Pictorial beauty on the screen (1923)

I22J) BEAUTY ON THE SCREEN ground resembled the sweep of the hills, then the rhythm of the quiet hills themselves might easily seem to be one with the rhythm of the restless sea. As we study the subject of visual rhythm we are led to compare it again and again with auditive rhythm, which is best exemplified in music. Thus it is easy to see how a given motion in a picture might be considered the melody while all the other motions serve as accompaniment, and how characteristic motions might be played against each other like counterpoint in music. It is easy to see how a whole succession of scenes might be considered a single rhythmical totality, like a "movement" in a musical composition. And it is certain that any director who thought of cinema composition in that sense would never permit the slovenly joining which is so familiar in photoplays. He would not then allow the shift from one scene to another to be essentially a clash of unrelated motions. He would assure himself rather that the characteristic types of motion in one scene, their directions, velocities, and patterns, played into corresponding factors of the next scene, until the entire succession became a symphony of motion.* It is an interesting fact that movement in a photoplay may come from other things besides motions. One would get a sense of movement, for example, even if every scene in a photoplay were itself a fixed picture held for a few seconds on the screen. The various durations of these pictures might be in a rhythmical series. The same might be said of their dominant tones, and of their characteristic patterns *For a further comparison between music and pictorial motions gee Chapter IV of 'The Art of Photoplay Making."