Pictorial beauty on the screen (1923)

PICTORIAL MOTIONS AT REST 151 plete description in words, how sudden and complete was the shock of scene 3 coming after the preparation of scene 2. There was a complete violation of unity of meanings, as well as of motions. We cannot say who was to blame for this bad art, whether it was the director, or some one in the "cutting room." Possibly some motion picture operator had mutilated the film in the theater. The fact remains that this part of the picture as it reached the audience was badly composed. The promise of one scene was not only ignored but ridiculed in the next scene. An excellent illustration of how the promise made by a scene can be beautifully fulfilled for the eye by a following scene may be found in Griffith's "The Idol Dancer." Incidentally the joining shows how false motion may be harmonized with real motion. Let the reader imagine himself looking at a motion picture screen. The setting is a New England country road in winter. Into the picture from the lower right side of the frame comes a one-horse sleigh, which, as it glides along the road, describes a curving motion over the screen, first to the left and then upward to the right. It then begins curving to the left again, when the scene is suddenly cut. The effect on our eyes at this moment is such that we expect a continuation of motion toward the left, a completion of the swing. And this is just what we get in the next picture, which shows, not the sleigh at all, but the motion of the landscape gliding by, from right to left, as the sleighriders themselves might have seen it. We feel a pleasure of the eye somewhat akin to the pleasure of our ears when a musician strikes a note which the melody has led us to expect. Griffith's touch of art in