The art of sound pictures (1930)

164 THE ART OF SOUND PICTURES over him, if the love affair depicted is to be exciting, col- orful, and stimulating to the screen audience. With the male lover, passion comes first in sequence, just as with women. But the passion phase is greatly- prolonged. The courtship, the long effort to succeed for the woman’s sake, the faithful following out of her love commands, and the process of passionate striving to win her love favor is conventionally prolonged throughout the entire story, with only a very brief climax of captivation, when the woman finally comes to his arms. The success- ful end of every love story, or the “clinch,” as it is col- loquially termed in motion pictures, represents a mutual and complete captivation between two successful lovers. Even in the final embrace, the predominance of captiva- tion power is retained by the woman, as illustrated by the pictures of Greta Garbo, the magnet irresistibly attracting her successful lover, John Gilbert. The passive magnetic role of the woman always holds the balance of captivation power, while the man still shows a predominance of pas- sion. This is a successful love affair in real life. Depic- tion of love relationships of precisely this sort has made famous not only the pair of lovers mentioned, but count- less other actresses from the days of Theda Bara to the modern vogues of Joan Crawford and Clara Bow. Experiments have shown that both men and women in audiences experience sympathetic passion with the male lover in such scenes, as his passion is drawn irresistibly forth by the woman love magnet. Captivation The general definition of captivation, “to take captive by charm,” aptly describes the process of love capture,