Pictorial Beauty on the Screen

by Victor Oscar Freeburg

In the cinema composition the director must, of course, have mastery over the places, as well as over the persons of a film story. He can then make the setting a live, active part of the picture instead of merely a dead background; he may truly dramatize it.[E] A notable example of the perfect blending of dramatic theme, actors, and setting is the German photoplay “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” which was first shown to the American public in April, 1921. This film, produced by the Decla Company, was directed by Mr. Robert Wien, and the scenic designs were made by Herman Warm, Walter Reiman, and Walter Rork. When the “movie fan” sees the beginning of this photoplay he is startled by the strange shapes of places. Houses and rooms are not laid out four-square, but look as though they had been built by a cyclone and finished up by a thunderstorm. Windows are sick triangles, floors are misbehaved surfaces and shadows are streaked with gleaming white. Streets writhe as though in distress and the skies are of the inky blackness that fills even strong men with foreboding. The people are equally bizarre. They resemble cartoons rather than fellow humans, and their minds are strangely warped.

[E] The subject of dramatizing a setting is discussed at length in Chapter VIII of “The Art of Photoplay Making.”

In the presence of all this the spectator feels that the screen has gone mad; yet he does not leave the theater, because his attention is chained and his emotions are beginning to surge with a peculiarly pleasing unrest. He stays and stares at the remarkable fitness of these crazy people in crazy places; for the story is, in fact, a madman’s fantasy of crimes committed by a sleep-walker under the hypnotic control of a physician who is the head of an insane asylum.

When we examine this photoplay critically we discover, not only that the settings are perfectly sympathetic with the action, but that the various factors are skillfully organized into an excellent pictorial composition. Look, for example, at the “still,” facing [page 179], and you will observe the uncanny emphasis upon the dark sleep-walker who slinks along the wall and a moment later turns upward into the hallway on his evil errand to the bed-chamber of the heroine. Place that figure in an ordinary village alley and it will lose half its horror; keep it out of this weird setting and the place will cry out for some one to come into it in pursuit of crime.

Study the plan of the pictorial design and you will see that as soon as the man has emerged from the shadows in the background he becomes the strongest accent in an area of white. The end of the alley from which he comes is accented by the jagged white shape above the shadows, and the doorway through which he goes is similarly accented by irregular shapes. These two accents keep the composition in balance, and when our glance passes from one to the other the path of attention must cross the area of central interest. There is rhythm in the composition, too, though one would scarcely realize it at first glance. Note the swinging curves in the white patch on the street and in the corresponding patch on the wall, and note also how some of these curves harmonize with the lines of the actor’s body and with his shadow upon the wall.

The “still” which we have just analyzed is typical of the cinema scenes throughout “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.” Whether the subject is the unscrupulous Doctor in his office within the gates of the insane asylum, or the unnatural sleep-walker cramped in his cabinet, or the innocent girl asleep in a sea of white coverlets, or the gawking villagers at the fake shows of the fair, the two factors of person and place complete each other in a masterly composition. But that composition as a whole was not made either by the actors or by the designers of settings; they were happily helpful, but the director was the master composer.

Any one who sees “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” is likely to remark that the settings would not be of much value in any story except the one for which they were designed. What a fine compliment to this photoplay as art! Perhaps some one long ago in the gray dawn of musical composition made a remark that the accompaniment in a certain piece of music could hardly serve for another melody than the one for which it was composed! At any rate let us hope that in the future the lover of the films may not look in vain for weird stories in uncanny haunts, for fairy tales in whimsical nooks, for epic dramas in spacious domains, for comedies in funny places; and let us hope, too, that he will find the compositions so perfect that not a single setting would have any artistic value apart from its own story.

“But what of nature?” says some one. “Must the movie director have mastery over the works of the Creator, too?” Indeed he must! Because if he is an artist he is a creator; and if nature becomes a medium in his art, then he must have mastery over that medium insofar as it enters the art. Hills have been levelled, streams have been dried up, and valleys have been filled with water, all for the welfare or profit of man. Mastery of this kind costs money; but are not the movie magnates noted for their fearlessness in signing checks?

Wealthy men have been known to build landscapes for their own pleasure; there is no very valid reason why they should not build landscapes for their own business, especially when that business is an art. The movie director of to-day wears out automobiles searching the country for “locations” that will do as natural backgrounds for screen stories; and in this enthusiasm he is almost as amateurish as the kodak fiend who scours the country for good things to snap. The movie director of some to-morrow will not look for natural backgrounds; he will make them.

When an artist paints a picture of a natural subject he does not try to reproduce exactly the material things which he sees before him. He rises far above the craft of the copyist into the divinity of creation. His painting is always a personal variation of the natural theme. If seven trees suit his composition better than the seventeen which he views, he paints only seven, and if there are only five in the grove, he creates two more on his canvas. If the waterfall is too high or too violent he reshapes it into the ideal one of his vision. This he does, not because nature is not beautiful in most of her aspects, but because no single one of those aspects fits into the scheme of the new beauty which he as an artist is trying to create.