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2. PICTORIAL INFLUENCES
When we speak of the influence of pictorial art in the early period of develop
nt of the art of the camera-man, we deliberately use the term ' pictorial imita
n ', since in their primary form these pictorial tendencies amounted mainly to
2 iechanical copying of individual compositional schemes and methods of lighting
lid in one or another product of pictorial art.
In its elementary form the imitation of pictorial art began at the moment \ ien the camera-man attempted mechanically to copy the compositional schemes c those pictorial products similar in subject to the tasks of the single frames c a given film. We find this similarity in early films of Italian origin, for ins nee " Quo Vadis " and " Salammbo ", and then in the German historical pieces of a later period (" Lucrezia Borgia "). Certain American films which \ re issued during the war and immediately post-war period (" Intolerance ", The Ten Commandments ") were also not free from mechanical borrowing of : ^positional schemes. These films are of interest for the contradiction which e ists between the construction of the long and mid-shots on the one hand, and fe close-ups on the other.
The relatively static quality of the long and the mid-shots, made it possible I apply to these the central, symmetrical composition of the pictures of the Renaislce period with their pomp and monumentalism, transferred to the perfection the frame locked-in-itself. These shots were regarded as expressive to the tent to which, by cinematographic means, they reproduced subjects known >m pictorial art, and their ' artistic qualities ' were judged in direct dependence on the extent to which the camera-man approximated them to the copied oduction. The situation was different with the composition of nearer groups d close-ups, where simple copying became impossible owing to the dynamic ality of the subjects. These shots interrupted and destroyed the illusion of rtiness ' in the film as a whole, since they sharply differed from the pictorial flisation of the long-shots. Whilst in long-shots the camera-man was still able reproduce exactly the compositional scheme of the original, even approximately tching the main principles of distribution of masses and lighting, with the insition to dynamic group compositions and close-ups he had to treat the bject independently, and the absence of a compositional unity of the various ots was at once revealed. This partly explains the striving of both director d camera-man towards more general, and as far as possible static constructions, other words towards forms which would enable them to keep to the i reproiction ' standpoint entirely (Figs. 78, 79).
In close-ups the object imitated was occasionally a portraiture product, but
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