(10 of 10)
For the first time since Edison cranked up his Kinetograph and recorded Fred Ott's Sneeze, the way lies open to a free exploration of the full possibilities of cinema as an art. The possibilities are clearly immense. No other art can so powerfully exploit the dimensions of time and space. No other art has so many ways of involving a human being. It involves his eyes, ears, mind, heart, appetites all at once. It is drama, music, poetry, novel, painting at the same time. It is the whole of art in one art, and it demands the whole of man in every man. It seizes him and spirits him away into a dark cave; it envelops him in silence, in night. His inner eye begins to see, his secret ear begins to hear. Suddenly a vast mouth in the darkness opens and begins to utter visions. People. Cities. Rivers. Mountains. A whole world pours out of the mouth of the enraptured medium, and this world becomes the world of the man in the darkness watching.
A tremendous power, a great magic has been given to the men of the new cinema. What will they do with it? Will Resnais really be able to renovate the esthetic of cinema? Will Bergman at last kindle the fire in the heart and light his gloomy world with love? Will Ray redeem his prodigious promise and become the Shakespeare of the screen? Or will new men emerge and surpass them all? Whatever happens, the pioneers have broken through. The world is on its way to a great cinema culture. The art of the future has become the art of the present.