Any one who goes frequently to the movies must have felt more than once a certain poignancy, a strange fascination in some pictorial arrangement, in some curiously appealing movement on the screen. Perhaps such a feeling came when you saw a “dissolve” for the first time. Perhaps the slow dying away of a scene, even while a new one was dawning before you, gave a pang of pleasure never felt before, not even in the magic blending of dreams. A “queer feeling” you may have called it, and you may have been less aware of it as the novelty wore off in later shows. Then it came again when you saw an accelerated motion picture which showed a plant growing from seed to blossom within a few minutes. And still again you felt it when in some slow-motion picture you saw a horse floating through the air. But time went on and the frequent repetition of these effects made their appeal less poignant.
In each case the thing that stirred you was due to a novelty of mechanics, a trick of cinematography. But you can get that emotion without waiting for a new mechanical invention. It may come also from the pictorial composition, from some peculiar patternings of things, whether fixed or moving, within the picture itself. A striking illustration of this may be found in the German photoplay, “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” which has been described in the preceding chapter. It contains at least two scenes in which extremely simple arrangements kindle strange flares of emotion. One of these moments comes in the scene which is represented by the “still” shown opposite [page 179]. Here we see Cesare, the hypnotized sleep-walker, slinking along an alley of weird lights and shadows. We know from earlier scenes that he is bent on committing some new crime. His face is ghastly and his lanky frame is tightly clothed in black. He emerges into a bright glare and stretches forth his arm in an unhuman gesture, as though he were going to glide serpent-wise up the very side of the wall. This movement makes a strange pattern and sends through us a flash of—shall we call it a sweet shudder or a horrible delight?—something poignant and unforgettable.
A similar experience of emotion comes to us a few minutes later in the same play when Cesare carries off the heroine from her bedchamber. This scene reveals a broad sea of billowy linen, evidently a bed, yet large enough for a whole bevy of heroines. Cesare appears outside a window, which seems to crumble at his touch. He enters the chamber and, dagger in hand, reaches out toward the head of the sleeping lady. We gasp at her fate, because we forget that this is only a play. That gasp is an expression of pity, a familiar emotion. But a mysterious emotion is in store for us. Cesare is spellbound by the lady’s beauty. He drops his dagger. Then suddenly he gathers her up, and, holding her against the side of his body, starts for the window. As he does so a sudden striking pattern is produced by the movement. In his haste Cesare has caught up some of the bed linen along with his prey, and this white expanse darts after him in a sudden inward-rushing movement from the remote corners of the bed. Instantly a strange sensation shoots through us. This sharp emotion, both painful and pleasing, is not pity, or hate, or fear. It does not relate itself to the villain’s violence against an innocent, defenseless girl. It is merely a “queer feeling” caused by that striking motion-pattern of the snowy linen whisked unexpectedly from the bed.
To one who has been emotionally affected by such things as the “dissolve” and retarded motion and the peculiar effects in “Dr. Caligari” the above paragraphs may give some idea of what we mean by poignancy in composition. It is a real quality tinged with an unreality that allies it with the effects which we experience in dreams. Any cinema composer who can strike this note of poignancy at least once in every photoplay that he produces may justly demand that his work be classed with the fine arts.
Another elusive quality, found all too seldom in the movies, is the appeal to imagination. Such an appeal may come from things in real life or from that life which art reflects; it may come also from the artist’s medium and composition. Thus, for example, some people can imagine melodious sounds when they look at colors in a painting, and nearly every one can imagine colors when listening to music. The motion picture’s appeal to the imagination has been treated at some length in Chapter VI of “The Art of Photoplay Making,” and we shall, therefore, be brief about it here. An illustration may be furnished by a sea-shell. We hold it to our ears and hear a low musical sound which makes us imagine the surf of the sea, sweetly vague. A similar, yet more subtle, delight may come from a picture of some person doing the same thing. Such a picture is to be found in the Fox film version of Longfellow’s “Evangeline.” Gabriel picks up a sea-shell and holds it to his ear. Instantly we imagine the sound which he hears. We also imagine the sea which that imagined sound suggests. And, if we are particularly sensitive, we may even try to imagine what Gabriel imagines. All this is delightful, a genuine emotional response to the art of the screen. But we are immediately insulted by an ugly anti-climax. Quick as a flash, our fancies are killed by a cut-in picture of a stretch of real sea. Now we must look; we may no longer imagine.
The above is a typical example of both imaginative and unimaginative treatment in a motion picture. Any reader can go to the movies and collect a hundred similar examples in a few evenings. Over and over again a director will lead us to the threshold of beautiful fancy, only to slam the door of hard realism against our faces. Why is this? Is it because the director thinks that audiences are incapable of exercising and enjoying their imaginations? Or is it only because he wants to get more footage for the film?
As though it were not bad enough to spoil the pictorial beauty of cinema composition, many directors proceed to spoil the charm of other arts, too. Poetry, for instance, may weave her spells elsewhere, but not upon the screen. Even the simplest poetic statement must be vulgarized by explanation. “Movie fans” are not considered intelligent enough to be trusted with the enjoyment of even such harmless imagery as
“There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the turn leads on to fortune.”
During all the three hundred years since those lines were written, probably no illustrator of Shakespeare’s plays ever felt called upon to draw a picture of that tide, and probably no actor ever strove to represent it on the stage by voice or gesture. But in De Mille’s photoplay “Male and Female,” where the passage is quoted, the lines on the screen must be accompanied by a photograph of surf, which was evidently intended to represent the tide!