In Passage 1, the reference to 'eyestrain' conveys a sense of
Directions: The passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
Passage 1
Talk to those people who first saw films when they were silent, and they will tell you the experience was magical. The silent films had extraordinary powers to draw members of an audience into the story, and an equally potent capacity to make their imaginations work. It required the audience to become engaged – to supply voices and sound effects. The audience was the final, creative contributor to the process of making a film.
The finest films of the silent era depended on two elements that we can seldom provide today – a large and receptive audience and a well–orchestrated score. For the audience, the fusion of picture and live music added up to more than the sum of the respective parts.
The one word that sums up the attitude of the silent filmmakers is enthusiasm, conveyed most strongly before formulas took shape and when there was more room for experimentation. This enthusiastic uncertainty often resulted in such accidental discoveries as new camera or editing techniques. Some films experimented with players; the 1916 film Regeneration, for example, by using real gangsters and streetwalkers, provided startling local color. Other films, particularly those of Thomas Ince, provided tragic endings as often as films by other companies supplied happy ones.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of silent films survive today in inferior prints that no longer reflect the care that the original technicians put into them. The modern versions of silent films may appear jerky and flickery, but the vast picture palaces did not attract four to six thousand people a night by giving them eyestrain. A silent film depended on its visuals; as soon as you degrade those, you lose elements that go far beyond the image on the surface. The acting in silent movies was often very subtle, very restrained, despite legends to the contrary.
Passage 2
Mime opens up a new world to the beholder, but it does so insidiously, not by purposely injecting points of interest in the manner of a tour guide. Audiences are not unlike visitors to a foreign land who discover that the modes, manners, and thoughts of its inhabitants are not meaningless oddities, but are sensible in context.
I remember once when an audience seemed perplexed at what I was doing. At first, I tried to gain a more immediate response by using slight exaggerations, I soon realized that these actions had nothing to do with the audience's understanding of the character. What I had believed to be a failure of the audience to respond in the manner, I expected was, in fact, only their concentration on: what I was doing; they were enjoying a gradual awakening – a slow transference of their understanding from their own time and place to one that appeared so unexpectedly before their eyes. This was evidenced by their growing response to succeeding numbers. Mime is an elusive art, as its expression is entirely dependent on the ability of the performer to image a character and to re–create that character for such performance. As a mime, I am a physical medium, the instrument upon which the figures of my imagination play their dance of life. The individuals in my audience also have responsibilities – they must be alert collaborators. They cannot sit back, mindlessly complacent, and wait to have their emotions titillated by mesmeric musical sounds or visual rhythms or acrobatic feats, or by words that tell them what to think. Mime is an art that, paradoxically, appeals both to those who respond instinctively to entertainment and to those whose appreciation is more analytical and complex. Between these extremes lie those audiences conditioned to resist any collaboration with what is played before them, and these the mime must seduce despite themselves. There is only one way to attack those reluctant minds – take them unaware! They will be delighted at an unexpected pleasure.