Pictorial beauty on the screen (1923)

FIXED PATTERNS 6v nique of graphic design can be effective only when it works subconsciously in the spectator's mind. Furthermore, those old masters knew how to achieve many results through simple means. They knew how to produce unity, emphasis, balance, and rhythm by the skillful manipulation of even a single device. By contrast many motion picture directors of to-day are mere bunglers. For example, in the "still" portrait which we have just studied there is unity and a definite, though heavy, equilibrium, but there is no rhythm, and the emphasis is sadly misplaced. The pose of the woman and her relation to the rug and the background admittedly make a unity. Our eyes ranging over the triangle, can easily grasp all that is important in the picture and leave out the rest ; but the triangular design is severe and makes a wrong emphasis. In the first place, the design is too obviously a triangle. ;We think of it as a mathematical figure, and thus waste part of the attention which should be directed upon the woman herself. And, in the second place, the accent is at the wrong corner and on the wrong side of the triangle. The base of the triangle is accented by containing the longest line in the composition, the line being further emphasized by its straightness and by the sharp contrast between black and white which it marks. This emphasis is, of course, wrong, for we are certainly not interested in the pattern of this rug. There is also no reason why our attention should be called to the woman's foot, or to the adjacent corner of the white panel in the rug, yet our glance is attracted to that region by the; strange zigzag line described by the slipper and that white corner. These accents are wrong at first glance, and they remain wrong as long as the picture