Pictorial Beauty on the Screen

by Victor Oscar Freeburg

In fact most people who have a highly developed taste for pictorial art, consider that beauty of treatment is more important than beauty of subject. Their emotions are stirred by something in the arrangement of the lines, masses, tones, and colors, something that serves other purposes than those of clearness, coherence, and emphasis. What that something is, has always been a great question to students of æsthetics. Mr. Clive Bell, for example, suggests that the essential beauty of art lies in “significant form.” But you have to read through his very interesting book entitled “Art” to get some notion of what he means by that term. Miss Ethel D. Puffer, in her book “The Psychology of Beauty,” has developed the very illuminating theory that the effect of beauty on the human mind is both to stimulate and give repose. And we shall adopt her theory for a while as a basis for a brief discussion of rhythm and balance in cinematic forms.

The terms “stimulation and repose,” are, of course, contrary. The feelings which they describe are in conflict. Yet this inner conflict between stimulation and repose always takes place when a person is faced with great beauty of art or nature. Any one of us can testify to that from experience. When listening to music, when reading a poem, when watching a play, when gazing at a temple, at a statue, or a painting, we have felt something strangely stirring and at the same time soothing, something both kindling and cooling, an inspiration to do great deeds, and at the same time a desire to rest for the while in satisfied contemplation.

Applying this theory to pictorial composition on the screen, we may say that the quality of balance in line, pattern, and tone suggests repose, while pulsating rhythm stimulates us to activity. This application at least has the merit of giving us something definite to discuss.

Looking at the mechanical aspects of balance in a picture we shall see that it can easily be analyzed. There is the balance of quantity which may be seen by comparing the right half of the picture with the left half, or the upper half with the lower half. Balance of quantity is often connected with symmetry in the fundamental pattern, as in the figure of the triangle. Further, there is balance through depth, the foreground weighing against the background. Another kind of balance is that of echoing motifs, a sort of fulfillment of the eye’s expectations. There is also a balance of interests, which is quite different from the balance of quantity, because a small quantity of one thing may have greater weight of interest than a large quantity of something else. And there is the balance of contrasts, such as light against shadow, or straight lines against curved lines. How balance in all of these forms may be obtained in cinema composition will be discussed in the first half of this chapter.

One of the simplest tests for balance in a static picture is to draw a vertical line through the center of the picture, and then to estimate the weight, so to speak, of the two halves of the composition thus formed. If we try the experiment with the “still” from the photoplay “Maria Rosa,” facing [page 71], we see at once that the left half is too heavy. Besides containing by far the greater dramatic interest, it contains too many objects, shapes, and lines to attract the eye.

From Maria Rosa. An interesting composition, but thrown out of balance by too much weight in the left half. See [page 70].

Now if this “still” were a student’s painting which fell under the eye of the master, he might suggest various ways of “saving” it. For example, some of the bric-a-brac might be “painted out” from the dressing table, the lower lines of the mirror might be softened, and the door reflected in the mirror might be painted out, while some similar interest might be painted in at the right of the picture. Or if this “still” were an amateur print for your kodak album, you might improve the picture considerably by trimming off the right end as far as the woman’s skirt; that is, about one-fifth of the entire width. You can estimate the value of that improvement right now by shutting off that part of the “still” with a sheet of paper or any convenient thing that may be used as a mask. Another picture may be formed by shutting off the left third, just including the reflection of the woman in the mirror. What then remains is a composition in beautiful balance, which, incidentally, appeals more strongly to the imagination than the “still” taken as a whole.

But neither trimming nor repainting nor retouching can be employed to alter a bad grouping that has been recorded on a film. We sympathize, therefore, with the conscientious cinema composer who has made a mistake in composition, for he is forced either to “shoot” the scene again or to clip it out entirely from the film.

Another test for balance of quantity is to draw a horizontal line through the center of the composition and weigh the visual values in the upper and lower halves thus formed. In the case of horizontal divisions, however, we have accustomed ourselves to expect greater weight at the bottom, because that is the natural arrangement of material things about us. Keeping this fact in mind let us analyze the “still” from “Audrey,” facing [page 45]. A glance shows us that the composition is top-heavy, for almost everything of interest lies above the center line. But turn the picture upside down, and look upon it as though it were a pattern meant to be viewed in that position; you feel immediately that the distribution of weights is more pleasing. Now hold it as if the right end were the bottom, and the composition takes on a heavy balance, with a commonplace symmetry of four long, rising and spreading lines. This is so because the right half, which is really too heavy when the picture is viewed in the position intended by the director, seems to be a weight in place when considered as the bottom of a pattern.