Title: Pictorial Beauty on the Screen
Author: Freeburg, Victor Oscar
Language: English
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PICTORIAL BEAUTY ON THE SCREEN



[Illustration]

  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

  NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
  ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

  MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED

  LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
  MELBOURNE

  THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
  TORONTO

[Illustration: From _The Covered Wagon_. The rich variety of light and
shadow in this scene, combined with the simple strength of the moving
pattern, makes it one of the most charming sections in a remarkable
photoplay. See pages 9, 66 and 140.]



  PICTORIAL BEAUTY
  ON THE SCREEN


  BY

  VICTOR OSCAR FREEBURG, PH.D.

  AUTHOR OF “THE ART OF PHOTOPLAY MAKING,” AND
  “DISGUISE PLOTS IN ELIZABETHAN DRAMA.”


  WITH A PREFATORY NOTE
  BY REX INGRAM


  New York
  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  1923
  _All rights reserved_



  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.


  COPYRIGHT, 1923,
  BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

  Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1923.



  To
  JAMES CRUZE


Because the Various Types of Pictorial Beauty Described in this Book
May Be Seen Richly Blended with Epic Narrative and Stirring Drama in
“The Covered Wagon,” a Cinema Composition That Will Live



PREFATORY NOTE

_By_ REX INGRAM, _Director of the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,”
“Scaramouche,” etc., etc._


In this volume Dr. Freeburg contends that in order to be classified
among the Arts, the Cinema must become something more than a series of
clear photographs of things in motion.

In other words, a motion picture must be composed of scenes that have
certain pictorial qualifications, such as form, composition, and a
proper distribution of light and shade.

It is chiefly according to the degree in which these qualities are
present in a picture, that it can register the full effectiveness of
its drama, characterizations and atmosphere.

Dr. Freeburg handles his subject clearly and comprehensively, and I
know that the majority who read this book will gain a great deal more
enjoyment than previously from productions of the calibre of “Broken
Blossoms,” “Dr. Caligari,” “Blind Husbands,” “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,”
“Nanook of the North,” and films more numerous than I can mention
by such picture makers as Messrs. Griffith, Seastrom, Tourneur, Von
Stroheim and Lubitsch.

                                                  REX INGRAM.

August 5th, 1923.



AUTHOR’S PREFACE


If I look upon a motion picture as a kind of substitute for some stage
play or novel, it seems to me a poor thing, only a substitute for
something better; but if I look upon it as something real in itself, a
new form of pictorial art in which things have somehow been conjured
into significant motion, then I get many a glimpse of touching beauty,
and I always see a great range of possibilities for richer beauties in
future examples of this new art. Then I see the motion picture as the
equal of any of the elder arts.

In other words, I enjoy the movies as pictures, and I do not enjoy
them as anything else but pictures. Yet it is on the pictorial side
that the movies are now in greatest need of improvement. And this need
will probably continue for at least another ten years. I feel that a
book such as this may prove to be of considerable help in bringing
about that improvement. So far as I know, this is the first book in
which a systematic analysis of pictorial composition on the screen has
been attempted, although there are certain earlier books in which the
pictorial art of the screen has been appraised without analysis, the
pioneer work in that class being Vachel Lindsay’s “Art of the Moving
Picture.” The most original things in my present volume are to be found
in the chapters on “Pictorial Motions”--or, at least, they ought to be
there, else I am to blame, because that is the phase of cinematic art
which has hitherto received the least attention from critics.

“Movie fans” in general are my audience, my hope being that they may
find something new in this discussion, something, here and there, which
they had not themselves thought of, but which will help them toward a
conscious and keen enjoyment of beauty scarcely observed before, and
to a more certain discrimination between genuine art on the screen and
mere pretentious imitations of art.

In order not to confuse the issue, I have purposely omitted discussions
of plot, dramatic situation, characterization, etc., except where
these matters are so intimately connected with pictorial form that an
omission would be impossible. In short, it is what the picture looks
like, rather than what it tells, which here occupies our attention.
This study is, therefore, supplementary to my book “The Art of
Photoplay Making,” which is published by The Macmillan Company.

Mr. James O. Spearing, who was for five years the distinguished motion
picture critic on the _New York Times_, and is now on the production
staff of the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation, has been kind enough to
criticize the manuscript of the present work, and I take pride in
thanking him publicly for having thus served me with his extensive
knowledge and cultivated taste.

                                                  V. O. F.

The National Arts Club, New York City, August 27th, 1923.



CONTENTS


  CHAP.                                                   PAGE
     I. PICTORIAL ART IN THE MOVIES                          1

    II. THE PRACTICAL VALUE OF PICTORIAL COMPOSITION         9

   III. EYE TESTS FOR BEAUTY                                25

    IV. PICTORIAL FORCE IN FIXED PATTERNS                   50

     V. RHYTHM AND REPOSE IN FIXED DESIGN                   68

    VI. MOTIONS IN A PICTURE                                83

   VII. PICTORIAL MOTIONS AT WORK                           97

  VIII. PICTORIAL MOTIONS AT PLAY                          116

    IX. PICTORIAL MOTIONS AT REST                          128

     X. MASTERY IN THE MOVIES                              154

    XI. THE MYSTERIOUS EMOTIONS OF ART                     178



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


  “The Covered Wagon.” Prairie Scene            _Frontispiece_

                                                        FACING
                                                          PAGE

  “The Plough Girl”                                         11

  “The Shepherdess.” By LeRolle                             21

  “The Spell of the Yukon.” Cabin Scene                     28

  A Study of Composition in “The Spell of the Yukon”        28

  “Daylight and Lamplight.” By Paxton                       39

  A Study of Lines                                          39

  “Audrey”                                                  45

  A Still Illustrating Misplaced Emphasis                   55

  A Specimen of Bad Composition                             55

  “The Spell of the Yukon.” Exterior                        57

  A Triangle Pattern                                        61

  “Derby Day.” By Rowlandson                                64

  A Study of Composition in “Derby Day”                     64

  “Maria Rosa”                                              71

  “Mme. LeBrun and Her Daughter.” By Mme. LeBrun            76

  “Polly of the Circus”                                     79

  “Banquet of the Officers of St. Andrew.” By Hals          79

  “The Covered Wagon.” Arroyo Scene                         93

  A Typical Bad Movie Composition                          100

  “Sherlock Holmes”                                        100

  “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”                    133

  “Portrait of Charles I.” By Van Dyck                     163

  “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”                            179



Pictorial Beauty On the Screen



CHAPTER I

PICTORIAL ART IN THE MOVIES


Vast armies of “movie fans” in massed formation move in and out of the
theaters day after day and night after night. They may be trampled on,
stumbled over, suffocated; they may have to wait wearily for seats and
even for a glimpse of the screen, and yet they come, drawn by a lure
which they never dream of denying. Yet the individuals in these crowds
are not the helpless victims of mob impulses. Choose the average person
among them, and you will find that he is able to criticize what he
sees. He has developed no small degree of artistic taste during all the
hundreds of nights which he has spent with eyes fixed upon the screen.
He can, at least, tell the difference between a dull, common-place plot
and one that is original and thrilling. He can distinguish between
the reasonable and the ridiculous. He is perfectly aware that much of
what he sees is plain “bunk,” that it is false, or silly, or of no
consequence; and yet, after waiting patiently, he is quick to catch
the honest message of significant truth when it comes. He is trained
in the appreciation of screen acting, and does not confuse mere showy
performance with sincere, sympathetic interpretation of a dramatic
character. And now, at last, the “average movie fan” is beginning to
demand that motion pictures have real pictorial beauty, that they be
something more than clear photographs of things in motion.

Here we have struck the measure of the motion picture’s possibilities
as a new art. The masses who pay for tickets have the situation
entirely in their hands. Photoplays are improving year by year
principally because the public wants better photoplays year by year.
When the movies were new, people were satisfied with novelties,
mechanical tricks, sensational “stunts,” pictures of sensational
people, pictures of pretty places, etc., but, although they appreciated
what was called good photography, they expressed no craving for genuine
pictorial beauty. Later on came the craze for adaptations of popular
novels and stage plays to the screen. This was really a great step
forward. The motion picture was no longer a mere toy or trick, but
was being looked upon as a real art medium. The public had developed
a taste for the exciting, clearly told story, and this demand was
satisfied by hundreds of excellent photoplays--excellent, at least,
according to the standards of the day. Yet the “fans” might have asked
for more. They got the story of a famous novel or play, with fairly
well acted interpretations by screen folk in proper costumes, and with
scenes and settings that usually answered to the descriptions in the
literary work adapted; they even got, here and there, a “pretty” view
or a chance grouping of striking beauty, but they did not regularly
get, or ask for, the kind of beauty which we are accustomed to find in
the masterpieces of painting. But taste has been developed by tasting,
and at last the craving for pictorial art has come.

Along with this new public demand for better pictorial qualities in
the motion pictures have come higher ideals to those who make and
distribute motion pictures. The producers are awakening to their
opportunities. They are no longer content with resurrecting defunct
stage plays and picturizing them hurriedly, with only enough additions
to the bare plot to make the photoplay last five reels. It is not now
so much a question of fixing over something old, as of constructing
something new. They are beginning to think in terms of pictorial
motion. The directors, too--those who have not been forced out of the
studios by their lack of ability--have learned their art of pictorial
composition in much the same way as the public has developed its
taste, that is, by experience. Once they seemed to think that it was
enough to tell the heroine when to sob or raise her eyebrows; now
they realize that the lines and pattern of the entire figure should
be pictorially related to every other line and pattern which is to be
recorded by the camera and shown upon the screen. And, finally, along
with the director’s rise in power and importance is coming the better
subordination of the “stars,” and yet they shine not the less brightly
on the screen.

The early exhibitors were often accused of being “ballyhoo” men,
hawking their wares of more or less questionable character. Most of
them, indeed, never suspected that motion pictures might contain
beauty. Now the worst of them can at least be classed with picture
dealers who value their goods because others love them, while the best,
including such men as Dr. Hugo Riesenfeld, have made exhibition itself
a new art. They select pictures with conscientious taste, place them in
a harmonious program, and show them in a theatrical setting that gives
the right mood for æsthetic appreciation on the part of the audience.

Publicity men, too, have felt the temper of the public. Although they
still like to exploit sensational features, the language of art is
creeping into their “dope.” They are beginning to find phrases for the
kind of beauty in a film which does not come from a ravishing “star”
or the lavish expenditure of money. And the independent reviewers
whose criticisms are published in the newspapers and magazines have
become professional. There was a time when they contented themselves
with listing the cast, revealing the plot in a paragraph, and adding
that “the photography is excellent.” But now we find thoughtful,
discriminating criticisms of photoplays in the film magazines and in
the leading daily papers of the country. These critics have learned
how to analyze the narrative as a dramatic construction, and how to
evaluate the interpretation of character in the acting, but they
have also learned something else, and this belongs to the new epoch
in the development of the photoplay; they have begun to observe the
pictorial art in motion pictures, the endless possibilities of beauty
in the pictorial combination of figure, setting, and action; in the
arrangement of lines and masses, of lights and shadows, and in the
fascinating rhythms of movement on the screen.

This conscious desire for beauty on the screen, which is springing
up all along the line, from the producer to the ultimate “fan,” has
naturally led to public discussion. In school room and church, on “lot”
and “location,” in office and studio, in club or casual group, men and
women are trying to find words and phrases to express the cinematic
beauty which they have sensed. And by that discussion they are
sharpening their senses for the discovery of richer beauty in the films
that are to come. My contribution to that discussion has taken the
form of this book, and my aim has been, first, to collect the topics
which are connected with the purely pictorial side of the movies,
and, second, to formulate my conception of some of the principles
which govern the creation of pictorial beauty on the screen. I have
endeavored to see my subject from various angles, assuming at times the
position of the sensitive spectator and at times standing, as it were,
beside the average director, and presuming to suggest to him what he
ought to do to please that spectator.

To begin with, let us take care to avoid some of the common pitfalls of
photoplay criticism. It has been a common error to judge a photoplay
as though it were a kind of visualized book. Many of us have slipped
into the mistake of expecting motion photographs to give us the same
kind of pleasure which we get from printed or spoken words. But let us
understand from now on that the beauty of a design-and-motion art must
of necessity be quite different from the beauty of a word-and-voice art.

This means that we shall have to get out of the habit of using
expressions like “He is _writing_ a photoplay.” A writer might indeed
devise a story for a motion picture play, as he might originate and
describe an idea for a painting, but it would not in either case be
proper to say that he had _written_ the picture. This book is not a
study of words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, etc. It does not deal
with literary expression. It deals with fixed and moving designs, the
things which the spectator actually sees, the only forms which actually
hold and present the contents of a photoplay. At times we shall, of
course, be obliged to say something about the familiar “sub-titles,”
which interrupt the pictorial flow in a film. But word-forms are
not characteristic photoplay forms. Fundamentally, a photoplay is a
sequence of motion pictures, and a man can no more write those pictures
than he can write a row of paintings on a wall. However, it would be
unfair to say that a writer could not in some way lend a hand in the
making of a motion picture; we merely insist that the finished picture
should not be judged as writing.

We must also get rid of the notion that “photoplays are _acted_.” It
would hardly be further from the truth to say that paintings are posed.
A finished painting may, in fact, contain the image of some person who
has posed for the artist; but the painting contains something else far
more significant. We cannot thank Raphael’s model for the beauty of
“The Sistine Madonna,” nor can we thank Charles I. of England for the
beauty of Van Dyck’s portraits of him. Turning to movies, it must be
admitted that actors are tremendously important, but it must not be
said that they act motion pictures. They only act while motion pictures
are being made. We cannot thank them for the poignant beauty of glowing
lights and falling shadows, of flowing lines, and melting forms, and
all that strange evanescence that makes up the lure of cinematic forms.

Also we must reject the theory that the artistic quality of a
photoplay can be guaranteed by engaging so-called art directors who
design backgrounds or select natural settings for the action of the
film story. The picture which we see on the screen consists not of
backgrounds alone; it is rather an ever-varying design of moving
figures combined with a fixed or changing background. If an art
director limits his work to the preparation of material environment
of photoplay action, he is, by definition, responsible only for the
place-element in the motion picture. Even if he were to design costumes
and general equipment for the players he would still be responsible for
only a part of the pictorial elements that appear upon the screen.

Plot, performers, places, equipment--these are only the materials which
a picture-maker puts into cinematic forms. The art does not lie in the
separate materials; it lies in the organization of those materials, a
process which may be called cinema composition.[A] In a later chapter
we shall discuss the proposition that the motion picture director is,
or certainly should be, the master cinema composer. Here we simply
want to make the point that criticism should concern itself with the
finished composition as a whole and not with the parts alone. The
critic who is interested only in the plot construction of photoplays
may indeed be able to make penetrating comment upon such dramatic
qualities as suspense, logic, etc., but he cannot thereby give us any
information on those visual aspects which please or displease the eye
while the picture is showing. Thus also the critic who looks only at
the acting in the photoplay is likely to be misled and to mislead us.
He may not observe, for example, that a film which has bad joining of
scenes, or a bad combination of figure and setting, is a bad cinema
composition, however superb the acting may be. And the critic who
writes, “The photography is excellent,”--a rubber-stamp criticism--is
of no help to art-lovers, because the photography as such may indeed
be excellent while the composition of the scenes photographed is
atrocious. Cinema criticism, to be of any real value to the “movie
fan,” must be complete. And that means that he must be enlightened
concerning the nature of pictorial design and pictorial progression,
as well as concerning the plot, the acting, and the mechanics of
photography.

    [A] The terms “cinema composer” and “cinema composition” were
        devised by the author in 1916, at the time when he and his
        students founded the Cinema Composers Club at Columbia
        University.

All of us are beginners in this pioneer work of analyzing the motion
picture as a design-and-motion art. But the prize is well worth the
adventure. Certainly the danger of making mistakes need not alarm us
unduly, for even a mistake may be interesting and helpful. At the start
we need to sharpen our insight by learning as much about the grammar of
pictorial art as we know about the grammar of language, by respecting
the logic of line and tone as highly as the logic of fictitious events,
by paying tribute to originality in the pattern of pictorial motions
no less than to the novelty in fresh dramatic situations. Beyond that
the prospect is alluring. Our new understanding will give us greater
enjoyment of the pictorial beauty which even now comes to the screen,
and the rumor of that enjoyment, sounding through the studios, will
assure of us of still greater beauty in the future.



CHAPTER II

THE PRACTICAL VALUE OF PICTORIAL COMPOSITION


The production manager of a large motion picture studio in New York
once declared to the author that he was “against artistry in the movies
because it usually spoils the picture.” “Emotion’s what gets ’em, not
art,” he added. “Besides, a director has to shoot thirty or forty
scenes a day, and hasn’t got any time to fool away with art notions.”

Any one who has seen “The Covered Wagon” (directed by James Cruze for
the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation) knows that such talk is nonsense.
This remarkable photoplay charms the eye, appeals to the imagination,
and stirs the emotions--all in the same “shot.” One can never forget
the pictorial beauty in those magnificent expanses of barren prairie,
traversed by the long train of covered wagons, a white line winding
in slow rhythm, while a softly rising cloud of dust blends the tones
of the curving canvas tops and of the wind-blown sage brush. Again
and again the wagon train becomes a striking pictorial motif, and,
whether it is seen creeping across the prairie, following the bank of
a river, climbing toward a pass in the mountains, stretching out, a
thin black chain of silhouettes on the horizon, curving itself along
the palisade-like walls of an arroyo, or halted in snow against a
background of Oregon pines, it always adds emphasis to the intense
drama of the pioneers battling against the hardships of the trail in
’48 and ’49. Here is entrancing change and flow of pattern, but here is
human striving and performance, too; and the emotions of the audience
are touched more directly and more deeply because picture and drama
have been fused into a single art.

Shortly after “The Covered Wagon” had opened in New York an executive
of a certain film company was heard to remark, “Well, no wonder it’s
a success. It cost $700,000 to make it! Any one could take that much
money and make a great picture.” I consider that reflection highly
unjust and the argument entirely fallacious. Good pictorial composition
does not necessarily cost a cent more than bad composition. In fact,
it will be shown in the following chapters that a scene of cinematic
beauty often costs less than an ordinary arrangement of the same scene.

The pictorial beauty discussed in this book is really a kind of
pictorial efficiency, and therefore must have practical, economic
value. When a motion picture is well composed it pleases the eye, its
meaning is easily understood, and the emotion it contains is quickly
and forcefully conveyed. In short, it has the power of art.

Pictorial efficiency cannot be bought. It cannot be guaranteed by the
possession of expensive cameras and other mechanical equipment. The
camera has no sense, no soul, no capacity for selecting, emphasizing,
and interpreting the pictorial subject for the benefit of the
spectator. In fact, the camera is positively stupid, because it always
shows more than is necessary; it often emphasizes the wrong thing,
and it is notoriously blind to beautiful significance. You who
carry kodaks for the purpose of getting souvenirs of your travels
have perhaps often been surprised, when the films were developed, to
discover some very conspicuous object, ugly and jarring, which you had
not noticed at the time when the picture was taken. At that time your
mind had forced your eye to ignore all that was not interesting and
beautiful, but the camera had made no such choice.

[Illustration: From _The Plough Girl_. The pictorial composition at
this moment of the action is bad because the spectator’s eye is not led
instantly to the book, which is the most important dramatic interest in
this scene. See page 11.]

It will not help matters to buy a better lens for your camera and to
be more careful of the focus next time. Such things can only make the
images more sharp; they cannot alter the emphasis. Unfortunately there
are still movie makers, and movie “fans,” too, in the world who have
the notion that sharpness of photography, or “clearness,” as they call
it, is a wonderful quality. But such people do not appreciate art; they
merely appreciate machinery. To make the separate parts of a picture
more distinct does not help us to see the total meaning more clearly.
It may, in fact, prevent us from seeing.

Let us look, for example, at the “still” reproduced on the opposite
page. The picture is clear enough. We observe that it contains three
figures and about a dozen objects. Our attention is caught by a
conspicuous lamp, whose light falls upon a suspicious-looking jug, with
its stopper not too tightly in. Yet these objects, emphasized as they
are, have but slight importance indeed when compared with the book
clutched in the man’s hand.

This mistake in emphasis is not the fault of the camera; it is the
fault of the director, who in the haste, or ignorance, perhaps, of
days gone by, composed the picture so badly that the spectators are
forced to look first at the wrong things, thus wasting time and energy
before they can find the right things. On the screen, to be sure, the
book attracts some attention because it is in motion, yet that does
not suffice to draw our attention immediately away from the striking
objects in the foreground. The primary interests should, of course,
have been placed in the strongest light and in the most prominent
position.

Guiding the attention of the spectator properly helps him to understand
what he is looking at, but it is still more important to help him feel
what he is looking at. Movie producers used to have a great deal to
say about the need of putting “punch” into a picture, of making it so
strong that it would “hit the audience between the eyes.” Well, let
those hot injunctions still be given. We maintain that good composition
will make any motion picture “punch” harder, and that bad composition
will weaken the “punch,” may, indeed, prevent its being felt at all.
But before arguing that proposition, let us philosophize a bit over the
manner in which a “punch” operates on our minds.

Anything that impresses the human mind through the eye requires a
three-fold expenditure of human energy. There is, first, the physical
exertion of _looking_, then the mental exertion of _seeing_, that is,
understanding what one looks at, and, finally, the joy of _feeling_,
the pouring out of emotional energy. This last is the “punch,” the
result which every artist aims to produce; but it can only be achieved
through the spectator’s enjoyment of looking and seeing.

Now, since the total human energy available at any one time for
looking, seeing, and feeling is limited, it is clearly desirable to
economize in the efforts of looking and seeing, in order to leave so
much the more energy for emotional enjoyment. We shall discuss in the
following chapter some of the things which waste our energies during
the efforts of looking and seeing. Let us here consider how pictorial
composition can control the expenditure of emotional energy, and how
it may thus either help or hinder the spectator in his appreciation of
beauty on the screen.

Let us imagine an example of a typical “punch” picture and describe it
here in words--inadequate though they may be--to illustrate how a bad
arrangement of events and scenes may use up the spectator’s emotional
energy before the story arrives at the event intended to furnish the
main thrill. The “punch” in this case is to be the transfer of a man
from one airplane to another. But many other things will disturb us on
the way, and certain striking scenes will rob the aerial transfer of
its intended “punch.”

First we see the hero and his pilot just starting their flight in a
hydro-airplane, the dark compact machine contrasting strongly with the
magnificent spread of white sails of a large sloop yacht--perhaps thus
tending to focus our attention on the yacht--which skims along toward
the left of our view.

Then, in the next scene, near some country village, evidently miles
away from the expanse of water in the first picture, we see a huge
Caproni triplane, which must have made a forced landing in the muddy
creek of a pasture. A herd of Holstein cows with strange black and
white markings, two bare-footed country girls, a shepherd dog, and five
helmeted mechanicians, stand helpless, all equally admiring and dumb,
while an alert farmer hitches an amusing span of mules, one black and
one gray, to the triplane and drags it out of the mud.

The third scene is strange indeed. It looks at first like a dazzling
sea of foam--perhaps the ocean churned to fury by a storm--no, you
may not believe it, but it is a sea of clouds. We are in an airplane
of our own high in the sky, perhaps miles and miles, or maybe only
three-quarters of a mile, above sea level. Just as we become fascinated
by the nests of shadows among the cloud billows, a black object swings
up from the whiteness, like a dolphin or a submarine from the sea. It
is the hydro-airplane with our hero and his pilot; we recognize them
because they are now sailing abreast of us only a few yards away. The
hero stands up and is about to assume the pose of Washington crossing
the Delaware, a difficult thing in such a strong wind when he is
suddenly struck from behind by a villain who evidently had concealed
himself in the body of the hydro-airplane before the flight was
started. The villain is dressed like a soldier and seems to have a
knapsack on his back.

Meanwhile, the sea of clouds flows by, dazzling white and without a
rift through which one might look to see whether a city, an ocean, a
forest, or a cornfield lies below.

Suddenly we look upward and discover the triplane, silhouetted sharply
against the sky like the skeleton of some monster. It has five bodies
and the five propellors, which three or four minutes ago were paralyzed
in the cow pasture, now are revolving so rapidly that we cannot see
them. It would be very interesting--but look! the villain and the hero
are having a little wrestling match on one of the wings of their
plane. Let us hope the hero throws the villain into the clouds! He
does, too! But villains are deucedly clever. The knapsack turns into a
parachute, which spreads out into a white circular form, more circular
than any of the clouds. We wonder if there will be any one to meet him
when he lands--but, don’t miss it! This is the “punch”! The triplane is
flying just above the hydro-airplane. Somebody lets down a rope ladder,
which bends back like the tail of a kite. The hero grabs it, grins at
the camera, climbs up, and with perfect calmness asks for a cigarette,
though he doesn’t light it, because that would be against the pilot’s
rules.

Well, the transfer from one airplane to another wasn’t so much of a
“punch,” after all.

Now let us count the thrills of such a picture as they might come to
us from the screen. First, in order of time, would be our delight at
the stately curves of the gleaming sails of the yacht, but this delight
would be dulled somewhat by the physical difficulty experienced by the
eyes in following the swaying, thrusting movement of the yacht as it
heels from the breeze, and at the same time following the rising shape
of the hydro-airplane; and it would be further dulled by the mental
effort of trying to see the dramatic relation between yacht and plane.
But, whether dulled or not, this thrill would be all in vain, for it
surely does not put more force into the “punch” which we set out to
produce, namely, the transfer of a man from one airplane to another.

The yacht, therefore, being unnecessary to our story, violates the
principle of unity; it violates the principles of emphasis and
balance, because it distracts our attention from the main interest; and
it violates the principle of rhythm, because it does not take a part in
the upward-curving succession of interests that should culminate with
the main “punch.”

If the plane of our hero must rise from the water, and if there is to
be a secondary interest in the picture, let it be something which,
though really subordinate, can intensify our interest in the plane.
Perhaps a clumsy old tug would serve the purpose, its smoke tracing a
barrier, above which the plane soars as easily as a bird. Or perhaps a
rowboat would be just as well, with a fisherman gazing spellbound at
the machine that rises into the air. Either of these elements would
emphasize the idea of height and danger.

The scene of the triplane in the pasture with the cows, mules, etc.,
might be mildly amusing. But our eyes would be taxed by its moving
spots, and, since its tones would be dark or dark gray, the pupils
of our eyes would become dilated, and would therefore be totally
unprepared for the flash of white which follows in the next scene.

The white expanse of fleecy clouds would shock the eyes at first sight,
since the approach to the subject had not been properly made; but in a
moment we would be stirred by the feeling that we were really above the
clouds. We would seem to have passed into a new world with floods of
mist. The long stretches of white are soft as eiderdown, yet, because
of our own motion, they seem like the currents of a broad river, and
one can almost imagine that it were possible to steer a canoe over
those rapids. All this would be the second thrill, beautiful in itself
but not actually tending to emphasize the “punch” of a man transferring
from one airplane to another.

The third thrill would surely come when the hydro-airplane swings up
through these clouds, like a dolphin from the sea, and yet not like a
dolphin, because it rises more slowly and in a few moments soars freely
into the air, a marvellous happening which no words can describe.
Yet this thrill, like the others, would exhaust our emotions rather
than leave them fresh for the “punch” we started out to produce, the
transfer of a man from one airplane to another.

Most thrilling of all would be the moments between the instant when
the villain is pushed off the wing of the plane and the instant when
his parachute snaps open. The white mass of the parachute, almost like
a tiny cloud, spreads out at the instant when it reaches the layer of
clouds, as if they pushed it open; then the parachute sinks into the
clouds and dies out like a wave of the sea.

After all these thrills, the intended “punch” would come like a slap
on the wrist. A man might now leap back and forth from one airplane to
another until it was time to go home for supper, and we would only yawn
at his exploits.

Now one of the morals of this story is that we did get a “punch,” even
though it was not the one originally intended by our imagined producer.
Treasures often lie in unsuspected places. Nearly every common-place
film on the screen contains some beauty by accident, some unexpected
charm, some unforseen “punch,” something the director never dreamed
of, which outshines the very beauty which he aimed to produce. And
whenever a thoughtful person is stirred by such accidental beauty he is
delighted to think that such a thing is possible. In the exceptional
films, he knows, such effects are produced by design instead of by
chance. It is better business, and it is better art.

We said at the beginning of this chapter that it was clearly desirable
to economize the spectator’s efforts of looking and seeing, in order
that he may have the greatest possible amount of energy left for the
experience of emotion. This is desirable even from a business man’s
point of view. We shall now try to show that emotional thrills can
actually be controlled by design, by what we shall call pictorial
composition.

But how is pictorial composition controlled, and who controls it? How
far is the scenario writer responsible for pictorial value? How much of
the pictorial composition shall the director direct, and how much of it
may safely be left to other hands? And, if a picture is well composed,
does that guarantee beauty? The answers to these questions depend upon
our definition of terms.

Composition in general means, of course, simply bringing things
together into a mutual relation. A particular combination of parts in
a picture may help the spectator, or may hinder him more than some
other possible combination of the same parts. Composition is form,
and as such should be revealing and expressive at the same time that
it is appealing in itself. Good composition cannot easily be defined
in a single sentence, but, for the sake of order in our discussion, I
wish to offer the following as my working definition. The best cinema
composition is that arrangement of elements in a scene or succession of
scenes which enables us to see the most with the least difficulty and
the deepest feeling.

A remarkable thing about composition is that it cannot be avoided.
Every picture must have some kind of arrangement, whether that
arrangement be good, bad, or indifferent. As soon as an actor enters
a room he makes a composition, because every gesture, every movement,
every line of his body bears some pictorial relation to everything else
within range of our vision. Even to draw a single line or to prick a
single point upon a sheet of paper is to start a composition, because
such a mark must bear some relation to the four unavoidable lines which
are described by the edges of the paper.

To place a flower in a vase is to make a composition. If the
arrangement contains more meaning, more significance than the
exhibition of the flower and the vase separately, and if this meaning
can easily be perceived, the composition is good. A bad composition
would doubtless result if we placed the flower and vase together in
front of a framed photograph, because the three things would not fuse
together into a unity which contained more meaning than the things had
separately. In fact, even the separate values would be lost, because
the vase would obscure the photograph, which in turn would distract our
attention from the vase. In other words, the arrangement would not help
us to see much with ease.

On the other hand, to place the flower and vase against some hanging or
panel which harmonizes with them in color and emphasizes the beauty of
the flower, is good composition, providing the rest of the environment
is in harmony. The vase must, of course, stand on something, perhaps a
table or a mantel-piece. This support must have shape, lines, color and
texture, all visual elements which must be skillfully wrought into our
design if the composition is to be successful. We see, therefore, that
the artistic arrangement of simple things which do not move, which stay
where you put them, is by no means a simple matter.

What we have just described may be called composition in a general
sense, but it represents only the initial process in pictorial
composition. The picture maker’s work only begins with the arranging of
the subject. It does not end until he has recorded that subject in some
permanent form, such as a painting, a drawing, or a celluloid negative.
In the recording, or treatment, the painter tries to improve the
composition of his subject. He changes the curves of the vase and the
flower somewhat in order to obtain a more definite unity. He softens
the emphasis in one place and heightens it in another. He balances
shape against shape. He swings into the picture a rhythm of line and
tone which he hopes may express to some beholder the harmony which he,
the artist, feels. In other words, the painter begins by arranging
things, he continues by altering the aspects of those things until they
fit his conception of the perfect picture of the subject before him,
and he finishes the composition only when he leaves a permanent record
of what he has seen and felt.

[Illustration: _The Shepherdess_, a painting by LeRolle, illustrating
several principles of design which can be effectively used in
photoplays. See page 55.]

Now it is evident that the painter might begin, without an actual
flower or vase or panel or table, by merely arranging his mental
images of those things. But the process would, of course, still be
composition. If, for example, he were to say to himself “To-morrow I
shall paint a picture of a rose in a slate-blue vase standing on an
antique oak table backed by a gray panel,” that very arrangement of
images in his mind would be the first phase of his composition. Or if
a customer were to come to him and say “To-morrow I want you to paint
for me a picture of a rose,” etc., the process of bringing things
together would still be composition; only in that case it begins with
the customer and is completed by the painter.

If we apply this reasoning to the movies it is clear that as soon as
a scenario writer writes a single line saying that a hydro-airplane
takes off from the sea, he has already started a pictorial composition.
Although he may not realize it, he has already brought together the
long straight line of the horizon, the short curving lines of the
waves, and the short straight and oblique lines of the plane. He has
already made it necessary to combine certain tonal values of airplane
and sky and sea, though he may not have stopped to consider what those
tonal values might be.

But the writer does other things of greater consequence than the
combining of shapes and tonal values. He prescribes motions and
locomotions of things, and he orders the succession of scenes. Even if
he writes only that “a plane rises from the sea,” he makes necessary
the combination of a great number of movements. On the screen that
plane will have at least four movements, namely, rising, tilting, going
toward the right or the left, and the movement of diminishing size.
And the sea will have at least three movements, namely, undulation,
flowing, and the movement of the wake. Now if the scenario writer adds
something else to the same scene, or prescribes the mutual relation of
things and movements which are to appear in the next scene, he is, of
course, merely continuing the process of cinema composition.

Insofar as the writer makes the combination of these things essential
to the story he circumscribes the power, he may even tie the hands, of
the director. For the latter, unless he ignores the composition thus
begun, can do only one thing with it; he can only carry it on.

Now it is a sad thing to relate that many scenario writers do not
suspect the truth of what we have just said. Some of them are evidently
unaware of the significant fact that their description is really a
prescription, that even by their written words they are really drawing
the first lines of hundreds of pictures, that they are actually engaged
in pictorial composition. They may be without knowledge of graphic art
and without skill. They may not be able to take a pencil or a piece
of charcoal and sketch out a horse or a hut or the general aspect of
a single pictorial moment as it would appear on the screen. They may
never have given any thought to the question of how best to arrange
simultaneous or successive movements in order to give the strongest
emotional appeal to the spectator. Yet they are drawing screen
pictures, and drawing them on the typewriter!

Of course, even the most intelligent scenario writers, even those who
have the most accurate knowledge of pictorial values on the screen and
the keenest power of visualizing their story as it will appear after
it has been screened, are always handicapped by working in the medium
of language. Words are not motion-photographs, any more than they are
paint or marble. This is the scenario writer’s handicap. But, though
we may sympathize with him because of the handicap, we cannot relieve
him of responsibility as the designer of beginnings in the cinema
composition.

The director has a handicap, too. He also does not work in the medium
of motion photographs. He cannot do so. Even if he were to look through
the view-finder of the motion picture camera during the entire taking
of every scene, he would not see exactly what we are destined to see in
the theater. He would see things only in miniature, in a glass some two
inches square, instead of larger than life. He would see things, not
in black and white, but in their true colors. And he can never, under
any circumstance, behold two or more scenes directly connected, with no
more than the wink of an eye between them, until after the negatives
have been developed, positives printed, and the strips spliced together
in the cutting and joining room.

In other words, neither the scenario writer nor the motion picture
director can ever know definitely in advance just what the finished
work will look like to us in the theater. If we are aware of these
handicaps, it may help us to understand why ugliness so often slips
through to the screen, but it will not permit us to tolerate that
ugliness. We, as spectators and critics, must forever insist that the
photoplay makers master their art, no matter how difficult the mastery
may be.

It was held some years ago that the only thing the matter with
the movies was that the stories were badly composed and of little
originality. Hence, a number of prominent novelists and playwrights
were hired to adapt their own literary work or prepare new stories for
the screen. But these literary men were among the first to discover
that better _writing_ does not in itself guarantee better _pictures_.
It is the director who is more truly the picture maker than any one
of his collaborators in the work. Ideally, he should prepare his own
scenario, just as the painter makes his own preliminary sketches, and
the fiction writer makes his own first draught of a story. Ideally,
too, the plot should be devised by the director (who might then truly
be called a cinema composer), devised especially for motion pictures,
and with peculiar qualities and appeals that could never so well be
expressed in other mediums.

But that is an ideal to be dreamed of. And, meanwhile, we “movie fans”
can enjoy the best that is being produced by collaborative methods, and
we can help toward the achievement of still better things by developing
a thorough appreciation of what is pictorially pleasing, at the same
time that we train ourselves to detect and talk out of existence the
common faults of the movies.



CHAPTER III

EYE TESTS FOR BEAUTY


Do the movies hurt your eyes? Some say “yes” and some say “no.” Why is
it that photoplay scenes sometimes flash and dazzle, but have neither
radiance nor sparkle? Why is it that the motions sometimes shown on
the screen get “on your nerves”? Why is it that you look at so much on
the screen and remember so little? These questions can be answered by
making certain eye tests for beauty, and, having answered them, we may
proceed to a detailed discussion of pictorial composition in a great
variety of cases.

In order to understand how the pleasure of pictorial beauty comes to a
spectator, we must analyze the processes of looking and seeing. These
processes consist partly of eye-work and partly of brain-work. That is,
the physical eye must do certain work before the brain gets the visual
image. Now if the physical eye has to work too hard, or bear a sudden
strain, or undergo excessive wear, it will not function well; and,
consequently, the brain will have to work harder in order to grasp the
picture. All this causes displeasure, and displeasure is in conflict
with beauty.

Let us state, once for all, that motion pictures need never hurt the
eyes--quite the contrary. Yet we have often seen photoplays that
did hurt the eyes. Some of the reasons for this will be given in the
following paragraphs.

A familiar operation of the physical eye is the contraction and
dilation of the pupil. We know from childhood that the pupil grows
large when the light is weak, and small when the light is strong. We
also know that the eye cannot make this adjustment instantly. If a
strong light is suddenly flashed on us, for example, when we lie awake
in a dark room it dazzles us, because our pupils are adjusted for
darkness; it even hurts so much that we defend ourselves by closing the
eyelids.

In exactly the same way our eyes are shocked by the movies when a
dazzling white light is flashed on the screen where a somewhat darkened
scene has just vanished. The pupil is caught unawares, is not instantly
able to protect the eye, and, besides, must use up a certain amount
of energy in adapting itself to the new condition. Such a shock once
or twice during the evening might easily be forgiven and forgotten,
might, in fact, be hardly felt at the time; but fifty such shocks in a
five-reel photoplay would certainly weary the eye, and a play of that
sort could hardly be called beautiful.

The fault which we have just named lies in the joining of scenes. But
it is not, as a rule, necessary to connect scenes or sections of a film
so that there is a jump from the darkest dark to the whitest white, or
vice versa. This can be avoided, of course, by the device of “fading
out” one scene and “fading in” the next, which gives the eye time to
adapt itself, or by “fading down” or “up” just far enough to match
the exact tone of the next picture. The shock can also be avoided by
joining various sections of the film in a series of steps of increasing
brightness or darkness.

The eye is hurt, we have said, by a sharp succession of black and
white. It is also hurt by a sharp contrast of whites and blacks lying
side by side on the screen. Such extremes are avoided in paintings. The
next time you are in an art museum please compare the brightest white
in any portrait with the white of your cuff, or your handkerchief, or a
piece of paper. You may be surprised to discover that the high light in
that painting is not severely white. It is rather grayish or yellowish,
soft and easy to the eye. Observe also that the darkest hue in that
painting is far from the deepest possible black. The extremes of tone
are, in fact, never very far apart, and are therefore easily grasped by
the eye without undue strain.

And while you are thinking of this practice of painters, you might
compare it with the similar practice of composers of music. Your piano
has many keys, the highest one in the treble being extremely far from
the lowest one in the bass. Yet if you examine the score of any single
piece of music you will discover that the highest note in that piece is
not so very far from the lowest note in the same piece. It might have
been possible to use the entire keyboard, but the composer has been
wise enough not to try it. His extreme notes are so near together that
the ear is able to catch them and all the subtle values of the music in
between, without being strained by the effort.

It seems, therefore, that in artistic matters moderation is a good
thing, is, in fact, necessary to produce real beauty. But moderation
in the movies is not yet a widely accepted gospel. Too often we find
that the dazzling flood of rays from a strong searchlight blazes over
several square yards of the silver screen, while at the same moment,
on adjoining parts of the same screen hang the deep shades of night.
The contrasts are sharp as lightning, not only in the scenes, but also
in the sub-titles which are cut in between. Our eyes gaze and twitch
and hurt, until it is a real relief to step out and rest them upon
something comparatively moderate, like the electric signs on Broadway.

If there were some mechanical difficulty which made this clashing
effect of the motion pictures necessary, we could never hope for
beauty on the screen; for no art can achieve beauty by producing pain.
But we know from the work of such directors as James Cruze, D. W.
Griffith, Allan Dwan, Rex Ingram, and John Robertson, that the moving
picture camera is capable of recording light gray and dark gray, as
well as steel white and ebony. They have shown us that it is possible
to produce sub-titles with light gray lettering against a dark gray
ground, and that such a combination of tones is pleasing to the eye.
They have shown us that it is possible to screen a lady of the fairest
face and dressed in the snowiest gown so as to bring out the softest
tones of light and shade, yet show nothing as dazzling as snow and
nothing as black as ebony.

[Illustration: From _The Spell of the Yukon_. An interesting example of
_chiaroscuro_ and the harmonizing of dramatic pantomime with pictorial
pattern. The composition, however, is slightly marred by over-emphasis
on the window. See pages 55 and 63.]

[Illustration: A study of the “still” shown above, illustrating a
simple method of analyzing pictorial composition. See page 63.]

Some of the “stills” in this book give a hint of the sharp contrasts in
the inferior films, but it is only a hint, because the white portions
in those illustrations can be no whiter than the paper of the page,
which is dull in comparison with the blaze on the screen. The
movie theater is the best place to verify the theories which we are
here trying to explain in words. Go to the movies. Whenever you find
that you enjoy the films thoroughly, then by all means do not stop to
analyze or criticise. If you enjoy any particular film so much that you
are sure you would like to see it two or three times every year for
the rest of your life, you may be happy, for you have discovered one
of the classics of the screen. Do not analyze that film either, unless
you are in the business of making pictures. But if a film makes you
uncomfortable, or if it is so bad that you are quite disgusted with it,
then, though you must become a martyr to do it, please stay and see it
again. Compare the good parts of the film, if there are any, with the
bad parts; study it in detail until you see where the trouble lies.
And when you have discovered the real causes of ugliness in that film,
wouldn’t it be a public service to express your opinion in such a way
that the manager of your theater might hear it?

Thus far in this chapter we have discussed only a single operation of
the eye, namely, the expanding and contracting of the pupils under the
effect of darkness and brightness, but it is easy to understand now how
such an apparently slight thing may seriously affect our enjoyment of
the movies. Let the reader, when he is next displeased by a picture,
test it for sharpness of contrast between white and black. He will
probably not have to seek further for explanation of its ugliness.

Another operation which the eye-machine performs is the accommodation
to color. It is somewhat similar to the accommodation to distance,
which we shall describe, if the reader will help us by making an
experiment. Close one eye and look steadily with the other at an
object across the room. Now, without changing your gaze, hold up your
finger in line with this object and about a foot away from your eye.
The outline of the finger will be indistinct as long as you keep the
eye focused on the remote object. Now, still keeping one eye shut,
look at your finger until you can see the little ridges on it. The eye
has changed its focus, and the remote object is now indistinct. What
happens is that the lens within the eye changes its shape, bulging more
for near objects and flattening again for distant objects. This work of
the eye, called accommodation, is done by certain delicate muscles. A
little of it may be stimulating, but too much will make the eyes tired.

Now it is a strange thing that certain colors affect the eyes in the
same way as distances. Painters knew this fact for hundreds of years
before the scientists were able to explain the reason. They knew that
blue seemed farther away than red, and arranged the colors in their
paintings accordingly. All artists have learned the trick, even some of
our commercial artists, who make advertising posters for street cars.
Blue makes the background fall back; red makes a figure stand forward.
The reason for this illusion is that when the eye looks at red it
adjusts itself exactly as if it were looking at a near object, and thus
deceives the brain, so to speak; and when it looks at blue it adjusts
itself as if it were looking at a distant object and again deceives the
brain. Or, to state the fact more completely, a color from the red end
of the color scale (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet)
seems nearer to the eye than one from the violet end, even though the
colors are all placed equally distant from the eye.

Now we shall see that, although these effects of color are useful in
a painting, they may be harmful in a motion picture. When we behold
a painting in which colors ranging from red to yellow are contrasted
with colors ranging from violet to blue, we may, indeed, get a pleasant
sensation of the eye because of the stimulating activity in the work
of accommodation. There is to most people a distinct pleasure, for
example, in shifting the gaze from orange-yellow to blue, because those
colors are felt to be “complementary.” But it must be remembered that
the circumstances of looking at a painting are entirely different from
those of looking at a motion picture.

Two differences are especially notable. The first difference is that
when we look at a painting we ourselves are practically the choosers of
when and how long to look at any spot, line, shape, or color. In other
words, we ourselves practically decide on how much and what kind of
work our eyes shall do; but when we look at a motion picture we never
know at any instant what we may be called upon to do the next instant.
That makes us nervous. We need to be constantly braced for the shock
and, if we are not so braced, we must suffer when the shock comes.

The second difference is that everything in a painting is always
actually at rest, while nearly everything in a motion picture is always
in motion. If a painting, which does not move in any of its parts,
can suggest movement to our imagination, or can make our eyes perform
actual movements of vision, such movements, actual and imaginary, are
pleasantly stimulating. The eyes enjoy the natural activity of their
work, and we feel that there is life in the painting. But the motion
picture, by its very nature, has as much life as it needs. It naturally
gives the eyes all the work they can stand. Hence, if they need any
stimulating change at all, it is rather the change from movement to
repose.

Now let us go to the movie theater. Very likely before the show is over
we shall be treated to a rapid shifting from the blue of some exterior
scene in the moonlight to the orange-yellowish glow of some interior
scene in lamplight. Our eyes, therefore, must accommodate their lenses
to one of these colors again and again, only to receive a sudden demand
for accommodation to the other color. We have no choice in the matter
except to get up and go out. Our eyes, already busy enough, do not need
the stimulation of any more activity, and our minds, already active
enough, would prefer the relief of something more reposeful.

If the director must have this shifting from blue to orange to blue,
etc., he might, at least, give us some warning, some softening of the
shock, so to speak. For example, if there is to be a sudden shift from
a yellowish lamp-light scene to a bluish night scene, a hint might be
given by attracting our attention to a window, through which the blue
of night is shown. And similarly in a bluish night scene our attention
might be attracted toward the warm glow from a door or window as a
warning that the next scene is to be flooded with that color. Thus in
either case we would have a chance to prepare our eyes for the shift,
and we would sense a better continuity of movement.

The subject of color in the movies will be discussed again in following
chapters. It may be remarked in passing that, since color movies are
still highly experimental, it is only to be expected that mistakes of
many kinds will be made. Doubtless the leading directors can be trusted
to learn from experience. Yet it behooves us who sit in the theaters to
be as disapproving of new faults as we are exultant over new beauties.

It is not discouraging to discover a fault, so long as we see that it
is one which might have been avoided. We want to make it plain in this
chapter that, although the movies sometimes hurt the eyes, it is never
due to any necessity. It is a fact that pictures on the screen, when
properly made, are always pleasing to the spectators’ eyes. And he who
does not accept this as a fundamental proposition can hardly come by
any large faith in the future of the photoplay as art.

But we must make a few more eye tests for beauty. If you face a wall
about twenty feet away, you can, without changing the position of your
head, look at the left side or the right, at the top or bottom, or you
can look at the four corners of the wall in succession. These three
different kinds of movements, vertical, horizontal, circular, are
controlled by as many different sets of muscles.

When we look at pictures, especially large pictures, these muscles are
constantly busy directing our line of regard from one point of interest
to another; and, whether there are definite points of interest or not,
our eyes will range over the lines and shapes as we try to discover
what they are meant to represent.

Now a certain amount of eye-movement does not hurt the muscles; it is,
on the contrary, rather pleasant, because their business is to attend
to those matters. But the eye will become fatigued by a great amount of
movement, especially when it is forced upon us at unexpected moments,
just as any other part of the body will become fatigued when it is
forced to perform a great number of sudden, unexpected tasks.

A simple experiment will illustrate this further. Suppose that we are
sitting in our door-yard, gazing across a valley at a group of trees
a mile or so away. It is more restful to look at those distant trees
than at a single tree only fifty feet away; and the reason is simple.
When we look at any object our eyes have a tendency to follow its
outline. Now, of course, it requires more rolling of the eyes to follow
the outline of a tree near by than one in the distance. This rolling
movement involves muscular work. And, if we look first at the near,
large object and then shift to the distant, small ones, we immediately
experience the restfulness of reduced work. There are other reasons why
distant objects are restful to the eyes, but they do not concern us
here.

Have you ever noticed the pleasing effect in the motion pictures when
the thing of interest, say, a train or a band of horsemen disappearing
in the distance, narrows itself down to a small space? All images on
the screen are, of course, equally distant from the spectator; yet
there is a sense of restfulness, as we have just explained, because the
rolling of the eyes decreases with the diminishing of the image and its
area of movement on the screen.

But suddenly there comes a close-up of a face twenty feet in diameter,
and our eyes have to get busy in the effort to cover the whole field at
once. They rove quickly over several square yards of screen until that
face is completely surveyed and every detail noted. Lots of looking!
Yes, but that “star” gets fifty thousand dollars a month! Can’t fool
the camera though--crow’s-feet on both sides--fourteen diamonds in the
left ear-drop and----

Flash to a broad, quiet, soft gray landscape, with a lone rider on
the horizon--oh, pshaw!--diamonds must ’a’ been glass though--anyway,
this picture’s good for sore eyes--kind o’ easy feelin’--Indian scout
maybe--or a----

Flash to a close-up of a Mexican bandit, etc., etc. And our eyes get
busy again mapping out the whole subject from hat to hoof, from bridle
to tail. Exciting! Oh, yes, indeed, and interesting too, but not as
art; for those little muscles up there are jerked around too much, they
are working overtime, and soon get weary.

“Oh, well, I reckon I can stand the strain,” says some heckler, who
“don’t quite, you know, get this high-brow stuff.” Of course, he can
stand it. We have stood the mad orchestra of the elevated trains, and
the riveters, and the neighbor’s parrot for years, but we do not call
it music.

The difference between noise and harmony is a physical difference.
If this were not true, no one could ever tune your piano. Jarring,
clashing, discordant sounds displease the ear. Just why noise
displeases is not for us to say. But we have already explained three
reasons why bad motion pictures hurt the eyes. Let us remember them.
First, sudden shifts from dark to bright pictures shock the eye.
Second, sudden shifts from a picture in a “cool” tint to another in
a “warm” tint, and vice versa, over-work the eye. Third, a series of
quick close-ups or other pictures in which the frame is filled with the
subject demands too much eye-movement.

In the case of the close-up, or any large picture where the points of
interest are scattered all over the field of vision, the eyes, as we
have said, become strained by too much rolling, a muscular effort which
is necessary even though the separate points of interest may themselves
be fixed, as fixed as the four corners of the screen itself.

But when the points of interest are moving things, as they generally
are in the movies, new causes of strain often arise. Sometimes the
object we are trying to look at moves so fast that we can hardly follow
it. Quick movement is generally desired by the directors because they
think that briskness, or “pep,” makes the dramatic action more intense.
Consequently people in the movies walk, march, dance, fight, and carry
on with terrific speed until our eyes become tired in the attempt to
observe all that is happening. The cure for such pictorial hysterics
is simple moderation, the elimination of jerky movements wherever
possible, and the choice of movements so easy to follow that the eye
may perceive them with the least muscular effort.

We do not say that you who worship speed shall not have your express
trains, your racing cars, your airplanes, your cow-ponies, and
your Arabian steeds. You may have them all, because they can be so
photographed that an actual run of two or three miles may be presented
on the screen as a movement of only two or three feet.

We find, too, that there is something pleasing about the apparent
slowness of actions that are moderated by distance. On the far horizon,
therefore, the fleetest things seem retarded to a stately pace that
claims our restful gaze. But when a quick movement takes place in the
foreground of the picture, too near the camera, ugliness results,
because the demands on the eye-muscles are too severe and unexpected.
Thus a sudden gesture, or the waving branches of trees or bushes, or a
motor car driving up in front of a house, or even such intended grace
as the movement in dancing, may spoil a picture by being too near the
camera.

Another thing which makes close-up movements ugly is the flicker, which
cannot be entirely eliminated. Our readers are doubtless generally
aware that what we see on the screen is simply the blending of a
rapid succession of still pictures falling on different spots in an
order and a direction which gives the appearance of motion. If you
examine a film you will find that there are in fact sixteen little
photographs, or “frames” to every foot of ribbon. The negative runs
through the camera, and the positive film through the projecting
machine, at a rate of about a foot per second. Now let us suppose that
we have a screen sixteen feet long and that we throw upon it a picture
of a car running at the rate of ten or eleven miles per hour. If the
picture is a close view the image will move across our screen in just
one second of time, for the speed we have assumed is at the rate of
sixteen feet per second. But, since there are only sixteen frames in
that foot, or second, of film, we know that only sixteen flashes of
the car have been thrown on the screen during that second. Therefore,
whatever particular part of the car we are looking at has fallen on
sixteen different spots of the screen, and each spot is just one foot
to the side of the previous one, because the screen is by assumption
just sixteen feet wide. Now these separations are so wide that the
eye cannot help noticing them even in the fraction of a second; there
is not sufficient blending of images to form smooth motion; and the
so-called flicker results.

However, if the car is photographed going obliquely away from us, the
entire motion may occupy only a small area of the screen, no matter
how far or fast the car goes; consequently the images fall much closer
together and the flicker becomes so slight that we scarcely notice it.
Also, since the field of movement is smaller in extent, the rolling of
our eyes in ranging over the subject is less, and the fatigue of the
muscles is so slight that we scarcely notice that either.

We have been arguing that large violent movements on the screen hurt
the eyes, and we hope that our readers agree with us. But if any one
is doubtful we invite him to make the following test. Go to any movie
theater and sit down in the seventh or eighth row. Then after having
seen about half of the picture, move back to the last row, or stand
behind the last row. The picture will immediately seem more restful to
the eyes, because the distance has made the screen seem smaller and the
motions slower, two changes which, of course, make less work for the
eyes. Now stay in the new position until the program is finished, and
then see that part of the picture which was at first seen from the
front seat. It will appear much more pleasing to the eye than it did
the first time.

[Illustration: _Daylight and Lamplight_, a painting by William
McGregor. The design illustrates artistic balance and rhythm. See pages
41 and 77.]

[Illustration: A study of lines to illustrate the value of repetition
within a pattern. See page 40.]

But we cannot all sit in the back row of a theater, and besides, even
when screen motions are reasonably slow and limited, they may still
fail to produce the effect of beauty.

Now, before we go further into this discussion of beauty on the screen,
let us recall, that, as we have already said, the process of vision is
partly eye-work and partly brain-work. These two factors are so closely
connected in fact, that scientists cannot definitely separate them.[B]

    [B] If any of our readers are especially interested in the
        details of physiological and psychological experiments
        in vision which are made by experts, they should read
        Chapter III in Hugo Muensterberg’s “The Photoplay,” and
        should consult the current numbers and the volumes for
        the last five or six years of the “Psychological Review,”
        the “American Journal of Psychology,” the “Journal of
        Experimental Psychology,” and other similar periodicals,
        which are available in any large library.

From the results published in scientific periodicals it may be learned
that visible ugliness does not always make the physical work of the eye
more difficult. This is not to contradict what we have already said in
this chapter, but merely to state that there may be certain kinds of
ugliness on the screen which apparently do not hurt the eye at all.
And yet ugliness does affect the mental phase of vision. It will be
worth while giving a page or more to the testing of this statement; and
the discussion may lead to a useful definition to keep in mind when
criticizing the movies.

Curiously enough, the muscular movement of the eye when ranging over a
single jagged, irregular line is practically the same as when ranging
over a graceful line of similar length and direction. Scientific
experiment shows that we move our eye-balls in a jerky, irregular
manner, even when we view the most graceful line that can be drawn. Yet
it is commonly said by all of us that one line delights the eye and the
other does not. Evidently, therefore, the difference must lie in that
function of seeing which the brain performs. But the brain, too, is
a physical organ. It, too, can become fatigued, and it finds certain
kinds of work less fatiguing than others.

Psychologists have suggested that a graceful line is pleasant to look
at because the regularity and smoothness of its changes in direction
make it easily perceived as a complete unity. Thus in the diagram
facing page 39, lines A and B are pleasanter to look at than lines C
and D, because their character as lines can be grasped by the mind more
quickly and more easily than the character of C or D. And, for the same
reason, lines A and B taken together make a more pleasing combination
than lines B and C or lines C and D.

Now, if you will shut the book and try to draw any one of these four
lines, even in your imagination, you will discover that you remember A
and B almost perfectly, while you can hardly remember a single part of
either C or D. This proves that in your own case the business of seeing
has been more successful with graceful lines than with ugly ones. And,
of course, successful effort is always more pleasing than failure.

Our working definition of good pictorial composition, offered in the
preceding chapter, may be adapted here. Let us put it this way: A
beautiful line or combination of lines is one in which we can see and
feel much with ease, while an ugly line or combination is one in which
we cannot see or feel much except with great difficulty. The terms
“ease” and “difficulty” apply both to eye-work and brain-work.

One reason why we see _much with ease_ in a beautiful line is evidently
that any one part of the whole is a kind of key to some adjoining or
corresponding part. Thus in line A the lower curve is very similar to
the upper curve and leads into it with the smoothest continuity. And
this same lower curve of A is so similar to the lower curve of B that
we can see instantly the balanced relation between them. In ugly lines,
on the other hand, there are no such visual helps. Yet, if some kind of
balance or repetition is adopted, it may be that lines which are ugly
when considered singly take on a kind of beauty or interestingness when
considered as a group. Thus lines E, F, and G, are not as pleasing when
standing alone as they become when considered in relation to a similar
line symmetrically placed. Therefore, the combinations EF or FG, or
even EFG are more pleasing than any one of their parts.

Now let us apply these principles of continuity and repetition to the
lines in a picture. If you turn to Paxton’s “Daylight and Lamplight,”
facing page 39, you will observe instantly the beautifully curving line
of the woman’s back and also a balancing line down the side of the
urn. That sweep of line gives at once the key to the arrangement of
the picture.[C] In other words, you can see much of that picture with
ease, even in a glance. Now if you examine this picture more in detail
you will find much continuity of line and many parallelisms of line
and shape, all of which tend to make the arrangement simple, without
reducing any of the actual contents of the picture.

    [C] Out of fairness to the painter it must be added that this
        canvas, as the title indicates, is also a study in the
        balancing of cool and warm colors.

The “much” which we can see in a beautiful line includes such things
as its meaning or use in the picture, its fitness for that use, its
power to suggest associations, its interestingness, etc. But we shall
not take up those phases of beauty in this chapter; we are now merely
arguing that pictorial beauty economizes the work of the eye and brain,
while visible ugliness does not.

What we said, a moment ago, regarding the value of continuity and
repetition in fixed lines may also be applied to moving lines and
objects. The great appeal of the screen lies in the showing of vivid
movement, the flow of forms, the subtle weaving, through soft play of
light and shadow, of fanciful figures that melt like music while we
gaze, and yet remain in our minds like curves of a strange melody. When
such glimpses of beauty come, our eyes and brains surely do not feel
any friction or strain in the process of looking. But when ugly motions
are presented the eye must perform excessive movement, and the brain
must exert excessive effort.

What is an ugly motion? To answer this we must observe one or two facts
concerning the visual process of seeing motions. We must admit the
fact that one can perceive the motion of an object without following
it with the eyes. Any one can test this for himself by fixing his eyes
steadily on some spot on the wall. Without shifting his glance he may
have knowledge of motions going on at other places many feet away
from that spot. But it is also a fact that he will immediately feel an
inclination to shift his eyes in order to see any one of these motions
more clearly. In making that shift he will, of course, have to move his
eyeballs. Now, if that moving object changes its place, his eyeballs
will continue to make the movements necessary to follow it. And, if the
attention continues directed toward that object, his eyes will have to
make great or small movements, according as the object makes a great or
small change of place.

An interesting theory, which scientific tests support, is that,
although the eye has to make a series of irregular, jerky movements
when following any moving object, these movements become fewer and
smaller as the smoothness and regularity of the observed motion
increases.

What we have just said about eye movement explains, at least
partly, why the aimless crawling of a house fly over a window pane
is ugly, while the graceful flying of a sea gull is beautiful; why
the clambering of a monkey is ugly, while the swimming of a fish is
graceful, and why the zigzag falling of a sheet of paper thrown from a
window is displeasing, while the smooth spiralling of an airplane is
pleasing.

In some of the movements which we classify as beautiful, it is clear
that the principle of repetition is at work, which, as we have said,
makes seeing easy. Any task accomplished once and undertaken again
becomes easier and easier with repetition. We have already shown
how this makes the perception of rhythmical fixed lines or balanced
composition of fixed lines easier for the mind, if not for the eye
itself. A similar experience of ease comes from viewing rhythmical or
balanced motions.

You would not enjoy watching a dancer whose every movement was entirely
unlike every previous movement. The effect would be utter confusion.
You could not grasp, could not remember, what you saw. And you would
probably say that it was not dancing at all. On the contrary, the
beauty of a dance is largely due to the frequent repetitions or
similarities of movements. Again and again you see and enjoy the same
flexing of knee and poising of foot, the same curving of back and
tossing of head, the same sweeping of hand and floating of drapery;
and again and again the dancer moves through the same path of circling
lines. Yet in these repetitions there are slight variations, too,
because no human being works with the precision of a machine. And as
you watch the dance you get variety without multiplicity; you see much
with ease.

“Now, look here,” cuts in some old-time producer, “you don’t mean to
say that you want our actors to dance through a drama, do you--a murder
scene, or a wedding, or a meeting of profiteers to raise the price of
soap?” No, indeed, we do not. In fact, we are hardly thinking of them
as actors at all--not in this chapter. We are merely thinking of them
as moving shapes upon a screen. And we want those shapes to move about
in such a way that the motions will not hurt our eyes.

If we study those films that please us most we shall discover easy
continuity of movement, so that a path of motion described in any one
scene is extended, as it were, into a similar path of motion in the
following scene. In such motion pictures there may be shifts, but
there are no breaks. Paths of motion on the screen can remain long in
our memories, as though they were fixed lines in a picture. Clearly,
therefore, it would not be pleasing to have these remembered lines of
motion clashing with those which are being perceived.

[Illustration: From _Audrey_. Cover up the left half of this picture
and the lower half of the remaining part, and the quarter which then
remains will contain a more pleasing and dramatic composition than that
of the view taken as a whole. See pages 53 and 71.]

So much for the optical effects of single motions coming in succession.
Now we must advance to the consideration of several motions going on
in various directions during the same moment, which is a more usual
situation in the photoplay. Several motions at once may constitute a
harmony or a jumble, according to the first demands which they make
upon the eye-work and brain-work of vision.

The difference between visual harmony and disharmony seems to depend
partly on the fact that a pair of human eyes work together as one,
and not as two separate instruments. You cannot look up with one eye
and down with the other; you cannot look to the left with one eye
and to the right with the other; you cannot look at a distant object
with one eye and at a near one with the other. Hence, if you try to
look intently at two or more objects crossing each other in opposite
directions, your eyes are baffled and the effect is not pleasurable.
There is also a conflict in our mental work of seeing, when opposing
motions try to claim equal attention at the same time, unless, as we
have previously stated, these motions are in some kind of rhythmical
balance with each other.

Because of this baffling of eye and brain, therefore, we are displeased
by the sight of two automobiles passing each other in opposite
directions, or by the crossing of an actor’s gestures with the spoke
of a wheel or the twig of a tree. A particularly ugly crossing is that
of false and real motion, which even some of the best directors still
indulge in. False, or apparent, motion occurs when the camera itself
has been moving about while the picture was being taken. Thus a road is
made to shoot upwards over the screen while our hero is riding madly
toward us, or a parlor slides drunkenly to one side while some fair
lady marches toward a door, or a stairway becomes a waterfall which
she swims upstairs. The real motion, of course, contains the dramatic
interest, but the false motion forces itself upon us by its novelty or
unexpectedness; it becomes difficult for us to see much with ease, and
the result is ugliness.

A particularly annoying device of recent vogue is the sub-title insert
which is decorated with symbolical motions. It forces the spectator
to read words and look at motions at the same time and upon the same
spot of the screen. The Metro interpretation of the “Four Horsemen of
the Apocalypse,” beautiful in its photographed scenes, was spoiled by
much ugliness of that kind. In one sub-title we must look at the Beast
snorting and chopping his long jaws, while several lines of type are
spread over his horrible movements. In others we see water flowing
from the bottom of the screen toward the top, or we see a pin-wheel of
sparks, to represent telegraphic messages going around the world, or we
see a squirrel in his wheel-cage, to represent something or other, and
in each of these cases we must also read words in glaring type blazed
on top of the moving symbols.

Oppositions and conflicts baffle and bewilder the eye and mind, but
concurrent co-operating motions please them. It is easy, for example,
to look at the shower of fire from a sky rocket, because the lines move
in similar directions and remain comparatively near together, each one,
as it were, helping the others, so that what we see in one part of the
motion is a key to the rest of the motion. There is a similar unity and
rhythmical balance in the motion of a flock of birds, a school of fish,
or a group of dancers, the billows of the sea, or the feathery fall of
snowflakes.

The production of harmonious motions in a photoplay might seem to us
spectators to be merely a matter of spying with a camera and catching
views of harmonious actions and settings. But the problem is not so
simple. For the movements within any given scene may be perfectly
orchestrated with respect to each other, and yet may clash with every
one of the movements in the following scene. If in one picture our
eyes and minds have adjusted themselves to the delicate threading of
snow-flakes, falling like a softly changing tapestry, they can only be
shocked by a sudden jump to the vigorous curling of a sea wave breaking
on the beach. And in our natural desire to appreciate both subjects
at once we are disappointed to find that each has spoiled the other.
Delicacy looks at power and thinks it violence; power looks at delicacy
and thinks it weakness. It is a visual effect such as one would get
from a drawing where the hair lines of the finest pen and thinnest ink
were crossed by the coarse marks of a blunt piece of charcoal.

So sharp a contrast might have a certain dramatic, stirring effect,
like the use of swear words in a prayer; the very hurt might bring
a certain thrill. An original and ingenious man, Mr. Griffith, for
instance, may choose to show us a close-up of a little girl smiling
in wistful innocence, her pretty curls quivering in the light breeze,
contrasted suddenly with a reeking flood of soldiers pouring into a
city street. Striking? Yes, exactly. The device is so striking that Mr.
Griffith himself has learned to use it with restraint. Because once
upon a time he composed a photoplay called “Intolerance,” which was
so full of striking contrasts that it failed. There were only a few
thousand people in the world who could stand the strain of looking at
it.

Thus as we analyze the optical aspects of a motion picture we are
amazed at the number of things that may conspire to hurt our eyes, and
we sympathize more than ever with the sincere cinema composer. He,
the new hope of the movies, feels the need of other equipment than a
line of talk and a megaphone. He no longer applies for a position in a
studio on the strength of his record as an actor, as a stage director,
as a city editor, as a college cheer leader, or as a drill sergeant in
the army. He has begun to think in pictorial composition and not in
words. He is never without his sketching pad and piece of charcoal,
because, forsooth, his business is picture making. He makes hundreds of
sketches by day, of shapes, and lines, and tones, and he goes over them
again and changes them by night. His scenario contains almost as many
drawings as words. He knows before he says “Good morning” to his queens
and cut-throats just what places and spaces their figures will occupy
during the pictorial climaxes, as well as during the movements to, and
away from, those climaxes. He sits among miles of films which he cuts,
joins, runs through his projecting machine, and cuts and joins again.
He knows that pictorial beauty does not come to the screen merely
because the camera itself is a wonderful instrument. He knows, what so
many critics are beginning to discover, that “the photography” may be
excellent in a film, while its pictorial composition is atrocious. He
knows first and last and always that, unless he makes his photoplay
fundamentally pleasing to the eyes of the spectator, he can never give
it the magic power of graphic art.



CHAPTER IV

PICTORIAL FORCE IN FIXED PATTERNS


Frequently while a director is rehearsing a photoplay scene he will
sing out the command, “Hold it!” indicating thereby that the player
has struck an attitude, or the players have woven themselves into a
pattern, which is so expressive and beautiful that it deserves to be
held for several seconds. What the camera then records will be shown on
the screen as a striking pictorial moment, and, while it lasts, will
appear as fixed as a painting.

But it is a peculiar psychological fact that such pictorial moments
seem to occur in every movement, whether the actors have paused or not,
the spectator seeing and remembering these arrested moments as though
they were fixed pictures. This peculiar fact, that we remember fixed
moments among continuous movements, has been discussed at some length
in Chapter III of “The Art of Photoplay Making,” and will, therefore,
not be dwelt upon here. However, a single example may illustrate what
we mean. Suppose we watch a diver stepping out upon a high springboard
and diving into a pool. The whole feat is, of course, a movement
without pause from beginning to end; yet our eyes will somehow arrest
one moment as the most interesting, the most pictorial. It may be the
moment when the diver is about midway between the springboard and the
water, a moment when the body seems to float strangely upon the air. We
are not unaware of the other phases of the dive, yet this particular
moment impresses us; to it we apply our fine appraisal of form.

Similarly in a motion picture theater we unconsciously select moments
from the action before us. These fleeting moments which fix themselves,
so to speak, demand practically the same work (or shall we call it
play?) from our eyes and minds as the momentarily fixed pictures which
the director sometimes demands. At such times the whole pattern on the
screen becomes as static as a painting, and its power or weakness,
its beauty or lack of beauty, may be appreciated much as one would
appreciate a design in a painting.

A painting enchants the beholder, not only by its color, but also
by its lines and pattern. The peculiar power which resides in the
arrangement of lines and masses has been studied by art critics
for hundreds of years, and many of the principles which they have
discovered might well be recalled by us in judging those moments of
a motion picture which may be viewed as fixed designs. And what we
learn by making such applications will help us greatly toward a better
understanding of the beauty of pictorial motions on the screen.

By what visual processes do we grasp the meaning of a picture? What
happens when we first look at the picture? And what happens as we
continue looking? The answers, as nearly as can be ascertained, are
as follows. When we face a picture our eyes first glance at some spot
or region which is more attractive than all others, and then proceed
to explore the whole picture, ranging over all of its parts, and
returning again to the center of attraction. In certain compositions
this whole tour of inspection may be accomplished in one trip, and may
be repeated at will, while in other compositions the inspection may
require various side trips away from the center of interest to the
outlying districts and back again. Of course, we are not aware that our
eyes are doing all these things when we are at the movies, but that is
what happens, just the same.

These visual processes take place in an exceedingly short time, usually
only a fraction of a second, but they are real physical processes,
nevertheless, subject to the laws of physical comfort and fatigue, and
capable of being tested by the ordinary laws of physical efficiency.

Perhaps the first test, in this hectic age of ours, is speed. The
quicker we can see and interpret a thing after we begin looking at
it, the more satisfied we are. Another test is ease, or freedom from
fatigue. The less energy we expend in looking, the more pleased we are.
Hence, if the several parts of a picture can be quickly and easily seen
and related to each other, the picture as a whole may be considered
beautiful, providing it satisfies certain other demands, which will be
analyzed later on.

Now suppose that we are at the movies and that some pictorial moment
from the flowing action is arrested in our minds. If we are critical
and feel like analyzing the effect of that arrested moment we may well
ask such questions as the following:

What portion of that picture did we look at first, and why? Was that
the spot which the cinema composer desired us to see first? If not,
how did he happen to mislead us and waste our time?

Where did our glances wander as we continued looking at the picture?
Did they follow the lines which the cinema composer had mapped out? If
not, what is wrong with his plan?

What part of the picture remains longest in memory? Does it coincide
with the dramatic emphasis intended by the composer? If not, what
caused the wrong accent?

Was the picture as a whole really beautiful to the eyes? If not, what
made it displeasing?

Beginning with the first question, we may say that the attracting
power of any portion of a picture depends upon many circumstances and
conditions. For example, a patch of white on an area of dark will
attract the eye, because it is natural for the eye to seek light in
preference to dark. Hence, in the “still” from “Audrey” on page 45 we
see the woman first; then we see the tree trunks, the reflections in
the water, and the person half hidden in the bushes to the left. It
is also natural for the eye to catch and follow the longest line in a
composition. Therefore the trunk of the fallen tree in this picture
helps to lead the eye to the woman. It is, furthermore, natural for the
eye to follow two or more lines to a point where they meet. Therefore
this picture would have given more emphasis to the woman if she had
been placed near the root of the tree trunk, where many lines converge.

The spectator in the theater should be enabled to see the central
interest at the very first instant of projection. Hence when the
picture is being taken, all lines of indication, gesture, draperies,
etc., should be set, before the camera begins “shooting,” and these
lines should connect up with the paths of previously moving objects, so
that the spectator’s eyes may sweep at once to the central interest.

The need of this may be illustrated by a horrible example. Let us turn
to the “still” on page 55. It is a safe bet that every one who looks at
this picture will first see a long diagonal pole, one of the supports
of the swing, because that is the longest, most striking line of the
picture. The poles leaning together and the converging chains, though
of no dramatic importance whatsoever, attract immediate attention to
themselves, and also carry the eye to the two standing girls; which is
clearly a mistake in composition, for the real interest evidently lies
in the facial expressions of the man and woman, who are conversing with
each other.

Students of pictorial design have discovered that, of all converging
lines in a drawing, those which meet at right angles usually attract
the eyes most strongly. Now if we look again at the “still” under
discussion we will observe that there are many square corners in its
composition, but that none of these angles coincide with any interest
deserving of pictorial emphasis. Two of the strongest accents are at
the square corners where the long pole and the brick curbing meet. Yet
there is certainly no very exciting interest in that region. Hence our
eyes wander thither in vain.

Let us speculate for a moment on what would happen to this composition
if we remove the diagonal poles, chains, etc., and turn the swing into
a seat. The figures, even as they stand, would then form a not
unpleasing rhythm, and the line of heads, with expressions helping to
give direction, would lead to the heroine.

[Illustration: This “still” illustrates misplaced emphasis and several
other defects in pictorial composition which characterized the general
run of movies a few years ago. See page 54.]

[Illustration: A specimen of bad composition, from an old film. The
window is emphasized by its curious shape, by its central position, by
its strong contrasts of black and white, and by the woman’s gesture;
yet this window has no dramatic significance whatsoever in the scene.
See page 55.]

A glaring example of wrong emphasis caused by the attraction of a
right-angled shape is to be seen in a “still” from “Other Men’s
Wives,” on opposite page, where the window, toward which the woman
unconsciously points her wand, irresistibly attracts the attention of
the spectator. Is it not evident from even a cursory analysis of these
“stills” that, though the directors may have given some thought to the
poses and groupings of the performers, they have failed to realize
that every other visible thing within scope of the camera must also
be harmonized with the figures in order to keep the dramatic emphasis
where it belongs?

Keeping in mind what we have just said about the visual accents of
right angles we turn to a “still” from the “Spell of the Yukon,” facing
page 28. The window catches our eyes before anything else in the
picture, both because of its square corners and because of its sharp
contrasts of black and white. Though this distraction may be only for a
brief moment, it is enough to keep our attention for that moment away
from the man and boy, set in fine atmosphere.

It is only common sense to aim at making the visual interest of a
picture coincide with the dramatic interest. And this can be done by
controlling such means of attraction as we have just mentioned. When
we look at the painting entitled “The Shepherdess,” facing page 21,
our glance falls immediately upon the shepherdess, because the almost
vertical line of her body forms a cross with the horizontal line of
the sheep’s backs. Yet the design is so subtle that, unless we stop to
analyze, we do not notice how the painter achieves his emphasis. We do
not notice that the front of the woman’s body is really a continuation
of the left edge of a tree which extends to the top of the frame, that
her profile is the continuation of a line of foliage from another tree,
that her staff makes right angles with her throat and with the back of
her head, that the rhythmical contours of a sheep flow into her left
hand and arm, and that a shadow from the lower center of the picture
leads to her feet.

If a painter establishes his emphasis so carefully in a picture which
the beholder may regard for hours at a time, it would seem all the
more urgent for a cinema composer to study out the correct emphasis
for a pictorial moment which the spectator must grasp in only a second
or two. It is extremely important, for the simple reason that, if the
director does not deliberately draw the attention of the spectator to
the dramatic interest in the picture, it is most likely that accident
will emphasize some other part, as we have seen in the examples already
discussed; and then, before the spectator has time to reason himself
away from the false emphasis to the true interest, the action will go
on to some other scene, and a part of the real message will be lost.

[Illustration: From _The Spell of the Yukon_. There are too many
distracting shapes in the left end of this picture. Mask over the
cabin, the sleigh, and the two dogs farthest to the left, and the
remaining part of the picture becomes a pleasing composition of line,
shape, and tone. See page 56.]

Let us illustrate this again by turning to another “still” from “The
Spell of the Yukon,” facing page 57. The thing which attracts first and
longest is the strange object in the upper left-hand corner. On the
screen our eyes would wander away to the dogs and the man, but they
would wander back again to that strange shape, because it is a law of
visual attention that the strangest and most unfamiliar shape attracts
most strongly. We would be curious about that shape, and by the time we
had decided that it was an Alaskan sled, the picture would fade out and
we would have missed the message, namely the affectionate companionship
of the man and his dogs.

If the sled had been more completely shown, or viewed from a different
angle, or placed in a more natural position immediately behind a
team of dogs, it would not have seemed strange and distracting. This
composition could be greatly improved by simply eliminating the left
third of it. If you cover up the sled and the two dogs nearest it with
a sheet of paper you will see that what remains is a fairly pleasing
arrangement, with considerably more emphasis on the man and the
theme of his affection for the dogs, with a better pattern and more
rhythmical lines.

If the director had simplified his composition as we have suggested he
might have eliminated the wrong emphasis and secured the right emphasis
in one stroke. The dark figure of the man framed roughly in white and
gray would have attracted attention by its tonal isolation. Emphasis
by isolation involves simplicity and economy, and for that very
reason, perhaps, this device is so often neglected by less experienced
directors. They breathe the poisonous air of extravagance and thrash
their arms in the heretical belief that multiplicity is power. Compare,
for instance, the “still” of “Polly of the Circus,” facing page 79,
with “The Banquet of the Officers of St. Andrew,” by Frans Hals,
facing page 79, and you get at once the distinct impression that Hals’s
picture depicts a larger crowd than the “still.” But you will be
astonished to find that the painting actually contains but twelve men,
while the “still” contains seventeen men, one woman, and one horse.

In the painting every head is isolated by hat, ruff, costume, or panel,
and seems to have plenty of room to move freely without bumping. Our
eyes can study the contours and values of those heads without colliding
with other interests. And the fact that each head is treated almost as
though it were a separate portrait might be called a trick of design
which makes us overestimate the number in the group, thus getting
the impression of a throng. Surely this is good economy. Compare it
with the extravagant composition of the circus crowd. There you see
heads and bodies huddled together in a meaningless jumble. No interest
is significantly framed, no two interests are properly spaced. The
director may have swelled the wage roll, but he has shrivelled the
art product. Perhaps it is not necessary to go further in support of
our contention that certain visual values and devices of arrangement
can be used, separately or in combination, to control the glances of
spectators, and that, unless these means are properly used, pictorial
impressiveness cannot be obtained. We have discussed the uses of
a bright patch on a generally dark ground, long converging lines,
crosses, sharp contrasts of tone and color, unfamiliar shapes, and
isolation of subject. Scores of other principles of design, well known
to painters, might be used to emphasize a screen picture during that
moment of the action when all movement seems to have stopped. Of
course, when the movement is actually or apparently resumed, emphasis
will be controlled according to the laws by which motion appeals to the
eye. But that is a subject for another chapter.

To continue our analysis of fixed design, let us examine the methods
whereby various pictorial elements may be fused into a unity. Every
writer knows that a sentence is really a train of words which, though
actually standing still on the paper, can carry the reader’s mind
swiftly across the page. By various literary devices the reader’s
interest is caught and carried from emphasis to emphasis, and by
various devices the reader’s thoughts may be organized into a complete
unity. So, too, the lines and shapes of a picture, however still they
may stand for the moment on the screen have the power to carry the
spectator’s eyes from interest to interest; and they may, if properly
designed, guide his attention through the picture in such a way as to
gather all of its parts into a complete unity.

When the eyes are caught by something in a picture, they do not at
first rest there, but proceed, as we have said, on a tour of inspection
of the whole area within the frame of that picture, after which they
return again to the first visual interest. In making this tour the eyes
seek, or at least, follow a pattern. Let us test these statements by
turning to the “still” facing page 61. You cannot see every point of
the picture at once. Therefore your eyes range over it. Perhaps, now
that we call your attention to it, you can feel your eyes moving as
they follow the outlines of the white mass which is produced by the
girl’s figure and dress. To make sure that you feel these movements,
just look quickly from her head to her foot, to her right hand, to her
head again, etc. Now you realize that the white mass is contained in a
distinct triangle. That triangle is the pattern of the picture. Whether
you like it or not makes no difference; the triangular path must be
followed by your eyes.

This little exercise shows that the eyes, unlike the lens of a camera,
cannot see every part of a picture at once, but must range over it
from point to point, repeating the tour again and again as long as the
picture is in view. But, if we cannot see head, hand, and foot at once,
it is evident that we must remember the head while we are observing the
hand, that we must remember both the head and the hand while we are
observing the foot, etc., else the whole picture could never be built
up in our minds. It is also evident that the smoother the path, the
more easily and quickly can the tour of inspection be made.

The eye needs paths, finger-posts, and bridges to carry it from one
part of a picture to another, a need which painters discovered ages
ago, and responded to by uniting the lines of their drawings into
some sort of image or design. Thus the old masters often constructed
their paintings on the design of a circle, a rectangle, a triangle, a
diamond, a right-angled cross, an X shape, an S curve, or some other
equally simple pattern, finding by experience that this practice
always helped the beholder to grasp the picture as a unity. But they
were real magicians, those medieval masters, and as such knew how to
conceal their designs. Their technique, which the probing critic lays
bare, is neither seen nor suspected by the average beholder who stands
worshipful before their paintings. In fact, the technique of graphic
design can be effective only when it works subconsciously in the
spectator’s mind. Furthermore, those old masters knew how to achieve
many results through simple means. They knew how to produce unity,
emphasis, balance, and rhythm by the skillful manipulation of even a
single device.

[Illustration: _A Triangle._ The fundamental pattern in a picture
should not be obtrusive, as in this too obviously triangular shape.
Compare this “still” with the illustration facing page 76. See also
pages 59, 72 and 76.]

By contrast many motion picture directors of to-day are mere bunglers.
For example, in the “still” portrait which we have just studied there
is unity and a definite, though heavy, equilibrium, but there is no
rhythm, and the emphasis is sadly misplaced. The pose of the woman and
her relation to the rug and the background admittedly make a unity. Our
eyes ranging over the triangle, can easily grasp all that is important
in the picture and leave out the rest; but the triangular design is
severe and makes a wrong emphasis. In the first place, the design is
too obviously a triangle. We think of it as a mathematical figure, and
thus waste part of the attention which should be directed upon the
woman herself. And, in the second place, the accent is at the wrong
corner and on the wrong side of the triangle. The base of the triangle
is accented by containing the longest line in the composition, the line
being further emphasized by its straightness and by the sharp contrast
between black and white which it marks. This emphasis is, of course,
wrong, for we are certainly not interested in the pattern of this rug.
There is also no reason why our attention should be called to the
woman’s foot, or to the adjacent corner of the white panel in the rug,
yet our glance is attracted to that region by the strange zigzag line
described by the slipper and that white corner. These accents are wrong
at first glance, and they remain wrong as long as the picture lasts,
because every time we repeat the tour of inspection our eyes rest a
moment on these false interests.

To show that these mistakes lie entirely in the treatment, and not
in the device of the triangle, we need only turn to the painting of
“Mme. Lebrun and Her Daughter,” facing page 76. Here is a composition
distinctly triangular in design, yet one may have admired this picture
hundreds of times without observing that fact. Here is unity, without
obviousness or severity. Our eyes leap to the apex of the triangle,
and there find the chief interest, the head of the mother. And, as
we continue gazing, our attention still favors the mother, because
the white areas of her shoulder, arm, and robe attract the eye more
strongly than the other portions of the picture. Here, too, is graceful
balance and a flowing rhythm in every line.

If we consider merely the dramatic action of the subjects, as the
motion picture directors so often do, we observe that the poses in Mme.
Lebrun’s painting are natural and easy, that the gesture is graceful
and telling, and we realize how completely and impressively the
technique of design, the craft of composition, expresses the message of
the painter.

A part of Mme. Lebrun’s technique consisted in eliminating the setting,
because in this particular case she found it easier to express her
meaning without describing environment. Setting may often well be
eliminated in the movies, too, as in “Moon-Gold,” discussed below; but
usually the physical environment of action, as has been stated rather
exhaustively in Chapter VIII of “The Art of Photoplay Making,” can be
dramatized more vividly in the movies than in any other narrative art.
And it is an interesting problem of design to weave places into a
definite unity with persons, things, and action.

Let us see how this problem has been met in the cabin scene of
“The Spell of the Yukon,” facing page 28, which, in spite of the
too conspicuous window, already spoken of, has a rather successful
pictorial arrangement. For the sake of experiment, this “still” may be
analyzed by making a simple drawing, as in the sketch facing page 28.
We see that the design consists essentially of an oval shape surrounded
by rectangles. The rectangles may be seen in the lines of the window,
the bunk, the table, etc. The oval, which includes all of the dramatic
action, may be traced from the boy’s head, down the boy’s arm to the
man’s right knee and leg, up the man’s left hand, arm, and shoulder to
his head, and thence across to the boy’s head again. In the center of
this oval is the hand holding a pipe and making a telling gesture in
the story.

This oval design, taken by itself, is an excellent composition. The
lines furnish easy paths for the eye, and bind the boy and man together
into a dramatic unity. There is, to be sure, only an imaginary line
between the faces of the man and the boy, but that imaginary line is
nevertheless as vivid as any visible thing in the picture. In fact, the
break in the visible part of the oval serves to arrest our attention
upon the faces for a moment every time our glance swings through the
oval pattern. Leading toward this oval are the straight lines of the
bunk and the table, thus serving to give unity and force. But the lines
of the window make an isolated pattern which, instead of leading one’s
eye toward the dramatic focus, does just the opposite. The design,
as a whole, therefore, is imperfect. And, though we see much in the
picture, we do not see it entirely with ease.

If we turn to “Derby Day,” facing this page, a drawing by the English
artist, Thomas Rowlandson, we shall find a more interesting design
and a surer control of accents. Here the basic theme is a long line.
By “line” in this case we mean, not merely a single stroke of the
pencil, but any succession of lines, shapes, or even spots, so arranged
that they make a track for the eye to follow. In “Derby Day” the long
swinging line of the road is the basis of the design. Yet this line is
not quite identical with the wheel tracks. It begins, in fact, with the
feet of the donkey at the lower right-hand corner of the frame, and
follows through the dog, the baskets under the wagon, the hub of the
wheel, then over the heads of the group, through the hubs of the third
wagon, then with a slight downward drop it swings along the edge of the
field and the hedge, and finally leads through the horses and wagons,
out at the left end of the picture.

[Illustration: _Derby Day_, a drawing by Thomas Rowlandson, showing the
kind of composition which could be effectively used in photoplays. See
page 64.]

[Illustration: Analysis of the fundamental design in _Derby Day_
(above). See page 64.]

Upon this line the whole design is built, and rather cleverly, too,
for our attention is controlled by the subtle ordination of accents.
At the right end of the line is the most unusual and striking shape in
the picture, namely, the curved figure described by the wagon-cover
and the wheel. Such a strange shape, as we have pointed out earlier in
this chapter, has a strong attraction for the eye, and in this picture
marks emphasis Number One. Emphasis Number Two occurs near the middle
of the road at the turn, where four or more lines meet to form a cross.
These lines are produced by the basic line already described, by the
conspicuous tree, and by the hedge which runs up to it from the
left side of the bottom frame. Here again are illustrated visual laws
already discussed. The third emphasis in this picture is where the road
runs out on the left, our eyes being drawn in that direction by the
familiar device of converging lines. Observe that the mass of trees
in the background forms a distinct wedge with the point toward the
left, that the wagon train itself tapers sharply, that the three trees
along the road are successively smaller toward the left, and that the
field on that side of the road tapers somewhat in the same direction.
The combined effect of these converging lines and tapering shapes
carries our vision along the road so insistently that we follow it in
imagination beyond the frame.

Thus by the magic of pictorial design our vision is caught and so
controlled that a single glance, sweeping the picture in the direction
ordained by the artist, gives us a definite feeling of movement.
No matter who looks, or how often, he will see the accents in the
order we have named--covered wagon, turn of the road, far end of the
road--and will thus get the main story of the picture in the shortest
time, the simplest terms, and with the right emphasis. If this picture
were to be thrown upon the screen for only a second we are confident
that every spectator would instantly get the primary meaning, (1)
wagon loads of merry-makers (2) are swinging (3) up the road. There
are minor interests, too, such as the comic figures and actions of
the characters, the prancing of dogs and horses, the rustic cottage,
the tops of trees, clouds, etc.; but these are kept subsidiary in the
design and yet, as they emerge one by one, they are found to be in
complete harmony with the main theme, the movement of merry-makers
along a country road.

Of course, if a scene like this were filmed and thrown upon the screen,
the wagon train would actually be moving, and we would perceive the
motion, rather than infer it or feel it, as we do from the fixed
design of the drawing. Yet, if the cinema director were indifferent
as to where he placed his accents, and trusted to chance for his
pictorial pattern, we would surely not perceive that motion in its
full significance. Now, if lines, shapes and tonal values in a certain
arrangement can clarify and emphasize the message of a picture, it
is obvious that in some other arrangement they could obscure and
minimize that message. For example, if “Derby Day” were filmed, and
the composition were left to accident or to the bungling of some
director ignorant of the laws of design, it is quite probable that
he would “feature” the “picturesque” cottage, or perhaps a “cunning”
dog, a “scenic” tree, the “patriotic pull” of the flag, or the
“side-splitting” corpulency of a woman. No spectator would then see or
feel the dominant idea of this subject, which is the joy of going away
on the open road.

Right here it is a pleasure to state for the benefit of any reader who
may not have seen “The Covered Wagon,” that James Cruze, the director
of that photoplay, did not bungle his composition. Always the historic
wagon train of the pioneers strikes the dominant note of the scene,
seeming to compose itself spontaneously into a pictorial pattern
which accents the dramatic meaning. This is true even when there is
no physical movement. In the arroyo scene, for example, facing page
93, the wagons, drawn up into formation for a camp, harmonize sternly
with the savage-looking cliffs, and their zigzag arrangement somehow
suggests the sharp action of the fight with the Indians which fate
holds in store for this very place.

Enough has now been said to illustrate how design in a picture can
control our attention during the pauses and arrested moments on the
screen, and by so doing can relieve the eyes of unnecessary, wasteful
work and give unity and emphasis to the message of the picture. But
still other powers reside in design. While it hastens our grasp of
meanings, and even accentuates those meanings, it can affect the mind
in other ways that are still more important. And if we delve deeper
into these ways we shall come out with a clearer vision of the artistic
possibilities of the movies.



CHAPTER V.

RHYTHM AND REPOSE IN FIXED DESIGN


Directness, ease, emphasis, unity--these are the things which we have
just demanded of cinema composition, the pictorial form which contains,
and at the same time reveals, the story of a photoplay. But we demand
something more. We do not get complete æsthetic pleasure from any
composition which merely contains and reveals something else. The
vessel, while serving to convey its treasure, should have a charm of
its own. In poetry, for example, we are not satisfied with the language
which merely expresses the poetic content in clear and forceful style.
We crave poetic language, too, words and sentences that sound like
music and that by their very form appeal to our fancy.

In fact most people who have a highly developed taste for pictorial
art, consider that beauty of treatment is more important than beauty
of subject. Their emotions are stirred by something in the arrangement
of the lines, masses, tones, and colors, something that serves other
purposes than those of clearness, coherence, and emphasis. What
that something is, has always been a great question to students of
æsthetics. Mr. Clive Bell, for example, suggests that the essential
beauty of art lies in “significant form.” But you have to read through
his very interesting book entitled “Art” to get some notion of what he
means by that term. Miss Ethel D. Puffer, in her book “The Psychology
of Beauty,” has developed the very illuminating theory that the effect
of beauty on the human mind is both to stimulate and give repose. And
we shall adopt her theory for a while as a basis for a brief discussion
of rhythm and balance in cinematic forms.

The terms “stimulation and repose,” are, of course, contrary. The
feelings which they describe are in conflict. Yet this inner conflict
between stimulation and repose always takes place when a person is
faced with great beauty of art or nature. Any one of us can testify
to that from experience. When listening to music, when reading a
poem, when watching a play, when gazing at a temple, at a statue, or
a painting, we have felt something strangely stirring and at the same
time soothing, something both kindling and cooling, an inspiration to
do great deeds, and at the same time a desire to rest for the while in
satisfied contemplation.

Applying this theory to pictorial composition on the screen, we may say
that the quality of balance in line, pattern, and tone suggests repose,
while pulsating rhythm stimulates us to activity. This application at
least has the merit of giving us something definite to discuss.

Looking at the mechanical aspects of balance in a picture we shall
see that it can easily be analyzed. There is the balance of quantity
which may be seen by comparing the right half of the picture with
the left half, or the upper half with the lower half. Balance of
quantity is often connected with symmetry in the fundamental pattern,
as in the figure of the triangle. Further, there is balance through
depth, the foreground weighing against the background. Another kind of
balance is that of echoing motifs, a sort of fulfillment of the eye’s
expectations. There is also a balance of interests, which is quite
different from the balance of quantity, because a small quantity of
one thing may have greater weight of interest than a large quantity of
something else. And there is the balance of contrasts, such as light
against shadow, or straight lines against curved lines. How balance
in all of these forms may be obtained in cinema composition will be
discussed in the first half of this chapter.

One of the simplest tests for balance in a static picture is to draw a
vertical line through the center of the picture, and then to estimate
the weight, so to speak, of the two halves of the composition thus
formed. If we try the experiment with the “still” from the photoplay
“Maria Rosa,” facing page 71, we see at once that the left half is too
heavy. Besides containing by far the greater dramatic interest, it
contains too many objects, shapes, and lines to attract the eye.

[Illustration: From _Maria Rosa_. An interesting composition, but
thrown out of balance by too much weight in the left half. See page 70.]

Now if this “still” were a student’s painting which fell under the
eye of the master, he might suggest various ways of “saving” it. For
example, some of the bric-a-brac might be “painted out” from the
dressing table, the lower lines of the mirror might be softened, and
the door reflected in the mirror might be painted out, while some
similar interest might be painted in at the right of the picture. Or
if this “still” were an amateur print for your kodak album, you might
improve the picture considerably by trimming off the right end as far
as the woman’s skirt; that is, about one-fifth of the entire width. You
can estimate the value of that improvement right now by shutting off
that part of the “still” with a sheet of paper or any convenient thing
that may be used as a mask. Another picture may be formed by shutting
off the left third, just including the reflection of the woman in the
mirror. What then remains is a composition in beautiful balance, which,
incidentally, appeals more strongly to the imagination than the “still”
taken as a whole.

But neither trimming nor repainting nor retouching can be employed to
alter a bad grouping that has been recorded on a film. We sympathize,
therefore, with the conscientious cinema composer who has made a
mistake in composition, for he is forced either to “shoot” the scene
again or to clip it out entirely from the film.

Another test for balance of quantity is to draw a horizontal line
through the center of the composition and weigh the visual values in
the upper and lower halves thus formed. In the case of horizontal
divisions, however, we have accustomed ourselves to expect greater
weight at the bottom, because that is the natural arrangement of
material things about us. Keeping this fact in mind let us analyze
the “still” from “Audrey,” facing page 45. A glance shows us that the
composition is top-heavy, for almost everything of interest lies above
the center line. But turn the picture upside down, and look upon it as
though it were a pattern meant to be viewed in that position; you feel
immediately that the distribution of weights is more pleasing. Now hold
it as if the right end were the bottom, and the composition takes on
a heavy balance, with a commonplace symmetry of four long, rising and
spreading lines. This is so because the right half, which is really
too heavy when the picture is viewed in the position intended by the
director, seems to be a weight in place when considered as the bottom
of a pattern.

Yet we may find beauty in this “still,” if we only have the patience
to corner it. Cover up three-quarters of the composition, that is,
all of the left half, and all of the lower half; then the remaining
quarter will contain a pleasant composition, and a delightful appeal
to the imagination. There is in that upper right-hand quarter, both
balance and rhythm, both repose and stimulation. The heroine’s gestures
carry our attention to the left, in the direction she is going; but
her glances, and the attracting power of the converging trees, carry
our attention to the right. And in the course of this easy playing to
and fro our fancy swings out beyond the frame into realms of our own
imagination.

But there is still another test for pictorial equilibrium. Besides
the balance of one side against the other and of the top against the
bottom, a picture should preserve a balance between the foreground
and the background. This assumes that the picture really suggests the
dimension of depth, which is usually the case. Interesting exceptions,
however, may appear occasionally, as in the “still” facing page 61,
and the painting facing page 76. One may even find entire photoplays
with scenes done in two dimensions only. For example, “Moon-Gold,” a
Will Bradley production, released in 1921, presents a story of Pierrot,
Columbine, and Harlequin in a series of scenes in a single plane.
There is no background except blackness, and there is no foreground at
all. The pictures are as flat as a poster. Such elimination of setting
may have artistic merit, especially in stories of familiar or naïve
themes, but in more involved stories it is desirable to include the
whole setting of the action, not only because of the dramatic power of
environment, but also because of the pictorial wealth which may thus be
added.

To test this third balance of a picture you need only imagine a curtain
of glass dropped so as to separate equally the interests near the
spectator from those farther away. Such a plane is, in fact, usually
imagined by a painter when he lays out his design. Though he does not
cut his ground mechanically into two equal areas, he usually does
distribute his subjects so that the spectator needs not feel that the
foreground is only a long waste to be crossed, or that the background
is but an empty region which lies beyond everything of interest.

The word “depth” in connection with the screen has doubtless made our
readers think of the stereoscopic motion picture as produced by the
Teleview and other companies. Such pictures are truly remarkable in
their mechanical power of showing physical depth through a scene. They
show you the images clearly separated, some near and some far away,
so that you feel as if you could really walk in and out among them.
To be able to produce such an illusion is something that any inventor
may well be proud of; and yet it is doubtful that the stereoscopic
picture will bring about any improvement in the artistic composition of
the motion picture. Most of us can recall the “stereoscope and views”
which we used to find on the center tables of our country aunts. How
well we remember the mystifying illusion of depth which was created.
How well we remember also that there was the same depth in the reeking
stockyards of Kansas City as in the cathedral aisle of Rheims! That
illustrates the shortcoming of purely mechanical things in the service
of art. The stereoscopic machinery cannot in itself create beauty.
It cannot automatically so select trees or distribute people over a
landscape that balance and rhythm, unity and emphasis will appear in
the finished picture. Unfortunately, for the uninspired artist, the
mechanician cannot help him.

It may be asked whether stereoscopic pictures may not be utilized to
get sculptural effects upon the screen. The answer is that if a piece
of sculpture had to be viewed through a single peep-hole and under an
unchanging light it would not really have a sculptural appeal. The
characteristic appeal of sculpture is due largely to the fact that it
is possible for the beholder to shift his gaze at will from one side
of the statue to the other. He even walks around the statue, thus
getting ever new aspects of the subject until he has completed the
circle of inspection. And this shifting view is governed entirely by
his own interest and choice. The sculptor has deliberately shaped his
marble so that the many aspects will be interesting variations of the
same theme. That many-sidedness of sculpture is one of its distinctive
qualities as art. But when you look at a stereoscopic motion picture
it is absolutely impossible for you to “see around” the objects any
farther than the camera has done, no matter how much you shift your
position. The other sides of all the objects and figures might as well
be missing. Your point of view is fixed absolutely in the stereoscopic
picture, just as it is in the ordinary “flat” picture. But perhaps
there are other ways in which the Teleview and similar inventions
can provide new opportunities for the cinema artist. That remains to
be shown by experimentation, and, of course, such experimentation is
welcome and should be encouraged.

However, for all purposes of pictorial art a sufficient illusion of
depth can be produced in the “flat” picture. This can be done by the
simplest instruments and means of picture making, even by the use of
a lead pencil and a piece of paper. There are only two secrets of
perspective. One is to render parallel lines, that is, lines which are
actually parallel in the subject, so that they converge in the distance
and, if continued, would meet at a “vanishing point.” The other is to
render objects with increasing dimness as they occupy positions at
increasing distances away from us.

One might suppose that in a photograph these problems of perspective
would take care of themselves. But they do not, as may be seen by
turning to the “still” of the conservatory scene, facing page 100.
There we find a jumble of stuff apparently all in the same vertical
plane. Why does the standing woman wear a palm leaf in her hair? Why
does the man wear the top of a doorway upon his head? And why does
the seated woman bury her head in the ferns? They do not actually, of
course, carry on thus hilariously; but some one has carelessly coaxed
the background into the foreground by making remote objects intensely
distinct, instead of subduing them into the soft values of distance.

But we have dwelt so long on the subject of balance in design that
we fear the reader may think we have over-emphasized the point. No
one quality in pictorial composition should be out of balance with
the others. Thus, too sharp an emphasis may violate balance, and too
perfect a balance may violate rhythm. After all, the kind of balance we
desire in pictorial design is that which is sufficient, but no more.
We do not, as a rule, enjoy the mathematical figure of the equilateral
triangle, standing heavily on its base, because it is balanced beyond
the need of any living thing. It suggests the dead repose of the
pyramids of Egypt, the tombs of her forgotten kings. Such a severe
design is utterly unsuitable, therefore, in the portrait of a lithe
young lady clad in silks and tulle, as illustrated in the “still”
facing page 61. It is flat and hard, and the eye following forever its
monotonous outlines misses the variety of rhythm. Yet a triangle, you
say, serves the purpose of unity and emphasis. Alter it then by making
it narrower, with a less obvious base, and by swinging a live rhythm
into its sides, as in the painting of “Mme. Lebrun and Her Daughter,”
facing this page.

But this brings us to a discussion of the mysterious quality of rhythm.
Rhythm is entirely too evasive for a tight definition, but perhaps we
can learn much by saying things about it.

[Illustration: _Mme. LeBrun and Her Daughter_, a painting by Mme.
Vigée-Lebrun. A good figure composition on the basis of a triangle.
Compare with the “still” shown facing page 61. See also pages 62 and
76.]

Rhythm in music may be partially described as a peculiar alternating
movement, with an alternation between sounds of different pitch,
quality, and quantity; between different sound groups, and between
sound and silence. The rhythm of visible motion is of a somewhat
similar nature, as we shall see in Chapter VIII. But a sense of
alternating movement may be produced by things which are not themselves
in motion. We can, therefore, find rhythm in fixed lines, shapes,
tones, colors, and textures. This we shall call rhythm of fixed design.

The peculiar thing about the element of alternation in rhythm which
distinguishes it from mere repetition, is that it is not regular, like
the swinging of a pendulum, but contains numerous variations from
regularity. But, while the symmetry of rhythm is only partial, so also
the variety is limited. It is the combined effect of these two factors
which makes rhythm delightful. Repetition or symmetry in a line or a
pattern is pleasurable because, as explained in Chapter III, it enables
us to see much with ease. But, at the same time, subtle or even bold
variations are appealing because they relieve us of monotony, stimulate
our interest, and lead our eyes in search of further variations.

A familiar rhythm of line is that of the reverse curve, which Hogarth
called “the line of beauty.” This line is beautifully used in the
painting “Daylight and Lamplight,” facing page 39. Observe the effect
of alternation with variety in the lines which bound the urn, the
woman’s figure, and the various shadows and lights in the background.
Your eye sweeps over those paths without effort, and you get a sense of
movement, as though you yourself were drawing these lines with a brush
or crayon. Analyze the composition and you will see how richly the
lines are woven together. Compare all the small curves with each other,
compare all the larger curves, all the short straight lines, all the
longer straight lines, etc., and you will discover an amazing amount of
alternation and repetition, with an equally amazing amount of deviation
from regularity.

Imagine that the painting which we have just analyzed is an accented
moment in a motion picture, and you must imagine another similar design
a few seconds earlier in the action and still another one a few seconds
later, as the woman walks gracefully through the room. In fact, there
would be a whole series of similar designs during the brief time that
the woman’s figure and the urn are in decorative contact. The instant
of action which the painter has chosen to fix on canvas might well be
the same instant which you would select as the pictorial climax in this
motion picture. This climax, accented perhaps with a pause, accented
also by the pictorial approach and departure, is something which you
would long remember as a rhythmical moment in the photoplay.

In the picture which we have just described the rhythm is found
chiefly in the continuity and richness of line and in a certain active
balancing of similar with dissimilar lines. The design is simple,
almost plain. It is a single pattern which does not recur again within
the frame. Quite different in type is the composition of a group
picture such as “The Banquet of the Officers of St. Andrew,” facing
page 79, where the rhythm is in the flow of patterns rather than in
the flow of lines. Take a hat, for example, as the decorative theme
and observe how definitely, yet how subtly, that theme is four times
varied. Note further how the curves of the hats are echoed, always with
variety, in the ruffs.

[Illustration: From _Polly of the Circus_. Compare this “still” with
_Banquet of the Officers of St. Andrew_ (below) and you get at once
the distinct impression that the painting depicts a larger crowd than
the “still.” As a matter of fact, the painter has used only twelve men
to produce his effect, while the motion picture director has employed
seventeen men, a woman, and a horse. This difference illustrates the
practical utility of pictorial design. See page 57.]

[Illustration: _Banquet of the Officers of St. Andrew_, a painting by
Frans Hals. See above and page 78.]

But so many curves would make the picture too rich in quality were
it not for the skillful introduction of straight lines to make, as
it were, a series of alternating notes. You observe immediately the
long straight lines of the windows, of the two flags, and of the
table. But you do not at first observe that there are several dozen
shorter straight lines, and that, curiously enough, they are nearly
all parallel to each other. Take as a key the sash of the first seated
officer, counting from the left, and you will find a surprising number
of similarities to this motif throughout the composition, all the way
from the shadows on the window casing in the upper left hand corner
to the edge of the table in the lower right hand corner. Yet, because
these similar straight lines are so frequently alternated with varying
curves, we get from the picture a stirring sense of a swinging movement.

Here, again, is an arrested moment of action which might conceivably
have come out of a motion picture. What the arrangement of the twelve
men might have been at other moments of the scene we do not know.
Perhaps they were all sitting when the scene opened; perhaps they had
all arisen before it closed; but for this one instant, at least, they
have resolved themselves into an interesting design of simple patterns
in a rhythmical series.

Another source of rhythm in a fixed picture may be the tonal
gradations. In a painting there would be a play of colors from hue
to hue and from tint to shade. In ordinary photography there may
be a similar play from deep black to intense white through all the
intervening values. It is all a question of lighting and choice of
subjects for the light to fall upon. The painter has an advantage over
the photographer because he does not have to record light and shadow
exactly as they are on the subject. He can soften his shadows or paint
them out completely. He can alter his tones and values at will, even
after the painting is practically finished. As an offset to this the
cinema composer has, of course, the power of presenting movement,
fugues and passages of light and shadow. And, by the use of the newest
apparatus for lighting, and by careful attention to the color values
and textures of sets, costumes, etc., he can also produce many of the
rhythmical effects of gradation in fixed tones which we are accustomed
to look for in painting.

As time goes on we shall more and more often find pictorial moments on
the screen which exhibit as fine a rhythm of fixed tones and masses as,
for example, Van Dyck’s “Portrait of Charles I,” facing page 163. If
you draw a straight line across this picture in almost any direction,
it will mark a great variety of graded values, a lovely shifting of
light and shadow, with no sharp contrasts except those which serve to
attract the spectator’s attention to the head of the king. There is
perfect harmony of composition here. The tones are in a rhythmical
design, yet it is a rhythm which keeps the emphasis on the focal
interest and preserves the balance throughout the painting.

Two or three men, a horse, and a bit of landscape is no uncommon
subject in photoplays. We have reason, therefore, to expect that from
long practice all directors will learn how to treat it pictorially, and
with ever new variety of beauty.

The general field of composition in fixed design has now been surveyed.
We have tried to show that a good pictorial composition, even from a
commercial point of view, is one which provides instant emphasis on the
focal interest; which unites this focal interest with the other parts
of the picture by means of a certain arrangement, or pattern; which
keeps all of its values in a reposeful balance, and which pulsates with
a vital rhythm. These four qualities--emphasis, unity, balance, and
rhythm--are necessary in what might be called the mechanics of beauty,
the technique of design. We admit, cheerfully, that the beauty of a
given masterpiece cannot be explained by pointing out an observance of
certain fundamental laws of design, for an uninspired artist might obey
all these laws without ever achieving beauty, just as a machinist might
obey all the laws of mechanics without ever inventing a machine. But we
insist that an observance of pictorial laws is a first condition that
must be fulfilled by the artist before the mysterious quality of beauty
will arise in his work.

The accented moment in a pictorial movement, which we have studied from
so many angles, is, of course, not fixed on the screen for any great
length of time, never for more than a few seconds, though it may remain
fixed in memory for years. Nor is it a separate thing upon the screen.
It rises from an earlier moment and flows into a later one. The rapid
succession of momentarily fixed pictures on the screen is, in fact,
what gives the illusion of motion. Yet it would not, therefore, be
correct to say that the motion picture as a whole can be made beautiful
by making each separate exposure in itself a beautiful composition.
The successive pictures must play, one into the next, in a stream of
composition which contains new delights for the eye, and which, alas,
contains new dangers for the ignorant or careless maker of pictures.
What these delights and dangers are we shall see in the following
chapters.



CHAPTER VI

MOTIONS IN A PICTURE


Pictorial motion is thousands of years older than the motion picture.
It is as old as the oldest art of all, the dance. Before man had
learned how to weave his own fancies into plots, or how to make
drawings of things that he saw, he had doubtless often feasted his
eyes upon the rhythmic beauty created by dancers. Their art was
the composition of motions. We can well imagine how they began by
exhibiting bodily postures, gestures, and mimicry; how they proceeded
to add other movements, such as the fluttering of garments, the
brandishing of weapons, the waving of flaring torches, and how they, in
time, made their composition more involved by swinging themselves into
swaying groups, circling and threading fanciful patterns.

As a form of art the dance has been preserved through the ages in an
apparently unbroken history. And it has had various off-shoots besides;
for religious and secular processions, pantomime, and even drama, have
had their beginnings in the dance. Pictorial motion was to be seen
two thousand years ago in the Roman triumphs and processions, whose
gaudiest features survive in the familiar circus parade of today. And
the circus itself is in a sense the pictorial motion of animals and men.

In the presentation of drama, too, pictorial motion has always played
a vital part. When we look back over the history of the theater we
see that the managers were never satisfied with the mere physical
exhibition of actors and dancers, but began very early to add other
motions to their performance. A large variety of motions was added by
bringing animals upon the scenes. Fire was put into the service of
show. We know that its flame and flicker, borne in torches or beating
upon the witches’ caldron, was not uncommon on Shakespeare’s stage.
Water in the form of leaping cascades and playing fountains was used
at least two hundred years ago to make the scene more pictorial. More
recently, wind has been produced artificially in order to give motion
to draperies, flags, or foliage.

All this amounts to something far more than an attempt to bring nature
upon the stage. It is the creation of new beauty. The kind of beauty
which professional entertainers have for thousands of years spun
together from various motions into patterns simple or subtle, is the
beauty of art, for it comes from human personality expressing itself in
forms and combinations never found as such in nature.

Now, if these showmen are really artists, at least in intent, we may
well ask how they have combined their motions so as to produce the
pleasing effects which they desired. Have they worked hit-or-miss
and achieved beauty only by accident, or have they intentionally or
instinctively obeyed certain laws of the human eye and mind?

How does the director of a motion picture make sure that pleasing
motion will appear upon the screen? Does he alter, or select, his
subjects? Does he choose his point of view? Does he patiently wait for
the right moment? Or must beauty come by accident, as music might come
from a cat’s running over the keyboard of a piano?

There must be laws of pictorial motion, just as there are laws of
color, design, modelling, architectural construction, all of which
appeal to the eye without visible motion. And, since the motion picture
can capture and combine and reproduce a greater variety of moving
things than was ever before possible in the history of art, it seems
particularly important that we make earnest efforts to find out under
what laws these manifold motions may be organized into art.

In studying the movies one might easily come to the conclusion that
some directors aim only to make motions life-like. Their whole creed
seems to be that a heart-broken woman should move her shoulders and
chest as though she really were heart-broken, that a goat should act
exactly like a goat, and that a windmill should behave itself exactly
like a windmill. Now, it may be very desirable, as far as it goes, that
an emotion be “registered” fitly. But to aim at fitting expression
alone is to aim at naturalness alone. And this is not enough, because
there may be natural ugliness, and because even the beauty of nature is
essentially different from the beauty of art.

Shakespeare’s plays are not admired simply because they reveal human
character truthfully. Rembrandt’s paintings are not preserved in
museums merely because they are truthful representations of Dutchmen.
The Venus of Milo would not have a room to herself in the Louvre if
the statue were nothing more than a life-like figure of a woman partly
dressed. In drama, poetry, fiction, painting, sculpture, and music,
it has never been considered that appropriateness, naturalness, or
truthfulness was in itself sufficient to distinguish the work as art.
And it surely cannot be so in the movies.

It certainly has not been so in the earlier arts of motion. The dance
as a form of expression is beautiful, but it is so far from natural
that if the average voter started out to express his joy or grief, or
love or defiance, the way a dancer does on the stage, he would be given
a free ride to the psychopathic ward. The stage pantomime is charming,
but if you behaved in the presence of your true love the way Pierrot
and Columbine behave, he or she, as the case may be, would probably
decide that you were too much of a clown ever to become a responsible
parent. The circus, too, though not properly to be classed as a form
of art, combines and presents a vast number of interesting motions
which you never expect to see outside the big tent. Dancers, pantomime
actors, circus masters and performers, all clearly strive to collect
our money by showing us the kind of motions which nature herself does
not show.

But do not become alarmed. We do not propose to establish a school of
unnatural acting in the movies. Let the women and men and greyhounds
and weeping willows and brooks be as natural as they can be, like
themselves and not like each other. Natural, yes, providing they be
not natural in an ugly way. If a brook is running in one direction
as naturally as it can, and a greyhound is running in the opposite
direction as naturally as he can, the combination of their contrary
movements may not be pleasing in a motion picture. Art is art, not
because it reflects some actual bit of nature, but because it is
endowed with some beauty made by man.

What other properties pictorial motion should have, besides correct
representation of action has been partly told in Chapter III, where
the demands of ease and economy of vision were made a condition
concomitant with beauty. We may further apply the same tests which have
been applied to fixed design. But, in order to get a firm grasp of our
subject let us first reduce pictorial motions to their simplest forms.

The simplest motion of all is the moving spot, especially when it is
entirely unrelated to a setting or background; that is, the kind of
moving spot which the spectator may see without at the same time seeing
any other thing, either fixed or moving. A familiar example in nature
is the dark dot of a bird flying high above us in a cloudless sky. An
example from the screen is the effect of a ball of fire shot from a
Roman candle through darkness, as in the battle scenes of Griffith’s
“Birth of a Nation.” But even so simple a moving thing as a spot has
two properties which are very important to the composer of motions. The
moving spot, like all other motions, has direction and velocity. The
buzzard soaring slowly in large circles affects us in one way, while
the hawk swooping downward sharply, or the crow flying in a straight
line, or the bat fluttering crazily in the air, affects us in quite a
different way.

When direction and velocity are controlled, even a single moving spot
may describe beautiful motion. Witness an airplane maneuvering high in
the sky, or a torch waved gracefully in the darkness. Beauty springs
from control; ugliness follows lack of control. But control is no easy
thing in the movies, for it is rare indeed that a director has only a
single moving point to manage. Almost always, he has the problem of
relative direction and relative speed. Moving things must be related
to other moving things, and also to fixed things. Even if the picture
consists only of a torch waved against a black background, we have the
problem of relating that motion to the four fixed lines of the frame of
the screen.

But can we expect a motion picture director to stop and think of so
small a matter as a ball thrown from one hand to another, to ask
himself whether such an action is beautifully related, in direction
and velocity, to everything else in the picture, fixed or moving?
Yes, we can expect him to do so until he becomes artist enough to
think of these matters without stopping. He should think about
pictorial composition until he can obey its laws without thought. Let
him remember that even a flock of geese can compose themselves so
appealingly in the sky and a herd of cows can wind so gracefully down a
hillside that a tender girl and a tough hobo will gaze alike upon them
in open-mouthed admiration.

The geese in the sky and the cows on the hillside are only a lot of
moving spots, until they arrange, or compose, themselves. They may
then illustrate the second type of moving object, that of the moving
line. A line may, for example, move along its own length in a way
which pleases the eyes. Such motions we see in the slender waterfall,
in the narrow stream, in such inanimate things as the long belting in
a factory, or the glowing line of a shooting star, and in the files of
geese, or cattle, or marching men.

A line may move in other directions besides that of its own length. It
may swing stiffly from one end, as in the case of a pendulum or the
rays from a searchlight. It may wave like a streamer in the breeze.
It may move sidewise, as in the long lines of surf that roll up on
the beach. It may move in countless other manners, as in the handling
of canes, swords, spears, golf clubs, polo mallets, whips, etc. Now,
of course, the director ordinarily thinks of a weapon as a weapon,
and not as a moving line. He studies the characteristic action of an
officer drawing his sword or of a Hottentot hurling his spear and tries
to reproduce them faithfully so that no small boy in the audience may
be able to pick out flaws. This is well, so far as it goes. A painter
would study these characteristic actions, too, and would suggest them
with equal faithfulness. But he would do something more. He would place
every object so carefully in his picture that its line harmonized with
the four lines of the frame and with all of the other lines, spots, and
pictorial values in his work.

Now we are beginning to guess how pictorial motions must be composed;
but first let us see what other kinds of motion there are. If we
take another look at the geese in the sky we may find that they have
composed themselves into the form of a “V” or a “Y” floating strangely
beneath the clouds. This illustrates the third type of motion, the
moving pattern.

We distinguish between a moving pattern and a moving spot or line,
because a pattern relates its separate elements to each other. This
relation may or may not change as the pattern moves. Thus the V-shaped
pattern formed by the flying geese may become sharper or flatter, or
one side may be stretched out longer than the other, as the flight
continues. All fixed pictures are patterns which do not change in form
while we look at them, and the pictorial principles therein involved
have been thoroughly discussed in the preceding chapters. But if the
director wants a pattern to move to the right or left, up or down, away
from him or toward him, or to change its character gradually, then a
new problem of composition arises, and the solution of this new problem
is both inviting and perplexing.

It is inviting because there are so many patterns which gain beauty
from motion or change. A fixed circle is not so appealing to the eye,
for example, as a rolling hoop. A wheel standing still is not so
fascinating as one that rotates, like the wheel of a wind mill, or one
that rolls, like the wheel of a carriage. Thus also the pattern formed
by the rectangular shapes of a train standing still does not please
the eye so much as the harmonious change in that same pattern when the
train swings by us and winds away into the distance.

The patterns which may be compared with mathematical figures, such as
circles, squares, triangles, diamond shapes, etc., are not the only
ones. We are simply mentioning them first to make our analysis clear.
Every group of two or more visible things, and nearly every visible
thing in itself, must of necessity be looked upon as a pattern, either
pleasing or displeasing to the eye. Therefore every motion picture that
has been, or can be, thrown upon the screen describes a pattern, fixed,
moving, or changing. If the direction and rate of these motions and
changes can be controlled, there is hope for beauty on the screen; if
they cannot be controlled, there is no help but accident.

A peculiar type of visible motion is that which we have elsewhere
called “moving texture.” Examples in nature are the changing texture of
falling snow, the stately coiling of clouds, and the majestic weaving
of ice floes in a river. In the movies the effect of moving texture is
produced whenever the elements of the subject are so many and so small
that we view them rather as a surface than as a design or pattern.
It may be seen, not only in subjects from nature, but also in such
things as a mob of people or a closely packed herd of cattle viewed
from a high position. Mr. Griffith has a good eye and taste for the
composition of moving textures, and has furnished interesting examples
in nearly all of his larger productions.

Now let us see how far we have gone. We have defined four different
types of pictorial motion, namely, the moving spot, the moving line,
the moving pattern, and the moving texture. They may appear singly or
grouped. For example, in a picture of the old-fashioned water wheel we
have a combination of the moving line of the stream with the moving
pattern of the wheel. And in a picture of a small motor boat, seen from
afar, speeding over a lake the composition contains a moving spot, the
changing pattern of the wake, and the changing texture of the water.
If we add to this picture a long train on the bank, trailing a ribbon
of smoke, an airplane in the sky, and a sailing yacht on the lake, we
have a subject which is difficult indeed to analyze, and infinitely
more difficult to compose into pictorial beauty. Yet those are the very
kinds of motion which a motion picture director must compose in every
scene that he “shoots.”

But we have not yet completed our analysis of the nature of pictorial
motion. It has still another property, which we shall call “changing
tonal value.” Changing tonal value depends upon changes in the amount
and kind of light which falls upon the subject, and upon changes in
the surface of the subject itself. For example, the shadow of a cloud
passing over a landscape gives a slightly different hue to every grove
or meadow, to every rock or road. To watch these values come and go is
one of the delights of the nature lover.

Nature’s supreme example of the beauty of changing values may be seen
in a sunset playing with delicate splendor on sea and sky. And if this
beauty defies the skill of painters it is because they have no means of
representing the subtle changes which run through any particular hue as
the moments pass by.

The beauty of a sunset may long, perhaps forever, elude the
cinematograph, but this machine can produce tonal changes in black and
white at the will of the operator by the familiar trick of “fading in”
and “fading out.” This camera trick is of great service for dramatic
effects, such as the dissolving of one picture into another; but
it has a greater power, which has not always been appreciated and
taken advantage of by directors, the power of producing for the eye a
pictorial rhythm of tonal intensities. This effect is somewhat like the
“crescendo” and “diminuendo” in music.

[Illustration: From _The Covered Wagon_. Distinctive rhythm of moving
lines, interesting changes in pictorial pattern, and harmonious play of
light and shade are skillfully used in this photoplay to intensify its
dramatic meaning. See pages 9, 66 and 140.]

When we consider that changing tonal value may be combined with
changing direction, as well as with changing velocity, of moving spots,
moving lines, moving patterns, and moving textures, we realize more
keenly the problems of the cinema composer. His medium is at once
extremely complex, extremely flexible, and extremely delicate.

But we have not yet revealed all of the strange qualities of the motion
picture. A unique power of the screen, which can never be utilized
by any other graphic art, is that which gives motion to things that
are themselves absolutely at rest and immovable. Even the pyramids of
Egypt can be invested with apparent motion, so that their sharp lines
flow constantly into new patterns. It can be done by simply moving the
camera itself while the film is being exposed. The appeal of apparent
motion in natural setting is familiar to any one who has ever gazed
dreamily from the window of a railroad car or from the deck of a yacht
sailing among islands. Apparent motion on the screen makes a similar
appeal, which can be enhanced by changing distance and point of view
and by artistic combination with real motions in the picture.

Still other fresh means of pleasing the eye may be found in the
altering of natural motions, as by the retarding action of the
slow-motion camera, which can make a horse float in the air like a
real Pegasus; or by the cinematographic acceleration of motion which
can out-rival an Indian conjuror in making a tree rise, blossom, and
bear fruit while you are watching.

Another peculiar type of pictorial motion, which has never before
existed, and does not come into being until it is projected upon the
screen, is the magic motion of the “animated cartoons.” The camera-man
sees no such marvelous motions. He faces only a stack of drawings. The
artist who makes the drawings does not see the motions except in his
own imagination. But the spectator in the theater is delighted to see
the strangely bewitched men and beasts, birds and trees, rocks and
streams, weapons and machines, all behaving in impossible ways that no
maker of fairy tales ever dreamed of. Here is a new field of pictorial
composition, with distant boundaries and fabulous wealth. Those who
exploit it will be able to teach many a valuable lesson to the director
who merely takes photographs of actors in motion.

Nearly all of these motions might be found in a single “shot,” that is,
in a single section of film. But when these sections of film are joined
together to form the finished photoplay they produce still another
kind of motion, a constant shifting from scene to scene. Whether this
succession is to be a series of collisions or a harmonious flow,
depends upon those who cut and join the films.

There is finally the total movement which is the product of all of
these motions working together. A scientist can show you in his
laboratory that when a cord vibrates in one way it gives forth a
particular note, and that when the same cord vibrates in another way it
gives forth a different note. He can also show you that a single cord
can vibrate in several different ways at the same time. The tones and
overtones thus produced constitute the peculiar _timbre_, or quality,
of a musical note. Thus, too, in a motion picture the _ensemble_ of
all the kinds, directions, and velocities of motion constitutes the
particular cinematic quality of that particular picture play. Whether
that resultant quality shall be like a symphony or like the cries of a
mad-house, depends on the knowledge, the skill, and the inspiration of
the cinema composer.

Having named the principal motions in a picture we come now to the
question of how those motions should be composed. When a musical
composer sits down before his piano he knows that he may strike single
notes in succession, giving a simple melody, or several notes at the
same moment, producing a chord, or he may play a melody with one hand
and a different melody with the other, or he may play a melody with
one hand and a succession of chords with the other, or he may use both
hands in playing two successions of chords. Before he is through with
his composition he will probably have done all of those things.

It is much the same with the cinema composer. Before he has finished
even a single scene he will probably have produced all of the different
types of motions in varying directions, with varying velocities, and
varying intensities. How may he know whether his work is good or bad?
What are the proofs of beauty in the composition of pictorial motion?

A practical proof is dramatic utility. The motions of a photoplay
are in the service of the story. They should perform that work well,
without waste of time and energy. An æsthetic proof is their power to
stimulate our fancy and to sway our feeling. Pictorial motions should
play for us, until by the illusion of art we can play with them.
Another proof is reposefulness. For at the very moment when we are
stimulated by art we desire to rest in satisfied contemplation. How
pictorial motions may produce beauty on the screen by being at work, at
play, and at rest will be told in the following chapters.



CHAPTER VII

PICTORIAL MOTIONS AT WORK


All the movement which you see on the screen may be enjoyed, we have
said, as something which appears beautiful to your eye, regardless of
its meaning to your mind. But if that movement, beautiful in itself,
also carries to your mind some significance, if it serves the dramatic
plot in some positive way, then the picture will be so much the richer.
Acting, of course, is visible movement that delineates character and
advances plot. It is pictorial motion at work. And acting, curiously
enough, is not limited to people and animals. In a sense there may
be acting also by things, by wagons or trees or brooks or waves or
water-falls or fountains or flames or smoke or clouds or wind-blown
garments. The motions of these things also constitute a kind of work in
the service of the photoplay.

One might say that the artistic efficiency of a motion picture may be
partly tested in the same way as the practical value of a machine. In
either case motions are no good unless they help to perform some work.
“Lost motions” are a waste, and resisting motions are a hindrance. The
best mechanical combination of motions, then, is that which results in
the most work with the least expenditure of energy.

Doubtless every one will agree with us that if, while a picture is
showing, any great work is necessary to “get the story across,” that
work should be done by the picture and not by the spectators. They want
the story to be clear, and they want it to be impressive. In other
words, they want beautiful and significant material presented with the
fullest emphasis. Emphasis results when the attention of the spectator
is caught and held by the primary interest in the picture, instead of
the secondary interest. In paintings, or in “still” pictures, or in
those parts of moving pictures which are held or remembered as fixed
moments, a great number of devices may be used separately or together
to control the attention of the spectator so that the main interest
gets its full emphasis. Pictorial motions on the screen may also be
so well organized that they will catch and control the spectator’s
attention, and will reveal the dynamic vitality of the pictorial
content.

The simplest principle of accent by motion is so obvious that we are
almost ashamed to name it. It is this, that if in the whole picture
everything remains at rest except one thing which moves, that thing
will attract our attention. Photoplays are full of mistakes which arise
through the violation of this simple law. In many a scene our attention
is drawn from the stalwart hero to a candle on the mantlepiece merely
because its flame happens to flicker; or from the heroine’s sweet face
to a common bush merely because its leaves happen to quiver in the
breeze; or from the villain’s steady pistol to a dog’s tail merely
because the dog happens to wag it.

It is no excuse to say that such motions are natural, or that they
give local color. For, though a moving trifle may help to give the
correct atmosphere, it may also at the same time rob the heroine of the
attention which is rightly due her. For example, in “The Love Light,”
which was conceived and directed by Frances Marion, there is the
kitchen of the little Italian home where Angela (Mary Pickford) sits
down to muse for a while. She occupies the right side of the picture
while at the left is the fire-place with a brisk fire. The fanciful
playing of the flames and smoke of that fire catch our attention
immediately. We guess that this fire-place is not important in the
story, and we turn our glances upon the heroine, but we cannot keep
them there because the fire is too interesting.

When the spectator’s reason tries to make him do one thing and his
natural inclination tempts him to do the opposite, there is confusion
and waste of mental energy; and during that hesitation of mind the
opportunity for being impressed by the main interest of the play passes
by. That rule may sound like a commonplace, but it is not nearly so
commonplace as the violation of it in the movies.

If the director must have a fire in the fire-place, and if Angela is
more important than that fire, then, of course, her motions should be
made more interesting than its motions. It should always be remembered
that the strangest, least familiar of two motions will attract our
attention away from the other. The fire is strange, while Angela is
familiar. In the preceding scenes she has walked, run, romped, laughed,
cried, talked, and made faces; she has, in short, performed so many
different kinds of motions that there is almost nothing unexpected left
for her to do in order to take our eyes away from the fire. She merely
sits for a long time unnoticed. Presently, however, after the fire has
lost its novelty for us, she arises, grasps a frying pan, and, using it
as a mirror, begins to primp. Then at last we look at her.

A more striking case of misplaced emphasis may be found in the
photoplay “Sherlock Holmes,” directed by Albert Parker. The part of the
great detective was played by no less a person than John Barrymore, yet
in the very scene where he makes his first appearance he is totally
eclipsed by a calico cow. In this scene, represented by the “still”
opposite this page, we see a beautifully patterned cow swinging into
the idyllic setting of a side street in Cambridge, following a rhythmic
path from the background with its dim towers of the university, past
the honeysuckle-clad walls of “Ye Cheshire Cheese,” and out into
the shadows of a picturesque tree. This cow holds our attention by
her photographic contrasts of black and white, and because she and
her attendant are the only moving things within the whole scope of
the camera. This inscrutable cow gets the spotlight while the great
Sherlock is neglected where he reclines drowsily in the shade. Here
was really the most pictorial scene of the whole photoplay, and the
annoying thing was that the cow never again showed hoof or horn. Why
was she ever let in? No suspicion of murder, theft, or other deviltry
was ever cast upon her. She neither shielded nor shamed any one. She
did not help to solve any problem. There was no further allusion to
cattle, dairies, or cheese. There was not even a glass of milk in the
rest of the play.

[Illustration: A typical bad movie composition from an old film. But
the pictorial mistakes here illustrated may be seen in some of the most
recent productions. Intelligent criticism by spectators would soon make
such careless directing intolerable. See page 75.]

[Illustration: From _Sherlock Holmes_. An example of wrong emphasis.
The cow attracts attention by her strong marking, the central position,
and because she is the only moving thing in the picture. But the cow
should not have been dragged in at all, much less accented. See page
100.]

Perhaps the innocent cow was an accident. Perhaps the director did
not know, or had forgotten, that the whitest patch in a picture
attracts the eye, that an irregular shape, such as the marking of a
Holstein cow, attracts more attention than the familiar patterning of
walls, windows, tree trunks, etc., that a moving object in a scene
where everything else is still attracts and holds attention, and that a
humble cow emphasized by all these cinematographic means makes more of
a hit than the most highly paid actor dozing in the shade.

But the strangeness or novelty of a motion may emphasize it, even
though other motions going on at the same time are larger and stronger.
In support of this statement the author offers a personal experience
which came in the nature of a surprise when first seeing Niagara Falls.
One would think that if a person who had never seen this sight were
placed suddenly before it, he would gaze spellbound at the awful rush
of water, and that no other motion could possibly distract him. But
the author’s attention was first attracted to something else which
impressed him more deeply, something which moved silently, very slowly
and very delicately. That strangely attractive thing was the cloud
of spray that rose steadily from the bottom of the fall, floating
gently upward past the brink and vanishing continually in the sky. Its
peculiar appeal lay in its strangeness, not in its strength.

The reader can doubtless recall similar cases where strangeness exerted
an overpowering appeal. At best that strangeness is much more than
the satisfaction of curiosity. It is a type of beauty which comes
as a relief from the common, familiar facts of every-day life. The
combination of strangeness and beauty has a powerful charm, and he is
an ideal director who can emphasize dramatic significance with that
charm.

Violence, at least, is not a virtue in the movies, as so many directors
seem to believe. Indeed, slowness and slightness may sometimes be
more impressive than speed and volume. This is often demonstrated on
the stage of the spoken drama, when, for example, the leading lady
who speaks slowly and in low tones holds our interest better than her
attendants who chatter in high pitch. The beauty of her speech is
emphasized by its contrast with the ugliness of the others. So in the
photoplay there may be more power in a single slight lowering of the
eyes or in the firm clenching of a fist than in a storm of waving arms
and heaving chests.

What has just been said refers to motions in a fixed setting, which
operate either against or in spite of, each other; but two or more
motions in a picture may work as a team, and may thus control our
attention better than if they were operating singly.

First we observe that if a single object is moving along in a
continuous direction it will pull our attention along in that
direction, may, indeed, send our attention on ahead of the object.
Thus if an actor swings his hand dramatically in the direction of a
door he may carry our glance beyond his hand to the door itself. This
law of vision works so surely that it can always be depended upon by a
magician, a highly specialized kind of actor, when he wishes to divert
the attention of his audience from some part of the stage or of his own
person where a trick is being prepared. It is not true, as is popularly
supposed, that we are deceived because “the hand is faster than the
eye”; it is really because the eye is faster than the hand. In other
words, our attention outstrips the moving object.

In the movies this law controls our attention to traveling persons,
vehicles, and things. If horsemen are represented as riding away they
should be photographed with their backs toward us and with the distance
between us and them increasing. Then, since our eyes travel beyond the
riders, we get a stronger impression that the men are really riding far
away. On the other hand, if the horsemen are coming home, the direction
of movement should naturally be toward us. This seems clear enough;
yet directors frequently prevent us from feeling the dramatic intent
and force of travel, by “shooting” the moving subject from various
angles in succession. Even Mr. Griffith has been guilty of this sort of
carelessness. In “The Idol Dancer,” for example, we have a scene (a)
in which a party of South Sea island villagers are paddling away in a
large canoe; correctly enough they are moving away from the camera.
The next scene (b) shows some one raising an alarm in the village by
beating a drum, which, as we have been informed, can be heard twenty
miles away. It is a call to the canoe party to return. The scene which
is then flashed on (c) is a close-up of the canoe coming toward the
camera. The men are paddling vigorously. We think, of course, that they
have already heard the alarm and are now returning. But no! Presently
they stop paddling and listen. They hear the drum. The next picture
(d), a “long shot,” shows the canoe being maneuvered around, and the
succeeding pictures all show the men paddling toward the camera.

Now it is perfectly logical for us to infer that the canoe is
already homeward bound, when we see it coming toward us in scene “c”
immediately after the drum has sounded the alarm, and we can therefore
only resent being caught in error and virtually told, two scenes later,
“This time we won’t fool you, now the canoe, as you see, is really
turning about.”

If one moving object can send our thoughts ahead to the goal of its
travel, two or more objects moving toward the same point can send our
thoughts there with greatly increased force. Thus a picture of two
ships shown approaching each other on converging courses will surely
make us think of that region of the sea where they are likely to come
close aboard each other. If there is an enemy submarine at that point
and if the two vessels are destroyers, the suspense and emphasis is
complete.

A similar law of attention may be seen at work in cases where lines
move along their length to a junction. Suppose we take as a setting a
western landscape in which two swiftly flowing streams meet and form
the figure of a “Y.” Suppose now that we desire to place an Indian camp
in this setting so carefully that it will attract attention as soon as
the picture is flashed on the screen. We must place it at the junction
of the two streams, because the eyes of the spectators will naturally
be drawn to that point. Now suppose that a long white road crosses
the main stream just below the place where the tributaries meet. The
position would be emphasized more than ever because the road would
virtually form two fixed lines leading toward the bridge; and fixed
lines, as we saw in Chapter IV, also have the power of directing our
attention to the point where a crossing is made.

Then let us suppose that the Indians build a fire, from which the
smoke rises in a tall, thin column. That would constitute another line
of motion. But would it emphasize or weaken the center of interest?
It would, as a matter of fact, still hold our attention on the camp
because of the curious law that, no matter in what directions lines
may move, it is the point which they have in common that attracts our
attention. Thus if we assume a landscape where there is only a single
stream, with a camp at the upper end, and with smoke rising from a
fire, we would still have emphasis on the camp, in spite of the fact
that the two lines of motion are directed away from it.

The same curious power over our attention may be exercised by moving
spots. If we see, for example, two ships sailing away on diverging
courses, we immediately suppose that the ships are sailing out of the
same port, and, even though we cannot see any sign of that port, our
minds will search for it. So also in those electric advertisements
where lines of fire, sprayed from a central source, rise and curve
over into the various letters of a word, the emphasis is rather on the
point where the lines originate than on any single letter or on the
word as a whole. Electric signs, by the way, are surprisingly often
examples of what not to do with motion if one desires to catch the eye
and to strike deep into the mind and emotions of the observer. The most
common mistake, perhaps, is the sign consisting of a word in steady
light surrounded by a flashing border in which a stream of fire flows
continuously from dusk till dawn. Our eyes chase madly around with
this motion and have no chance to rest upon the word for which the
advertiser is wasting his money.

But, to return to the question of how motions running away from each
other can throw the spectator’s attention to the point where they
originate, we can think of no more perfect example in nature than the
effect which is produced by throwing a pebble into a pool. Ripples
form themselves immediately into expanding rings which seem to pursue
each other steadily away from a common center. Yet, despite the
outward motion of these rings our eyes constantly seek the point from
which they so mysteriously arise. That this is true every reader has
experienced for himself. Here then we have discovered a fascinating
paradox of motion, namely, that a thing may sometimes be caught by
running away from it. This ought to be good news to many a movie
director.

But let us see what other means there are of emphasizing a theme or
some other feature of significant beauty in a photoplay. One method
is repetition. But what is the effect of repetition? Is it monotony
or emphasis? Does it dull our senses or sharpen them? There can be
no doubt that the steady repetition of the sea waves breaking on the
beach, or of rain drops dripping on our roofs, or of leaves rustling
in the forest, or of flames leaping in our fire-places can send us
into the forgetfulness of sleep. But, on the other hand, the periodic
repetition of a movement in a dance, or of a motif in music, or of a
refrain in poetry can drive that movement, that motif, or that refrain
so deeply into our souls that we never forget it. We refer, of course,
to the higher forms of dancing, music, and poetry; for in the lower
forms, such as the dancing of savages, the grinding of hand organs, and
the “sing-song” of uninspired recitations the too frequent repetition
soon results in monotony.

In the movies of to-day there is, we are glad to observe, very little
bad repetition except that of close-ups, and even they are now more
and more eliminated by directors. But there is also very little good
repetition in the cause of artistic emphasis. The tendency is rather a
touch and run. Seventy settings are used where seventeen would give us
a stronger sense of environment. We read more publicity “dope” about a
woman who can do a hundred “stunts” in five reels than about one who
can strike a single enthralling pose, and can return to it again and
again until it becomes as unforgettable as a masterpiece of sculpture.

The photoplay needs repetition, especially because of the fact that
any pictorial motion or moment must by its very nature vanish while we
look. Hence, unless all other circumstances are especially favorable
for emphasis, such a motion or moment may vanish from our minds as
well as from the screen. To fix these fleeting values is a problem,
but it can be solved without the danger of monotony if each repetition
is provided with a variety of approach, or if each repetition is made
under a variety of circumstances. This is the method in music. A
particular series of notes is struck and serves for a theme; then the
melody wanders off into a maze of harmony and returns to the theme,
only to wander off again into a new harmony and to return from a new
direction to the same theme. After a while this musical theme, thus
repeated with a variety of approach, penetrates our souls and remains
imbedded there long after the performance has ceased. The same method
is often employed to give emphasis to a particular movement or pose in
æsthetic dancing.

To show how repetition with variety of approach may operate on the
screen let us remake in imagination some scenes from Griffith’s “Broken
Blossoms,” a photoplay which was adapted from Thomas Burke’s short
story “The Chink and the Child.” The wistful heroine, called simply
The Girl, played charmingly by Lillian Gish, is shown in the wretched
hovel of her father, “Battling” Burrows, a prize-fighter. We see her
against a background of fading and broken walls, a bare table, a couple
of chairs, a cot, and a stove. If she sits down, stands up, lies down,
or walks across the room, she moves, of course, through a changing
pattern of motion against fixed lines. And she ends each movement in
a different fixed design. Now let us suppose that the most pictorial
of all these arrested moments is the one which is struck when she
pauses before an old mirror to gaze sadly at her own pathetic image,
and that during this moment we see, not only the best arrangement
of lines, patterns, and tones, and the best phase of all her bodily
movements, but also the most emotional expression of her tragic
situation as the slave of her brutal father. Wouldn’t it be a pity if
this pictorial moment were to occur once only during the play? How much
more impressive it would be if she paused often before this mirror,
always striking the same dramatic note. Such a pause would be quite
natural immediately after she enters the room or when she is about to
go out, or during her weary shuffling between the stove and the table
while serving supper, or after she has arisen from a spell of crying
on the cot and tries to shape her tear-stained face into a smile. In
all of these cases there would be variety and yet emphasis, always the
same tonal harmony between her blond hair and the faded wall, always
the same resemblance between the lines of her ragged dress and those of
the old furniture, always the same binding of her frail figure into the
hard pattern of her surroundings, as though she were but a thing to be
kicked about and broken,--all this shown again and again until the full
dramatic force and beauty of the pictorial moment is impressed upon the
spectator.

This kind of repetition can be done much more effectively and with
less danger of monotony in the photoplay than in the stage play,
because much of the action which intervenes between the repetitions
can be eliminated and other scenes can be cut in without breaking the
continuity of visible motion, while on the stage no bridging of time or
shifting of scene is feasible without dropping the curtain.

One device which is unique on the screen is the repetition of the
same “shot” by simply cutting into the film numerous prints from a
single negative. A well-remembered case was the “Out-of-the-cradle
endlessly-rocking” theme of Griffith’s “Intolerance,” a picture
of a young woman rocking a cradle, which was repeated at frequent
intervals throughout the story. The picture remained the same, but the
context was ever new; and, if the repetition was not impressive to
the spectators, the fault was not in the device itself, but rather in
the fact that there really was no very clear connection between the
cradle-rocking and intolerance.

Whenever we speak of emphasis in art we are naturally concerned about
emphasizing that which is vital in the theme or story. We do not,
for example, emphasize a man’s suspenders in a portrait where the
main theme is grief. Nor need we, for that matter, emphasize tears;
for a man might show as much grief with his shoulders as with a wet
handkerchief. In other words, if the theme is grief we should emphasize
grief itself rather than any particular gesture of grief.

Similarly if in a romantic story the main theme is dashing sword play,
it is swordsmanship which should be stressed, and not the sword itself,
unless, of course, that sword happens to have some magic property.
Therefore it is bad art in “The Mark of Zorro,” a Douglas Fairbanks
play, to repeat with every sub-title a conventional sketch of a sword.
It is bad, not only because the hero’s sword needs no emphasis, but
because a mere decorative drawing of a sword cannot reinforce the
significance of the real sword which the hero so gallantly wields.

There is a recurring note, however, in this play which can be
commended. It is the “Z” shaped mark or wound which Zorro makes with
his sword. We see it first as an old scar on the cheek of a man whom
Zorro has reprimanded. Then we see Zorro himself trace the mark on a
bulletin board from which he tears down a notice. Then we see him cut
the dreaded “Z” upon the neck of an antagonist. And, finally, we see
him, some days later, fix his weird mark squarely on the brow of his
old enemy. And in every case except the first we observe the quick
zigzag motion of the avenging sword.

Here the emphasis lies in the repetition of a pictorial element
with some variety of shape and movement and under a variety of
circumstances. The “mark” of Zorro becomes a sharp symbol which
inscribes ever anew upon our minds the character of the hero, his
dashing pursuit and lightning retribution.

Emphasis by repetition in the photoplay may further be achieved in
ways which we shall not take the time to discuss. Thus an especially
significant setting may be repeated in various lights and in
combination with various actions; or some particular action, such as a
dramatic dance, may be repeated in a variety of settings.

A sure means of emphasis is contrast. We have already shown how this
principle works in cases where a moving thing is contrasted with other
things which are at rest. Yet the contrast in such cases works only
in one direction. That is to say, the contrast throws the attention
on the motion, but it does not at the same time draw any attention to
the fixed objects. It will be interesting now to illustrate a sort of
double-acting contrast which may produce great emphasis in pictures.
In the well-known case where a tall man stands beside a short one on
a stage the difference between them is emphasized by the contrast in
their statures; and when we meet them off the stage we are surprised
to discover that one is not so tall, and the other not so short, as
we had been led to believe. In a photograph, for a similar reason, if
a very black tone is placed sharply along a very white one, each tone
will make the other seem more intense. And if a painter desires to
emphasize a color, say red, in his painting he does not need to do so
by spreading more paint over the first coat. Red may be accented by
placing green beside it. In fact, each of these two colors can accent
the other by contrast.

Similarly when two motions occur together the contrast between them
may be double-acting. When you are setting your watch, for example,
the minute-hand seems to run faster, and the hour-hand more slowly,
than is actually true, because of the contrast in their rates of speed.
This simple law might well be applied in the movies when emphasis of
motion is required. We would thus get the effect of speed upon the mind
without the annoyance of speed for the eye.

One does not have to be a critic to realize that there is entirely
too much speed on the screen. Some of this dizzy swiftness is due to
imperfect projection or to the worn-out condition of the film; witness
the flicker and the “rain” of specks and lines. Much of it is due also
to the fact that the projection is “speeded up” to a faster rate than
that of the actual performance before the camera. But there is also a
lamentable straining for effect by many directors who believe that an
unnaturally fast tempo gives life and sparkle to the action. Perhaps
some of these directors have not been able to forget a lesson learned
during their stage experience. In the spoken drama it has long been a
tradition that actors must speak more rapidly, and must pick up their
cues more promptly, than people do in real life, in order that the play
may not seem to drag. But we know that the motion picture is in danger
of racing rather than dragging. And racing, as we have said, hurts the
eyes.

The principle of contrast can relieve the eye of a part of its work
without imposing any additional task upon the mind. Thus some crazy
Don Quixote may _seem_ to cut and thrust with greater agility than the
fighting which we actually _see_, provided his action is contrasted
with the restful poking of his ham-fed servant, Sancho Panza. And thus
a railroad train which really was running at a moderate speed, might
_seem_ to dash by on the screen, if it were contrasted with the ambling
gait of a farmer’s team driven in the same direction along the tracks.

A kind of emphasis which we may classify as contrast is that which
occurs when movement is suddenly arrested. The unexpected stop not
only makes the previous motion seem faster than it really was, but it
also fixes attention more alertly on the thing which has just stopped
moving. When you bump against a chair in the darkness you are always
astonished to find that you were dashing along instead of merely
walking slowly. But the shock has deceived you, for you really were
walking slowly. If you are out hunting and your setter stops in his
tracks, your eye is immediately upon him, and will remain so fixed
until he or something else makes the next move. The same principle
works on the screen. If an actor, or an animal, or a thing is in motion
and then unexpectedly pauses, the effect of the pause is to attract
immediate attention, as well as to make the previous motion seem to
have been faster than it actually was. Sometimes this law may operate
to distract our attention from the dramatic interest. If, for example,
an outdoor scene has been “shot” on a squally day, and the wind has
abruptly died down for a few moments during the climax of the scene,
the effect on the screen will be to attract our attention instantly to
the leaves which have stopped fluttering, or the garments which have
stopped flapping. We will observe the sudden change in the weather and
forget the state of the story.

With this argument we ourselves shall pause, in order to summarize the
principal ways in which pictorial motions, working singly or together,
can produce the greatest impression on the spectator with the least
expenditure of his mental energy. Here is the list: A thing in motion
is normally more emphatic than anything at rest in the same picture.
Of two motions the one which is the more surprising or fanciful gets
the chief attention. Slowness or slightness may sometimes by contrast
be more emphatic than great speed or volume. A moving spot or a
line flowing along its own length has a tendency to carry attention
along with, or even ahead of, itself in the direction of movement.
Two or more movements along well-marked lines, whether converging
or diverging, focus attention on the point which these lines have
in common. Lines moving in circles away from a common center hold
attention on that center. Repetition can work for emphasis without
monotony, provided it be a repetition with variety of circumstances.
Contrast between two simultaneous motions or between a motion and
an abrupt rest may be double-acting, that is, may emphasize in both
directions.

Our discussion of motions at work in a picture has not been exhaustive.
The list might easily be made three times as long as it is. But it is
long enough to illustrate the evil which motions may do if they are
turned wild on the screen, and the good which they may work if they are
harnessed by a director who understands these fundamental principles
of pictorial composition.

However, all work and no play would make any picture dull, but that is
a subject for another chapter.



CHAPTER VIII

PICTORIAL MOTIONS AT PLAY


The average matter-of-fact man thinks that artists concern themselves
only with copying their subjects, and that their success as artists
consists in copying correctly. He is satisfied with a painted portrait
of his wife, provided it is a “speaking likeness,” and he craves no
other magic of design and color. Such a man praises a photoplay if
it presents a “rattling good story,” and expects no thrill from the
cinema composer’s conjuring with shifting patterns and evanescent
tones. At least he would say something to that effect if you argued the
matter with him. But he would be mistaken in his self-analysis, for
even a prosaic person really enjoys the decorative rhythmical quality
in a picture, though he may not be conscious of doing so. And every
spectator can get the richest beauty from the screen only when the
pictorial motions play as well as they work.

What is the difference between play and work? We know that when our
work most resembles play it is most enjoyable. And we know, too, that
play, even when it has not been professionalized, often comes very
near being work. The playing of children, as that of grown-ups, is
often very highly organized and pursued with a great deal of effort
and earnestness. Play, however, may be characterized by spontaneity
and variety. It is not forced, like work, which aims for some definite
practical result; and it does not have the rigidity and uniformity
which in work sometimes develops into dullness. If the emphasizing of
dramatic expression may be called the work of pictorial motions, then
the spontaneity and variety which accompanies this work may be called
the play of pictorial motions. And that play is essentially the same as
rhythm.

We think immediately of two of the elder arts in which rhythm is all
important--dancing and music. Music leads us to the thought of song,
and poetry, and oratory, arts which also are dependent on rhythm.
Dancing suggests sculpture, and sculpture suggests painting, arts
which would have little beauty without the quality of rhythm. Even
architecture must have it. From art we turn to nature, and we see the
poignant beauty of rhythm in cloud and wave, in tree and flower, in
brook and mountain, in bird and beast. The motion picture, which is the
mirror of nature, and at the same time the tablet upon which all of the
elder arts may write their laws, must bring to us the inheritance and
reflection of rhythm.

This quality has already been discussed in connection with the laws of
the eye, in Chapter III, and in connection with static composition,
in Chapter V. We come now to the pictorial problem of weaving the
individual and combined motions of a photoplay into a totality of
rhythm. First, let us consider the case of a single moving spot.
Suppose that we have before us a barren hillside of Mexico, an expanse
of light gray on the screen. Down that hillside a horseman is to come,
dark against the gray. If he rides in a single straight line, directly
toward the camera or obliquely down the hill, his movement will not be
pleasing to the eye, nor will it seem natural. But if he moves in a
waving line, a series of reverse curves freely made, the effect on the
eye of the spectator will be somewhat like that of the “line of beauty”
discussed in Chapter V.

An important difference, however, between a fixed line and one traced
by a moving object is that the latter disappears as soon as it is
drawn. It may linger in our memories, to be sure, yet our eyes can
trace that line only once, and only in the direction taken by the
moving object. That is, our physical eye cannot range back and forth
over the vanished path, as it can over a fixed line. And a still
greater difference is that the moving object has a rhythm of velocity
as well as a rhythm of direction. Velocity and direction of movement
arise and exist together, and consequently their relation to each other
may produce a new rhythm. The horse, varying his pace according to
the nature of the ground, may gallop along the level stretches, and
may pick his way cautiously down the steep declines. There is natural
harmony in rapid motion over a long smooth line, and slow motion over
a short jagged one. A simple case like this may help us to answer
the question, When is the relation between velocity and direction
harmonious? But we have still the fundamental questions, When is a
change of direction rhythmical? And, when is a change of velocity
rhythmical?

We cannot promise to give direct and definite answers to these
questions; but, recalling our discussion in Chapter V concerning rhythm
in fixed design, let us say that cinematic rhythm is a peculiar
alternation of phases or properties of pictorial motion which gives the
spectator a vivid sense of movement performed with ease and variety.

Now it may seem a vain task to analyze or try to define so delicate
a thing as rhythm, because all of us can be carried away by rhythm
without saddling it with a formula. Yet analysis will serve a useful
purpose if it can help the director to avoid motions which are not
rhythmical and if it can help the thoughtful spectator to fix the blame
for the jumble of unrhythmical motions which he now so often sees on
the screen.

Suppose we make a few tests upon the horseman coming down the hillside.
If he moves in a perfectly straight line at a perfectly steady pace,
the action will seem to be a forced, hard effort exerted without
variety. No rhythm will be there. But if he moves, even without change
of pace, along a path of flowing curves, we will sense a rhythm of
direction, providing the horse seems to follow the winding path freely
and without undue effort.

If, without change of direction, the horse frequently alters his gait
from a gallop to a walk and back to a gallop again in equal periods of
time, say half a minute each, it will be apparent that ease and variety
are utterly absent from the movement. And even if the horse follows
a winding path and changes gait at such regular intervals the rhythm
in direction will be neutralized by the lack of rhythm in velocity.
If, however, there is a progression of varying directions, varying
gaits, and varying durations of time which appear to be spontaneously
and easily performed, a progression, moreover, in which both the
similarities and the differences of the various phases can instantly be
perceived by the spectator, he will immediately experience the emotion
of rhythmical movement.

The above example illustrates how a single spot can move rhythmically
over the area of a picture. A moving line, say a column of soldiers
on the march, may have still more rhythm. We get a hint of this from
the “still,” facing page 133. It represents a scene from the Metro
production of Ibanez’s “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” which was
directed by Rex Ingram. We see there that the soldiers describe a path
of alternate curves, instead of the straight lines and square corners
which a less imaginative director would have ordered. Mr. Ingram has
further heightened the rhythm by placing gaps here and there in the
main column, and by introducing a secondary movement in the detachment
which turns off from the road just before reaching the village. These
movements are truly pictorial in composition; yet their meaning is none
the less military and dramatic.

In the scene just described the various motions are similar, and the
handling of them is therefore comparatively easy. But it is very
difficult to make a rhythmical combination of motions which differ
widely in character. In “The Dumb Girl of Portici,” for instance, we
are shown Pavlowa dancing on the beach, while the stately waves and
pounding surf of the ocean fill most of the area of the screen. But
there is no rhythm in the combined movements of that picture. The
dancer without the sea, or the sea without the dancer, might have been
perfectly rhythmical. But when we try to view them together in this
photoplay we get only the strong clash between their movements, and we
feel no pleasure when shifting our gaze from one to the other.

Perhaps the picture might have been a success if the dancer’s ground
had been a bank sufficiently high to mask the severe effect of the
surf, yet permitting a view of the incoming waves, and if the stately
variety in the movement of the sea had been taken as a key to a
sympathetic movement of the dancer. We might then get a harmonious,
alternating flow of the two movements, our eyes might play easily from
one to the other, and the total pictorial effect might arouse the
emotion of rhythm.

In a similar way any of the movements of nature, such as the effect of
wind on cloud, or tree, or field of grain; the fall or flow of water;
the flight of bird or characteristic movement of beast, movements
which, once admitted to the scene, cannot easily be controlled,
might be taken as keys in which to play those movements which can be
controlled.

Some practical-minded person may suggest that instead of worrying about
the composition of “unnecessary” motions, it would be better to omit
them. But such a person overlooks the natural human desire for richness
in art. We are so constituted that we crave lively emotional activity.
We love rich variety, and at the same time we enjoy our ease. When we
listen to the music of a pianist we are not satisfied if he plays with
only one finger, even though he might thus play the melody correctly,
because the melody alone is not rich enough. We want that melody
against all its background of music. We want those musical sounds so
beautifully related to each other that their harmony may arouse our
feelings without unduly straining our attention.

A splendid example of secondary motion may be seen in the light
draperies of a dancer. Even in the elementary movement of a few leaps
across the stage we see the delicate rhythm of a scarf which is at
first retarded by the air, then follows the dancer gracefully, and at
last gently overtakes her.

Between the movements of body and scarf there is a charming play. They
are pleasantly similar, yet they are pleasantly different. And there
is a distinct feeling of progression in the various phases of this
similarity and this difference. As spectators we catch this progression
without any effort of the intellect and are instantly swept into its
rhythm.

It would be easy for the director, of course, if the story which he is
about to film always called for action as graceful as that of a dance.
But unfortunately his scenario often demands the connecting of actions
which, pictorially considered, are totally unrelated to each other. Yet
if the director cares to seek the principles of beauty he will find
many ways of harmonizing elements that are seemingly in conflict.

One way is simply to impose on each of the discordant elements a
new value which they may assume in common without losing their own
distinctive characters. Suppose, for instance, that we must show a
society lady, with all her soft refinement, on a visit to a foundry,
with all its sweating roughness. One may fear that there must be
something repellent between her stately gentility and the bending
backs of workmen; between her kid-gloved gestures and the flow of
molten metal. Yet we can blend the whole scene into a single rhythm
by suffusing all its elements with the warm glow of the furnace and
by playing over them all the same movement of quivering light and
shadow. This vibrant, welding beauty which lady and laborer and machine
may have in common, while still retaining their individual dramatic
significance, will thus give the touch of art to a motion picture which
might otherwise be merely a crude photographic record of an incident in
a story.

Another way of bringing two conflicting motions into a rhythmical
relation is to place between them a third motion which, by being
somewhat like either of the other two, bridges the gap and thus
transforms a sense of fixed opposition into a sense of moving variety.
It would be somewhat of a shock, for instance, to shift our view
instantly from the rippling flow of a narrow stream to the wheels and
levers of a mill. But there would undoubtedly be a sense of continuity,
and perhaps of rhythm, in shifting from a general view of the stream to
a view of the water-wheel over which it flows, and thence to the wheels
of the machinery inside the mill.

This method of interposing a harmonizer might be useful also in
carrying over the rhythm of motion into the rhythm of fixed forms. Thus
if we were to throw upon the screen a picture of the gently rolling
sea, sharply followed by a view of the sweeping horizon of the hills,
it is most probable that the two kinds of rhythm would not unite to
draw a single emotional response from the spectator. He would feel only
the contrast. But if the view of the sea were followed by a view of a
field of grain, whose wind-driven billows resembled the waves of the
sea and whose rolling ground resembled the sweep of the hills, then
the rhythm of the quiet hills themselves might easily seem to be one
with the rhythm of the restless sea.

As we study the subject of visual rhythm we are led to compare it
again and again with auditive rhythm, which is best exemplified
in music. Thus it is easy to see how a given motion in a picture
might be considered the melody while all the other motions serve as
accompaniment, and how characteristic motions might be played against
each other like counterpoint in music. It is easy to see how a whole
succession of scenes might be considered a single rhythmical totality,
like a “movement” in a musical composition. And it is certain that
any director who thought of cinema composition in that sense would
never permit the slovenly joining which is so familiar in photoplays.
He would not then allow the shift from one scene to another to be
essentially a clash of unrelated motions. He would assure himself
rather that the characteristic types of motion in one scene, their
directions, velocities, and patterns, played into corresponding factors
of the next scene, until the entire succession became a symphony of
motion.[D]

    [D] For a further comparison between music and pictorial
        motions see Chapter IV of “The Art of Photoplay Making.”

It is an interesting fact that movement in a photoplay may come from
other things besides motions. One would get a sense of movement,
for example, even if every scene in a photoplay were itself a fixed
picture held for a few seconds on the screen. The various durations
of these pictures might be in a rhythmical series. The same might be
said of their dominant tones, and of their characteristic patterns and
textures. Would the time-lengths 3, 4, 2, 7, 5, be a good succession?
Or would 3, 7, 4, 5, 2 be better? Which would make a better succession
of figures? A circle, a triangle, and a cross? Or a cross, a square,
and a circle? Questions like these are not trivial; neither are they
over-refined. They and their answers should appear in the catechism of
every cinema composer.

Speaking of durations of scenes reminds us that in music it is often
the silences between the notes which vary in length while the notes
themselves are uniform. This would be true in the case of a simple
melody played on the piano. The intervals between notes can be observed
by tapping out the “time” of the piece on a single key of the piano, or
on a tin pan, for that matter; and the rhythm of time thus represented
would alone enable a listener to identify any popular piece of music.

At present there are no rests on the screen, no blank periods between
the scenes. There are, to be sure, moments of relaxation when scenes
are being “faded out,” and these “fades,” like the dying away of
musical sounds, have genuine rhythmical movement. But there is not on
the screen any alternation between stimulus and non-stimulus, as there
is in music, and as there is also in the performance of a stage play.
The motion picture, therefore, lacks that source of rhythm which exists
in musical rests or in the dramatic pauses of stage dialogue.

Whether intervals of non-stimulus could be successfully introduced
on the screen can be learned only by experiment. Any director who is
really in earnest about developing the motion picture as art should
make such an experiment. If he investigates the results of scientific
tests in psychological laboratories he will learn that under certain
conditions the normal spectator unconsciously creates rhythm in what
he sees. It has been shown, for example, that a person looking at a
small light which is flashed on and off at intervals has a tendency
to make rhythmic groupings of those flashes, by overestimating or
underestimating the lengths of the intervals. In other words, if you
give the beholder’s imagination a chance to function, it will indulge
in rhythmic play. We believe that if a cinema composer could thus
produce rhythm by illusion, as well as by actual presentation, his
achievement would be epoch-making in the movies.

Movement, movement through rich variety, movement accomplished with
the utmost ease--that is the essence of what we have chosen to call
the play of pictorial motions. That play, as we have seen in the
illustrations given, involves every kind of pictorial motion, whether
of spot, or line, or pattern, or texture, or tone; and every property
or phase, whether of direction, or rate, or duration; and every
circumstance, whether in relation to other motions near or remote,
simultaneous, or successive, or in relation to fixed elements of the
picture. Any two or three of these things may be treated as a separate
problem, but it is in the orchestration of all of them together that
the director may achieve the dominant, distinctive rhythm of his
photoplay. If he does not aspire to such achievement he is unworthy of
his profession. If he evades his problems because they are difficult he
is robbing his trust. If he declares that the world that loves movies
does not crave beauty on the screen, he is bearing false witness. If
he believes that the beauty of a photoplay lies wholly in the emotional
appeal of the performer and in the dramatic action of the plot, he is
stone blind to art.

So far as the motions in a picture present the actions and reactions
of the dramatic characters clearly and emphatically, they do faithful
work; but this work becomes play when it is relieved of its hardness
and dullness, and is animated with a spontaneity and variety that
catches up the spectator into a swinging movement of attention. And
those motions which are both work and play are basic in the beauty of
cinematic art.



CHAPTER IX

PICTORIAL MOTIONS AT REST


That a moving thing may sometimes seem to be at rest is well known by
any one who has ever spun a top. The top spins itself to sleep. We gaze
upon it in a peculiar spell of restfulness, which is broken only when
the top wakes up and begins to wabble.

Now one trouble with the movies is that they often wabble when they
ought to spin. The motions in the picture too often lack a center of
balance, a point of rest. All of us have been annoyed by excessive
motions, jumbling, clashing, on the screen. But many of us have also,
in lucky moments, been delighted by sudden harmonies on the screen,
when the pictorial motions, without slowing up in the least, were
conjured into a strange vital repose. And afterward, when we recalled
the enthrallment of such moments, we became optimists about the future
of cinema art.

Surely this is one of the characteristic appealing things about
a motion picture, that it can show us motions doing the work of
pictorial expression, indulging in rhythmic play, and yet suggesting
a dynamic repose. Thus the youngest art can give us in a new way that
“stimulation and repose” which, psychologists say, is the function of
all arts. The painter who can suggest movement by means of fixed lines,
masses, and colors is no more of a magician than the cinema composer
who can make moving things suggest rest.

Let me propose the following as working theories to explain the effect
of reposefulness in organized pictorial motions: First, that the
separate motions are balanced against each other; Second, that the
significant motions are kept near to a center of rest within the frame
of the picture, are sometimes even limited to an exceedingly small area
of the screen; and, Third, that every significant motion is harmonized
in kind, direction, and tempo with everything else in the picture.

The balancing of pictorial motions does not imply that they must be
paired off in exact equals. Certainly we do not insist that a dramatic
scene be so composed that when, for example, a person rises from a
chair in one part of a room, some other person sits down in a chair
in the opposite part of the room. Such an effect would be highly
mechanical, like the teetering of a see-saw; and it is not possible
for a spectator to get a thrill of beauty while his attention is being
held down to mechanics. We mean rather to apply the same reasoning to
pictorial motions which we have in Chapter V applied to fixed lines,
shapes, and tones. In short, we want to see the values of pictorial
motions so well distributed over the screen, and so related to each
other, that they give the impression of being in perfect equilibrium.

Suppose we imagine a cinema scene which contains a waterfall in the
left half, and nothing in the right half except a dark, uninteresting
side of a cliff. That composition would be out of balance. And if a
band of Indians entered the scene from the left and did a war dance
directly in front of the waterfall, that would throw the composition
still more out of balance. Or if, at the opening of the scene, the
Indians appeared dancing in front of the bare cliff, and then gradually
moved over to a place in front of the waterfall, this cluttering of
motions would certainly unbalance the picture.

Such cluttering is common on the screen because of the many movie
directors who either are afraid of simplicity, or lack the skill
which is necessary to make complexity appear simple. In the scene
just mentioned the safest course would be to leave out the waterfall,
however much of a natural wonder it may be, and to let the bare cliff
serve as the entire background for the Indian dance. But if this
cannot be done because of the peculiar demands of the plot, then the
picture might be balanced by introducing some additional motion in
the right half, say a column of smoke rising from a camp fire. Thus
even the careful addition of a new element would tend to bring unity
and restfulness into the arrangement of parts. Just visualize that
composition, the whitish water falling on one side, and the light gray
smoke rising on the other, and you will feel a peculiar restful balance
which could never be obtained by a mechanical pairing of two waterfalls
or two columns of smoke.

As critics searching for beauty on the screen, we might even carry our
demand for pictorial balance still farther. In some other picture we
might demand that there be motions in the upper part of the composition
to balance those in the lower part. To be sure, we would hardly look
for such balance in a stage play, or in an ordinary cinema scene where
the camera “shoots” in a level line, because in ordinary every-day
life we see more motion near the bottom of our view than anywhere in
the upper levels. Besides it is natural that weights should be kept
low; any object is more likely to be in equilibrium when its center of
gravity is low. But when we are shown a motion picture which has been
made with the camera pointing downward, so that a level thing, like a
plain or the surface of the sea, appears standing on end, then we like
to see the points of interest so distributed that the various parts of
the screen seem to be proportionally filled. Thus in a motion picture
of a lake taken from a high cliff we are not pleased to see moving
objects, boats, swans, etc., only in that area of the picture which
comes near the lower edge of the frame. We realize instantly that the
objects are not actually above or below each other in the air. And we
forget, therefore, that the screen is really in a vertical plane and
think of it rather as we would of a map lying before us. In fact, if
there are swans in the near part of the lake view, then the distant
surface of the lake will not appear to sink back into its proper level
unless it bears some balancing weight and value, say, two or three
small boats under sail.

However, even the best of balancing in a separate scene cannot insure
a balance between that scene and the next one. Directors are often
tempted to make shots from odd angles, straight up or straight down,
and to scatter them through a film, showing, for example, a skyscraper
lying down, or a city street standing on end. But the resulting series
of scenes does not make a composition pleasing to the eye. It gives the
effect of wabbling. Even if these oblique views show no moving things
whatsoever, their combined effect is the opposite of restfulness.

Returning now to the subject of balance in separate scenes, we may
consider depth, the third dimension of a cinema subject. This dimension
is usually far greater than either the height or the breadth of that
space which the camera measures off for us. And it is interesting
to see what problems the cinema composer has in relating motions
in the third dimension to those in the other dimensions of the
picture. He often finds it hard, for instance, to compensate in the
background for the movements in the foreground, without destroying the
dramatic emphasis. The usual trouble in the movies is that, when the
dramatic interest is in the foreground, the motions in the background
nevertheless draw so much of our attention to that region that the
picture becomes too heavy in the rear; while, on the other hand, if the
dramatic interest is in the background, the motions in the foreground
nevertheless become so heavy that the front of the picture falls into
our faces.

These are common faults; yet they may be avoided by foresight and
ingenuity. In the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” Rex Ingram reveals
a sure sense of proportion in his control of the marching soldiers.
If you turn to the “still” of a village scene from this photoplay,
facing page 133, you will get a suggestion of the equilibrium which is
obtained for a time, at least, between the motions in various regions
of the picture.

[Illustration: From _The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse_. The
arrangement in this scene has interesting balance between the right and
left halves of the picture, as well as between the foreground and the
background, and there is a vigorous rhythm in the moving columns of
soldiers. See pages 120 and 132.]

Let us say that the foreground of that scene extends from the camera to
the cavalryman, that the middle ground is that area which is occupied
by the buildings, and that the background is all the region which
lies beyond the ruined tower. This picture has many distances, and yet
they fuse together into a single composition. Equilibrium is maintained
by the fact that the scattering figures near the fountain weigh against
the marching soldiers to the left in the foreground, while the two
sides find a center of balance in the quiet horseman and the three
persons to whom he is talking. In the middle ground the same care has
been shown, for the soldiers first swing to their left, past the tower,
and then execute a balancing movement to their right. In the background
there is a balance between those forces which are executing a “column
right” and those which are proceeding down into the village street. And
if we take the background of the picture as against the foreground,
we shall find a balancing point in the narrowest part of the street.
No undue attention is attracted to either side of this point, but the
whole sweep of interest from front to back, or from back to front, is
continuous and even. There is plenty of military movement here amid
evidences of terrific bombardment, and yet, because of the artistic
composition of the picture, we get from it all a momentary sense of
repose, as though war itself were at rest.

Several details in this “still” are worth noting. For example, the
comparatively few figures in the right side of the foreground are given
additional weight by the whiteness of costume, as against the gray of
the soldiers. Another interesting thing is the balance between the line
described by the leading company of soldiers and the line of tree tops
on the wooded hill, which begins near the upper right hand corner and
extends to the castle. This relation can be clearly seen by holding the
“still” upside down.

The reader must keep in mind, of course, that in a “still” the arrested
motion has not the same weight as the actual motion on the screen, and
consequently the fixed things get more than their share of weight.
Therefore in this “still” from “The Four Horsemen” the jagged holes in
the buildings attract more attention than they do on the screen, where
the movement of the soldiers and civilians brings the whole composition
into balance.

When the whole picture is deep, as in the example just discussed,
it offends us if some of the moving objects come near the camera,
because this produces two pictures within a single frame, namely, a
close-up and a long shot. The effect is as bad as that of listening
to an orchestra so placed that some of the instruments are five feet
away from our ears while the others are seventy-five feet away. In
either case there comes a sense of violence instead of restfulness. The
close-up superposed on the long shot is a common fault in photoplays.
But we are often annoyed by the opposite fault also, that of jumbling
two sets of actions which are going on in adjoining areas, one just
beyond the other. In such a case the director should contrive to make
the vertical planes seem farther apart than they really are; and it can
easily be done without cleaving the picture in two.

To prove this let us imagine a cabaret scene containing prominent
persons of the play sitting at tables near the camera, and a number
of couples dancing on a floor farther away. In such an arrangement
it is probable that the diners have more dramatic value than the
dancers; yet the dancing figures are likely to distract attention
from those seated at the tables, and thus throw the picture out of
balance. Mr. Ingram in “The Four Horsemen” had this very problem, and
he solved it in a very simple and convincing way. He allowed a thick
haze of cigarette smoke to envelop the dancers till they seemed dim
and distant. Or, rather, he used the smoke as a transparent curtain
which separates the diners from the action in the background. Thus
balance was restored and the spectator could follow the action in the
foreground without a sense of disturbance.

A separation of planes somewhat similar to this was skilfully effected
by Allan Dwan in “Sahara.” One of the settings is a luxurious tent in
the desert. The front of this tent had a wide opening over which hung
a veil of mosquito netting. Viewed from within the tent, this veil
became a soft background against which the figures moved, while at the
same time it served as a thick atmosphere to give dimness and distance
to the figures which were just outside the tent. By this device, which
is as natural and unobtrusive as the smoke screen described above,
Mr. Dwan, besides providing a peculiar pictorial quality of gradated
tones, kept two sets of figures separate and yet combined them in rich
restfulness.

When a director is composing a scene in which there is a single moving
element with a very short path of motion and no strong fixed interests
to counter-balance it, he should remember that an object tends to
shift the weight of interest somewhat in advance of its own movement.
Therefore, a picture will seem to be in better balance if a movement
begins near one edge and ends near the center, than if it begins at
the center of the picture and passes out at one side.

This observation regarding the shifting of balance during pictorial
action raises the question whether it is a practical possibility to
keep the composition of a cinema scene steadily in equilibrium for
minute after minute. Since the fixed accents do not change their
positions and the moving accents do, one might suppose that the scene
must sooner or later fall out of balance. But this is not necessarily
so. It is true that if, for example, there is a group of fixed accents
in the left half of the picture, and a single figure starts from the
center and passes out of the scene at the right, it would tend, first,
to over-balance the right side of the picture, and then suddenly to
leave it without weight. But this tendency may be counter-acted by
swinging the camera slightly to the left without stopping the exposure.
Such an expedient would shift all of the fixed accents together, though
at the cost of introducing a momentary false motion. The ingenious
director may find other means by which to compensate for the changes
which must of necessity come about in a cinematic composition. However,
when it is not possible to have good proportion and balance at more
than one moment of a changing scene, that moment should be at the
pictorial climax, the crucial point of that scene, the instant when
the spectator is to receive the strongest impression, the greatest
stimulation and yet the most perfect repose.

Equilibrium is reposeful because it is characteristic of a thing at
rest. To say that another characteristic of a thing at rest is that
it stays where it is, may sound like an Irish bull; but we say it,
nevertheless, in order to make another point in our argument that
pictorial motions may sometimes be in dynamic repose. It is quite
possible for a pictorial motion to give a sharp impression of power,
weight, and velocity, and yet stay practically where it first appears
on the screen. An express train, for example, may be shown in a
“long shot” starting several hundred yards away from the camera and
continuing for miles into the distance, and yet the actual moving
image on the screen might cover an area less than two feet square, and
might, from beginning to end of the scene, never come near the frame
of the picture. Thus the train, without losing any of its impressive
character, would provide a reposeful motion for the eye to gaze upon.
Surely such an effect would be better than to show the train as a
close-up on a track at right angles to our line of sight, with the
locomotive crashing in through the frame at the left of the picture and
crashing out through the frame at the right.

The reposeful quality of restricted movement on the screen is due
partly to the fact that the flicker and the eye movement is thus
reduced, as we have said in Chapter III. In the case just described
it is due also to the contrast between the slight movement which we
actually _look at_ and the large movement which we really _perceive and
feel_. We look at inches and perceive miles. Thus we see very much with
extreme ease.

We have remarked in preceding chapters that every picture has four
lines, those of the frame, which the composer must always consider. He
could, it is true, soften the sharp boundaries of the picture by using
some masking device with the camera, but this is not usually done.
The four corners of the frame are always strongly emphasized, because
of the crossing of lines at right angles. To lead another strong line
into one of the corners would surely result in undue emphasis and lack
of balance, because of the power of converging lines. It is almost as
bad to lead a strong line squarely into the frame between the corners,
because such a meeting creates two more right angles to attract
attention. Of course, there may be certain lines in a composition,
such as the line of the horizon, which cannot stop short of the frame.
In such a case it is well to have some other strong accent not far
from the center of the picture in order to keep the attention of the
beholder within the frame.

What is true of the relation between fixed lines is also true of the
relation between paths of motion and fixed lines. It is rather annoying
to watch a continuous movement continually being cut off by the frame;
and it is especially annoying when one sees that such a composition
might have been avoided. In a waterfall, for example, the points of
greatest interest are the curving top and the foaming bottom, and we
like to see both at the same time and wholly within the frame. A motion
shown entirely surrounded by things at rest is reposeful on the screen
as well as in nature. Like a fixed object it stays where it is.

There are certain pictorial motions, however, such as the falling of
snow, which must always either begin or continue outside of the frame.
But even when we view such a motion on the screen or in nature we get
a feeling of repose, because our eyes do not perform any following
movement; we do not, in watching a snow storm through a window,
pick out certain flakes and follow them from a height until they
strike the ground; but rather we keep our line of sight steady upon a
certain spot while the changing texture slips by. One can get the same
effect by looking down from a tall building into a crowded street.
The individuals are no longer thought of as separate moving objects,
because they weave themselves into a broad band of moving and changing
texture. Here we get the feeling of restfulness, of motion in repose,
in contrast to the feeling of restless motion when we ourselves become
part of that crowd.

A delightful picture in “Barbary Sheep,” directed by Maurice Tourneur,
is the view of a flock of sheep moving slowly along from left to right.
The animals are so crowded together that the mass as a whole has a
textural quality. And yet it is not fixed texture, like that of cloth,
because some of the sheep move faster and then again more slowly than
the others, and thus, as in the case of the snow flakes, or the crowd
in the street, give us a vital stimulus of change within the texture
itself.

A somewhat similar sense of rest comes from watching those motions
which arise and vanish within some given area of the screen. A cloud
of cigarette smoke which floats and coils for a few moments and then
fades into nothing, bubbles which rise in a pool and break into faint
ripples that finally die on the glassy surface, the blazing and dimming
of tones through the photographic device of the “fade-out” and the
“fade-in”--all changes of this type we sense vividly as movements, and
yet as movements in delightful repose.

At the beginning of this chapter we mentioned the spinning top as
an example of motion that had the appearance of being at rest. To a
certain extent all circular movement presents that appearance and may
be very pleasing on the screen, providing it does not conflict with
our desire for fitness and is not allowed to become monotonous. A fly
wheel whirling may look like a disk at rest, but it is monotonous and
entirely without artistic stimulation. The action within the ring of
a circus presents a more stimulating show, and yet it is not quite
satisfying as an artistic composition of motion, because we cannot help
feeling that it is not natural, that it is unfit for a horse to turn
forever within a forty-foot ring. In the æsthetic dance, on the other
hand, a circling movement can always be of satisfying beauty, full of
graceful vitality and yet delightfully reposeful, too, because it never
flies away from its axis fixed within our area of vision.

Now, we cannot recommend that the players of a film story should always
be shown running around in circles. And yet their separate actions,
gestures and bodily movements in general, may often be so composed that
they progress in a circular path, each movement tracing an arc of a
circle which nowhere touches the frame of the picture. Such circularity
of motions would give unity, balance, and repose. A good example of
circularity may be seen in “The Covered Wagon” when the wagon train,
just before coming to a halt, divides and swings into two large arcs
of a circle, which slowly contract as the wagons turn inward toward a
common center.

Another interesting example of circular balance may be seen in “One
Arabian Night,” a German photoplay directed by Ernst Lubitsch. The
scene is a court yard, viewed from on high. Looking down we see eight
or ten servants running inward from all sides to a focal place, where
they pile up cushions for the hero and heroine. Then they turn and
run outwards to get more cushions. In a few moments they return, and
finally they seat themselves in a circle about the central figures.
Here is a charming combination of pictorial motion with a natural
dramatic by-play, delighting the eye and lingering long as a pleasant
motor image in memory. When we analyze this part of the picture we
discover that the principle of balancing motions has been applied
perfectly. To begin with, the design is kept in balance because the
men enter at the same time from opposite directions and approach the
center at equal speed. Thus, while they are separate figures moving
over symmetrically arranged courses, they also form a circle which
gradually contracts about a fixed center. This inward movement of the
men is itself balanced by the corresponding outward movement when they
go to get more cushions, which is in turn balanced when they come
back. Finally this pattern of a circle contracting, expanding, and
contracting again, harmonizes perfectly with the fixed circle which
is formed when the men seat themselves. There is a further pleasing
continuity in the composition when a woman enters the scene and dances
over a circular path just within the ring formed by the servants.

To the so-called practical business man, whose artistic experience
consists chiefly in drawing dollar signs, it may sound like sheer folly
for us spectators to ask a director to spend valuable time in refining
the art of pictorial motions by some of the methods above suggested.
The money magnate may not realize that even a slight improvement, a
delicate touch, may be as important in a picture as in the motor of his
touring car. Yet he does know, of course, that in the world of industry
the superiority of one article over another may lie in a secret known
only to the maker, a secret perhaps never even suspected by the man who
sells the article. We should be sorry indeed to lose credit with the
man who can draw dollar signs, because we need his co-operation, and we
hope, therefore, that he will not long remain blind to the fact that in
art the superiority of one article over another may lie in a concealed
design so skilfully wrought that neither the spectator nor the man who
traffics in the spectator’s pleasure may suspect its presence.

Balanced motions and motions that are limited in area are valuable on
the screen, we have said, because they can stimulate the spectator
while giving him the satisfaction of repose. We come now to a third
characteristic of motions that appear to be at rest, the fact that
they are in perfect adjustment with everything else around them.
Perfect adjustment means that all of the moving elements of a pictorial
composition are at peace with the fixed elements, as well as with each
other. It means harmony, the supreme quality of every art.

No other art, not even music, contains so great a number of varied
parts as the motion picture. To fuse all of these parts into a single
harmonious whole requires knowledge and skill and happy inspiration,
yet fusion must take place in the cinema composition itself in order
that the spectator may be spared the annoyance of trying to unify in
his own mind the ill-adjusted factors on the screen.

The pleasing effect of motions in harmony can be illustrated by
something with which we are all familiar from childhood, the display of
sky rockets. The spray of stars, flaming up, burning bright lines in
the sky, and fading out again into the darkness of night, exhibits a
perfect harmony of kinds, directions, and rates of motions, as well as
of changes in brightness. We have explained in Chapter III that things
moving in similar directions are more pleasing than those crossing in
opposite directions because they are easier for the eye to follow. And
it is, of course, true that whatever hurts the eyes will probably not
seem beautiful. But a picture must please our emotions as well as our
eyes. We must feel that it is good, that it is in order, that it obeys
some law of harmony. In the case of the sky rocket we do feel that
there is unity and not discord, rest and not warfare. Though we may
not stop to analyze the matter, we feel that at any one moment all of
the burning elements are in perfect agreement, obeying the same law of
motion.

Now let us recall some familiar movie subjects, and test them for
harmony. A common picture is that of a horse and an automobile racing
side by side. Here there is similarity of direction, but there is no
similarity of motion. The car glides; the horse bounds. The changing
pattern which the horse describes with legs and neck and back and tail
finds no parallel in the moving panel of the car. Besides, we feel
that there is antagonism between the two. They hate each other. Their
histories and destinies are different. They are not in harmony. A much
better subject is a huntsman galloping over the countryside with a
dog at the horse’s heels. Every action of the one animal is somewhat
like every corresponding action of the other animal. One might even say
that the horse is a large kind of dog, while the dog is a small kind
of horse. And, as they cross the fields in loyalty to the same master,
their motions harmonize.

There would be unity of a similar kind in a picture of an automobile
and a railroad train racing on parallel roads. Although they are two
separate machines, their motions fuse into one thing, which we call a
race. If the roads are not perfectly parallel but swing slowly away
from and toward each other again, we get a pleasing rhythm of motions,
yet, because the directions and speeds are similar, the unity still
remains.

But if we imagine the train dashing by a farmstead where a Dutch
windmill sweeps its large arms slowly around, we would feel again a
lack of unity between the two kinds of motions. The impression upon our
minds would be confused; it would not be a single impression, because
the moving objects show two different kinds of patterns, with rates
of speed that are not sufficiently alike to be grasped as a unity.
A better picture would be that of an old Dutch mill on the bank of
a river whose sluggish waters flow wearily by. Perhaps even an old
steamboat with a large paddle wheel might be so introduced that the
revolutions and patterns of the two wheels would be similar, while the
forward thrusts of the boat and the current would also be similar, all
four movements blending together into a single harmony, like the music
of four different instruments in an orchestra.

The orchestration of motions is, in fact, the proper work of the cinema
composer. If he cannot control the objects which move before him, he
is in as bad a way as the director of an orchestra who cannot make the
musicians do his bidding. We can sympathize with the movie director,
because some of the things he wants to bring into a picture are not
so easily controlled as musicians. One can talk to a fiddler, but one
cannot waste time talking to a brook or to a Dutch windmill. However,
if a windmill will not behave itself, it can be dismissed no less
promptly than a fiddler.

The average photoplay seen in the theaters to-day could undoubtedly
be improved by retaking it with at least half of the material omitted
from every scene. The simplicity thus obtained would help to give
a more unified effect, would be less of a strain on the eyes, and
would require less effort of the mind. But simplicity is worshiped by
only a few of our best directors. The average director who is asked
to film a scene of a country girl in a barnyard, a scene in which
simplicity itself should predominate, will produce a conglomeration of
chickens fluttering, ducks waddling, calves frisking, a dog trotting
back and forth, wagging his tail and snapping his jaws, gooseberry
bushes shaking in the wind (always the wind), a brook rippling over
pebbles, and, somewhere in the center of the excitement, the girl
herself, scattering corn from her basket while her skirts flap fiercely
about her knees. From such a picture the spectator goes out into the
comparative quiet of crowded Broadway with a sigh of relief, thankful
that he does not have to live amid the nerve-wracking scenes of a farm.

When we insist that the motions in a picture should be in harmony with
each other because of the pictorial restfulness which thus results, we
do not forget that motions should also be in harmony with the meaning,
the dramatic action, which the scene contains. Some red-blooded reader
of this book might possibly have the notion that artistic composition
of a picture will rob it of its strength. Please may we ask such a
person to read carefully Chapters II, IV, and VII of this book? We
have maintained there that good pictorial composition can make any
movie “punch” harder than ever. Let us illustrate that argument again.
Suppose we “shoot” two brawny men in a fist fight. The motions of
the men should have unity, even though their souls might lack it. It
sounds like a contradiction, but the methods of the men fighting should
harmonize in motion. If they do not, we cannot enjoy the fight. What
would you think of a fist fight in which one man had the motions of a
windmill, and the other had the motions of a chicken?

Many movie directors have had stage experience, either as actors
or directors, and are instinctively able to harmonize the dramatic
pantomime of actors or actresses, whenever this pantomime takes place
in the midst of perfectly quiet surroundings, as is usual in the
setting of the theater stage. But as soon as these directors take their
troupe out “on location” they encounter difficulties, because the wind
nearly always blows costumes, bushes and trees into motion, because
there are nearly always animals or moving vehicles on the scene, and
because the “location” is more likely than not to include such things
as fountains, waterfalls, or sea beaches. They find therefore, that
the movement of the actors during any one moment of the picture is
likely to be discounted by the gamboling of a lamb or the breaking of a
sea wave during the next minute.

The sea and surf possess a perfectly rhythmical motion which one may
watch for hours without becoming weary. And the effect of that motion
may well be heightened by composing it with other moving objects so
that the various motions taken together will harmonize in directions,
shapes, and velocities. Such composition was very well done in the
climactic scenes of “The Love Light,” the Mary Pickford play directed
by Frances Marion, who also wrote the story. Views of the sea breaking
on the shore are shown time and again throughout the play, but the most
impressive scenes are near the end where a sailing party lose control
of their sloop in a storm and are shipwrecked on the shoals. Here
the principal moving objects partake of the movements of the sea and
therefore harmonize with it in tempo. The vessel rises and falls with
the waves. The people above and below decks sway and lurch with the
same motion. The water which breaks through the hatches and trickles
down the companionway describes the same shapes and flows with the same
rate as the water which breaks over and trickles down the rocks. The
total effect is a single impression of motion in which the separate
parts parallel and reinforce each other. And this total impression is
sustained through many scenes, even though the position of the camera
is often shifted and the subject is viewed from many angles. This
cinematic climax is a good example for readers to keep in mind when
they set out through the movie theaters in search of cases where the
motion of nature has been successfully harmonized with those of other
motions demanded by the action of the story.

One of the ugliest of pictorial conflicts occurs when false motion
and real motion are projected together upon the screen. Who has not
been annoyed by the typical “follow” picture in which a lady is shown
ascending a flight of stairs, while the stairs themselves (because
the camera has been swept upward during the exposure) flow swiftly
downward across the screen? The “follow” or “panoram” picture of moving
things is usually bad because it falsifies real motion and gives the
appearance of ugly motion to things which actually are at rest. An
atrocious picture of a horse race, exhibited not very long ago, had
been taken by carrying the camera on a motor car which had been kept
abreast though not steadily abreast, of the horses. The result was
that the grand stand, guard rails, and all fixed objects flew crazily
from left to right, and that, because of the irregular swinging of the
camera, the horses sometimes seemed to drop back together, even though
they had clearly not slackened their speed.

We have been discussing in the above paragraphs the harmony of
pictorial motions which occur together at a given moment. They may have
a harmony like that of musical notes struck in a chord. But pictorial
motions come in a procession as well as abreast, and these successive
motions may have a harmony like that which runs through a melody in
music.

In a stage play it is not difficult to organize simultaneous or
successive actions so that the total action will produce a single
effect, because all the movements of human performers are naturally
very much of the same style. The gestures and postures of a performer
in any given action are very likely to be followed by similar gestures
and postures at frequent intervals during the play. Stage directors
have developed their traditions of unity and harmony through centuries
of theatrical history. They have learned to preserve, not only the
“key” of the action, but the “tempo” as well. If they strike a certain
pace at the beginning of the act or play they will maintain that pace
with practically no variation to the end.

It would be most desirable if unity of motion could be sustained
throughout the entire length of a photoplay, as in a stage play or in
a musical composition. There should be a real continuity of pictures,
as there is supposed to be “continuity” of actions described in a
scenario. But such continuity is hard to find on the screen. In “The
Love Light,” for instance, the film which we have just discussed, there
is little unity of motion except in the climactic scenes. The very
action from which the title “The Love Light” is derived, is botched
in composition. The light is that of a lighthouse and the heroine
manipulates it so as to throw a signal to her lover. This action
is shown in a series of cut-backs from a close-up of a girl in the
lighthouse to a general view of the sea below and to a close-up of the
hero. But the lantern with its apparatus of prisms makes a cylindrical
pattern which does not harmonize in shape with the long white pencil of
the searchlight sweeping the sea. Nor does it harmonize in motion, for
the simple reason that the sweeping ray moves clock-wise, in spite of
the fact that the girl rotates the lantern counter-clock-wise.

Two other discrepancies in these scenes may be noted. One is that in
the close-ups the lantern does not appear to be lighted, and the other
is that lighthouses do not, as a rule, send out light in pencil-like
shape.

The scene above cited lacks pictorial unity, in spite of the fact that
the neighboring scenes are in perfect unity of dramatic meaning. This
illustrates the dangerous difference between saying things in words
and saying them in pictures. If we write, for example, “she swings
the lantern around slowly, etc.,” no reader is likely to question
whether the lantern is lighted or not, or whether it is rotated in one
direction or the opposite. But the camera impolitely tells the whole
truth. And some truths are full of fight when they are brought face to
face with each other.

The suddenness with which one scene leaps to the next on the screen
is a factor which many directors and most scenario writers fail to
reckon with. In Chapter III we have discussed at some length the effect
which these sudden jumps have upon our eyes. It remains now to see how
the “flash” from one scene to another affects our minds. In “Barbary
Sheep,” directed by Maurice Tourneur, there is bad joining which may
be illustrated by naming a succession of three scenes. They are: (1) A
picture of a mountain sheep some distance away on the edge of a cliff,
sharp against the sky, an excellent target for a hunter. (2) The hero
out hunting. He sees something, aims his gun obliquely upward. Our eyes
follow the line of the gun toward the upper left-hand corner of the
frame. (3) Some society ladies in a room.

Perhaps the reader can guess, even from this incomplete description in
words, how sudden and complete was the shock of scene 3 coming after
the preparation of scene 2. There was a complete violation of unity of
meanings, as well as of motions. We cannot say who was to blame for
this bad art, whether it was the director, or some one in the “cutting
room.” Possibly some motion picture operator had mutilated the film
in the theater. The fact remains that this part of the picture as it
reached the audience was badly composed. The promise of one scene was
not only ignored but ridiculed in the next scene.

An excellent illustration of how the promise made by a scene can be
beautifully fulfilled for the eye by a following scene may be found
in Griffith’s “The Idol Dancer.” Incidentally the joining shows how
false motion may be harmonized with real motion. Let the reader
imagine himself looking at a motion picture screen. The setting is a
New England country road in winter. Into the picture from the lower
right side of the frame comes a one-horse sleigh, which, as it glides
along the road, describes a curving motion over the screen, first to
the left and then upward to the right. It then begins curving to the
left again, when the scene is suddenly cut. The effect on our eyes at
this moment is such that we expect a continuation of motion toward
the left, a completion of the swing. And this is just what we get in
the next picture, which shows, not the sleigh at all, but the motion
of the landscape gliding by, from right to left, as the sleigh-riders
themselves might have seen it. We feel a pleasure of the eye somewhat
akin to the pleasure of our ears when a musician strikes a note which
the melody has led us to expect. Griffith’s touch of art in this
joining is especially delightful because it is so subtle that any
spectator, though he would surely feel it, would not observe it unless
he were especially occupied in the analysis of motion on the screen.

Sometimes two scenes may be joined in perfect harmony of motions and
yet show a conflict of meanings. In “The Love Light,” above mentioned,
we have one scene where the hero is about to take refuge in the cellar
beneath the room occupied by the heroine. He raises a trap door, goes
down the steps, and, as he descends slowly, closes the door behind
him. This downward-swinging motion of the door is in our eyes when the
scene is cut, and the next instant we see the outer door of the house
swinging open suddenly as the heroine rushes out into the yard. The
motions of the two doors are in perfect unity and balance, but we are
shocked nevertheless, because, since our minds and eyes were on the
hero in the cellar, we had expected another view of him beneath the
trap door.

But there are worse compositions than this in the movie theaters.
Sometimes whole plays are out of unity from beginning to end. A
notorious example was a photoplay called “The Birth of a Race,” which
began with Adam and Eve and ended up with visions of the future,
touching as it ran such things as little Moses and the Daughter
of Pharaoh, the slave drivers of Egypt, the exodus of Israel, the
crucifixion of Christ, the three ships of Columbus, the signing of the
Declaration of Independence, Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation,
the World War, German spies, steel works in the United States, a strike
of the workers, etc., etc. All of these scenes were badly joined, but
the greatest shock of all came when the action jumped in a flash from
Christ and the two thieves writhing in crucifixion to the three ships
of Columbus heeling gracefully in a light breeze.

Merely to hint at the contents of such a play is, we hope, sufficient
criticism. Without harmony of subject matter there certainly can be
no harmony of treatment. And if the director of “The Birth of a Race”
offers as his defense that he did not write the story, we can only
retort that he should not have picturized it. Even when the subject
matter is in continuous unity it requires a skillful, painstaking,
sincere director to weave its various materials into a single harmony
of impressiveness.

Perhaps we have continued long enough the discussion of the many-sided
nature and the artistic value of pictorial motions at rest. Let us
simply add that the kind of rest we have in mind is never the rest of
inaction, of sleep, or of death; it is rather a dynamic repose. Just
as the still portions of the motion picture may be active upon the
spectator’s mind, so the motions may be reposeful while they are both
at work and at play. Such harmony of pictorial motions on the screen
is not too high an ideal for the lovers of the cinema. The glimpses we
get of that ideal now are enough to assure us that as time goes on more
and more directors will be filled with inspiration and will achieve
triumphant expression through their chosen art.



CHAPTER X

MASTERY IN THE MOVIES


Who is the legitimate master in movie making? It is, of course, the
director, and he should take complete command over the plot action
of the photoplay, over the players and their accessories, over the
settings and those who make the settings, over the camera men, over the
cutters, joiners, and title writers; in short, over all those who are
co-workers in photoplay making. If this mastery cannot be obtained; if
writers and players and scene painters will not agree to shed their
royal purple for the badge of service; if all those who co-operate in
making a photoplay cannot see that the product must be judged by its
total effect and not by mere details of performance, then, of course we
shall never have art upon the screen.

But it is usually very difficult for the director to take and keep
complete command. Among the first rebels against his authority is
the writer of the story which is to be filmed. It would be best, of
course, if the director could originate his own plot, as a painter
conceives his idea for a painting, or if he could, at least, prepare
his own scenario as studiously as the painter makes his own preliminary
sketches for a painting. But, under the present system, these two tasks
of movie making can only in exceptional cases be performed in detail by
the same person. The next best thing, then, is for the writer to limit
himself to the bare subject matter of a picture, that is, the general
action in which the characters are involved, while the director takes
the responsibility for the pictorial treatment of this subject matter.

Now comes an interesting question. Which has the more artistic weight
on the screen, the treatment of the subject, that is the presentation
of the story pictorially, or the subject as such regardless of its
presentation? The same question may be asked of any masterpiece of art;
is it distinctive because of the subject matter or because of what
the artist has done to that subject matter? In other words, would the
subject matter remain distinctive even if it were badly treated?

There are sometimes happenings in real life that can hold one’s
unwavering attention, no matter how poorly presented in language or
picture. For example, if a panic-stricken idiot were to rush to you
and say, “It were quick, oh, explosion by Wall Street and lots of
fellers shut up dead and J. P. Morgan’s windows all over bloody men
every way,” you would be shocked--not amused--and you would not stop to
consider the ridiculous language of the report. And if by some strange
coincidence a camera man had secured a motion picture of that explosion
in Wall Street, you would be curious to see that picture, and would
undoubtedly be impressed by it, no matter how ineffective might be its
photography or pictorial composition.

In fiction there may be certain chains of incidents, such as the action
of a detective story, which might carry a strong dramatic appeal, even
though the language of the narrator were crude, confused, obscure,
weak, and of no beauty appropriate to the thing expressed. “There
may be,” we say; but all self-respecting writers will agree with us
that language-proof stories are extremely rare. The story is usually
impressive because of the telling, and not in spite of it.

In the motion picture, naturally, the telling is not in words, but in
arrangements of lines and shapes, of tones and textures, of lights and
shadows, these values being either fixed or changing, and exhibited
simultaneously or in succession. Whatever arrangement the director
makes comes directly to us in the theater. Barring accident we see it
unchanged on the screen, and, as far as we are concerned, it is the
only treatment which the story has.

It is true, of course, that cinematographic treatment may be vaguely
suggested by written or spoken words; it may be more definitely
suggested by drawings; but it can never actually be given either by
words or drawings. Even the director himself cannot know definitely,
in advance of the actual rehearsing and taking of the picture, just
what the composition will be. He may plan in advance, but he does not
actually compose until the players are on the scene and the camera
“grinding.” During those moments are created the actual designs which
become fixed permanently in the film.

Turning from pictures for a moment, let us consider the relation
between plot and treatment in literary art. It is interesting to study
Shakespeare’s attitude toward the material which he borrowed for his
plays. Glance through the introduction and notes of any school text,
and you will see that the plot which came to his hand ready-made
was not held sacred. He twisted it, tore out pieces from it, or spun
it together with other plots similarly altered. And even then the
altered plot, though an improvement over the raw material, was not a
masterpiece; it was only a better framework for masterly treatment.

In the art of Shakespeare it is the telling, not the framework, of the
story that counts. Hence any play of his becomes a poor thing indeed if
you take away from it the tone-color of his words, the rhythm of his
lines, the imaginative appeal of his imagery, the stimulating truth in
his casual comment on character and deed. When a play of Shakespeare is
filmed, those literary values are lost; it cannot in the nature of the
motion picture be otherwise.

On the other hand, the distinctive value and particular charm of a
photoplay lies in its pictorial treatment, in what the director does
pictorially with the subject in hand. And that distinctive value would
in turn be lost if some one else attempted to transfer the picture to a
literary medium.

In view of all this it is surely fair to say that if a writer and a
picture-maker were to co-operate in producing a piece of literature,
the writer should be in command; but when they co-operate in producing
a picture the picture-maker should be in command.

Now when the director is in command of the story, what does he do with
it? He may permit the incidents to stand in their original order, or he
may change or omit or add. But in any case he sweeps away the phrases,
sentences, and paragraphs which describe the places of the action,
and erects instead real settings, or selects suitable “locations”
from already existing settings. He marshals forth real human beings
to perform the parts which are described in words. He divides the
action into limited periods of time, and decides how to connect these
periods visually so that the pictorial movement on the screen may be
a flowing unity. The director, not the writer, does this; and, if he
were satisfied to do less, he would be only partly a director. His work
is not the “translation” of literature into motion pictures; it is a
complete substitution of motion pictures for literature.

When we analyze pictorial composition on the screen we must proceed
as we have done throughout this book. We must look at it from the
point of view of the spectator in the theater. The spectator does
not see the setting with one eye and the actors with the other, he
does not separate the respective movements of human beings, animals,
trees, water, fire, etc., as they play before him, and he does not
disconnect any one scene from the scenes which precede or follow it.
To him everything on the screen is connected with everything else
there. The connection may be strong or weak, bad or beautiful, but it
is nevertheless a connection. This ought to be clear enough to any
one who gives the matter any thought; yet there are scene designers
who appear to believe that their setting is a complete work of art
quite independent of the actors, for whom and with whom it ought to be
composed, and there are certainly any number of players who look upon
themselves as stars that dwell apart.

We do not underestimate the individual power of the player as an
interpreter of the deeds and emotions of dramatic characters.
Pantomimic acting is one of the most personal of arts, yet the acting
in a photoplay is a somewhat smaller factor in the total result than
acting in the stage pantomime; and neither kind of acting can compare
in importance with acting in the stage play, where the magic of the
actor’s voice works its spell upon the audience.

In the photoplay the player, whether at rest or in action, is usually
the emphatic part of the picture; but he is only a part, and the
relation between that part and the other parts of the picture can best
be established by the director. If the player attempts to compose the
picture in which he appears, he is handicapped, not only because he
cannot see himself, but also because he cannot see any other portion of
the composition from the same point of view as the ultimate spectator
who is temporarily represented by the director. He is, in fact, in
danger of spoiling his own pantomime, of destroying his own power.

The frequent abuse of the close-up, for example, is often due to the
mistaken idea that an actor’s facial expression is the sole means of
representing emotion. To think that dramatic pantomime consists of
making faces is just as foolish as to think that dancing is merely a
matter of shaking the feet and legs. It is really as important for a
screen actress to be able to show grief with her elbows or knees as for
a dancer to have rhythm in her neck. The “star” actress, therefore,
who insists on several facial close-ups per reel reveals a lack of
capability in her own art, as well as an over-developed appreciation of
her own looks. The further objection to the close-up is that it takes
the player out of the picture. For the moment all the setting, all the
other players are shut off from sight. It is as though a painter,
while entertaining a group of friends with a view of a newly finished
work, were suddenly to cover the whole painting except a single spot,
and then to say, “Now forget the rest of the picture, and just look at
this spot. Isn’t it wonderful?”

The player should, of course, always be in perfect union with the rest
of the picture, yet carrying as much emphasis as the story demands. But
even when the player wisely desires to remain in the picture, he should
not be allowed to determine his own position, pose, or movement there.
He is, after all, only a glorified model with which the artist works.

When an actress moves about in a room, for example, she cannot know
that to the eye of the camera her nose seems to collide with the corner
of the mantel-piece, that her neck is pressed out of shape by a bad
shadow, that her gesture points out some gim-crack of no dramatic
significance at the moment, that her movement is throwing her out
of balance with some other movement in the scene, that her walking,
sitting, or rising appears awkward, in spite of the fact that it feels
natural and rhythmical to her. These and a thousand other accidents of
composition can be avoided only by the player’s instant obedience to an
alert and masterful director who can stop or guide the moving factor in
the picture as surely as a painter can stop or guide his brush.

When the action takes place out of doors, or in an interior setting
with considerable depth, the player is still more ignorant of what the
composition looks like to the eye of the camera. Whether the movement
of a particular person will harmonize with a swaying willow tree
and with the shadows playing over the ground, can be discovered only
by experiments viewed from the angle of the camera. And even then,
after the action has been carefully planned through a succession of
rehearsals, it may have to be varied during the actual “shooting.”
A sudden change of wind or light or an unexpected movement of a dog
or horse may bring in a new factor that must be instantly taken into
account.

At the beginning and end of a scene the player should be especially
pliable under the hands of the director, because the latter alone
knows what the cinematic connection is to be with the preceding and
following scenes. The lack of control in this pictorial continuity
is often evident on the screen. Separate scenes become little dramas
in themselves, and the whole photoplay is then really a succession
of acts, with a structure always tending to fall apart, instead of
cohering firmly into a unity. The peculiar difficulty in the movies is
that the scenes are not taken in the same order as they are projected
in the theater. On the screen the scenes shift more quickly than the
actors could pass from one setting to the next, and yet the actual
taking of those actions may have been weeks or even months apart. This
is so because it is more economical to let the particular setting, and
not the continuity of action, determine the grouping of the “shots.”

Thus, for example, the scenes numbered 9, 22, 25, 41, 98, and 133,
with a drawing-room as setting, may all be taken on a single day,
while numbers 8, 40, and 134, with a street as setting, may be taken
some other day. And still another group of disconnected scenes may be
taken a month later “on location” hundreds of miles away. This may be
a fine system of efficiency for the manufacturer, but it often plays
havoc with pictorial continuity. When an actress goes directly from
scene 98 to 133, for example, she may be able to remember whether the
latter scene is supposed to find her still single or already divorced,
but she cannot be allowed to determine her own positions, pauses, tempo
and general nature of movement, because that might spoil the transition
from scene 132, which is not to be “shot” until several days later!

The farther we go into the study of the relation between the player and
the rest of the motion picture, the more we realize that this relation
can best be established and controlled by the director, and that the
player is, in a sense, only a pigment with which the director paints.

“But what of the movie fans?” you ask. “Are they not more interested
in the performer as a performer than in the play as a play, or in
the picture as a picture?” Yes, the audience is undoubtedly “crazy
about the star,” but that is largely because they have not been given
anything else to be crazy about. It is true that we all admire the
distinction of individual performers in any kind of entertainment; yet
we would not approve of a football game, for example, in which the
“star” half-back made so many brilliant plays that the rest of the
eleven could not prevent the opposing team from piling up a winning
score, or of a baseball game which was lost because the batter with
a world’s record refused to make a “sacrifice hit.” And, besides, a
distinguished actor or actress may remain distinguished even after
having submitted to the directing of the master cinema composer,
just as a figure in a painting may still be fascinating even though the
painter has made it a thoroughly organic part of the whole composition.

[Illustration: _Portrait of Charles I_, a painting by Van Dyck. The
composition is characterized by rhythm of tone and line, balance of
design, and skilful subordination of interests. Many of the principles
that underlie good painting may be successfully applied in a motion
picture. See page 80.]

As the figure is really only a part of the motion picture so the
setting is also only a part, and neither the setting nor the figure
should be considered sufficient unto itself. One without the other
is really incomplete; together they can be organized into a unified
picture. This simple truth, always recognized by painters, has often
been ignored, both by stage directors and motion picture directors.
Perhaps the explanation is to be found in the materials with which the
three different composers work. In a painting both the figure and the
background are only paint, only representations side by side on a flat
surface, and therefore easily admit of a perfect fusion of material.
But in the case of stage drama the situation is different. The stage
composition does not give us a similar natural blending of actor and
background. The actor is a real human being, so near the spectators
that some of them could touch him with their hands, while the
background is merely an artificial representation of a room, a garden,
or a cliff. The two elements of the stage picture refuse to mix, and
the average spectator seems quite content to take them separately. In
fact, it is not unusual for the audience to “give the scenery a hand”
long before a single figure has entered to complete the composition.

Now the screen picture is entirely different from the stage picture,
because on the screen everything we see is photographic representation,
mere gradations of light and shadow, just as everything on the canvas
of a painting is paint. In the motion picture without color the
boundary line of a window or a table is described in exactly the same
medium as the contour of an actor’s face; and the actor’s complexion
differs from the wall paper only in being lighter or darker. It should
be impossible, therefore, to consider that the photoplay setting is a
complete, independent picture, and that the actors are separate visible
things merely placed in front of the setting. And if the movie director
makes the mistake of not fusing actor and setting into a pictorial
composition, it is perhaps because he imagines the spectator with
himself in the studio, where the scene and action are like those of the
stage, instead of putting himself with the spectator before the screen.

But there are signs of awakening in the theater of the stage play. More
and more the influence of such European masters as Max Reinhardt and
Gordon Craig is being felt. According to their method of production
the setting and the actors are interdependent and make a co-operative
appeal to the eye of the audience. The young designers in the United
States are beginning to think of the dramatic picture as a whole,
rather than of the setting as a self-sufficient exhibition of their
skill in painting. Mr. Lee Simonson, for example, not long ago, in
commenting on his designs for the Theater Guild’s production of “The
Faithful,” said that he purposely designed his sets so that they would
seem top-heavy until the actors entered and filled in the comparatively
empty zone near the bottom of the stage picture. Without the presence
of the actor, he declared, one could never say that the set was good
or bad; one could only say that it was incomplete. Such reasoning
would do a great deal of good in the movie studios, from which a vast
amount of silly publicity “dope” has come, announcing that this or
that photoplay was highly artistic because such-and-such a well-known
painter had been engaged to design the interior settings. One might
as well say that a certain art student’s mural decoration was good
because a famous master had begun the work by painting a background for
the figures, or that a piece of music was beautiful because a master
composer had written an accompaniment which somebody else had afterward
combined with a melody.

In the cinema composition the director must, of course, have mastery
over the places, as well as over the persons of a film story. He can
then make the setting a live, active part of the picture instead of
merely a dead background; he may truly dramatize it.[E] A notable
example of the perfect blending of dramatic theme, actors, and setting
is the German photoplay “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” which was first
shown to the American public in April, 1921. This film, produced by
the Decla Company, was directed by Mr. Robert Wien, and the scenic
designs were made by Herman Warm, Walter Reiman, and Walter Rork. When
the “movie fan” sees the beginning of this photoplay he is startled
by the strange shapes of places. Houses and rooms are not laid out
four-square, but look as though they had been built by a cyclone and
finished up by a thunderstorm. Windows are sick triangles, floors are
misbehaved surfaces and shadows are streaked with gleaming white.
Streets writhe as though in distress and the skies are of the inky
blackness that fills even strong men with foreboding. The people are
equally bizarre. They resemble cartoons rather than fellow humans, and
their minds are strangely warped.

    [E] The subject of dramatizing a setting is discussed at length
        in Chapter VIII of “The Art of Photoplay Making.”

In the presence of all this the spectator feels that the screen has
gone mad; yet he does not leave the theater, because his attention
is chained and his emotions are beginning to surge with a peculiarly
pleasing unrest. He stays and stares at the remarkable fitness of these
crazy people in crazy places; for the story is, in fact, a madman’s
fantasy of crimes committed by a sleep-walker under the hypnotic
control of a physician who is the head of an insane asylum.

When we examine this photoplay critically we discover, not only that
the settings are perfectly sympathetic with the action, but that the
various factors are skillfully organized into an excellent pictorial
composition. Look, for example, at the “still,” facing page 179, and
you will observe the uncanny emphasis upon the dark sleep-walker who
slinks along the wall and a moment later turns upward into the hallway
on his evil errand to the bed-chamber of the heroine. Place that figure
in an ordinary village alley and it will lose half its horror; keep it
out of this weird setting and the place will cry out for some one to
come into it in pursuit of crime.

Study the plan of the pictorial design and you will see that as soon as
the man has emerged from the shadows in the background he becomes the
strongest accent in an area of white. The end of the alley from which
he comes is accented by the jagged white shape above the shadows, and
the doorway through which he goes is similarly accented by irregular
shapes. These two accents keep the composition in balance, and when our
glance passes from one to the other the path of attention must cross
the area of central interest. There is rhythm in the composition, too,
though one would scarcely realize it at first glance. Note the swinging
curves in the white patch on the street and in the corresponding patch
on the wall, and note also how some of these curves harmonize with the
lines of the actor’s body and with his shadow upon the wall.

The “still” which we have just analyzed is typical of the cinema scenes
throughout “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.” Whether the subject is the
unscrupulous Doctor in his office within the gates of the insane
asylum, or the unnatural sleep-walker cramped in his cabinet, or the
innocent girl asleep in a sea of white coverlets, or the gawking
villagers at the fake shows of the fair, the two factors of person
and place complete each other in a masterly composition. But that
composition as a whole was not made either by the actors or by the
designers of settings; they were happily helpful, but the director was
the master composer.

Any one who sees “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” is likely to remark that
the settings would not be of much value in any story except the one for
which they were designed. What a fine compliment to this photoplay as
art! Perhaps some one long ago in the gray dawn of musical composition
made a remark that the accompaniment in a certain piece of music
could hardly serve for another melody than the one for which it was
composed! At any rate let us hope that in the future the lover of the
films may not look in vain for weird stories in uncanny haunts, for
fairy tales in whimsical nooks, for epic dramas in spacious domains,
for comedies in funny places; and let us hope, too, that he will find
the compositions so perfect that not a single setting would have any
artistic value apart from its own story.

“But what of nature?” says some one. “Must the movie director have
mastery over the works of the Creator, too?” Indeed he must! Because if
he is an artist he is a creator; and if nature becomes a medium in his
art, then he must have mastery over that medium insofar as it enters
the art. Hills have been levelled, streams have been dried up, and
valleys have been filled with water, all for the welfare or profit of
man. Mastery of this kind costs money; but are not the movie magnates
noted for their fearlessness in signing checks?

Wealthy men have been known to build landscapes for their own pleasure;
there is no very valid reason why they should not build landscapes for
their own business, especially when that business is an art. The movie
director of to-day wears out automobiles searching the country for
“locations” that will do as natural backgrounds for screen stories; and
in this enthusiasm he is almost as amateurish as the kodak fiend who
scours the country for good things to snap. The movie director of some
to-morrow will not look for natural backgrounds; he will make them.

When an artist paints a picture of a natural subject he does not try
to reproduce exactly the material things which he sees before him. He
rises far above the craft of the copyist into the divinity of creation.
His painting is always a personal variation of the natural theme. If
seven trees suit his composition better than the seventeen which he
views, he paints only seven, and if there are only five in the grove,
he creates two more on his canvas. If the waterfall is too high or too
violent he reshapes it into the ideal one of his vision. This he does,
not because nature is not beautiful in most of her aspects, but because
no single one of those aspects fits into the scheme of the new beauty
which he as an artist is trying to create.

But the cinema composer does not work in so plastic a medium as paint.
The camera is only a recording machine, working without the power of
altering what it sees. The subject must be altered by the director
before the camera man begins “shooting.” On a small scale this is
perhaps already being done. Bushes, for example, may be cleared out
from among the trees, and possibly even a tree or two may be chopped
down in order to facilitate the carrying on of certain dramatic
actions. We should like to see the ax wielded also in the cause of such
things as simplicity, or balance, or rhythm in pictorial composition.
Already bridges are being built especially for certain scenes in
photoplays. We should like to see the cinema engineers called upon also
to put an extra bend in the creek, or to make the waterfall only half
as large, or to shape the bank into a more graceful slope whenever
any change of that sort might serve to organize the setting more
harmoniously with the general design of the picture.

Already grass has been mown to suit a director. We should like to see
grass grown especially for the director. They already make sunshine
and wind and rain for motion pictures. We should like to see trees
planted and tended for a dozen or fifty years, if necessary, in order
to provide a more pictorial natural background for one or a dozen film
stories.

In thus advocating a new art of cinema landscape gardening we do not
mean to imply that nature untouched is not full of beauty. We know well
enough that the rhythm of line in the horizon of a rolling country, or
in the lights and shadows of trees massed in the distance is often a
delight to the beholder. But natural beauty of that sort is admissible
to a cinema composition only when it is itself the dramatic theme of
the story, and can be emphasized by the introduction of human figures
or other elements, or when it can be subordinated to something else
which is the dramatic theme. If nature cannot be thus composed she may
still be photographed by the maker of scenics, travel pictures, etc.,
but she is of no practical value to the director of photoplays.

But there is perhaps a question brewing in some reader’s mind. “Would
it not be ridiculously extravagant,” he asks, “to construct a real
landscape especially for a photoplay, since you maintain that any
particular setting, if it is a proper part of a good composition, will
have little artistic value apart from the particular action for which
it has been designed?”

Yes, it would certainly be extravagant to spend ten years producing
a natural setting which could be used only for two days of movie
“shooting.” But our theories really do not lead to any such conclusion.
First, any landscape which has been designed especially for cinema
composition, can be “shot” from fifty or a hundred different points
of view, and yet can have separate artistic value from every angle.
And, second, any such landscape would alter itself periodically and
gradually through seasons and years. And, third, the cinema landscape
engineer could make considerable alterations again and again without
destroying the landscape. Thus, even if only a single square mile of
land were used, it might well serve a film company for a number of
years; and meanwhile other landscapes would be in the making on other
square miles of land. However, it is not the critic’s business to enter
into the ways and means of financing the production of art. He only
undertakes to express the refined taste of the thoughtful public, the
public which in the long run it will pay the producers to please.

We desire the director’s mastery in the movies to extend also to that
phase of pictorial composition which is known as the “cutting and
joining” of scenes. Bad work in this department of photoplay making is
something which cannot be counteracted by the most inspired pantomime,
by the most beautiful setting, or by the most perfect composition in
the separate scenes. Without careful cutting and joining the photoplay
can never achieve that dynamic movement, that rhythmical flow which is
a characteristic and distinguishing quality of the motion picture as
art. It should be as important for the cinema composer to decide upon
the progression and transformation of scenes as it is for the poet to
arrange the order and transitions of his own verses and stanzas, or for
the musical composer to arrange the movement through the music which he
writes. Some directors seem to forget that a piece of art can exert
its power only through that final form which comes in direct contact
with the appreciator. And many of the others who desire to preserve
their work intact must gnash their teeth at the thought that no matter
how carefully they may cut and join a film, it is likely to be marred
before it reaches the projecting machine.

An example of the amazing lack of artistic co-operation in the movie
world is furnished by the following press notice, sent out from one
of the largest moving picture theaters on Broadway. “Audiences who
see a film projected on the screen at the ---- Theater, seldom take
the details connected with its showing into consideration. It is a
well-known fact that a photoplay is seldom presented at the ---- in
the form it is received from the manufacturer. Every foot of film is
carefully perused and cuts are made, either for complete elimination or
for replacement in a more appropriate part of the story.”

Add to such deliberate desecration the havoc wrought by censors and by
the eliminations caused by fire or breakage and you have a prospect
of butchery which is bad enough to make any artist drop his work in
despair. There is no hope for him unless he can organize his photoplay
so perfectly and make its definite final form so compellingly beautiful
that even a dull mechanician in a projecting booth would recognize it
as a sacred thing which must be kept intact as it came from the hands
of the master.

But a photoplay is often robbed of pictorial continuity long before it
reaches the exhibitor. The “title-writer,” who frequently combines his
office with that of “cutter,” is at best, a dangerous collaborator
on a photoplay. Words in the form of titles, sub-titles, dialogue,
comments, etc., are rarely in place on the screen. If they are admitted
for the purpose of telling or explaining a part of the story, they come
as a slur on the art of the motion picture, and often as an insult to
the intelligence of the spectator.[F] Nevertheless, the producer finds
words practically useful as stop-gaps, padding, and general support for
an ill-directed play that would otherwise have to be scrapped. And even
the most prominent directors are inclined to lean heavily on words. We
are doomed, therefore, to endure the hybrid art of reading matter mixed
with illustrations, at least for many years to come. But we insist that
this mixture shall be no worse than the director makes it.

    [F] Words which appear as an organic part of the action, such
        as writing, print, sign-boards, etc., do not come under the
        general category of “cut-in titles.” For a discussion of
        the dramatic value of words on the screen see Chapter IX of
        “The Art of Photoplay Making.”

After a director has carefully composed a series of scenes so that
the motions and patterns and textures and tones dissolve, from one
moment to the next, in a rhythmical flow, regardless of how the story
may have shifted its setting, we do not want some film doctor to come
along and break that unity into pieces for the sake of a few jokes, or
near-jokes, or for a few words of schoolroom wisdom or of sentimental
gush. We object, not only to the content, the denotation of such
“titles,” but also to their pictorial appearance.

That written words have pictorial appearance is a fact which most
of us forgot as soon as we learned to read. We realize that Chinese
characters or Egyptian hieroglyphics are pictorial, that they are
drawings; but we forget that the characters and arrangements of our own
writing and printing are also drawings. Judged as pictures the words
on the screen are usually too severely white for the background. They
fairly flash at you. Also the horizontal lines made by the tops and
bottoms of the letters constitute a sort of grill-work which hardly
ever blends pictorially with the pattern of the preceding or following
scene.

As to the design of the letters themselves we find considerable variety
on the screen, often with no direct reference to the meaning of the
words or to the picture where they are inserted. Thus the tendency
to introduce y’s and g’s with magnificent sweeping tails, or capital
letters in fantastic curves, while revealing a commendable impulse to
make writing pictorial, often leads to overemphasis, or to a direct
conflict with other pictorial values in the film.[G]

    [G] A neat pictorial touch in the titles of the German play,
        “The Golem,” is the suggestion of Hebrew script in the
        shaping of the letters.

Furthermore, the eye-movement over reading matter should be considered
with reference to the eye-movement over the adjoining pictures. For
example, after the title has been shown long enough to allow the normal
reader to get to the end of the text, his eye may be at a point near
the lower right corner or at the right side of the frame. Then if the
following picture does not attract attention at this portion of the
frame, a slight shock is caused by the necessary jump to a remote point
of attention. A similar difficulty may arise in connecting a preceding
picture with the beginning of the title.

Many directors have endeavored to make the title sections of a
film more pictorial by introducing decorative drawings or paintings
around the words, and even by introducing miniature motion pictures.
Decorations in motion, however, are not to be recommended, because they
distract attention from the words of the title, as has been illustrated
in the discussion of “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” on page
46, and because they do not readily compose with those words to form
a single picture. It is, in fact, as inartistic to “vision in” motion
pictures on the background of a title as to “vision in” words on the
background of a motion picture. In either case you really get two
pictures within one frame.

Fixed decorations around a title may fill a pictorial need in unifying
the portions of the film which have been cut apart by the insert. They
may bridge the gap with a continuity of tone or line or shape, and may
by their meaning preserve the dramatic mood of the photoplay. But here,
too, caution must be observed lest the decorations draw attention away
from the words or fail to compose well with the pictorial character of
those words.

The problem of words on the screen does not seem very near a solution.
There will doubtless be a great deal of juggling with titles before
some magician comes who can “vanish” them completely from the fabric
of a photoplay. Already photoplays such as “The Old Swimmin’ Hole,”
directed by Joseph De Grasse and “The Journey’s End,” directed by Hugo
Ballin, have been successfully produced without sub-titles. Some day,
we hope, the wordless picture play will no longer be a novelty.

Another factor, which has already become troublesome, is the
reproduction of color in the motion picture. If the director were
a genuine colorist, and if he could produce the exact tint or shade
of hue which the particular composition needs, and if this could be
projected so that the spectator would really see what the director
wanted him to see, then the conditions would be ideal for mastery in
color movies. Such conditions may some day come, but they are not here
now.

It is possible that the machinery of color photography will become so
perfect that the spectator may be able to see on the screen the exact
color values which were found in the subject photographed. But that
will be only a triumph of science. It will be a scientific achievement
of the same kind as the correct reproduction of colors in a lithograph
or color-gravure of a painting. But art lies in the production and
arrangement, not in the reproduction, of colors.

An elementary study of painting must convince any one that the colors
which the artist puts on the canvas are really only suggested by the
model or subject, and that his arrangement of them is inspired by an
ideal personal conception, rather than a desire to reproduce something
with absolute accuracy. Therein lies creation and mastery. Hence,
there is no artistic advantage to a cinema composer in having machines
which can make a green dress appear green, and a red rose, red, on the
screen, unless that particular green and that particular red in that
particular combination really add beauty to the picture.

The “tinted” scenes, usually blue or orange, which are so familiar
in the movies, are not color photographs, since they are produced by
immersing an ordinary black and white film in a bath of dye. But from
an artistic point of view they are better than color photographs.
In the first place, the value of the tint can be controlled by the
director, or at least by the person who does the tinting. And in the
second place, although the lights of the film take the strongest tint,
the shadows are also affected by it; and the entire picture, therefore,
gets a tonal unity which is never present in color photography.
However, even “tinted” scenes should be used with caution, because,
when they are cut into a film which is elsewhere black and white, they
break the unity of tonal flow, and usually get far more emphasis than
their meaning in the story demands. The effect is almost as bad as that
of the old family photograph which baby sister has improved by touching
up a single figure with pretty water colors.

Thus we have indicated the many departments and stages of development
in a photoplay composition, the many pictorial forces which should be
controlled by a single hand. That single hand holds the reins of many
powers. And, if those powers cannot be so guided that they pull in the
same direction, with similar speeds, and with balanced efforts, then
their combination is disastrous, however elegant and blue-ribboned any
individual power may be. In the photoplay neither the plot action,
nor the acting, nor the setting, nor the cutting and joining, nor the
titles, nor the coloring, nor any other element can be allowed to pull
in its own wild way. And in any single section of the motion picture
the fixed design and the movement, the accentuation and the harmony,
the work and the play, must be co-ordinated and all this technique must
itself be subordinate to spontaneous enduring inspiration. Without such
mastery no movie-maker can ever win to the far goal of art.



CHAPTER XI

THE MYSTERIOUS EMOTIONS OF ART


The end of all aspiring mastery in the movies is to provide for every
beholder the thrills of art. These thrills are not like the emotions
which are aroused by other experiences of life, by sports, for example,
or adventure, or amusements, or industry, or war. They are stirring
experiences quite different from those of him who makes a “home
run” or a “touch-down,” or “loops the loop” in the air, or sinks a
submarine, or has a play accepted, or discovers a new way of evading
some obnoxious law. It is true that the dramatic content of a photoplay
may sometimes seem so real that the beholder forgets where he is and
responds with such natural feelings as fear and triumph, love and hate,
pride, selfish desire and hope; but it is also true that the pictorial
form of a photoplay, that is, the mere arrangement of the substance,
considered apart from its meaning, can arouse strange, pleasurable
emotions which are peculiar to the enjoyment of art.

When we recall the masterpieces of painting which have thrilled us we
must admit that much of their appeal came from other factors besides
the content of the picture. Think of a portrait of some Dutchman
painted by Rembrandt. The painting stirs you as the Dutchman himself
in real life never could have stirred you. You may be impressed by
the likeness of the portrait, by the engaging character of the person
portrayed, and by some significant truth expressed in that portrayal.
But that is not all. You are also stirred by the colors in the
painting, by the peculiar arrangement of lines and shapes. That emotion
which you get from the form and medium itself, rather than from the
subject, is a characteristic art-emotion.

[Illustration: From _The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari_. A remarkable example
of “stylization” in the movies, showing how setting, figure, and action
may be harmonized to express the dominant mood of the photoplay. See
pages 165 and 180.]

We are not now speaking of such qualities as unity, emphasis, balance,
and rhythm. They are indeed fundamental needs in pictorial composition,
and yet a photoplay may have all of those qualities without possessing
any strong appeal as art. A motion picture, like a painting, must
possess other, more subtle, qualities if it is to make any lasting
impression upon our souls. What these mysterious qualities really
are, we do not presume to know. At the same time we believe that a
discussion of them will be stimulating and helpful both to “movie
fans” and movie makers. Suppose we endeavor to isolate four of these
mysterious qualities in art and call them poignancy, appeal to the
imagination, exquisiteness, and reserve.

Any one who goes frequently to the movies must have felt more than
once a certain poignancy, a strange fascination in some pictorial
arrangement, in some curiously appealing movement on the screen.
Perhaps such a feeling came when you saw a “dissolve” for the first
time. Perhaps the slow dying away of a scene, even while a new one was
dawning before you, gave a pang of pleasure never felt before, not even
in the magic blending of dreams. A “queer feeling” you may have called
it, and you may have been less aware of it as the novelty wore off in
later shows. Then it came again when you saw an accelerated motion
picture which showed a plant growing from seed to blossom within a few
minutes. And still again you felt it when in some slow-motion picture
you saw a horse floating through the air. But time went on and the
frequent repetition of these effects made their appeal less poignant.

In each case the thing that stirred you was due to a novelty of
mechanics, a trick of cinematography. But you can get that emotion
without waiting for a new mechanical invention. It may come also
from the pictorial composition, from some peculiar patternings of
things, whether fixed or moving, within the picture itself. A striking
illustration of this may be found in the German photoplay, “The Cabinet
of Dr. Caligari,” which has been described in the preceding chapter.
It contains at least two scenes in which extremely simple arrangements
kindle strange flares of emotion. One of these moments comes in the
scene which is represented by the “still” shown opposite page 179. Here
we see Cesare, the hypnotized sleep-walker, slinking along an alley
of weird lights and shadows. We know from earlier scenes that he is
bent on committing some new crime. His face is ghastly and his lanky
frame is tightly clothed in black. He emerges into a bright glare and
stretches forth his arm in an unhuman gesture, as though he were going
to glide serpent-wise up the very side of the wall. This movement
makes a strange pattern and sends through us a flash of--shall we call
it a sweet shudder or a horrible delight?--something poignant and
unforgettable.

A similar experience of emotion comes to us a few minutes later in the
same play when Cesare carries off the heroine from her bedchamber. This
scene reveals a broad sea of billowy linen, evidently a bed, yet large
enough for a whole bevy of heroines. Cesare appears outside a window,
which seems to crumble at his touch. He enters the chamber and, dagger
in hand, reaches out toward the head of the sleeping lady. We gasp at
her fate, because we forget that this is only a play. That gasp is an
expression of pity, a familiar emotion. But a mysterious emotion is
in store for us. Cesare is spellbound by the lady’s beauty. He drops
his dagger. Then suddenly he gathers her up, and, holding her against
the side of his body, starts for the window. As he does so a sudden
striking pattern is produced by the movement. In his haste Cesare has
caught up some of the bed linen along with his prey, and this white
expanse darts after him in a sudden inward-rushing movement from the
remote corners of the bed. Instantly a strange sensation shoots through
us. This sharp emotion, both painful and pleasing, is not pity, or
hate, or fear. It does not relate itself to the villain’s violence
against an innocent, defenseless girl. It is merely a “queer feeling”
caused by that striking motion-pattern of the snowy linen whisked
unexpectedly from the bed.

To one who has been emotionally affected by such things as the
“dissolve” and retarded motion and the peculiar effects in “Dr.
Caligari” the above paragraphs may give some idea of what we mean by
poignancy in composition. It is a real quality tinged with an unreality
that allies it with the effects which we experience in dreams. Any
cinema composer who can strike this note of poignancy at least once in
every photoplay that he produces may justly demand that his work be
classed with the fine arts.

Another elusive quality, found all too seldom in the movies, is the
appeal to imagination. Such an appeal may come from things in real
life or from that life which art reflects; it may come also from the
artist’s medium and composition. Thus, for example, some people can
imagine melodious sounds when they look at colors in a painting, and
nearly every one can imagine colors when listening to music. The
motion picture’s appeal to the imagination has been treated at some
length in Chapter VI of “The Art of Photoplay Making,” and we shall,
therefore, be brief about it here. An illustration may be furnished by
a sea-shell. We hold it to our ears and hear a low musical sound which
makes us imagine the surf of the sea, sweetly vague. A similar, yet
more subtle, delight may come from a picture of some person doing the
same thing. Such a picture is to be found in the Fox film version of
Longfellow’s “Evangeline.” Gabriel picks up a sea-shell and holds it to
his ear. Instantly we imagine the sound which he hears. We also imagine
the sea which that imagined sound suggests. And, if we are particularly
sensitive, we may even try to imagine what Gabriel imagines. All this
is delightful, a genuine emotional response to the art of the screen.
But we are immediately insulted by an ugly anti-climax. Quick as a
flash, our fancies are killed by a cut-in picture of a stretch of real
sea. Now we must look; we may no longer imagine.

The above is a typical example of both imaginative and unimaginative
treatment in a motion picture. Any reader can go to the movies and
collect a hundred similar examples in a few evenings. Over and over
again a director will lead us to the threshold of beautiful fancy, only
to slam the door of hard realism against our faces. Why is this? Is it
because the director thinks that audiences are incapable of exercising
and enjoying their imaginations? Or is it only because he wants to get
more footage for the film?

As though it were not bad enough to spoil the pictorial beauty of
cinema composition, many directors proceed to spoil the charm of other
arts, too. Poetry, for instance, may weave her spells elsewhere,
but not upon the screen. Even the simplest poetic statement must be
vulgarized by explanation. “Movie fans” are not considered intelligent
enough to be trusted with the enjoyment of even such harmless imagery as

    “There is a tide in the affairs of men
     Which taken at the turn leads on to fortune.”

During all the three hundred years since those lines were written,
probably no illustrator of Shakespeare’s plays ever felt called upon
to draw a picture of that tide, and probably no actor ever strove
to represent it on the stage by voice or gesture. But in De Mille’s
photoplay “Male and Female,” where the passage is quoted, the lines
on the screen must be accompanied by a photograph of surf, which was
evidently intended to represent the tide!

Shakespeare’s poetic image was thus killed by a single shot. But it
sometimes takes more ingenuity to destroy a charm. Take, for instance,
this descriptive line from “Evangeline”:

  “When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.”

Those words are surely full of emotional, imaginative appeal. Yes, but
not for the director of the Fox “Evangeline.” He inserts the line as
a title, then shows Evangeline strolling over a forest path, and then
“cuts in” a close-up of hands playing across the strings of a gigantic
harp!

There is nothing mysterious about the emotions of any moderately
intelligent person who sees things like that on the screen. “Movie
stuff!” he groans, and wonders “how they have the nerve to get away
with it.” We have a quarrel with the director, not because he has
failed to picturize the imagined sweetness of that silence which comes
when exquisite music has ceased, but because he has considered it
necessary to picturize anything at all in support of the poet’s words.

This brings us again to the question whether art should strive to
present any beauty other than that of the subject represented. Was
he a great artist who, according to an old fable, painted fruit so
realistically that the birds came to peck at it? And would Michelangelo
have been a better artist if he had given his marble statues the colors
of real flesh, or if he had made statues with flesh soft to the touch
and capable of perspiring on a hot day? We think not.

Art may please through illusion, but never by deception. We get a
peculiar emotional experience from imagining that Michelangelo’s
“Moses” is alive with human grandeur, but we should not like to be
caught in a mob of idiots staring at some more realistically sculptural
Moses, in the expectation that he was about to make a speech or perform
a trick. Neither can we go into ecstasies over the fact that the fur
mantle in some portrait is so skillfully painted that all the women
want to stroke it.

The depressing thing about many movies is that they are to the ideal
photoplay what the wax figure of a shop window is to sculpture. Instead
of dancing lightly through a rich atmosphere of suggestion they are
anchored heavily with bolts of dollar-marked material. And worse days
are to come if the “stunt” workers are fed with applause. They promise
us pictures in natural colors, more natural than any now produced. They
promise us pictures that have depth so real that the beholder may be
tempted to take a stroll into them. They promise us pictures that talk,
and whistle, and chirp, and bark. And perhaps somewhere they are even
promising pictures that will give off scents.

All these wonders will create industrial activity. They will make good
advertising, and will doubtless bring crowds to the theaters. But they
will not bring happiness to those fortunate individuals who can enjoy
art because it is art, who can get a finer thrill from a painting that
felicitously suggests interesting trees, than from one which looks so
much like a real orchard that the birds and bees swarm in through the
gallery doors.

Let the motion picture look like a motion picture of life, and not
like life itself. Let the mobilization of characters in a photoplay
start fancies and stir emotions finer and deeper than any which we
can experience by observing our neighbors or by reading sensational
newspapers. Let the lights and shadows on the screen, the lines and
shapes, the patterns and movements suggest to our imaginations richer
beauties than those which are actually shown to our eyes. Let the
motion picture become as romantic as music, and yet remain equally
consistent with reality and truth.

Thus we have considered two mysterious art-emotions, namely, that
which is aroused by a peculiar artistic poignancy in the cinema design
itself, and that which is aroused when the suggestions and associations
of the design make our own imaginations creative. A third art-emotion
comes from the conscious or sub-conscious appreciation of something
exquisite in the finished product.

Exquisite values and exquisite combinations are present in the
masterpieces of every art. The sweet blending of musical tones which
leads into a delicacy of overtones that no ear can distinguish; the
subtle shadings of color in a painting, soft touches of pictorial
harmony which can be felt more surely than they can be seen; tender
curves in the most vigorous statue, and marble surfaces surging so
slightly that their shadows scarcely linger; crisp edges of acanthus
leaves in a Greek capital and the almost imperceptible swelling of the
column beneath; the sparkle, the caper and the organ-music of a poem
you love--these are the exquisite things in art. And there are many
others less tangible. They thrill you again and again with feelings too
refined for description in words.

Can the motion picture achieve a similar refinement? Or must it
always deserve the epithet “crude”? When half of the typical movie’s
brute strength and snorting speed can be exchanged for tenderness
and spirituality we shall have a new era in cinema history. That
era may dawn while the doubters are still slumbering. Even now we
occasionally see motion pictures which are sparkling without the
so-called “flashes” of scenes, pictures which flow firmly, one into the
next, with delicate mingling of tones and patterns, pictures in which
sometimes the moving elements are as airy as gossamer threads blown by
a fairy’s breath.

This quality of exquisiteness is something which the director cannot
produce by taking thought or signing a contract. Other values he may
develop by study and experiment, but not this one. He may bring balance
and unity to his pictorial elements; he may accent the interests
properly; he may succeed in starting a vital rhythm and stimulating the
beholder’s fancy, all this through determined application of skill; but
he will need the help of inspiration before he can create the charm
of exquisiteness. The gods have granted that mysterious help to other
artists; they will grant it to the cinema composer, too, whenever he
proves worthy.

There is at least another peculiar art-emotion which the cinema
composer should be able to arouse. It is the emotion which comes over
us at the overwhelming discovery that a given masterpiece of art has
a wealth of beauty that we can never hope to exhaust. That emotion
is stimulated by the reserve which lies back of all really masterful
performance in art. We feel it when we have read a poem for the
twentieth time and know that if we read it again we shall find new
beauties and deeper meaning. We feel it in a concert hall listening to
a symphony that has been played for us repeatedly since childhood and
yet reveals fresh beauties to our maturing powers of appreciation. We
feel it in the mystic dimness of some cathedral beneath whose arches
a score of generations have prayed and the most eloquent disbeliever
of today stands gaping in silence. Behind the human power which wrote
the poem, or composed the music, or built the cathedral lies a vast
reserve; and, though it was not drawn upon, we seem to glimpse that
reserve forever in the finished masterpiece.

Has any reader of this book gone to see the same photoplay ten times?
And if so, why? Was it because of some irresistible, undying lure in
the content of that photoplay or in the pictorial form of that content?
Did you go of your own free will? Did you even make a sacrifice to see
it the tenth time? If so, then you have known the calm joy of a reserve
power in the newest of the arts.

Unfortunately reserve is not characteristic of the movies. It is seldom
indeed that a photoplay contains anything of value that cannot be
caught during the first showing. In fact, it happens rather frequently
that a photoplay uses up every ounce of its own proper power and then
is forced to call in the help of something known as “padding” before it
measures up to the commercial fullness of five reels, or whatever the
contract stipulates. If you poke around through this padding, you will
find that it is usually made up of innocent kittens, ducklings, calves,
human babies, and other “ain’t-it-cunnin’” stuff, which may arouse
emotions, to be sure, but not the emotions which make up the enjoyment
of art as art.

Another typical lack of reserve is illustrated in the building and
decoration of settings. Avalanches of furniture are apparently
necessary to show that a character is well-to-do. The heroine’s boudoir
must look like a gift shop, and her dressing table like a drug store
counter, in order to convince the audience that she spends a few sacred
moments of the day attending to her finger nails. Walls of rooms must
be paneled off by scores of framed pictures, mirrors, etc., so that,
no matter where the actor stands, his head will be strikingly set off
by some ornamental frame. Floors must look partly like an Oriental
bazaar and partly like a fur market. Chairs, tables, cabinets, beds,
and what-nots, must carry our minds to Versailles and the Bronx,
to Buckingham Palace, and Hollywood. Hangings of plush and silk,
tapestries of cloth of gold, curtains of lace or batiked silk, cords of
intricate plaiting, must flow from the heights, waving in the breeze to
prove that they are real. All this extravagance must be, we presume, in
order to show that the heroine lives on an income and not a salary, and
in order to give the brides in the audience new ideas for mortgaging
their husbands’ futures at the installment-plan stores.

With such extravagance of materials in a picture there can be no
simplicity or reserve in the pictorial composition, if indeed there can
be any composition at all. Whatever design the director gives to the
miscellaneous lines and shapes will seem rather like a last despairing
effort than the easy, happy touch of a master’s hand.

The hysterical extravagance of the movies is further illustrated in
the breathless speed which so often characterizes every moving thing
on the screen. We feel that, at the end of the road, horses must
expire from exhaustion and automobiles must catch fire from excessive
friction. Clouds are driven by hurricanes, rivers shoot, trees snap,
and the most dignified gentleman dog-trots. It is true that some of
this breathlessness carries with it a certain thrill for the spectator,
but that thrill is by no means to be classed as an æsthetic emotion. It
has nothing of that abiding joy which comes from the consciousness of
restrained energy in art.

Much of this feverish activity, this “jazz” of the screen, is due to
rapidity of projection; and yet the director is responsible, for he
certainly knows the probable rate of projection and can control his
composition accordingly by retarding actions or by selecting slower
actions in place of those which cannot be retarded. Slowness of
movement, where it is not unnatural, is pleasant to the eye, as we
have said in preceding chapters, but it has a peculiar appeal for the
emotions, too. It fills us with a sense of the majesty that none can
shake, of the deep currents that none can turn aside.

How to produce a picture that shall impress an audience with its
inexhaustible reserve is a secret that remains with him who has the
power. So, too, with the other pictorial qualities discussed in this
chapter. We know of no formulas by which the mysterious art-emotions
can be aroused. Yet if directors and spectators alike ponder over these
mysteries, it will surely help them to separate the gold from the dross.

Let us vision an ideal photoplay. It is entrancing, yet restful, to
the eye. Its composition is both vigorous and graceful, as harmonious
as music. Our sympathies are stirred warmly by the experiences of
the persons in the story. We are held in keen suspense as to the
dramatic outcome. And we get also the more subtle art-emotions.
Our souls are shot through by the poignancy of fixed and flowing
designs. We are fascinated by these designs at the same time that our
fancies pass through and beyond them. The visible work of the artist
is only a mesh-work through which our imaginations are whirled away
into rapturous regions of experiences unlived and unexpressed. Such
transports may be brief, yet they are measureless in their flights.
Our attention swings back from these far flights into a quiet response
to the delicacy of arrangement of line and shape, of texture and tone,
of blending and weaving and vanishing values. We feel an exquisiteness
too fine for understanding, which tapers away at last until it is too
fine for the most sensitive feeling. And during all the while that we
are rapt by the poignancy, the imagination, the exquisiteness of the
master’s production, we feel that a rich reserve lies beyond our grasp
or touch. We cannot quite soar to the master’s heights, or plumb his
depths, or separate the airy fibers of his weaving.

Yet, when such beauty comes to the screen, who shall say that it is a
miracle, that the manner of its coming is above every law and beyond
all conjecture? And who shall say that the hour of its coming has not
been hastened by the million spectators whose judgments have been
whetted and whose sympathies have been deepened by taking thought about
the nature of art?



Transcriber’s Notes


Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.

Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs
and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support
hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to
the corresponding illustrations.

Page 14: “propellors” was printed that way.

Page 120: “Pavlowa” was printed that way.



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