The Art of the Moving Picture

by Vachel Lindsay

To make a more elaborate showing of what is meant by architecture-in-motion, let us progress through the centuries and suppose that the builder has this enthusiasm for France, that he is slowly setting about to build a photoplay around the idea of the Maid.

First let him take the mural painting point of view. Bear in mind these characteristics of that art: it is wall-painting that is an organic part of the surface on which it appears: it is on the same lines as the building and adapted to the colors and forms of the structure of which it is a part.

The wall-splendors of America that are the most scattered about in inexpensive copies are the decorations of the Boston Public Library. Note the pillar-like quality of Sargent's prophets, the solemn dignity of Abbey's Holy Grail series, the grand horizontals and perpendiculars of the work of Puvis de Chavannes. The last is the orthodox mural painter of the world, but the other two will serve the present purpose also. These architectural paintings if they were dramatized, still retaining their powerful lines, would be three exceedingly varied examples of what is meant by architecture-in-motion. The visions that appear to Jeanne d'Arc might be delineated in the mood of some one of these three painters. The styles will not mix in the same episode.

A painter from old time we mention here, not because he was orthodox, but because of his genius for the drawing of action, and because he covered tremendous wall-spaces with Venetian tone and color, is Tintoretto. If there is a mistrust that the mural painting standard will tend to destroy the sense of action, Tintoretto will restore confidence in that regard. As the Winged Victory represents flying in sculpture, so his work is the extreme example of action with the brush. The Venetians called him the furious painter. One must understand a man through his admirers. So explore Ruskin's sayings on Tintoretto.

I have a dozen moving picture magazine clippings, which are in their humble way first or second cousins of mural paintings. I will describe but two, since the method of selection has already been amply indicated, and the reader can find his own examples. For a Crowd Picture, for instance, here is a scene at a masquerade ball. The glitter of the costumes is an extension of the glitter of the candelabra overhead. The people are as it were chandeliers, hung lower down. The lines of the candelabra relate to the very ribbon streamers of the heroine, and the massive wood-work is the big brother of the square-shouldered heroes in the foreground, though one is a clown, one is a Russian Duke, and one is Don Cæsar De Bazan. The building is the father of the people. These relations can be kept in the court scenes of the production of Jeanne d'Arc.

Here is a night picture from a war story in which the light is furnished by two fires whose coals and brands are hidden by earth heaped in front. The sentiment of tenting on the old camp-ground pervades the scene. The far end of the line of those keeping bivouac disappears into the distance, and the depths of the ranks behind them fade into the thick shadows. The flag, a little above the line, catches the light. One great tree overhead spreads its leafless half-lit arms through the gloom. Behind all this is unmitigated black. The composition reminds one of a Hiroshige study of midnight. These men are certainly a part of the architecture of out of doors, and mysterious as the vault of Heaven. This type of a camp-fire is possible in our Jeanne d'Arc.

These pictures, new and old, great and unknown, indicate some of the standards of judgment and types of vision whereby our conception of the play is to be evolved.

By what means shall we block it in? Our friend Tintoretto made use of methods which are here described from one of his biographers, W. Roscoe Osler: "They have been much enlarged upon in the different biographies as the means whereby Tintoretto obtained his power. They constituted, however, his habitual method of determining the effect and general grouping of his compositions. He moulded with extreme care small models of his figures in wax and clay. Titian and other painters as well as Tintoretto employed this method as the means of determining the light and shade of their design. Afterwards the later stages of their work were painted from the life. But in Tintoretto's compositions the position and arrangement of his figures as he began to dwell upon his great conceptions were such as to render the study from the living model a matter of great difficulty and at times an impossibility.... He ... modelled his sculptures ... imparting to his models a far more complete character than had been customary. These firmly moulded figures, sometimes draped, sometimes free, he suspended in a box made of wood, or of cardboard for his smaller work, in whose walls he made an aperture to admit a lighted candle.... He sits moving the light about amidst his assemblage of figures. Every aspect of sublimity of light suitable to a Madonna surrounded with angels, or a heavenly choir, finds its miniature response among the figures as the light moves.

"This was the method by which, in conjunction with a profound study of outward nature, sympathy with the beauty of different types of face and varieties of form, with the many changing hues of the Venetian scene, with the great laws of color and a knowledge of literature and history, he was able to shadow forth his great imagery of the intuitional world."

This method of Tintoretto suggests several possible derivatives in the preparation of motion pictures. Let the painters and sculptors be now called upon for painting models and sculptural models, while the architect, already present, supplies the architectural models, all three giving us visible scenarios to furnish the cardinal motives for the acting, from which the amateur photoplay company of the university can begin their interpretation.