Victor Oscar Freeburg

“ The great appeal of the screen lies in the showing of vivid movement, the flow of forms, the subtle weaving, through soft play of light and shadow, of fanciful figures that melt like music while we gaze, and yet remain in our minds like curves of a strange melody. When such glimpses of beauty come, our eyes and brains surely do not feel any friction or strain in the process of looking. But when ugly motions are presented the eye must perform excessive movement, and the brain must exert excessive effort. ”

“ Enough has now been said to illustrate how design in a picture can control our attention during the pauses and arrested moments on the screen, and by so doing can relieve the eyes of unnecessary, wasteful work and give unity and emphasis to the message of the picture. But still other powers reside in design. While it hastens our grasp of meanings, and even accentuates those meanings, it can affect the mind in other ways that are still more important. And if we delve deeper into these ways we shall come out with a clearer vision of the artistic possibilities of the movies. ”

“ In exactly the same way our eyes are shocked by the movies when a dazzling white light is flashed on the screen where a somewhat darkened scene has just vanished. The pupil is caught unawares, is not instantly able to protect the eye, and, besides, must use up a certain amount of energy in adapting itself to the new condition. Such a shock once or twice during the evening might easily be forgiven and forgotten, might, in fact, be hardly felt at the time; but fifty such shocks in a five-reel photoplay would certainly weary the eye, and a play of that sort could hardly be called beautiful. ”

“ False, or apparent, motion occurs when the camera itself has been moving about while the picture was being taken. Thus a road is made to shoot upwards over the screen while our hero is riding madly toward us, or a parlor slides drunkenly to one side while some fair lady marches toward a door, or a stairway becomes a waterfall which she swims upstairs. The real motion, of course, contains the dramatic interest, but the false motion forces itself upon us by its novelty or unexpectedness; it becomes difficult for us to see much with ease, and the result is ugliness. ”

“ Thus as we analyze the optical aspects of a motion picture we are amazed at the number of things that may conspire to hurt our eyes, and we sympathize more than ever with the sincere cinema composer. He, the new hope of the movies, feels the need of other equipment than a line of talk and a megaphone. He no longer applies for a position in a studio on the strength of his record as an actor, as a stage director, as a city editor, as a college cheer leader, or as a drill sergeant in the army. He has begun to think in pictorial composition and not in words. ”

“ But if the director wants a pattern to move to the right or left, up or down, away from him or toward him, or to change its character gradually, then a new problem of composition arises, and the solution of this new problem is both inviting and perplexing.
It is inviting because there are so many patterns which gain beauty from motion or change. A fixed circle is not so appealing to the eye, for example, as a rolling hoop. A wheel standing still is not so fascinating as one that rotates, like the wheel of a wind mill, or one that rolls, like the wheel of a carriage. ”

“ If I look upon a motion picture as a kind of substitute for some stage play or novel, it seems to me a poor thing, only a substitute for something better; but if I look upon it as something real in itself, a new form of pictorial art in which things have somehow been conjured into significant motion, then I get many a glimpse of touching beauty, and I always see a great range of possibilities for richer beauties in future examples of this new art. Then I see the motion picture as the equal of any of the elder arts. ”

“ If in one picture our eyes and minds have adjusted themselves to the delicate threading of snow-flakes, falling like a softly changing tapestry, they can only be shocked by a sudden jump to the vigorous curling of a sea wave breaking on the beach. And in our natural desire to appreciate both subjects at once we are disappointed to find that each has spoiled the other. Delicacy looks at power and thinks it violence; power looks at delicacy and thinks it weakness. ”

“ 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 ”

“ How does the director of a motion picture make sure that pleasing motion will appear upon the screen? Does he alter, or select, his subjects? Does he choose his point of view? Does he patiently wait for the right moment? Or must beauty come by accident, as music might come from a cat’s running over the keyboard of a piano? ”

“ MOTIONS IN A PICTURE Pictorial motion is thousands of years older than the motion picture. It is as old as the oldest art of all, the dance. Before man had learned how to weave his own fancies into plots, or how to make drawings of things that he saw, he had doubtless often feasted his eyes upon the rhythmic beauty created by dancers. Their art was the composition of motions. ”

“ But can we expect a motion picture director to stop and think of so small a matter as a ball thrown from one hand to another, to ask himself whether such an action is beautifully related, in direction and velocity, to everything else in the picture, fixed or moving? Yes, we can expect him to do so until he becomes artist enough to think of these matters without stopping. He should think about pictorial composition until he can obey its laws without thought. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To test this third balance of a picture you need only imagine a curtain of glass dropped so as to separate equally the interests near the spectator from those farther away. Such a plane is, in fact, usually imagined by a painter when he lays out his design. Though he does not cut his ground mechanically into two equal areas, he usually does distribute his subjects so that the spectator needs not feel that the foreground is only a long waste to be crossed, or that the background is but an empty region which lies beyond everything of interest. ”

“ It does not end until he has recorded that subject in some permanent form, such as a painting, a drawing, or a celluloid negative. In the recording, or treatment, the painter tries to improve the composition of his subject. He changes the curves of the vase and the flower somewhat in order to obtain a more definite unity. He softens the emphasis in one place and heightens it in another. He balances shape against shape. He swings into the picture a rhythm of line and tone which he hopes may express to some beholder the harmony which he, the artist, feels. ”

“ Let the motion picture look like a motion picture of life, and not like life itself. Let the mobilization of characters in a photoplay start fancies and stir emotions finer and deeper than any which we can experience by observing our neighbors or by reading sensational newspapers. Let the lights and shadows on the screen, the lines and shapes, the patterns and movements suggest to our imaginations richer beauties than186 those which are actually shown to our eyes. Let the motion picture become as romantic as music, and yet remain equally consistent with reality and truth. ”

“ Their whole creed seems to be that a heart-broken woman should move her shoulders and chest as though she really were heart-broken, that a goat should act exactly like a goat, and that a windmill should behave itself exactly like a windmill. Now, it may be very desirable, as far as it goes, that an emotion be “registered” fitly. But to aim at fitting expression alone is to aim at naturalness alone. And this is not enough, because there may be natural ugliness, and because even the beauty of nature is essentially different from the beauty of art. ”

“ Let us simply add that the kind of rest we have in mind is never the rest of inaction, of sleep, or of death; it is rather a dynamic repose. Just as the still portions of the motion picture may be active upon the spectator’s mind, so the motions may be reposeful while they are both at work and at play. Such harmony of pictorial motions on the screen is not too high an ideal for the lovers of the cinema. ”

“ He faces only a stack of drawings. The artist who makes the drawings does not see the motions except in his own imagination. But the spectator in the theater is delighted to see the strangely bewitched men and beasts, birds and trees, rocks and streams, weapons and machines, all behaving in impossible ways that no maker of fairy tales ever dreamed of. Here is a new field of pictorial composition, with distant boundaries and fabulous wealth. Those who exploit it will be able to teach many a valuable lesson to the director who merely takes photographs of actors in motion. ”