent Image.” Cinemonkey 5 (Winter 1979): 15-21, 44. Lipkin, Steven N. “ ‘Sunrise’ : A Film Meets Its Public.” Quarterly Review of Film Studies 3 (1977) 339-55. Mayne, Judith. “Dracula in the Twilight: Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922).” In German Films and Liter¬ ature: Adaptations and Transformations, pp. 22-39. Ed. by Eric Rentschler. New York: Methuen, 1986. Murnau, F. W. “Films of the Future.” In Hollywood Directors, 1914-1940, pp. 214-21. Ed. by Richard Koszarski. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. -. “The Ideal Picture Needs No Titles.” Theater Magazine 57 (January 1928): 41, 72. Sarris, Andrew. The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968. New York: E. P. Dut¬ ton, 1968. Whittemore, Don, and Philip Alan Cecchettini. Passport to Hollywood: Film Immigrants Anthology, pp. 386-423. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1976. Wood, Robin. “Sunrise.” Film Comment 12 (May-June 1976): 10-19. -. “Tabu.” Film Comment 1 (Summer 1971): 23-27.

Index

Adler, Augusta (Gusti): on Reinhardt’s productions, 80, 100 Adler, Stella: on Reinhardt’s home as a theater, 94 Anti-illusionism, 6 Antoine, Andre: Appia on the work of, 67 Appia, Adolphe, 59-76; on the actor, 64; and continuity, 67, 73-74; designer of Dalcroze’s theater at Hellerau, 70; on the director and the written text, 61; on indica¬ tion and expression, 68-69; on light, 71-75; on the mise en scene as extemalization of drama, 67-68; Mumau’s framing technique compared to the work of, 137; on music, 69, 70-71; call for production notation, 62-63; on the relationship between time and space, 70-71; on the treatment of three-dimensional space, 64—66, 75-76; on the ideal of unity, 63 —and the work of the Duke: the actor, 63, continuity, 66; the director and the written text, 61; indication vs. expression, 68-69; three-dimensional space, 64-65 —and the work of Wagner: Appia’s criticism of, 59-60; the role of the audience, 69-70; scenery changes in Parsifal, 74; similarity of ideals, 60-61, 64, 70 Aristotle: dramatic theory of, 27 Balazs, Bela: on the difference between film and theater, 1-2 Bamay, Ludwig: actor at Meiningen, 43 Bayreuth, Festspielhaus at: Appia on, 59-60, 69; Wagner’s reforms at, 30-34 Bazin, Andre: on the ambiguous nature of shots, 5; compared to Mumau, 137, 138; on deep-focus cinematography, 134; on film vs. theater, 2; and realism in film, 134, 137, 138 Beethoven, Ludwig van: Wagner on, 22, 23

Beggar, The: Reinhardt’s romanticized produc¬ tion of, 100 Ben Hur: staging of chariot races for, 4 The Blue Bird: Humperdinck’s musical score for, 85 The Bond: Reinhardt’s production of, 90 Boucicault, Dion: and French neoclassical drama, 27; physical disasters in the melo¬ dramas of, 4 Brahm, Otto: and Reinhardt, 77, 89 Brecht, Berthold: as an anti-illusionist, 6 Die Brille: Reinhardt’s productions at, 90 Buddhism: Wagner and, 12-13

Caesar and Cleopatra: directed by the Duke, 42 Chronegk, Ludwig: at the Meiningen theater, 40, 47 City Girl, 126-29; compared to Wagner’s Lohengrin, 126; diagonal composition in, 148; the heroine’s sexuality in, 109; mon¬ tage in, 154; moving camera in, 151-52; few titles in, 141; violation of the frame in, 135 Classical drama: Reinhardt’s romanticized treatment of, 98 Continuity: the Duke's provisions for, con¬ trasted wth Wagner’s, 54—55; and Mumau’s moving camera, 133-34. See also Appia, Adolphe; Reinhardt, Max Copeau, Jacques: settings by, 68 Costuming: conventions in, late nineteenth century, 38 Couple: in Mumau’s films, 105-6 —Edenic state of, 107; in City Girl, 127; in Faust, 122; in The Haunted Castle, 112; in The Last Laugh, 116; in Nosferatu, 114; in Sunrise, 123; in Tabu, 129; in Tartuffe, 119 —as a single personality, 110, 116

170

Index

Covent Garden Opera: Reinhardt’s thrust stage and gangways at, 92 Craig, Edward Gordon, 63, 68 Crowd scenes: Antoine on the conventional staging of, 38. See also Reinhardt, Max; Saxe-Meiningen, Duke Georg II of; and works produced by them Danton's Death: continuity through lighting in, 80-81; crowd scene in, 86; audiertce par¬ ticipation in, at the Grosses Schauspielhaus, 92 Deep-focus cinematography: Bazin and, 134; space and time in, 135; and theater, 133. See also Mumau, Friedrich Wilhelm Dent, E. J.: on Reinhardt’s production of Urfaust, 100-101 Deutsches Theater: Mumau’s apprenticeship at, 132; Reinhardt and, 77; Reinhardt's tech¬ nical renovations at, 81, 92; three-dimensional scenery at, 83 Dissolve: anticipation of, in Danton’s Death, 81; for continuity, 133-34. See also Mumau, Friedrich Wilhelm Double: character type in Mumau’s films, 107; in City Girl, 128; in Faust, 122; in The Haunted Castle, 113; in The Last Laugh, 117; in Nosferatu, 115; in Sunrise, 124; in Tartuffe, 120 Dream world, representation of: Appia on, 67; in Mumau’s films, 135; by Reinhardt, 97-98; Wagner on, 24, 25, 28 Eisenstein, Sergei: on filmmaking by montage, 5 Elizabethan theater: limitations of, 26-27 Everyman: as communal theater, 88; Reinhardt’s production of, 95, 97, 101 Expressionism: Mumau’s work contrasted with, 140-41, 146; vs. romanticism, 99-100 Expressionist theater, German: use of stairs in, 83 Expressionist works: Reinhardt’s romanticized interpretations of, 100 Eysolt, Gertrud: on Reinhardt's work with actors, 102; on Reinhardt’s productions, 98 Faust —Mumau’s film, 121-22, 163n.9; compared to Goethe’s Faust, 121; compared to the Ring, 121; light in, 146; montage in, 154; movement and stasis opposed in, 150; Mumau’s interpolations in, 140; simplicity of setting for, 144; wind in, 106 —Reinhardt’s productions of, 83, 96 Faust II: Reinhardt’s production of, 85

Fauststadt: Reinhardt’s setting at the Summer Riding School, 96 Fiesko: composition in depth in, 56; electric lighting in, 50; Simonson on, 52 Film; Appia’s production notation as an antecedent to, 63; differences from theater, 1-3; Mumau and the development of, 133; Reinhardt’s anticipation of, 133 Flaherty, Robert; collaborator of Mumau in Tabu, 139; director of documentaries, 134 Flight, theme of: in Faust, 122; in films by Mumau, 106-7; in The Last Laugh, 117; in Nosferatu, 114; in Tabu, 130 The Flying Dutchman: Mumau’s projected film based on, 132; Nosferatu compared to, 113-14; the storm in, 106 Fortuny, Maxiano: and lighting systems, 81 Franz, Ellen (later Baroness von Heldburg), 36, 40-41 French Academy: effects of Aristotelian theory on dramas of, 27 French neoclassical theater: Wagner on, 27 Gesamtkunstwerk: Wagner’s idea of, 23-25, 28, 29 Ghosts: the Duke’s production of, 42; Reinhardt’s romanticized production of, 99 Gotterdammerung: Briinnhilde’s rock in, 67; Wagner’s values portrayed in, 18; Wotan’s moral development in, 19 The Great World Theater: Reinhardt's produc¬ tion of, at Salzburg, 95-96, 101-2 Greek theater: Wagner on, 23 Griffith, David Wark, 4-5, 154 Grosses Schauspielhaus: Danton’s Death at, 80-81, 92; as a people’s theater, 88; Reinhardt’s constmction of, 91; three-dimensional scenery at, 83; thrust stage for, 91 Grube, Max: historian of the Meiningen theater, 40-41, 43 Hamlet: Appia’s lighting for, 72; Reinhardt's Kuppelhorizont in, 81 Hanamichi: Reinhardt’s use of, 92 The Haunted Castle (Schloss Vogelod), 111-13; compared to Parsifal, 111; sexual¬ ity in, 108; silhouette in, 147; simplicity of setting for, 144 Hauser, Arnold; on film vs. theater, 1 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: influence on Wagner’s philosophy, 19, 20 Heldburg, Baroness von. See Franz, Ellen Hellerau: Appia’s lighting for theater at, 75 Henry IV: Reinhardt's production of, 79, 132 Herald, Heinz: collaborator of Reinhardt, 78

Index Hermannschlacht: blocking in, 51-52; scenery as a metaphor in, 53; visual synecdoche in, 57 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von: collaborator of Reinhardt, 82, 87, 101 Homosexuality: effect on Mumau’s works, 108-9, 110, 118, 163n.8 Humperdinck, Engelbert: and Reinhardt, 85 Illusionism: change from, to anti-illusionism, 139-57; in theater, 4, 5-6 The Imaginary Invalid: the Duke’s production of, 48, 55; Reinhardt's entr’actes in. 80; Reinhardt's production of at Schloss Leopoldskron, 96 Intruder: theme in Mumau’s films, 105-6, 109; in City Girl, 127; in The Haunted Castle, 112; in The Last Laugh, 117; in Sunrise, 124; in Tabu, 129; in Tartujfe, 120 Iphigenia in Tauris: the Duke’s visual synec¬ doche in, 57 Jannings, Emil: actor in The Last Laugh, 143 Der Januskopf: use of silhouette in, 147 Josefstadt Theater (Vienna): Reinhardt’s work at, 80 Julius Caesar —the Duke’s production of: continuity in, 55; crowd scenes, 45-46; diagonal composition for, 56-57; electric lighting in, 50-51; his¬ torical accuracy in, 46, 47; scenery as a metaphor in, 53-54 —Reinhardt's production of: at the Grosses Schauspielhaus, 133 Kabuki theater: influence on Reinhardt, 92 Kainz, Josef: training by the Duke, 42-43 Kammerspiele: built by Reinhardt, 90; lighting in, 82 Kammerspielslil, 87 Kean, Charles: the Duke on productions by, 48 King Lear: setting for, 83 Kleines Theater: Reinhardt’s productions at, 90 Kracauer, Siegfried: on film vs. theater, 2—3; ideal of realist cinema, 137-38 Kuppelhorizont (sky-dome, or cyclorama): de¬ veloped by Reinhardt, 81-82 The Last Laugh (Der letzte Mann), 116-19; compared to Die Meistersinger, 116; dis¬ rupted sense of scale in, 135; editing in, 123; Mayer’s script altered for, 140; mon¬ tage in, 122; movement and stasis opposed in, 150; moving camera in, 152; one title in, 141; simplicity of setting for, 144; violation of the frame in, 136

171

The Learned Ladies, 48 Lebensbediirfnis: Wagner’s discussion of, 11 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim: on illusionism in theater, 6 Der letzte Mann. See Last Laugh, The Liebesbedurfnis: in Wagner’s operas, 11 Das Liebesverbot: conflict between Nature and Culture in, 16-17; Mumau’s Tartujfe com¬ pared to, 119 Lighting: Appia and, 71-75; the Duke and, 50-51; Mumau and, 146-47; Reinhardt and, 80-83, 90 Lindner, Amanda: roles at Meiningen, 43 Liszt, Lranz: and Wagner, on Dante’s Divine Comedy, 12 Lohengrin: City Girl compared to, 127 Long shot: lack of concreteness in, 134; Mumau’s use of, 133, 134 Lysistrata: Reinhardt’s production of, 84, 86-87 Macbeth: the Duke’s production of, 51, 54, 56; Reinhardt’s production of, 81-82 Madonna: Mumau’s heroines as, 108-10; in Faust, 122; in Sunrise, 124, 126; in Tabu, 129 The Maid of Orleans: the Duke's production of, 43, 45, 49-50, 57-58; Stanislavsky on, 49 Male characters, Mumau’s: general nature of, 108-9; in Faust, 122; in The Last Laugh, 118; in Sunrise, 124, 125 Maria Stuart: the Duke’s production of, 51, 56 The Massacre of St. Bartholomew: sound effects created by the Duke for, 50 Mayer, Carl: and Murnau, 139; and Pick, 140 Measure for Measure: Wagner’s adaptation as Das Liebesverbot, 119 Medieval plays: Reinhardt’s use of, 88 Die Meistersinger von Niirnberg: Appia’s lighting for, 72; The Last Laugh compared to, 116; das Volk in, 18-19 The Merchant of Venice —production by the Duke: color in the scenery for, 48-49; composition in depth in, 56; crowd scene in, 46, 55; historical accuracy in, 51; scenario for, 43-44 —productions by Reinhardt: indoors, 84, 85; on a canal in Venice, 97 Metaphysical world: Murnau’s representation of, 138 A Midsummer Night’s Dream —Reinhardt’s 1905 production: influence of impressionism on, 84; musical quality in, 85; naturalism in, 77-78; setting for, 83; un¬ ity and continuity in, 79

172

Index

—Reinhardt’s 1908 production, 85 —Reinhardt’s outdoor productions of, 97; at the Hollywood Bowl, 102; at Oxford, 102 The Miracle: the dream world in, 97; London production of, 82-83, 93; Mumau in, 132; musical score for, 85; Vollmoeller’s scenar¬ io for, 101 Mirrors: doubling of characters in Mumau’s films represented by, 107; in Faust, 122; in The Last Laugh, 118; in Nosferatu, 115; in Tartuffe, 121 La Mise en scene du drame wagnerien: Appia’s first published work on Bayreuth, 60 The Miser: Reinhardt’s romanticized produc¬ tion of, 98, 101 Moving camera: compared to earlier techniques, 151, 153; used to violate the re¬ lationship between time and space, 153 Munch, Edward: designer of setting for Ghosts, 99 Mumau, Friedrich Wilhelm, 105-57; and actors, 143; apprenticeship to Reinhardt, 132-33; cinematography of, 5, 146-49; and designers, 144-45; editing by, 154; and German theater, 132-33; illusions of space in films of, 138-39; lighting by, 146-47; love as a theme in films by, 105-6; mini¬ malist settings by, 144-45; montage in films by, 150; use of moving camera by, 133-34, 138, 150-53; and realist cinema, 137, 138; relationship of his work to that of Wagner, 105-31; romanticized treatment of material by, 140-41; self-reference in films by, 156-57; similarity of his work to that of Appia, 147; similarity of his work to that of Reinhardt, 133, 139-40, 143, 145, 147; use of words in films by, 141^43; and world theater, 146 Music: union of poetry with, 29 Die Musik und die Inscenierung: Appia’s second book on the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, 60 Nature: 106; vs. Culture, in Mumau’s works, 105, 131; vs. Culture, in Wagner’s ideas, 10, 16-17, 21 Die Nibelungun (film by Lang): Bazin on, 138 Nosferatu (Nosferatu - Eine Symphonie des Grauens), 113-16, 163n.6; attitude toward sexuality in, 108; compared to The Flying Dutchman, 113-14; disjunction between word and image in, 142; dislocation through editing in, 155; filming on location for, 145; lighting effects in, 146, 147; maturation of characters in, 107; montage in, 154; musical

qualities in, 149; narrator in, 141-42; simi¬ larities to The Haunted Castle, 111, 112; simplicity of setting for, 144; violation of the frame in, 135 The Octoroon: physical disaster in, 4 Oedipus trilogy: the Duke’s simplified staging for, 48 Oedipus Tyrranus: crowd scene in, 86; light¬ ing in, 82, 83; Reinhardt’s production of in London, 83, 92; romanticized, 98; stairs in, 83 Olympia (London): Reinhardt’s interior design for The Miracle at, 93 Opera: Wagner’s reforms in, 29-34 Oresteia: the Duke’s crowd scenes in, 46 Othello: revolve used for, 80; Reinhardt’s sim¬ plified setting for, 83-84 Oxford University: Reinhardt's outdoor pro¬ duction of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at, 97 Parsifal: Appia on Wagner’s production of, 59-60, 73; Appia’s production of, 66, 72, 74; films by Mumau compared to. 111, 123; sexuality portrayed in, 17-18; Wagner’s views of love portrayed in, 11 Pauvrette: physical disaster in, 4 Penthesilea: revolve used in, 80 Phantom: silhouette in, 147 Pick, Lupu: and Carl Mayer, 140 Pictorial realism: in theater, according to Wagner, 27, 28 Poel, William: settings by, 50 Poetry: Wagner’s idea of uniting music with, 29 Preminger, Otto: actor at Josefstadt Theater, 80 The Prince of Homburg: the Duke’s visual synecdoche in, 57-58 Propless plays: Grube on the Duke’s presenta¬ tions of, 48-49

Read, Herbert, on film vs. theater, 1 Realist cinema: Mumau's influence on, 137; relationship to the work of Wagner, 138 Realistic drama: Reinhardt’s romanticized pro¬ ductions of, 98-99 Regiebuch (pi. Regiebiicher): directions for performance in as an antecedent to film, 63; realization of Appia’s call for production notation, 103-4; vocal changes indicated in, 86 Rehearsals: as conducted by the Duke, 44-45; as conducted by Wagner, 29-30

Index Reinhardt, Gottfried (son of Max Reinhardt): On his father’s crowd scenes, 87 Reinhardt, Max, 77-104; and actors, 89, 102- 3; alteration of texts by, 100-101; and communal theater, 88-89; and continuity, 78-81; crowd scenes by, 86-87; influence of the impressionists on, 84; influence on playwrights by, 100-102; and integration of space and time, 87; lighting by, 80-83, 90; medieval plays favored by, 88; Mumau’s apprenticeship to, 132-33; Mumau’s work compared to that of, 137, 138, 143, 145; and music, 84—86, 87; naturalism as illusionism by, 77-78; philosophy in the writ¬ ings of, 87-88; and the Regiebuch, 63, 86, 103- 4; and the relationship between perfor¬ mer and audience, 89-93; revolving stage used by, 78-80; and the role of the director, 100; romanticized interpretations by, and scenery, 83-84, 99; and the setting as an environment, 78, 90; and sound effects, 85-86; thrust stage constmcted by, 91-92, 93; and unity, 79-80, 82; and the world as theater, 94—97 —and the work of Appia, 77-78, 80; the director, 100; integration of space and time by, 87; lighting, 81, 82; the Regiebuch as production notation by, 63, 104; scenery, 83 —and the work of the Duke: blocking, 93; crowd scenes, 86; division of labor, 89; music, 85, 86 —and the work of Wagner, 77-78; the actor, 89; the audience, 90; music, 84, 85; phi¬ losophy of, 87, 88, 89; visual effects, 97 Reunion, theme of: in Mumau’s films, 106; in Sunrise, 125-26 Revolving stage: Reinhardt’s use of, 78-80 Das Rheingold: Appia’s staging for, 66-67 Rienzi: Wagner’s attempts at naturalism in, 30 Der Ring des Nibelungen: Appia’s production of, 66, 72, 75; Murnau’s Faust compared to, 121; the storm in, 106; Wagner’s phi¬ losophy portrayed in, 11, 20 The Robbers: alterations made in, 41 Romanticism: vs. expressionism, 99-100; in Mumau’s films, 105; Mumau’s undermining of, 106, 122, 130-31; Wagner and, 10-11; and Woman, 110, 163n.4 Romeo and Juliet: the Duke’s crowd scene in, 46 Salzburg: Reinhardt’s productions at, 88, 95-96 Saxe-Meiningen, Duke Georg II of, 35-58; and acting, 43; blocking developed by, 41, 42, 51-52; and Chronegk, 40; composition

173

in depth by, 55-56; continuity, compared to that of Wagner, 54, 55; crowd scenes by, 45- 46; design of scenery and costumes by, 46- 47, 53-54; diagonal lines in staging by, 56-57; friendship with Richard and Cosima Wagner, 35-37; and Grube, 39; as a director, 42-44, 55; music used by, 49-50; influence on the development of cinema, 55; Intendant of his court theater, 36; light used as an expressive element by, 50-51; metaphoric value of staging by, 51-53; moving picture created by, 53; repertoire fa¬ vored by, 41; and scenery changes, 54-55; and texts, 41-42; training of, 39-40 Scenery: the Duke’s, as a metaphor, 53-54; late nineteenth-century conventions in, 38-39 Schall und Rauch: Reinhardt’s productions at, 90 Schloss Leopoldskron: Reinhardt’s productions at, 80, 72 Schloss Vogeldd. See The Haunted Castle The Servant of Two Masters: Reinhardt’s pro¬ duction of, 80, 85 Sexuality: in Mumau’s films, 107-10; in Faust, 121-22; in The Haunted Castle, 112; in Nosferatu, 114, 116; in Sunrise, 124, 125; in Tabu, 129-30; in Tartuffe. 119, 120 Shakespeare, William: Wagner’s opinion of, 22-23, 26-27 Shooting script: Mumau’s, compared to Reinhardt’s Regiebuch. 139-40 Siegfried: Briinnhilde’s rock in, 67 “Star system”: the Duke’s abandonment of, 43; Wagnerian reform contrary to, 33; as a Western convention, 37-38 Stem, Ernst: and Reinhardt, 78 Stoker, Bram: author of novel on which Nos¬ feratu is based, 141, 163n,6 The Streets of New York: physical disaster in, 4 The Stronger: Reinhardt's production of, 90 Student of Prague: Doppelganger in, 107 Summer Riding School: Reinhardt’s production of Faust at, 96 Samurun: hanamichi in, 92 Sunrise, 122-26; alteration of Sudermann's script for, 140-41; compared to other films by Mumau, 114, 124, 128; compared to Parsifal, 123; diagonal composition in, 148; lighting in, 146, 147; maturation of charac¬ ters in, 107; moving camera in, 151, 152-53; and Mumau's homosexuality, 108; musical conception of, 149; Nature in, 106; Nature and Culture in, 131; theme of re¬ demption in. 106; simplicity in setting for,

174

Index

144; few titles in, 141; violation of the frame in, 135 Synecdoche, visual: by Appia, 66-67; by the Duke, 57; Mumau’s violation of the frame as, 137; by Reinhardt, 78, 81 Tabu, 129-30; compared to Tristan und Isolde, 129; filming on location for, 146: long take in, 148; musical design in, 150; Nature and Culture in, 131; objectivity re¬ futed in, 142-43; shadow in, 147; simplicity of setting for, 144; titles in, 141; violation of the frame in, 135 The Taming of the Shrew: the Duke’s produc¬ tion of, 48; Reinhardt’s production of, 97-98 Tannhduser: Nature vs. Culture in, 17; Sunrise compared to, 122-23 Tartuffe (Tartiiff), 119-21; compared to other works, 119, 120; depth of field in, 148; montage in, 153-54; movement and stasis opposed in, 150; self-reference in, 156; sex¬ uality in, 109, 112; simplicity of setting for, 144, 145 Theater: differences from film, 1-3; late nineteenth-century trends in, 3, 35; romantic movement in, as the antecedent to Murnau’s work, 5 Too Many Husbands: music specified by Reinhardt for, 84—85 "A Trip to Tilsit”: altered by Mumau for Sunrise, 140 Tristan und Isolde: Appia’s production of, 65-66, 74—75; Buddhist philosophy in, 12-13; portrayal of love in, 17; Tabu com¬ pared to, 129; Wagner’s values portrayed in, 18 Turandot: Vollmoeller's reworking of for Reinhardt, 101 Twelfth Night: the Duke’s production of, 48, 54; Reinhardt’s production of, 80, 96 Vardac, Nicholas: on the anticipation of film by theater, 4—5 Vedas: Wagner and, 12

Venetian Night: Reinhardt’s production of, 80, 85 The Victors: Buddhist philosophy in, 12 Vienna, Imperial Palace: Reinhardt's theater in the Redoutensaal at, 94 Villains: Mumau’s, 156-57 Violation of the frame: by Murnau, 135-37 Vollmoeller, Karl: and Reinhardt, 101 Wagner, Richard, 9-34; and the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, 30-34; and Buddhism, 12-13, 14; changes made in production practice by, 29-34; and Christianity, 12-13, 14, 16, 18, 20, 25; and community, 14, 18-20; and Darwin’s views, 11-12; on the dream world, 24—26; on the Duke, 58; general world view of, 9-10; on love, 11, 14—15; and Mumau’s work, 5, 130-31; on Natural necessity, 11, 15, 19; on Nature vs. Culture, 10, 16, 17, 21; political views of, 10-11, 20-21; on the social role of Art, 20-27; on theater, 22-24, 26-28; on Woman, 15-16 Die Walkiire: Briinnhilde’s rock in, 49 Wallenstein’s Death: crowd scenes in, 45 A Winter’s Tale: the Duke’s medieval setting for, 49 Wish fulfillment. 107; in City Girl. 128; in Faust, 122; in The Haunted Castle, 113; in The Last Laugh, 117, 118; in Sunrise, 124; in Tabu, 130; in Tartuffe, 120 Woman: Mumau’s representation of, 105, 109-10, 122; Wagner on, 15-16 Woyzeck: Reinhardt's romanticized production of, 99 Das Wunder: Wagner on, 25 Yab-yum (yin-yang): principle of, as man¬ ifested in Wagner’s ideas, 13, 14, 29

Zola, Emile: Appia on the ideals of, 67; Bazin's realism contrasted with that of, 138; Wagner's ideas contrasted with those of, I61n.4

^Cb, Arias COLLIER, JC LESLIE, FROH WAGNER TO MURNAL ^320^04806077 TRANSPOSITION CF ROMANTICISM N/E0L0/01b3a/lbb3X VCGLFWTM

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Trinity University

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ISBN 0-8357-1843-3

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32060004806077

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