Pictorial beauty on the screen (1923)

66 BEAUTY ON THE SCREEN in complete harmony with the main theme, the movement of merry-makers along a country road. Of course, if a scene like this were filmed and thrown upon the screen, the wagon train would actually be moving, and we would perceive the motion, rather than infer it or feel it, as we do from the fixed design of the drawing. Yet, if the cinema director were indifferent as to where he placed his accents, and trusted to chance for his pictorial pattern, we would surely not perceive that motion in its full significance. Now, if lines, shapes and tonal values in a certain arrangement can clarify and emphasize the message of a picture, it is obvious that in some other arrangement they could obscure and minimize that message. For example, if "Derby Day" were filmed, and the composition were left to accident or to the bungling of some director ignorant of the laws of design, it is quite probable that he would "feature" the "picturesque" cottage, or perhaps a "cunning" dog, a "scenic" tree, the "patriotic pull" of the flag, or the "side-splitting" corpulency of a woman. No spectator would then see or feel the dominant idea of this subject, which is the joy of going away on the open road. Right here it is a pleasure to state for the benefit of any reader who may not have seen "The Covered Wagon," that James Cruze, the director of that photoplay, did not bungle his composition. Always the historic wagon train of the pioneers strikes the dominant note of the scene, seeming to compose itself spontaneously into a pictorial pattern which accents the dramatic meaning. This is true even when there is no physical movement. In the arroyo scene,