Pictorial Beauty on the Screen

by Victor Oscar Freeburg

In the art of Shakespeare it is the telling, not the framework, of the story that counts. Hence any play of his becomes a poor thing indeed if you take away from it the tone-color of his words, the rhythm of his lines, the imaginative appeal of his imagery, the stimulating truth in his casual comment on character and deed. When a play of Shakespeare is filmed, those literary values are lost; it cannot in the nature of the motion picture be otherwise.

On the other hand, the distinctive value and particular charm of a photoplay lies in its pictorial treatment, in what the director does pictorially with the subject in hand. And that distinctive value would in turn be lost if some one else attempted to transfer the picture to a literary medium.

In view of all this it is surely fair to say that if a writer and a picture-maker were to co-operate in producing a piece of literature, the writer should be in command; but when they co-operate in producing a picture the picture-maker should be in command.

Now when the director is in command of the story, what does he do with it? He may permit the incidents to stand in their original order, or he may change or omit or add. But in any case he sweeps away the phrases, sentences, and paragraphs which describe the places of the action, and erects instead real settings, or selects suitable “locations” from already existing settings. He marshals forth real human beings to perform the parts which are described in words. He divides the action into limited periods of time, and decides how to connect these periods visually so that the pictorial movement on the screen may be a flowing unity. The director, not the writer, does this; and, if he were satisfied to do less, he would be only partly a director. His work is not the “translation” of literature into motion pictures; it is a complete substitution of motion pictures for literature.

When we analyze pictorial composition on the screen we must proceed as we have done throughout this book. We must look at it from the point of view of the spectator in the theater. The spectator does not see the setting with one eye and the actors with the other, he does not separate the respective movements of human beings, animals, trees, water, fire, etc., as they play before him, and he does not disconnect any one scene from the scenes which precede or follow it. To him everything on the screen is connected with everything else there. The connection may be strong or weak, bad or beautiful, but it is nevertheless a connection. This ought to be clear enough to any one who gives the matter any thought; yet there are scene designers who appear to believe that their setting is a complete work of art quite independent of the actors, for whom and with whom it ought to be composed, and there are certainly any number of players who look upon themselves as stars that dwell apart.

We do not underestimate the individual power of the player as an interpreter of the deeds and emotions of dramatic characters. Pantomimic acting is one of the most personal of arts, yet the acting in a photoplay is a somewhat smaller factor in the total result than acting in the stage pantomime; and neither kind of acting can compare in importance with acting in the stage play, where the magic of the actor’s voice works its spell upon the audience.

In the photoplay the player, whether at rest or in action, is usually the emphatic part of the picture; but he is only a part, and the relation between that part and the other parts of the picture can best be established by the director. If the player attempts to compose the picture in which he appears, he is handicapped, not only because he cannot see himself, but also because he cannot see any other portion of the composition from the same point of view as the ultimate spectator who is temporarily represented by the director. He is, in fact, in danger of spoiling his own pantomime, of destroying his own power.

The frequent abuse of the close-up, for example, is often due to the mistaken idea that an actor’s facial expression is the sole means of representing emotion. To think that dramatic pantomime consists of making faces is just as foolish as to think that dancing is merely a matter of shaking the feet and legs. It is really as important for a screen actress to be able to show grief with her elbows or knees as for a dancer to have rhythm in her neck. The “star” actress, therefore, who insists on several facial close-ups per reel reveals a lack of capability in her own art, as well as an over-developed appreciation of her own looks. The further objection to the close-up is that it takes the player out of the picture. For the moment all the setting, all the other players are shut off from sight. It is as though a painter, while entertaining a group of friends with a view of a newly finished work, were suddenly to cover the whole painting except a single spot, and then to say, “Now forget the rest of the picture, and just look at this spot. Isn’t it wonderful?”

The player should, of course, always be in perfect union with the rest of the picture, yet carrying as much emphasis as the story demands. But even when the player wisely desires to remain in the picture, he should not be allowed to determine his own position, pose, or movement there. He is, after all, only a glorified model with which the artist works.

When an actress moves about in a room, for example, she cannot know that to the eye of the camera her nose seems to collide with the corner of the mantel-piece, that her neck is pressed out of shape by a bad shadow, that her gesture points out some gim-crack of no dramatic significance at the moment, that her movement is throwing her out of balance with some other movement in the scene, that her walking, sitting, or rising appears awkward, in spite of the fact that it feels natural and rhythmical to her. These and a thousand other accidents of composition can be avoided only by the player’s instant obedience to an alert and masterful director who can stop or guide the moving factor in the picture as surely as a painter can stop or guide his brush.