But so many curves would make the picture too rich in quality were it not for the skillful introduction of straight lines to make, as it were, a series of alternating notes. You observe immediately the long straight lines of the windows, of the two flags, and of the table. But you do not at first observe that there are several dozen shorter straight lines, and that, curiously enough, they are nearly all parallel to each other. Take as a key the sash of the first seated officer, counting from the left, and you will find a surprising number of similarities to this motif throughout the composition, all the way from the shadows on the window casing in the upper left hand corner to the edge of the table in the lower right hand corner. Yet, because these similar straight lines are so frequently alternated with varying curves, we get from the picture a stirring sense of a swinging movement.
Here, again, is an arrested moment of action which might conceivably have come out of a motion picture. What the arrangement of the twelve men might have been at other moments of the scene we do not know. Perhaps they were all sitting when the scene opened; perhaps they had all arisen before it closed; but for this one instant, at least, they have resolved themselves into an interesting design of simple patterns in a rhythmical series.
Another source of rhythm in a fixed picture may be the tonal gradations. In a painting there would be a play of colors from hue to hue and from tint to shade. In ordinary photography there may be a similar play from deep black to intense white through all the intervening values. It is all a question of lighting and choice of subjects for the light to fall upon. The painter has an advantage over the photographer because he does not have to record light and shadow exactly as they are on the subject. He can soften his shadows or paint them out completely. He can alter his tones and values at will, even after the painting is practically finished. As an offset to this the cinema composer has, of course, the power of presenting movement, fugues and passages of light and shadow. And, by the use of the newest apparatus for lighting, and by careful attention to the color values and textures of sets, costumes, etc., he can also produce many of the rhythmical effects of gradation in fixed tones which we are accustomed to look for in painting.
As time goes on we shall more and more often find pictorial moments on the screen which exhibit as fine a rhythm of fixed tones and masses as, for example, Van Dyck’s “Portrait of Charles I,” facing [page 163]. If you draw a straight line across this picture in almost any direction, it will mark a great variety of graded values, a lovely shifting of light and shadow, with no sharp contrasts except those which serve to attract the spectator’s attention to the head of the king. There is perfect harmony of composition here. The tones are in a rhythmical design, yet it is a rhythm which keeps the emphasis on the focal interest and preserves the balance throughout the painting.
Two or three men, a horse, and a bit of landscape is no uncommon subject in photoplays. We have reason, therefore, to expect that from long practice all directors will learn how to treat it pictorially, and with ever new variety of beauty.
The general field of composition in fixed design has now been surveyed. We have tried to show that a good pictorial composition, even from a commercial point of view, is one which provides instant emphasis on the focal interest; which unites this focal interest with the other parts of the picture by means of a certain arrangement, or pattern; which keeps all of its values in a reposeful balance, and which pulsates with a vital rhythm. These four qualities—emphasis, unity, balance, and rhythm—are necessary in what might be called the mechanics of beauty, the technique of design. We admit, cheerfully, that the beauty of a given masterpiece cannot be explained by pointing out an observance of certain fundamental laws of design, for an uninspired artist might obey all these laws without ever achieving beauty, just as a machinist might obey all the laws of mechanics without ever inventing a machine. But we insist that an observance of pictorial laws is a first condition that must be fulfilled by the artist before the mysterious quality of beauty will arise in his work.
The accented moment in a pictorial movement, which we have studied from so many angles, is, of course, not fixed on the screen for any great length of time, never for more than a few seconds, though it may remain fixed in memory for years. Nor is it a separate thing upon the screen. It rises from an earlier moment and flows into a later one. The rapid succession of momentarily fixed pictures on the screen is, in fact, what gives the illusion of motion. Yet it would not, therefore, be correct to say that the motion picture as a whole can be made beautiful by making each separate exposure in itself a beautiful composition. The successive pictures must play, one into the next, in a stream of composition which contains new delights for the eye, and which, alas, contains new dangers for the ignorant or careless maker of pictures. What these delights and dangers are we shall see in the following chapters.
CHAPTER VI
MOTIONS IN A PICTURE
Pictorial motion is thousands of years older than the motion picture. It is as old as the oldest art of all, the dance. Before man had learned how to weave his own fancies into plots, or how to make drawings of things that he saw, he had doubtless often feasted his eyes upon the rhythmic beauty created by dancers. Their art was the composition of motions. We can well imagine how they began by exhibiting bodily postures, gestures, and mimicry; how they proceeded to add other movements, such as the fluttering of garments, the brandishing of weapons, the waving of flaring torches, and how they, in time, made their composition more involved by swinging themselves into swaying groups, circling and threading fanciful patterns.