Here begins the art of the photoplay.  That one nervous hand which feverishly grasps the deadly weapon can suddenly for the space of a breath or two become enlarged and be alone visible on the screen, while everything else has really faded into darkness.  The act of attention which goes on in our mind has remodeled the surrounding itself.  The detail which is being watched has suddenly become the whole content of the performance, and everything which our mind wants to disregard has been suddenly banished from our sight and has disappeared.  The events without have become obedient to the demands of our consciousness.  In the language of the photoplay producers it is a “close-up.” The close-up has objectified in our world of perception our mental act of attention and by it has furnished art with a means which far transcends the power of any theater stage.

The scheme of the close-up was introduced into the technique of the film play rather late, but it has quickly gained a secure position.  The more elaborate the production, the more frequent and the more skillful the use of this new and artistic means.  The melodrama can hardly be played without it, unless a most inartistic use of printed words is made.  The close-up has to furnish the explanations.  If a little locket is hung on the neck of the stolen or exchanged infant, it is not necessary to tell us in words that everything will hinge on this locket twenty years later when the girl is grown up.  If the ornament at the child’s throat is at once shown in a close-up where everything has disappeared and only its quaint form appears much enlarged on the screen, we fix it in our imagination and know that we must give our fullest attention to it, as it will play a decisive part in the next reel.  The gentleman criminal who draws his handkerchief from his pocket and with it a little bit of paper which falls down on the rug unnoticed by him has no power to draw our attention to that incriminating scrap.  The device hardly belongs in the theater because the audience would not notice it any more than would the scoundrel himself.  It would not be able to draw the attention.  But in the film it is a favorite trick.  At the moment the bit of paper falls, we see it greatly enlarged on the rug, while everything else has faded away, and we read on it that it is a ticket from the railway station at which the great crime was committed.  Our attention is focused on it and we know that it will be decisive for the development of the action.

A clerk buys a newspaper on the street, glances at it and is shocked.  Suddenly we see that piece of news with our own eyes.  The close-up magnifies the headlines of the paper so that they fill the whole screen.  But it is not necessary that this focusing of the attention should refer to levers in the plot.  Any subtle detail, any significant gesture which heightens the meaning of the action may enter into the center of our consciousness by monopolizing the stage for