PICTORIAL BEAUTY ON THE SCREEN
[Illustration]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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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.