CHAPTER IX

PICTORIAL MOTIONS AT REST

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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