Pictorial Beauty on the Screen

by Victor Oscar Freeburg

What other properties pictorial motion should have, besides correct representation of action has been partly told in Chapter III, where the demands of ease and economy of vision were made a condition concomitant with beauty. We may further apply the same tests which have been applied to fixed design. But, in order to get a firm grasp of our subject let us first reduce pictorial motions to their simplest forms.

The simplest motion of all is the moving spot, especially when it is entirely unrelated to a setting or background; that is, the kind of moving spot which the spectator may see without at the same time seeing any other thing, either fixed or moving. A familiar example in nature is the dark dot of a bird flying high above us in a cloudless sky. An example from the screen is the effect of a ball of fire shot from a Roman candle through darkness, as in the battle scenes of Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation.” But even so simple a moving thing as a spot has two properties which are very important to the composer of motions. The moving spot, like all other motions, has direction and velocity. The buzzard soaring slowly in large circles affects us in one way, while the hawk swooping downward sharply, or the crow flying in a straight line, or the bat fluttering crazily in the air, affects us in quite a different way.

When direction and velocity are controlled, even a single moving spot may describe beautiful motion. Witness an airplane maneuvering high in the sky, or a torch waved gracefully in the darkness. Beauty springs from control; ugliness follows lack of control. But control is no easy thing in the movies, for it is rare indeed that a director has only a single moving point to manage. Almost always, he has the problem of relative direction and relative speed. Moving things must be related to other moving things, and also to fixed things. Even if the picture consists only of a torch waved against a black background, we have the problem of relating that motion to the four fixed lines of the frame of the screen.

But can we expect a motion picture director to stop and think of so small a matter as a ball thrown from one hand to another, to ask himself whether such an action is beautifully related, in direction and velocity, to everything else in the picture, fixed or moving? Yes, we can expect him to do so until he becomes artist enough to think of these matters without stopping. He should think about pictorial composition until he can obey its laws without thought. Let him remember that even a flock of geese can compose themselves so appealingly in the sky and a herd of cows can wind so gracefully down a hillside that a tender girl and a tough hobo will gaze alike upon them in open-mouthed admiration.

The geese in the sky and the cows on the hillside are only a lot of moving spots, until they arrange, or compose, themselves. They may then illustrate the second type of moving object, that of the moving line. A line may, for example, move along its own length in a way which pleases the eyes. Such motions we see in the slender waterfall, in the narrow stream, in such inanimate things as the long belting in a factory, or the glowing line of a shooting star, and in the files of geese, or cattle, or marching men.

A line may move in other directions besides that of its own length. It may swing stiffly from one end, as in the case of a pendulum or the rays from a searchlight. It may wave like a streamer in the breeze. It may move sidewise, as in the long lines of surf that roll up on the beach. It may move in countless other manners, as in the handling of canes, swords, spears, golf clubs, polo mallets, whips, etc. Now, of course, the director ordinarily thinks of a weapon as a weapon, and not as a moving line. He studies the characteristic action of an officer drawing his sword or of a Hottentot hurling his spear and tries to reproduce them faithfully so that no small boy in the audience may be able to pick out flaws. This is well, so far as it goes. A painter would study these characteristic actions, too, and would suggest them with equal faithfulness. But he would do something more. He would place every object so carefully in his picture that its line harmonized with the four lines of the frame and with all of the other lines, spots, and pictorial values in his work.

Now we are beginning to guess how pictorial motions must be composed; but first let us see what other kinds of motion there are. If we take another look at the geese in the sky we may find that they have composed themselves into the form of a “V” or a “Y” floating strangely beneath the clouds. This illustrates the third type of motion, the moving pattern.

We distinguish between a moving pattern and a moving spot or line, because a pattern relates its separate elements to each other. This relation may or may not change as the pattern moves. Thus the V-shaped pattern formed by the flying geese may become sharper or flatter, or one side may be stretched out longer than the other, as the flight continues. All fixed pictures are patterns which do not change in form while we look at them, and the pictorial principles therein involved have been thoroughly discussed in the preceding chapters. But if the director wants a pattern to move to the right or left, up or down, away from him or toward him, or to change its character gradually, then a new problem of composition arises, and the solution of this new problem is both inviting and perplexing.

It is inviting because there are so many patterns which gain beauty from motion or change. A fixed circle is not so appealing to the eye, for example, as a rolling hoop. A wheel standing still is not so fascinating as one that rotates, like the wheel of a wind mill, or one that rolls, like the wheel of a carriage. Thus also the pattern formed by the rectangular shapes of a train standing still does not please the eye so much as the harmonious change in that same pattern when the train swings by us and winds away into the distance.

The patterns which may be compared with mathematical figures, such as circles, squares, triangles, diamond shapes, etc., are not the only ones. We are simply mentioning them first to make our analysis clear. Every group of two or more visible things, and nearly every visible thing in itself, must of necessity be looked upon as a pattern, either pleasing or displeasing to the eye. Therefore every motion picture that has been, or can be, thrown upon the screen describes a pattern, fixed, moving, or changing. If the direction and rate of these motions and changes can be controlled, there is hope for beauty on the screen; if they cannot be controlled, there is no help but accident.