Pictorial beauty on the screen (1923)

140 BEAUTY ON THE SCREEN spinning top as an example of motion that had the appearance of being at rest. To a certain extent all circular movement presents that appearance and may be very pleasing on the screen, providing it does not conflict with our desire for fitness and is not allowed to become monotonous. A fly wheel whirling may look like a disk at rest, but it is monotonous and entirely without artistic stimulation. The action within the ring of a circus presents a more stimulating show, and yet it is not quite satisfying as an artistic composition of motion, because we cannot help feeling that it is not natural, that it is unfit for a horse to turn forever within a forty-foot ring. In the aesthetic dance, on the other hand, a circling movement can always be of satisfying beauty, full of graceful vitality and yet delightfully reposeful, too, because it never flies away from its axis fixed within our area of vision. Now, we cannot recommend that the players of a film story should always be shown running around in circles. And yet their separate actions, gestures and bodily movements in general, may often be so composed that they progress in a circular path, each movement tracing an arc of a circle which nowhere touches the frame of the picture. Such circularity of motions would give unity, balance, and repose. A good example of circularity may be seen in "The Covered Wagon" when the wagon train, just before coming to a halt, divides and swings into two large arcs of a circle, which slowly contract as the wagons turn inward toward a common center. Another interesting example of circular balance may be seen in "One Arabian Night," a German pho