Pictorial Beauty on the Screen

by Victor Oscar Freeburg

But the cinema composer does not work in so plastic a medium as paint. The camera is only a recording machine, working without the power of altering what it sees. The subject must be altered by the director before the camera man begins “shooting.” On a small scale this is perhaps already being done. Bushes, for example, may be cleared out from among the trees, and possibly even a tree or two may be chopped down in order to facilitate the carrying on of certain dramatic actions. We should like to see the ax wielded also in the cause of such things as simplicity, or balance, or rhythm in pictorial composition. Already bridges are being built especially for certain scenes in photoplays. We should like to see the cinema engineers called upon also to put an extra bend in the creek, or to make the waterfall only half as large, or to shape the bank into a more graceful slope whenever any change of that sort might serve to organize the setting more harmoniously with the general design of the picture.

Already grass has been mown to suit a director. We should like to see grass grown especially for the director. They already make sunshine and wind and rain for motion pictures. We should like to see trees planted and tended for a dozen or fifty years, if necessary, in order to provide a more pictorial natural background for one or a dozen film stories.

In thus advocating a new art of cinema landscape gardening we do not mean to imply that nature untouched is not full of beauty. We know well enough that the rhythm of line in the horizon of a rolling country, or in the lights and shadows of trees massed in the distance is often a delight to the beholder. But natural beauty of that sort is admissible to a cinema composition only when it is itself the dramatic theme of the story, and can be emphasized by the introduction of human figures or other elements, or when it can be subordinated to something else which is the dramatic theme. If nature cannot be thus composed she may still be photographed by the maker of scenics, travel pictures, etc., but she is of no practical value to the director of photoplays.

But there is perhaps a question brewing in some reader’s mind. “Would it not be ridiculously extravagant,” he asks, “to construct a real landscape especially for a photoplay, since you maintain that any particular setting, if it is a proper part of a good composition, will have little artistic value apart from the particular action for which it has been designed?”

Yes, it would certainly be extravagant to spend ten years producing a natural setting which could be used only for two days of movie “shooting.” But our theories really do not lead to any such conclusion. First, any landscape which has been designed especially for cinema composition, can be “shot” from fifty or a hundred different points of view, and yet can have separate artistic value from every angle. And, second, any such landscape would alter itself periodically and gradually through seasons and years. And, third, the cinema landscape engineer could make considerable alterations again and again without destroying the landscape. Thus, even if only a single square mile of land were used, it might well serve a film company for a number of years; and meanwhile other landscapes would be in the making on other square miles of land. However, it is not the critic’s business to enter into the ways and means of financing the production of art. He only undertakes to express the refined taste of the thoughtful public, the public which in the long run it will pay the producers to please.

We desire the director’s mastery in the movies to extend also to that phase of pictorial composition which is known as the “cutting and joining” of scenes. Bad work in this department of photoplay making is something which cannot be counteracted by the most inspired pantomime, by the most beautiful setting, or by the most perfect composition in the separate scenes. Without careful cutting and joining the photoplay can never achieve that dynamic movement, that rhythmical flow which is a characteristic and distinguishing quality of the motion picture as art. It should be as important for the cinema composer to decide upon the progression and transformation of scenes as it is for the poet to arrange the order and transitions of his own verses and stanzas, or for the musical composer to arrange the movement through the music which he writes. Some directors seem to forget that a piece of art can exert its power only through that final form which comes in direct contact with the appreciator. And many of the others who desire to preserve their work intact must gnash their teeth at the thought that no matter how carefully they may cut and join a film, it is likely to be marred before it reaches the projecting machine.

An example of the amazing lack of artistic co-operation in the movie world is furnished by the following press notice, sent out from one of the largest moving picture theaters on Broadway. “Audiences who see a film projected on the screen at the —— Theater, seldom take the details connected with its showing into consideration. It is a well-known fact that a photoplay is seldom presented at the —— in the form it is received from the manufacturer. Every foot of film is carefully perused and cuts are made, either for complete elimination or for replacement in a more appropriate part of the story.”

Add to such deliberate desecration the havoc wrought by censors and by the eliminations caused by fire or breakage and you have a prospect of butchery which is bad enough to make any artist drop his work in despair. There is no hope for him unless he can organize his photoplay so perfectly and make its definite final form so compellingly beautiful that even a dull mechanician in a projecting booth would recognize it as a sacred thing which must be kept intact as it came from the hands of the master.

But a photoplay is often robbed of pictorial continuity long before it reaches the exhibitor. The “title-writer,” who frequently combines his office with that of “cutter,” is at best, a dangerous collaborator on a photoplay. Words in the form of titles, sub-titles, dialogue, comments, etc., are rarely in place on the screen. If they are admitted for the purpose of telling or explaining a part of the story, they come as a slur on the art of the motion picture, and often as an insult to the intelligence of the spectator.[F] Nevertheless, the producer finds words practically useful as stop-gaps, padding, and general support for an ill-directed play that would otherwise have to be scrapped. And even the most prominent directors are inclined to lean heavily on words. We are doomed, therefore, to endure the hybrid art of reading matter mixed with illustrations, at least for many years to come. But we insist that this mixture shall be no worse than the director makes it.

[F] Words which appear as an organic part of the action, such as writing, print, sign-boards, etc., do not come under the general category of “cut-in titles.” For a discussion of the dramatic value of words on the screen see Chapter IX of “The Art of Photoplay Making.”