Pictorial beauty on the screen (1923)

MASTERY IN THE MOVIES 163 ing of the master cinema composer, just as a figure in a painting may still be fascinating even though the painter has made it a thoroughly organic part of the whole composition. As the figure is really only a part of the motion picture so the setting is also only a part, and neither the setting nor the figure should be considered sufficient unto itself. One without the other is really incomplete; together they can be organized into a unified picture. This simple truth, always recognized by painters, has often been ignored, both by stage directors and motion picture directors. Perhaps the explanation is to be found in the materials with which the three different composers work. In a painting both the figure and the background are only paint, only representations side by side on a flat surface, and therefore easily admit of a perfect fusion of material. But in the case of stage drama the situation is different. The stage composition does not give us a similar natural blending of actor and background. The actor is a real human being, so near the spectators that some of them could touch him with their hands, while the background is merely an artificial representation of a room, a garden, or a cliff. The two elements of the stage picture refuse to mix, and the average spectator seems quite content to take them separately. In fact, it is not unusual for the audience to "give the scenery a hand" long before a single figure has entered to complete the composition. Now the screen picture is entirely different from the stage picture, because on the screen everything we see is photographic representation, mere gradations of light and shadow, just as everything on the canvas