Chapter III in Hugo Muensterberg’s “The Photoplay,” and

should consult the current numbers and the volumes for the last five or six years of the “Psychological Review,” the “American Journal of Psychology,” the “Journal of Experimental Psychology,” and other similar periodicals, which are available in any large library.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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