The soul of the moving picture (1924)

The Setting 91 Illustration No. 17, a quite unostentatious setting, shows, with unreserved fidelity to life, a house wing of plain compactness, and of an unusually modest atmosphere, which encompasses the action and aids in its effective visualization. The scenery in Illustration No. 18 — the picture is from Vogelod — is inimitable. The loneliness and desertion of the two people is seemingly in the act of beginning to strike up a deep note, just as if one were to draw the bow across the bass string of a violin. This is the kind of reserved and unobtrusive clarity of lines that has got to be practiced if we are to solve the problem of film decoration in a successful way. Such practice absorbs and assimilates the fundamental elements of all styles and tones them down into one grandiose picture — such as Illustration No. 19. It leads one out beyond the narrow confines of the atelier and on to piles of human occupancy in the open air, creations of the architect's mind which make no attempt at a microcosmic delineation of details; it has the whole, the entity, rather tower up before us, in microcosmic fashion, and uses to this end, not the pebbles of excessive embellishment, but the huge square stones of all great buildings. Instances of such are Illustrations Nos. 20 and 21. It must be conceded that settings, if strenu