Our director has suffered in his early career. Perhaps he has slept on a park bench on a cold night with newspapers stuffed among his thin clothes to guard against the wind. His sleep has been fitful and in his moments of awakening he has thought the whole world against him—and roundly cursed it. In the morning he has risen with his bones aching and not even the two cents in his trousers necessary for the purchase of a cup of boiled muddy water called coffee down the line at Ben's Busy Bee.
This is a not uncommon case of suffering, specially in the world of make-believe, where genius is raised from poverty to affluence sometimes within the short space of a single day.
But while it is being experienced it is doubtless one of the most terrible adventures ever visited upon a human being. As a consequence in later years this experience of acute suffering remains stamped, consciously or subconsciously, on the individual's mind.
Now to the point where this experience will tell when the individual has become a director. The director is called upon to stage, we will say, the scene of Napoleon, a prisoner of the European powers on the island of St. Helena.
REX INGRAM, DRILLING SOME OF THE VARIOUS “TYPES” OF “THE FOUR HORSEMEN” IN THEIR PARTS
GEORGE FITZMAURICE TRANSFERRED “PETER IBBETSON” TO THE SCREEN RETAINING ALL ITS RARE CHARM
How can the director know how Napoleon felt? What does he know about his attitude of mind? The answers are he knows everything. Back in the photographic gallery of his mind he reaches for that scene of himself on the park bench. He recalls that that was the night during which he suffered, in his own mind, even to the extent that Napoleon had suffered.
Therefore, still in his mind's eye, our director refers to his arc of emotional experience. The point A represents the height of his suffering. He then merely extends the line A out and beyond his own emotional arc until it crosses the emotional arc of Napoleon at the point where he suffered the tortures of defeat, disillusionment and imprisonment.