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.