Pictorial Beauty on the Screen

by Victor Oscar Freeburg

Perhaps the innocent cow was an accident. Perhaps the director did not know, or had forgotten, that the whitest patch in a picture attracts the eye, that an irregular shape, such as the marking of a Holstein cow, attracts more attention than the familiar patterning of walls, windows, tree trunks, etc., that a moving object in a scene where everything else is still attracts and holds attention, and that a humble cow emphasized by all these cinematographic means makes more of a hit than the most highly paid actor dozing in the shade.

But the strangeness or novelty of a motion may emphasize it, even though other motions going on at the same time are larger and stronger. In support of this statement the author offers a personal experience which came in the nature of a surprise when first seeing Niagara Falls. One would think that if a person who had never seen this sight were placed suddenly before it, he would gaze spellbound at the awful rush of water, and that no other motion could possibly distract him. But the author’s attention was first attracted to something else which impressed him more deeply, something which moved silently, very slowly and very delicately. That strangely attractive thing was the cloud of spray that rose steadily from the bottom of the fall, floating gently upward past the brink and vanishing continually in the sky. Its peculiar appeal lay in its strangeness, not in its strength.

The reader can doubtless recall similar cases where strangeness exerted an overpowering appeal. At best that strangeness is much more than the satisfaction of curiosity. It is a type of beauty which comes as a relief from the common, familiar facts of every-day life. The combination of strangeness and beauty has a powerful charm, and he is an ideal director who can emphasize dramatic significance with that charm.

Violence, at least, is not a virtue in the movies, as so many directors seem to believe. Indeed, slowness and slightness may sometimes be more impressive than speed and volume. This is often demonstrated on the stage of the spoken drama, when, for example, the leading lady who speaks slowly and in low tones holds our interest better than her attendants who chatter in high pitch. The beauty of her speech is emphasized by its contrast with the ugliness of the others. So in the photoplay there may be more power in a single slight lowering of the eyes or in the firm clenching of a fist than in a storm of waving arms and heaving chests.

What has just been said refers to motions in a fixed setting, which operate either against or in spite of, each other; but two or more motions in a picture may work as a team, and may thus control our attention better than if they were operating singly.

First we observe that if a single object is moving along in a continuous direction it will pull our attention along in that direction, may, indeed, send our attention on ahead of the object. Thus if an actor swings his hand dramatically in the direction of a door he may carry our glance beyond his hand to the door itself. This law of vision works so surely that it can always be depended upon by a magician, a highly specialized kind of actor, when he wishes to divert the attention of his audience from some part of the stage or of his own person where a trick is being prepared. It is not true, as is popularly supposed, that we are deceived because “the hand is faster than the eye”; it is really because the eye is faster than the hand. In other words, our attention outstrips the moving object.

In the movies this law controls our attention to traveling persons, vehicles, and things. If horsemen are represented as riding away they should be photographed with their backs toward us and with the distance between us and them increasing. Then, since our eyes travel beyond the riders, we get a stronger impression that the men are really riding far away. On the other hand, if the horsemen are coming home, the direction of movement should naturally be toward us. This seems clear enough; yet directors frequently prevent us from feeling the dramatic intent and force of travel, by “shooting” the moving subject from various angles in succession. Even Mr. Griffith has been guilty of this sort of carelessness. In “The Idol Dancer,” for example, we have a scene (a) in which a party of South Sea island villagers are paddling away in a large canoe; correctly enough they are moving away from the camera. The next scene (b) shows some one raising an alarm in the village by beating a drum, which, as we have been informed, can be heard twenty miles away. It is a call to the canoe party to return. The scene which is then flashed on (c) is a close-up of the canoe coming toward the camera. The men are paddling vigorously. We think, of course, that they have already heard the alarm and are now returning. But no! Presently they stop paddling and listen. They hear the drum. The next picture (d), a “long shot,” shows the canoe being maneuvered around, and the succeeding pictures all show the men paddling toward the camera.

Now it is perfectly logical for us to infer that the canoe is already homeward bound, when we see it coming toward us in scene “c” immediately after the drum has sounded the alarm, and we can therefore only resent being caught in error and virtually told, two scenes later, “This time we won’t fool you, now the canoe, as you see, is really turning about.”

If one moving object can send our thoughts ahead to the goal of its travel, two or more objects moving toward the same point can send our thoughts there with greatly increased force. Thus a picture of two ships shown approaching each other on converging courses will surely make us think of that region of the sea where they are likely to come close aboard each other. If there is an enemy submarine at that point and if the two vessels are destroyers, the suspense and emphasis is complete.

A similar law of attention may be seen at work in cases where lines move along their length to a junction. Suppose we take as a setting a western landscape in which two swiftly flowing streams meet and form the figure of a “Y.” Suppose now that we desire to place an Indian camp in this setting so carefully that it will attract attention as soon as the picture is flashed on the screen. We must place it at the junction of the two streams, because the eyes of the spectators will naturally be drawn to that point. Now suppose that a long white road crosses the main stream just below the place where the tributaries meet. The position would be emphasized more than ever because the road would virtually form two fixed lines leading toward the bridge; and fixed lines, as we saw in Chapter IV, also have the power of directing our attention to the point where a crossing is made.