Pictorial beauty on the screen (1923)

148 BEAUTY ON THE SCREEN in search of cases where the motion of nature has been successfully harmonized with those of other motions demanded by the action of the story. One of the ugliest of pictorial conflicts occurs when false motion and real motion are projected together upon the screen. Who has not been annoyed by the typical "follow" picture in which a lady is shown ascending a flight of stairs, while the stairs themselves (because the camera has been swept upward during the exposure) flow swiftly downward across the screen? The "follow" or "panoram" picture of moving things is usually bad because it falsifies real motion and gives the appearance of ugly motion to things which actually are at rest. An atrocious picture of a horse race, exhibited not very long ago, had been taken by carrying the camera on a motor car which had been kept abreast though not steadily abreast, of the horses. The result was that the grand stand, guard rails, and all fixed objects flew crazily from left to right, and that, because of the irregular swinging of the camera, the horses sometimes seemed to drop back together, even though they had clearly not slackened their speed. ,We have been discussing in the above paragraphs the harmony of pictorial motions which occur together at a given moment. They may have a harmony like that of musical notes struck in a chord. But pictorial motions come in a procession as well as abreast, and these successive motions may have a harmony like that which runs through a melody in music. In a stage play it is not difficult to organize simultaneous or successive actions so that the total action will produce a single effect, because all the movements