Pictorial beauty on the screen (1923)

86 BEAUTY ON THE SCREEN they are truthful representations of Dutchmen. The Venus of Milo would not have a room to herself in the Louvre if the statue were nothing more than a life-like figure of a woman partly dressed. In drama, poetry, fiction, painting, sculpture, and music, it has never been considered that appropriateness, naturalness, or truthfulness was in itself sufficient to distinguish the work as art. And it surely cannot be so in the movies. It certainly has not been so in the earlier arts of motion. The dance as a form of expression is beautiful, but it is so far from natural that if the average voter started out to express his joy or grief, or love or defiance, the way a dancer does on the stage, he would be given a free ride to the psychopathic ward. The stage pantomime is charming, but if you behaved in the presence of your true love the way Pierrot and Columbine behave, he or she, as the case may be, would probably decide that you were too much of a clown ever to become a responsible parent. The circus, too, though not properly to be classed as a form of art, combines and presents a vast number of interesting motions which you never expect to see outside the big tent. Dancers, pantomime actors, circus masters and performers, all clearly strive to collect our money by showing us the kind of motions which nature herself does not show. But do not become alarmed. We do not propose to establish a school of unnatural acting in the movies. Let the women and men and greyhounds and weeping willows and brooks be as natural as they can be, like themselves and not like each other. Natural, yes, providing they be not natural in an ugly way. If