Pictorial beauty on the screen (1923)

PICTORIAL MOTIONS, AT WORK 109 of crying on the cot and tries to shape her tear-stained face into a smile. In all of these cases there would be variety and yet emphasis, always the same tonal harmony between her blond hair and the faded wall, always the same resemblance between the lines of her ragged dress and those of the old furniture, always the same binding of her frail figure into the hard pattern of her surroundings, as though she were but a thing to be kicked about and broken, — all this shown again and again until the full dramatic force and beauty of the pictorial moment is impressed upon the spectator. This kind of repetition can be done much more effectively and with less danger of monotony in the photoplay than in the stage play, because much of the action which intervenes between the repetitions can be eliminated and other scenes can be cut in without breaking the continuity of visible motion, while on the stage no bridging of time or shifting of scene is feasible without dropping the curtain. One device which is unique on the screen is the repetition of the same "shot" by simply cutting into the film numerous prints from a single negative. A ;well-remembered case was the "Out-of-the-cradle endlessly-rocking" theme of Griffith's "Intolerance," a picture of a young woman rocking a cradle, which was repeated at frequent intervals throughout the storyi The picture remained the same, but the context was ever new; and, if the repetition was not impressive to the spectators, the fault was not in the device itself, but rather in the fact that there really was no very clear connection between the cradle-rocking and intolerance.