Lorenzo Ciacciavicca Plus
The essence of cinema is not light, but a secret compact between light and darkness. Half of all the time at the movies is spent by the transfixed victims of this technological art in complete darkness. There is no image on the screen at all. In the course of a single second, forty-eight periods of darkness follow forty-eight periods of light. During this same infinitesimal period, every image is shown to the audience twice; and as a still photograph; for the film comes to a dead stop in the projector forty-eight times in the course of a single second. Given the retina's inability to adjust quickly to differences in brightness, an illusion of movement is created by this rapid, stop-start series projection of still photographs, each slightly different from the one before. Thus, during half the time spent at the movies, the viewer sees no picture at all; and at no time is there any movement. Without the viewer's physiological and psychological complicity, the cinema could not exist.
(Amos Vogel)
