Styles of Radical Will

by Susan Sontag

Panofsky derives the difference between theatre and film as a difference between the formal conditions of seeing a play and those of seeing a movie. In the theatre, “space is static, that is, the space represented on the stage, as well as the spatial relation of the beholder to the spectacle, is unalterably fixed,” while in the cinema, “the spectator occupies a fixed seat, but only physically, not as the subject of an aesthetic experience.” In the theatre, the spectator cannot change his angle of vision. In the cinema, the spectator is “aesthetically … in permanent motion as his eye identifies with the lens of the camera, which permanently shifts in distance and direction.” True enough. But the observation does not warrant a radical dissociation of theatre and film. Like many critics, Panofsky has a “literary” conception of the theatre. In contrast to theatre, conceived of as basically dramatized literature (texts, words), stands cinema, which he assumes to be primarily “a visual experience.” This means defining cinema by those means perfected in the period of silent films. But many of the most interesting movies today could hardly be described adequately as images with sound added. And the most lively work in the threatre is being done by people