CHAPTER VIII

PICTORIAL MOTIONS AT PLAY

The average matter-of-fact man thinks that artists concern themselves only with copying their subjects, and that their success as artists consists in copying correctly. He is satisfied with a painted portrait of his wife, provided it is a “speaking likeness,” and he craves no other magic of design and color. Such a man praises a photoplay if it presents a “rattling good story,” and expects no thrill from the cinema composer’s conjuring with shifting patterns and evanescent tones. At least he would say something to that effect if you argued the matter with him. But he would be mistaken in his self-analysis, for even a prosaic person really enjoys the decorative rhythmical quality in a picture, though he may not be conscious of doing so. And every spectator can get the richest beauty from the screen only when the pictorial motions play as well as they work.

What is the difference between play and work? We know that when our work most resembles play it is most enjoyable. And we know, too, that play, even when it has not been professionalized, often comes very near being work. The playing of children, as that of grown-ups, is often very highly organized and pursued with a great deal of effort and earnestness. Play, however, may be characterized by spontaneity and variety. It is not forced, like work, which aims for some definite practical result; and it does not have the rigidity and uniformity which in work sometimes develops into dullness. If the emphasizing of dramatic expression may be called the work of pictorial motions, then the spontaneity and variety which accompanies this work may be called the play of pictorial motions. And that play is essentially the same as rhythm.

We think immediately of two of the elder arts in which rhythm is all important--dancing and music. Music leads us to the thought of song, and poetry, and oratory, arts which also are dependent on rhythm. Dancing suggests sculpture, and sculpture suggests painting, arts which would have little beauty without the quality of rhythm. Even architecture must have it. From art we turn to nature, and we see the poignant beauty of rhythm in cloud and wave, in tree and flower, in brook and mountain, in bird and beast. The motion picture, which is the mirror of nature, and at the same time the tablet upon which all of the elder arts may write their laws, must bring to us the inheritance and reflection of rhythm.

This quality has already been discussed in connection with the laws of the eye, in Chapter III, and in connection with static composition, in Chapter V. We come now to the pictorial problem of weaving the individual and combined motions of a photoplay into a totality of rhythm. First, let us consider the case of a single moving spot. Suppose that we have before us a barren hillside of Mexico, an expanse of light gray on the screen. Down that hillside a horseman is to come, dark against the gray. If he rides in a single straight line, directly toward the camera or obliquely down the hill, his movement will not be pleasing to the eye, nor will it seem natural. But if he moves in a waving line, a series of reverse curves freely made, the effect on the eye of the spectator will be somewhat like that of the “line of beauty” discussed in Chapter V.

An important difference, however, between a fixed line and one traced by a moving object is that the latter disappears as soon as it is drawn. It may linger in our memories, to be sure, yet our eyes can trace that line only once, and only in the direction taken by the moving object. That is, our physical eye cannot range back and forth over the vanished path, as it can over a fixed line. And a still greater difference is that the moving object has a rhythm of velocity as well as a rhythm of direction. Velocity and direction of movement arise and exist together, and consequently their relation to each other may produce a new rhythm. The horse, varying his pace according to the nature of the ground, may gallop along the level stretches, and may pick his way cautiously down the steep declines. There is natural harmony in rapid motion over a long smooth line, and slow motion over a short jagged one. A simple case like this may help us to answer the question, When is the relation between velocity and direction harmonious? But we have still the fundamental questions, When is a change of direction rhythmical? And, when is a change of velocity rhythmical?

We cannot promise to give direct and definite answers to these questions; but, recalling our discussion in Chapter V concerning rhythm in fixed design, let us say that cinematic rhythm is a peculiar alternation of phases or properties of pictorial motion which gives the spectator a vivid sense of movement performed with ease and variety.

Now it may seem a vain task to analyze or try to define so delicate a thing as rhythm, because all of us can be carried away by rhythm without saddling it with a formula. Yet analysis will serve a useful purpose if it can help the director to avoid motions which are not rhythmical and if it can help the thoughtful spectator to fix the blame for the jumble of unrhythmical motions which he now so often sees on the screen.

Suppose we make a few tests upon the horseman coming down the hillside. If he moves in a perfectly straight line at a perfectly steady pace, the action will seem to be a forced, hard effort exerted without variety. No rhythm will be there. But if he moves, even without change of pace, along a path of flowing curves, we will sense a rhythm of direction, providing the horse seems to follow the winding path freely and without undue effort.

If, without change of direction, the horse frequently alters his gait from a gallop to a walk and back to a gallop again in equal periods of time, say half a minute each, it will be apparent that ease and variety are utterly absent from the movement. And even if the horse follows a winding path and changes gait at such regular intervals the rhythm in direction will be neutralized by the lack of rhythm in velocity. If, however, there is a progression of varying directions, varying gaits, and varying durations of time which appear to be spontaneously and easily performed, a progression, moreover, in which both the similarities and the differences of the various phases can instantly be perceived by the spectator, he will immediately experience the emotion of rhythmical movement.

The above example illustrates how a single spot can move rhythmically over the area of a picture. A moving line, say a column of soldiers on the march, may have still more rhythm. We get a hint of this from the “still,” facing page 133. It represents a scene from the Metro production of Ibanez’s “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” which was directed by Rex Ingram. We see there that the soldiers describe a path of alternate curves, instead of the straight lines and square corners which a less imaginative director would have ordered. Mr. Ingram has further heightened the rhythm by placing gaps here and there in the main column, and by introducing a secondary movement in the detachment which turns off from the road just before reaching the village. These movements are truly pictorial in composition; yet their meaning is none the less military and dramatic.

In the scene just described the various motions are similar, and the handling of them is therefore comparatively easy. But it is very difficult to make a rhythmical combination of motions which differ widely in character. In “The Dumb Girl of Portici,” for instance, we are shown Pavlowa dancing on the beach, while the stately waves and pounding surf of the ocean fill most of the area of the screen. But there is no rhythm in the combined movements of that picture. The dancer without the sea, or the sea without the dancer, might have been perfectly rhythmical. But when we try to view them together in this photoplay we get only the strong clash between their movements, and we feel no pleasure when shifting our gaze from one to the other.

Perhaps the picture might have been a success if the dancer’s ground had been a bank sufficiently high to mask the severe effect of the surf, yet permitting a view of the incoming waves, and if the stately variety in the movement of the sea had been taken as a key to a sympathetic movement of the dancer. We might then get a harmonious, alternating flow of the two movements, our eyes might play easily from one to the other, and the total pictorial effect might arouse the emotion of rhythm.

In a similar way any of the movements of nature, such as the effect of wind on cloud, or tree, or field of grain; the fall or flow of water; the flight of bird or characteristic movement of beast, movements which, once admitted to the scene, cannot easily be controlled, might be taken as keys in which to play those movements which can be controlled.

Some practical-minded person may suggest that instead of worrying about the composition of “unnecessary” motions, it would be better to omit them. But such a person overlooks the natural human desire for richness in art. We are so constituted that we crave lively emotional activity. We love rich variety, and at the same time we enjoy our ease. When we listen to the music of a pianist we are not satisfied if he plays with only one finger, even though he might thus play the melody correctly, because the melody alone is not rich enough. We want that melody against all its background of music. We want those musical sounds so beautifully related to each other that their harmony may arouse our feelings without unduly straining our attention.

A splendid example of secondary motion may be seen in the light draperies of a dancer. Even in the elementary movement of a few leaps across the stage we see the delicate rhythm of a scarf which is at first retarded by the air, then follows the dancer gracefully, and at last gently overtakes her.

Between the movements of body and scarf there is a charming play. They are pleasantly similar, yet they are pleasantly different. And there is a distinct feeling of progression in the various phases of this similarity and this difference. As spectators we catch this progression without any effort of the intellect and are instantly swept into its rhythm.

It would be easy for the director, of course, if the story which he is about to film always called for action as graceful as that of a dance. But unfortunately his scenario often demands the connecting of actions which, pictorially considered, are totally unrelated to each other. Yet if the director cares to seek the principles of beauty he will find many ways of harmonizing elements that are seemingly in conflict.

One way is simply to impose on each of the discordant elements a new value which they may assume in common without losing their own distinctive characters. Suppose, for instance, that we must show a society lady, with all her soft refinement, on a visit to a foundry, with all its sweating roughness. One may fear that there must be something repellent between her stately gentility and the bending backs of workmen; between her kid-gloved gestures and the flow of molten metal. Yet we can blend the whole scene into a single rhythm by suffusing all its elements with the warm glow of the furnace and by playing over them all the same movement of quivering light and shadow. This vibrant, welding beauty which lady and laborer and machine may have in common, while still retaining their individual dramatic significance, will thus give the touch of art to a motion picture which might otherwise be merely a crude photographic record of an incident in a story.

Another way of bringing two conflicting motions into a rhythmical relation is to place between them a third motion which, by being somewhat like either of the other two, bridges the gap and thus transforms a sense of fixed opposition into a sense of moving variety. It would be somewhat of a shock, for instance, to shift our view instantly from the rippling flow of a narrow stream to the wheels and levers of a mill. But there would undoubtedly be a sense of continuity, and perhaps of rhythm, in shifting from a general view of the stream to a view of the water-wheel over which it flows, and thence to the wheels of the machinery inside the mill.

This method of interposing a harmonizer might be useful also in carrying over the rhythm of motion into the rhythm of fixed forms. Thus if we were to throw upon the screen a picture of the gently rolling sea, sharply followed by a view of the sweeping horizon of the hills, it is most probable that the two kinds of rhythm would not unite to draw a single emotional response from the spectator. He would feel only the contrast. But if the view of the sea were followed by a view of a field of grain, whose wind-driven billows resembled the waves of the sea and whose rolling ground resembled the sweep of the hills, then the rhythm of the quiet hills themselves might easily seem to be one with the rhythm of the restless sea.

As we study the subject of visual rhythm we are led to compare it again and again with auditive rhythm, which is best exemplified in music. Thus it is easy to see how a given motion in a picture might be considered the melody while all the other motions serve as accompaniment, and how characteristic motions might be played against each other like counterpoint in music. It is easy to see how a whole succession of scenes might be considered a single rhythmical totality, like a “movement” in a musical composition. And it is certain that any director who thought of cinema composition in that sense would never permit the slovenly joining which is so familiar in photoplays. He would not then allow the shift from one scene to another to be essentially a clash of unrelated motions. He would assure himself rather that the characteristic types of motion in one scene, their directions, velocities, and patterns, played into corresponding factors of the next scene, until the entire succession became a symphony of motion.[D]

[D] For a further comparison between music and pictorial motions see Chapter IV of “The Art of Photoplay Making.”

It is an interesting fact that movement in a photoplay may come from other things besides motions. One would get a sense of movement, for example, even if every scene in a photoplay were itself a fixed picture held for a few seconds on the screen. The various durations of these pictures might be in a rhythmical series. The same might be said of their dominant tones, and of their characteristic patterns and textures. Would the time-lengths 3, 4, 2, 7, 5, be a good succession? Or would 3, 7, 4, 5, 2 be better? Which would make a better succession of figures? A circle, a triangle, and a cross? Or a cross, a square, and a circle? Questions like these are not trivial; neither are they over-refined. They and their answers should appear in the catechism of every cinema composer.

Speaking of durations of scenes reminds us that in music it is often the silences between the notes which vary in length while the notes themselves are uniform. This would be true in the case of a simple melody played on the piano. The intervals between notes can be observed by tapping out the “time” of the piece on a single key of the piano, or on a tin pan, for that matter; and the rhythm of time thus represented would alone enable a listener to identify any popular piece of music.

At present there are no rests on the screen, no blank periods between the scenes. There are, to be sure, moments of relaxation when scenes are being “faded out,” and these “fades,” like the dying away of musical sounds, have genuine rhythmical movement. But there is not on the screen any alternation between stimulus and non-stimulus, as there is in music, and as there is also in the performance of a stage play. The motion picture, therefore, lacks that source of rhythm which exists in musical rests or in the dramatic pauses of stage dialogue.

Whether intervals of non-stimulus could be successfully introduced on the screen can be learned only by experiment. Any director who is really in earnest about developing the motion picture as art should make such an experiment. If he investigates the results of scientific tests in psychological laboratories he will learn that under certain conditions the normal spectator unconsciously creates rhythm in what he sees. It has been shown, for example, that a person looking at a small light which is flashed on and off at intervals has a tendency to make rhythmic groupings of those flashes, by overestimating or underestimating the lengths of the intervals. In other words, if you give the beholder’s imagination a chance to function, it will indulge in rhythmic play. We believe that if a cinema composer could thus produce rhythm by illusion, as well as by actual presentation, his achievement would be epoch-making in the movies.

Movement, movement through rich variety, movement accomplished with the utmost ease--that is the essence of what we have chosen to call the play of pictorial motions. That play, as we have seen in the illustrations given, involves every kind of pictorial motion, whether of spot, or line, or pattern, or texture, or tone; and every property or phase, whether of direction, or rate, or duration; and every circumstance, whether in relation to other motions near or remote, simultaneous, or successive, or in relation to fixed elements of the picture. Any two or three of these things may be treated as a separate problem, but it is in the orchestration of all of them together that the director may achieve the dominant, distinctive rhythm of his photoplay. If he does not aspire to such achievement he is unworthy of his profession. If he evades his problems because they are difficult he is robbing his trust. If he declares that the world that loves movies does not crave beauty on the screen, he is bearing false witness. If he believes that the beauty of a photoplay lies wholly in the emotional appeal of the performer and in the dramatic action of the plot, he is stone blind to art.

So far as the motions in a picture present the actions and reactions of the dramatic characters clearly and emphatically, they do faithful work; but this work becomes play when it is relieved of its hardness and dullness, and is animated with a spontaneity and variety that catches up the spectator into a swinging movement of attention. And those motions which are both work and play are basic in the beauty of cinematic art.