Nielsen’s function is quite different. Richard Dyer long ago identified as a key feature of stardom its ambivalent fusion in a single personality of the ordinary and the extraordinary. Stars, according to Dyer, project an image that is both and ‘special’ but are also known, through their screen roles as well as celebrity ‘spectacular’, chatter, as emblems of the familiar everyday. Balázs’s epilogue does not, Visible Man however, reproduce the conjunction between the ordinary and the extraordinary that Dyer identifies within individual stars. Instead it divides those qualities along gender lines, operating with a distinction that places Chaplin on the side of life ‘ordinary … ordinary things’, and Nielsen in the elevated realm of what Dyer calls the extraordinary but which might also be termed the modern sublime. Balázs’s ecstatic prose certainly recalls Romantic adorations of the sublime when he declaims: Just as we are tempted to despair that film can ever be capable of becoming a genuine form of art on its own, an art worthy of being represented by a tenth Muse on Mount Olympus; just as we are on the verge of accepting that film can never be more than a lame version of theatre Asta Nielsen restor[es] … … our faith and our conviction. lower the flags in her honour, she is … incomparable and without peer. (pp. 87–88) The rhapsodic tone persists as Balázs on to specify three features of Nielsen that locate her as the embodiment of an Olympian tenth muse. as is well Visible Man, known, presents silent cinema as the site of articulation of a new language of the body. Silent film in general, Balázs asserts, has rescued popular representation from the rationalist abstraction of a modern abstract and over-intellectualized’ ‘dematerialized, print culture, while screen performance in particular creates a of gestures’ ‘language that effects a bodily recovery from the alienation of the printed word (p. 11).
Nielsen’s function is quite different. Richard Dyer long ago identified as a key feature of stardom its ambivalent fusion in a single personality of the ordinary and the extraordinary. Stars, according to Dyer, project an image that is both ‘special’ and ‘spectacular’, but are also known, through their screen roles as well as celebrity chatter, as emblems of the familiar everyday. Balázs’s Visible Man epilogue does not, however, reproduce the conjunction between the ordinary and the extraordinary that Dyer identifies within individual stars. Instead it divides those qualities along gender lines, operating with a distinction that places Chaplin on the side of ‘ordinary life … ordinary things’, and Nielsen in the elevated realm of what Dyer calls the extraordinary but which might also be termed the modern sublime. Balázs’s ecstatic prose certainly recalls Romantic adorations of the sublime when he declaims: Just as we are tempted to despair that film can ever be capable of becoming a genuine form of art on its own, an art worthy of being represented by a tenth Muse on Mount Olympus; just as we are on the verge of accepting that film can never be more than a lame version of theatre … Asta Nielsen … restor[es] our faith and our conviction. … lower the flags in her honour, she is incomparable and without peer. (pp. 87–88) The rhapsodic tone persists as Balázs on to specify three features of Nielsen that locate her as the embodiment of an Olympian tenth muse. Visible Man, as is well known, presents silent cinema as the site of articulation of a new language of the body. Silent film in general, Balázs asserts, has rescued popular representation from the rationalist abstraction of a modern ‘dematerialized, abstract and over-intellectualized’ print culture, while screen performance in particular creates a ‘language of gestures’ that effects a bodily recovery from the alienation of the printed word (p. 11).
Screen_dossier_final_EC.docx