In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

MOVIE PALACES 143
shorts, which is itself preceded by a brief filmed speech by Will Hays,
president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America.
He announces "the beginning of a new era in music and motion pictures"
(258). When the Vitaphone production comes to Hollywood, it
is enthusiastically greeted by an special issue of Variety:
Vitaphone made its initial bow to the Pacific Coast tonight in the most
brilliant premiere ever staged at Grauman's Egyptian theatre ...
Crowds began to pour into the incourt of the Egyptian as early as 7:45,
and one by one as the celebrities arrived they were introduced over the
loudspeaker. Powerful arc lamps played across the sky in gorgeous arcs
and illuminated the outdoor foyer ... True, it was a slightly incredulous
audience that passed through the doors at 8:15. So much has been
talked and written about sound and pictures that some were openly
skeptical. But it was those who came doubtingly that passed out later
warmest in their enthusiastic praise of a new art. (Cook, 259)
Rather than constituting an "alternative world," the actions on the
screens of the movie palaces add up to a highlighted rerun of the main
fascinations and concerns that prevail in everyday life: heroic individual
and collective deeds from the remote or recent past, as in Ben Hur or
Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin [see Action vs. Impotence, Individuality
vs. Collectivity]; the struggle between nature and technology, as in The
Lost World, which depicts the invasion of London by a horde of dinosaurs
[see Authenticity vs. Artificiality]; the complexities of human existence
and the confrontation with death, as in the mountaineering drama
Der Heilige Berg (The Sacred Mountain) or in F. W. Murnau's Faust [see
Mountaineering, Immanence = Transcendence (Death)]; psychoanalytic
treatment, as staged in the film Geheimnisse einer Seele (Secrets of a
Soul); the tragedies of daily existence, as in Charlie Chaplin's Gold Rush,
which comes to Berlin on February 23, or in Berthold Viertel's K. 13513,
which portrays "the adventures of a ten-mark note" (Chronik, 220). [see
Sobriety vs. Exuberance, Action = Impotence (Tragedy)] These last two
films, in particular, give an impression of life as continuous movement
and suggest that traveling can help the individual avoid falling prey to
vices and addictions. [see Bars] Siegfried Kracauer's formulation for this
effect of movies is elegant and apt: "The attention of the spectators is
riveted to the peripheral, so that they will not sink into the abyss"