: Pictorial Beauty on the Screen by Freeburg Victor Oscar Ingram Rex Author Of Introduction Etc - Motion pictures Aesthetics

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harmonious program, and show them in a theatrical setting that gives the right mood for aesthetic appreciation on the part of the audience.

Publicity men, too, have felt the temper of the public. Although they still like to exploit sensational features, the language of art is creeping into their "dope." They are beginning to find phrases for the kind of beauty in a film which does not come from a ravishing "star" or the lavish expenditure of money. And the independent reviewers whose criticisms are published in the newspapers and magazines have become professional. There was a time when they contented themselves with listing the cast, revealing the plot in a paragraph, and adding that "the photography is excellent." But now we find thoughtful, discriminating criticisms of photoplays in the film magazines and in the leading daily papers of the country. These critics have learned how to analyze the narrative as a dramatic construction, and how to evaluate the interpretation of character in the acting, but they have also learned something else, and this belongs to the new epoch in the development of the photoplay; they have begun to observe the pictorial art in motion pictures, the endless possibilities of beauty in the pictorial combination of figure, setting, and action; in the arrangement of lines and masses, of lights and shadows, and in the fascinating rhythms of movement on the screen.

This conscious desire for beauty on the screen, which is springing up all along the line, from the producer to the ultimate "fan," has naturally led to public discussion. In school room and church, on "lot" and "location," in office and studio, in club or casual group, men and women are trying to find words and phrases to express the cinematic beauty which they have sensed. And by that discussion they are sharpening their senses for the discovery of richer beauty in the films that are to come. My contribution to that discussion has taken the form of this book, and my aim has been, first, to collect the topics which are connected with the purely pictorial side of the movies, and, second, to formulate my conception of some of the principles which govern the creation of pictorial beauty on the screen. I have endeavored to see my subject from various angles, assuming at times the position of the sensitive spectator and at times standing, as it were, beside the average director, and presuming to suggest to him what he ought to do to please that spectator.

To begin with, let us take care to avoid some of the common pitfalls of photoplay criticism. It has been a common error to judge a photoplay as though it were a kind of visualized book. Many of us have slipped into the mistake of expecting motion photographs to give us the same kind of pleasure which we get from printed or spoken words. But let us understand from now on that the beauty of a design-and-motion art must of necessity be quite different from the beauty of a word-and-voice art.

Also we must reject the theory that the artistic quality of a photoplay can be guaranteed by engaging so-called art directors who design backgrounds or select natural settings for the action of the film story. The picture which we see on the screen consists not of backgrounds alone; it is rather an ever-varying design of moving figures combined with a fixed or changing background. If an art director limits his work to the preparation of material environment of photoplay action, he is, by definition, responsible only for the place-element in the motion picture. Even if he were to design costumes and general equipment for the players he would still be responsible for only a part of the pictorial elements that appear upon the screen.

Plot, performers, places, equipment--these are only the materials which a picture-maker puts into cinematic forms. The art does not lie in the separate materials; it lies in the organization of those materials, a process which may be called cinema composition. In a later chapter we shall discuss the proposition that the motion picture director is, or certainly should be, the master cinema composer. Here we simply want to make the point that criticism should concern itself with the finished composition as a whole and not with the parts alone. The critic who is interested only in the plot construction of photoplays may indeed be able to make penetrating comment upon such dramatic qualities as suspense, logic, etc., but he cannot thereby give us any information on those visual aspects which please or displease the eye while the picture is showing. Thus also the critic who looks only at the acting in the photoplay is likely to be misled and to mislead us. He may not observe, for example, that a film which has bad joining of scenes, or a bad combination of figure and setting, is a bad cinema composition, however superb the acting may be. And the critic who writes, "The photography is excellent,"--a rubber-stamp criticism--is of no help to art-lovers, because the photography as such may indeed be excellent while the composition of the scenes photographed is atrocious. Cinema criticism, to be of any real value to the "movie fan," must be complete. And that means that he must be enlightened concerning the nature of pictorial design and pictorial progression, as well as concerning the plot, the acting, and the mechanics of photography.

The terms "cinema composer" and "cinema composition" were devised by the author in 1916, at the time when he and his students founded the Cinema Composers Club at Columbia University.

All of us are beginners in this pioneer work of analyzing the motion picture as a design-and-motion art. But the prize is well worth the adventure. Certainly the danger of making mistakes need not alarm us unduly, for even a mistake may be interesting and helpful. At the start we need to sharpen our insight by learning as much about the grammar of pictorial art as we know about the grammar of language, by respecting the logic of line and tone as highly as the logic of fictitious events, by paying tribute to originality in the pattern of pictorial motions no less than to the novelty in fresh dramatic situations. Beyond that the prospect is alluring. Our new understanding will give us greater enjoyment of the pictorial beauty which even now comes to the screen, and the rumor of that enjoyment, sounding through the studios, will assure of us of still greater beauty in the future.

THE PRACTICAL VALUE OF PICTORIAL COMPOSITION

The production manager of a large motion picture studio in New York once declared to the author that he was "against artistry in the movies because it usually spoils the picture." "Emotion's what gets 'em, not art," he added. "Besides, a director has to shoot thirty or forty scenes a day, and hasn't got any time to fool away with art notions."

Any one who has seen "The Covered Wagon" knows that such talk is nonsense. This remarkable photoplay charms the eye, appeals to the imagination, and stirs the emotions--all in the same "shot." One can never forget the pictorial beauty in those magnificent expanses of barren prairie, traversed by the long train of covered wagons, a white line winding in slow rhythm, while a softly rising cloud of dust blends the tones of the curving canvas tops and of the wind-blown sage brush. Again and again the wagon train becomes a striking pictorial motif, and, whether it is seen creeping across the prairie, following the bank of a river, climbing toward a pass in the mountains, stretching out, a thin black chain of silhouettes on the horizon, curving itself along the palisade-like walls of an arroyo, or halted in snow against a background of Oregon pines, it always adds emphasis to the intense drama of the pioneers battling against the hardships of the trail in '48 and '49. Here is entrancing change and flow of pattern, but here is human striving and performance, too; and the emotions of the audience are touched more directly and more deeply because picture and drama have been fused into a single art.

Shortly after "The Covered Wagon" had opened in New York an executive of a certain film company was heard to remark, "Well, no wonder it's a success. It cost 0,000 to make it! Any one could take that much money and make a great picture." I consider that reflection highly unjust and the argument entirely fallacious. Good pictorial composition does not necessarily cost a cent more than bad composition. In fact, it will be shown in the following chapters that a scene of cinematic beauty often costs less than an ordinary arrangement of the same scene.

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