Pictorial beauty on the screen (1923)

174 BEAUTY ON THE SCREEN tian hieroglyphics are pictorial, that they are drawings; but we forget that the characters and arrangements of our own writing and printing are also drawings. Judged as pictures the words on the screen are usually too severely white for the background. They fairly flash at you. Also the horizontal lines made by the tops and bottoms of the letters constitute a sort of grill-work which hardly ever blends pictorially with the pattern of the preceding or following scene. As to the design of the letters themselves we find considerable variety on the screen, often with no direct reference to the meaning of the words or to the picture where they are inserted. Thus the tendency to introduce y's and g's with magnificent sweeping tails, or capital letters in fantastic curves, while revealing a commendable impulse to make writing pictorial, often leads to overemphasis, or to a direct conflict with other pictorial values in the film.* Furthermore, the eye-movement over reading matter should be considered with reference to the eyemovement over the adjoining pictures. For example, after the title has been shown long enough to allow the normal reader to get to the end of the text, his eye may be at a point near the lower right corner or at the right side of the frame. Then if the following picture does not attract attention at this portion of the frame, a slight shock is caused by the necessary jump to a remote point of attention. A similar difficulty may arise in connecting a preceding picture with the beginning of the title. Many directors have endeavored to make the title *A neat pictorial touch in the titles of the German play, "The Golem," is the suggestion of Hebrew script in the shaping of the letters.