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.

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.