Pictorial beauty on the screen (1923)

PICTORIAL COMPOSITION 13 is clearly desirable to economize in the efforts of looking and seeing, in order to leave so much the more energy for emotional enjoyment. We shall discuss in the following chapter some of the things which waste our energies during the efforts of looking and seeing. Let us here consider how pictorial composition can control the expenditure of emotional energy, and how it may thus either help or hinder the spectator in his appreciation of beauty on the screen. Let us imagine an example of a typical "punch" picture and describe it here in words — inadequate though they may be — to illustrate how a bad arrangement of events and scenes may use up the spectator's emotional energy before the story arrives at the event intended to furnish the main thrill. The "punch" in this case is to be the transfer of a man from one airplane to another. But many other things will disturb us on the way, and certain striking scenes will rob the aerial transfer of its intended "punch." First we see the hero and his pilot just starting their flight in a hydro-airplane, the dark compact machine contrasting strongly with the magnificant spread of white sails of a large sloop yacht — perhaps thus tending to focus our attention on the yacht — which skims along toward the left of our view. Then, in the next scene, near some country village, evidently miles away from the expanse of water in the first picture, we see a huge Caproni triplane, which must have made a forced landing in the muddy creek of a pasture. A herd of Holstein cows with strange black and white markings, two bare-footed country girls, a shepherd dog, and five helmeted mechanicians, stand helpless, all equally admiring and dumb, while