Our discussion of motions at work in a picture has not been exhaustive. The list might easily be made three times as long as it is. But it is long enough to illustrate the evil which motions may do if they are turned wild on the screen, and the good which they may work if they are harnessed by a director who understands these fundamental principles of pictorial composition.
However, all work and no play would make any picture dull, but that is a subject for another chapter.
CHAPTER VIII
PICTORIAL MOTIONS AT PLAY
The average matter-of-fact man thinks that artists concern themselves only with copying their subjects, and that their success as artists consists in copying correctly. He is satisfied with a painted portrait of his wife, provided it is a “speaking likeness,” and he craves no other magic of design and color. Such a man praises a photoplay if it presents a “rattling good story,” and expects no thrill from the cinema composer’s conjuring with shifting patterns and evanescent tones. At least he would say something to that effect if you argued the matter with him. But he would be mistaken in his self-analysis, for even a prosaic person really enjoys the decorative rhythmical quality in a picture, though he may not be conscious of doing so. And every spectator can get the richest beauty from the screen only when the pictorial motions play as well as they work.
What is the difference between play and work? We know that when our work most resembles play it is most enjoyable. And we know, too, that play, even when it has not been professionalized, often comes very near being work. The playing of children, as that of grown-ups, is often very highly organized and pursued with a great deal of effort and earnestness. Play, however, may be characterized by spontaneity and variety. It is not forced, like work, which aims for some definite practical result; and it does not have the rigidity and uniformity which in work sometimes develops into dullness. If the emphasizing of dramatic expression may be called the work of pictorial motions, then the spontaneity and variety which accompanies this work may be called the play of pictorial motions. And that play is essentially the same as rhythm.
We think immediately of two of the elder arts in which rhythm is all important—dancing and music. Music leads us to the thought of song, and poetry, and oratory, arts which also are dependent on rhythm. Dancing suggests sculpture, and sculpture suggests painting, arts which would have little beauty without the quality of rhythm. Even architecture must have it. From art we turn to nature, and we see the poignant beauty of rhythm in cloud and wave, in tree and flower, in brook and mountain, in bird and beast. The motion picture, which is the mirror of nature, and at the same time the tablet upon which all of the elder arts may write their laws, must bring to us the inheritance and reflection of rhythm.
This quality has already been discussed in connection with the laws of the eye, in Chapter III, and in connection with static composition, in Chapter V. We come now to the pictorial problem of weaving the individual and combined motions of a photoplay into a totality of rhythm. First, let us consider the case of a single moving spot. Suppose that we have before us a barren hillside of Mexico, an expanse of light gray on the screen. Down that hillside a horseman is to come, dark against the gray. If he rides in a single straight line, directly toward the camera or obliquely down the hill, his movement will not be pleasing to the eye, nor will it seem natural. But if he moves in a waving line, a series of reverse curves freely made, the effect on the eye of the spectator will be somewhat like that of the “line of beauty” discussed in Chapter V.
An important difference, however, between a fixed line and one traced by a moving object is that the latter disappears as soon as it is drawn. It may linger in our memories, to be sure, yet our eyes can trace that line only once, and only in the direction taken by the moving object. That is, our physical eye cannot range back and forth over the vanished path, as it can over a fixed line. And a still greater difference is that the moving object has a rhythm of velocity as well as a rhythm of direction. Velocity and direction of movement arise and exist together, and consequently their relation to each other may produce a new rhythm. The horse, varying his pace according to the nature of the ground, may gallop along the level stretches, and may pick his way cautiously down the steep declines. There is natural harmony in rapid motion over a long smooth line, and slow motion over a short jagged one. A simple case like this may help us to answer the question, When is the relation between velocity and direction harmonious? But we have still the fundamental questions, When is a change of direction rhythmical? And, when is a change of velocity rhythmical?
We cannot promise to give direct and definite answers to these questions; but, recalling our discussion in Chapter V concerning rhythm in fixed design, let us say that cinematic rhythm is a peculiar alternation of phases or properties of pictorial motion which gives the spectator a vivid sense of movement performed with ease and variety.