Pictorial beauty on the screen (1923)

PICTORIAL MOTIONS AT FLAY 125 and textures. Would the time-lengths 3, 4, 2, 7, 5, be a good succession? Or would 3, 7, 4, 5, 2 be better? Which would make a better succession of figures? A circle, a triangle, and a cross? Or a cross, a square, and a circle? Questions like these are not trivial; neither are they over-refined. They and their answers should appear in the catechism of every cinema composer. Speaking of durations of scenes reminds us that in music it is often the silences between the notes which vary in length while the notes themselves are uniform. This would be true in the case of a simple melody played on the piano. The intervals between notes can be observed by tapping out the "time" of the piece on a single key of the piano, or on a tin pan, for that matter; and the rhythm of time thus represented would alone enable a listener to identify any popular piece of music. At present there are no rests on the screen, no blank periods between the scenes. There are, to be sure, moments of relaxation when scenes are being "faded out," and these "fades," like the dying away of musical sounds, have genuine rhythmical movement. But there is not on the screen any alternation between stimulus and non-stimulus, as there is in music, and as there is also in the performance of a stage play. The motion picture, therefore, lacks that source of rhythm which exists in musical rests or in the dramatic pauses of stage dialogue. Whether intervals of non-stimulus could be successfully introduced on the screen can be learned only by experiment. Any director who is really in earnest about developing the, motion picture as art should