In 1945 Bééla Baláázs, the Hungarian author, film director, and critic, observed that motion pictures had revived the language of the human body and facial expressions, which had been subdued by print culture: "The first new world discovered by the film camera in the days of the silent film was the world of very small things visible only from very short distances, the hidden life of little things. . . . By means of the close-up the camera in the days of the silent film revealed also the hidden mainsprings of a life which we had thought we already knew so well. In the days of the silent film [the close-up] not only revealed new things, but showed us the meaning of the old."1 More than half a century later, and more than a century and a half after Victor...
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September 2010
