Pictorial Beauty on the Screen

by Victor Oscar Freeburg

Exquisite values and exquisite combinations are present in the masterpieces of every art. The sweet blending of musical tones which leads into a delicacy of overtones that no ear can distinguish; the subtle shadings of color in a painting, soft touches of pictorial harmony which can be felt more surely than they can be seen; tender curves in the most vigorous statue, and marble surfaces surging so slightly that their shadows scarcely linger; crisp edges of acanthus leaves in a Greek capital and the almost imperceptible swelling of the column beneath; the sparkle, the caper and the organ-music of a poem you love—these are the exquisite things in art. And there are many others less tangible. They thrill you again and again with feelings too refined for description in words.

Can the motion picture achieve a similar refinement? Or must it always deserve the epithet “crude”? When half of the typical movie’s brute strength and snorting speed can be exchanged for tenderness and spirituality we shall have a new era in cinema history. That era may dawn while the doubters are still slumbering. Even now we occasionally see motion pictures which are sparkling without the so-called “flashes” of scenes, pictures which flow firmly, one into the next, with delicate mingling of tones and patterns, pictures in which sometimes the moving elements are as airy as gossamer threads blown by a fairy’s breath.

This quality of exquisiteness is something which the director cannot produce by taking thought or signing a contract. Other values he may develop by study and experiment, but not this one. He may bring balance and unity to his pictorial elements; he may accent the interests properly; he may succeed in starting a vital rhythm and stimulating the beholder’s fancy, all this through determined application of skill; but he will need the help of inspiration before he can create the charm of exquisiteness. The gods have granted that mysterious help to other artists; they will grant it to the cinema composer, too, whenever he proves worthy.

There is at least another peculiar art-emotion which the cinema composer should be able to arouse. It is the emotion which comes over us at the overwhelming discovery that a given masterpiece of art has a wealth of beauty that we can never hope to exhaust. That emotion is stimulated by the reserve which lies back of all really masterful performance in art. We feel it when we have read a poem for the twentieth time and know that if we read it again we shall find new beauties and deeper meaning. We feel it in a concert hall listening to a symphony that has been played for us repeatedly since childhood and yet reveals fresh beauties to our maturing powers of appreciation. We feel it in the mystic dimness of some cathedral beneath whose arches a score of generations have prayed and the most eloquent disbeliever of today stands gaping in silence. Behind the human power which wrote the poem, or composed the music, or built the cathedral lies a vast reserve; and, though it was not drawn upon, we seem to glimpse that reserve forever in the finished masterpiece.

Has any reader of this book gone to see the same photoplay ten times? And if so, why? Was it because of some irresistible, undying lure in the content of that photoplay or in the pictorial form of that content? Did you go of your own free will? Did you even make a sacrifice to see it the tenth time? If so, then you have known the calm joy of a reserve power in the newest of the arts.

Unfortunately reserve is not characteristic of the movies. It is seldom indeed that a photoplay contains anything of value that cannot be caught during the first showing. In fact, it happens rather frequently that a photoplay uses up every ounce of its own proper power and then is forced to call in the help of something known as “padding” before it measures up to the commercial fullness of five reels, or whatever the contract stipulates. If you poke around through this padding, you will find that it is usually made up of innocent kittens, ducklings, calves, human babies, and other “ain’t-it-cunnin’” stuff, which may arouse emotions, to be sure, but not the emotions which make up the enjoyment of art as art.

Another typical lack of reserve is illustrated in the building and decoration of settings. Avalanches of furniture are apparently necessary to show that a character is well-to-do. The heroine’s boudoir must look like a gift shop, and her dressing table like a drug store counter, in order to convince the audience that she spends a few sacred moments of the day attending to her finger nails. Walls of rooms must be paneled off by scores of framed pictures, mirrors, etc., so that, no matter where the actor stands, his head will be strikingly set off by some ornamental frame. Floors must look partly like an Oriental bazaar and partly like a fur market. Chairs, tables, cabinets, beds, and what-nots, must carry our minds to Versailles and the Bronx, to Buckingham Palace, and Hollywood. Hangings of plush and silk, tapestries of cloth of gold, curtains of lace or batiked silk, cords of intricate plaiting, must flow from the heights, waving in the breeze to prove that they are real. All this extravagance must be, we presume, in order to show that the heroine lives on an income and not a salary, and in order to give the brides in the audience new ideas for mortgaging their husbands’ futures at the installment-plan stores.

With such extravagance of materials in a picture there can be no simplicity or reserve in the pictorial composition, if indeed there can be any composition at all. Whatever design the director gives to the miscellaneous lines and shapes will seem rather like a last despairing effort than the easy, happy touch of a master’s hand.

The hysterical extravagance of the movies is further illustrated in the breathless speed which so often characterizes every moving thing on the screen. We feel that, at the end of the road, horses must expire from exhaustion and automobiles must catch fire from excessive friction. Clouds are driven by hurricanes, rivers shoot, trees snap, and the most dignified gentleman dog-trots. It is true that some of this breathlessness carries with it a certain thrill for the spectator, but that thrill is by no means to be classed as an æsthetic emotion. It has nothing of that abiding joy which comes from the consciousness of restrained energy in art.

Much of this feverish activity, this “jazz” of the screen, is due to rapidity of projection; and yet the director is responsible, for he certainly knows the probable rate of projection and can control his composition accordingly by retarding actions or by selecting slower actions in place of those which cannot be retarded. Slowness of movement, where it is not unnatural, is pleasant to the eye, as we have said in preceding chapters, but it has a peculiar appeal for the emotions, too. It fills us with a sense of the majesty that none can shake, of the deep currents that none can turn aside.