Читать книгу Pictorial Beauty on the Screen - Victor Oscar Freeburg - Страница 4

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The production manager of a large motion picture studio in New York once declared to the author that he was “against artistry in the movies because it usually spoils the picture.” “Emotion’s what gets ’em, not art,” he added. “Besides, a director has to shoot thirty or forty scenes a day, and hasn’t got any time to fool away with art notions.”

Any one who has seen “The Covered Wagon” (directed by James Cruze for the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation) knows that such talk is nonsense. This remarkable photoplay charms the eye, appeals to the imagination, and stirs the emotions—all in the same “shot.” One can never forget the pictorial beauty in those magnificent expanses of barren prairie, traversed by the long train of covered wagons, a white line winding in slow rhythm, while a softly rising cloud of dust blends the tones of the curving canvas tops and of the wind-blown sage brush. Again and again the wagon train becomes a striking pictorial motif, and, whether it is seen creeping across the prairie, following the bank of a river, climbing toward a pass in the mountains, stretching out, a thin black chain of silhouettes on the horizon, curving itself along the palisade-like walls of an arroyo, or halted in snow against a background of Oregon pines, it always adds emphasis to the intense drama of the pioneers battling against the hardships of the trail in ’48 and ’49. Here is entrancing change and flow of pattern, but here is human striving and performance, too; and the emotions of the audience are touched more directly and more deeply because picture and drama have been fused into a single art.

Shortly after “The Covered Wagon” had opened in New York an executive of a certain film company was heard to remark, “Well, no wonder it’s a success. It cost $700,000 to make it! Any one could take that much money and make a great picture.” I consider that reflection highly unjust and the argument entirely fallacious. Good pictorial composition does not necessarily cost a cent more than bad composition. In fact, it will be shown in the following chapters that a scene of cinematic beauty often costs less than an ordinary arrangement of the same scene.

The pictorial beauty discussed in this book is really a kind of pictorial efficiency, and therefore must have practical, economic value. When a motion picture is well composed it pleases the eye, its meaning is easily understood, and the emotion it contains is quickly and forcefully conveyed. In short, it has the power of art.

Pictorial efficiency cannot be bought. It cannot be guaranteed by the possession of expensive cameras and other mechanical equipment. The camera has no sense, no soul, no capacity for selecting, emphasizing, and interpreting the pictorial subject for the benefit of the spectator. In fact, the camera is positively stupid, because it always shows more than is necessary; it often emphasizes the wrong thing, and it is notoriously blind to beautiful significance. You who carry kodaks for the purpose of getting souvenirs of your travels have perhaps often been surprised, when the films were developed, to discover some very conspicuous object, ugly and jarring, which you had not noticed at the time when the picture was taken. At that time your mind had forced your eye to ignore all that was not interesting and beautiful, but the camera had made no such choice.

From The Plough Girl. The pictorial composition at this moment of the action is bad because the spectator’s eye is not led instantly to the book, which is the most important dramatic interest in this scene. See page 11.

It will not help matters to buy a better lens for your camera and to be more careful of the focus next time. Such things can only make the images more sharp; they cannot alter the emphasis. Unfortunately there are still movie makers, and movie “fans,” too, in the world who have the notion that sharpness of photography, or “clearness,” as they call it, is a wonderful quality. But such people do not appreciate art; they merely appreciate machinery. To make the separate parts of a picture more distinct does not help us to see the total meaning more clearly. It may, in fact, prevent us from seeing.

Let us look, for example, at the “still” reproduced on the opposite page. The picture is clear enough. We observe that it contains three figures and about a dozen objects. Our attention is caught by a conspicuous lamp, whose light falls upon a suspicious-looking jug, with its stopper not too tightly in. Yet these objects, emphasized as they are, have but slight importance indeed when compared with the book clutched in the man’s hand.

This mistake in emphasis is not the fault of the camera; it is the fault of the director, who in the haste, or ignorance, perhaps, of days gone by, composed the picture so badly that the spectators are forced to look first at the wrong things, thus wasting time and energy before they can find the right things. On the screen, to be sure, the book attracts some attention because it is in motion, yet that does not suffice to draw our attention immediately away from the striking objects in the foreground. The primary interests should, of course, have been placed in the strongest light and in the most prominent position.

Guiding the attention of the spectator properly helps him to understand what he is looking at, but it is still more important to help him feel what he is looking at. Movie producers used to have a great deal to say about the need of putting “punch” into a picture, of making it so strong that it would “hit the audience between the eyes.” Well, let those hot injunctions still be given. We maintain that good composition will make any motion picture “punch” harder, and that bad composition will weaken the “punch,” may, indeed, prevent its being felt at all. But before arguing that proposition, let us philosophize a bit over the manner in which a “punch” operates on our minds.

Anything that impresses the human mind through the eye requires a three-fold expenditure of human energy. There is, first, the physical exertion of looking, then the mental exertion of seeing, that is, understanding what one looks at, and, finally, the joy of feeling, the pouring out of emotional energy. This last is the “punch,” the result which every artist aims to produce; but it can only be achieved through the spectator’s enjoyment of looking and seeing.

Now, since the total human energy available at any one time for looking, seeing, and feeling is limited, it is clearly desirable to economize in the efforts of looking and seeing, in order to leave so much the more energy for emotional enjoyment. We shall discuss in the following chapter some of the things which waste our energies during the efforts of looking and seeing. Let us here consider how pictorial composition can control the expenditure of emotional energy, and how it may thus either help or hinder the spectator in his appreciation of beauty on the screen.

Let us imagine an example of a typical “punch” picture and describe it here in words—inadequate though they may be—to illustrate how a bad arrangement of events and scenes may use up the spectator’s emotional energy before the story arrives at the event intended to furnish the main thrill. The “punch” in this case is to be the transfer of a man from one airplane to another. But many other things will disturb us on the way, and certain striking scenes will rob the aerial transfer of its intended “punch.”

First we see the hero and his pilot just starting their flight in a hydro-airplane, the dark compact machine contrasting strongly with the magnificent spread of white sails of a large sloop yacht—perhaps thus tending to focus our attention on the yacht—which skims along toward the left of our view.

Then, in the next scene, near some country village, evidently miles away from the expanse of water in the first picture, we see a huge Caproni triplane, which must have made a forced landing in the muddy creek of a pasture. A herd of Holstein cows with strange black and white markings, two bare-footed country girls, a shepherd dog, and five helmeted mechanicians, stand helpless, all equally admiring and dumb, while an alert farmer hitches an amusing span of mules, one black and one gray, to the triplane and drags it out of the mud.

The third scene is strange indeed. It looks at first like a dazzling sea of foam—perhaps the ocean churned to fury by a storm—no, you may not believe it, but it is a sea of clouds. We are in an airplane of our own high in the sky, perhaps miles and miles, or maybe only three-quarters of a mile, above sea level. Just as we become fascinated by the nests of shadows among the cloud billows, a black object swings up from the whiteness, like a dolphin or a submarine from the sea. It is the hydro-airplane with our hero and his pilot; we recognize them because they are now sailing abreast of us only a few yards away. The hero stands up and is about to assume the pose of Washington crossing the Delaware, a difficult thing in such a strong wind when he is suddenly struck from behind by a villain who evidently had concealed himself in the body of the hydro-airplane before the flight was started. The villain is dressed like a soldier and seems to have a knapsack on his back.

Meanwhile, the sea of clouds flows by, dazzling white and without a rift through which one might look to see whether a city, an ocean, a forest, or a cornfield lies below.

Suddenly we look upward and discover the triplane, silhouetted sharply against the sky like the skeleton of some monster. It has five bodies and the five propellors, which three or four minutes ago were paralyzed in the cow pasture, now are revolving so rapidly that we cannot see them. It would be very interesting—but look! the villain and the hero are having a little wrestling match on one of the wings of their plane. Let us hope the hero throws the villain into the clouds! He does, too! But villains are deucedly clever. The knapsack turns into a parachute, which spreads out into a white circular form, more circular than any of the clouds. We wonder if there will be any one to meet him when he lands—but, don’t miss it! This is the “punch”! The triplane is flying just above the hydro-airplane. Somebody lets down a rope ladder, which bends back like the tail of a kite. The hero grabs it, grins at the camera, climbs up, and with perfect calmness asks for a cigarette, though he doesn’t light it, because that would be against the pilot’s rules.

Well, the transfer from one airplane to another wasn’t so much of a “punch,” after all.

Now let us count the thrills of such a picture as they might come to us from the screen. First, in order of time, would be our delight at the stately curves of the gleaming sails of the yacht, but this delight would be dulled somewhat by the physical difficulty experienced by the eyes in following the swaying, thrusting movement of the yacht as it heels from the breeze, and at the same time following the rising shape of the hydro-airplane; and it would be further dulled by the mental effort of trying to see the dramatic relation between yacht and plane. But, whether dulled or not, this thrill would be all in vain, for it surely does not put more force into the “punch” which we set out to produce, namely, the transfer of a man from one airplane to another.

The yacht, therefore, being unnecessary to our story, violates the principle of unity; it violates the principles of emphasis and balance, because it distracts our attention from the main interest; and it violates the principle of rhythm, because it does not take a part in the upward-curving succession of interests that should culminate with the main “punch.”

If the plane of our hero must rise from the water, and if there is to be a secondary interest in the picture, let it be something which, though really subordinate, can intensify our interest in the plane. Perhaps a clumsy old tug would serve the purpose, its smoke tracing a barrier, above which the plane soars as easily as a bird. Or perhaps a rowboat would be just as well, with a fisherman gazing spellbound at the machine that rises into the air. Either of these elements would emphasize the idea of height and danger.

The scene of the triplane in the pasture with the cows, mules, etc., might be mildly amusing. But our eyes would be taxed by its moving spots, and, since its tones would be dark or dark gray, the pupils of our eyes would become dilated, and would therefore be totally unprepared for the flash of white which follows in the next scene.

The white expanse of fleecy clouds would shock the eyes at first sight, since the approach to the subject had not been properly made; but in a moment we would be stirred by the feeling that we were really above the clouds. We would seem to have passed into a new world with floods of mist. The long stretches of white are soft as eiderdown, yet, because of our own motion, they seem like the currents of a broad river, and one can almost imagine that it were possible to steer a canoe over those rapids. All this would be the second thrill, beautiful in itself but not actually tending to emphasize the “punch” of a man transferring from one airplane to another.

The third thrill would surely come when the hydro-airplane swings up through these clouds, like a dolphin from the sea, and yet not like a dolphin, because it rises more slowly and in a few moments soars freely into the air, a marvellous happening which no words can describe. Yet this thrill, like the others, would exhaust our emotions rather than leave them fresh for the “punch” we started out to produce, the transfer of a man from one airplane to another.

Most thrilling of all would be the moments between the instant when the villain is pushed off the wing of the plane and the instant when his parachute snaps open. The white mass of the parachute, almost like a tiny cloud, spreads out at the instant when it reaches the layer of clouds, as if they pushed it open; then the parachute sinks into the clouds and dies out like a wave of the sea.

After all these thrills, the intended “punch” would come like a slap on the wrist. A man might now leap back and forth from one airplane to another until it was time to go home for supper, and we would only yawn at his exploits.

Now one of the morals of this story is that we did get a “punch,” even though it was not the one originally intended by our imagined producer. Treasures often lie in unsuspected places. Nearly every common-place film on the screen contains some beauty by accident, some unexpected charm, some unforseen “punch,” something the director never dreamed of, which outshines the very beauty which he aimed to produce. And whenever a thoughtful person is stirred by such accidental beauty he is delighted to think that such a thing is possible. In the exceptional films, he knows, such effects are produced by design instead of by chance. It is better business, and it is better art.

We said at the beginning of this chapter that it was clearly desirable to economize the spectator’s efforts of looking and seeing, in order that he may have the greatest possible amount of energy left for the experience of emotion. This is desirable even from a business man’s point of view. We shall now try to show that emotional thrills can actually be controlled by design, by what we shall call pictorial composition.

But how is pictorial composition controlled, and who controls it? How far is the scenario writer responsible for pictorial value? How much of the pictorial composition shall the director direct, and how much of it may safely be left to other hands? And, if a picture is well composed, does that guarantee beauty? The answers to these questions depend upon our definition of terms.

Composition in general means, of course, simply bringing things together into a mutual relation. A particular combination of parts in a picture may help the spectator, or may hinder him more than some other possible combination of the same parts. Composition is form, and as such should be revealing and expressive at the same time that it is appealing in itself. Good composition cannot easily be defined in a single sentence, but, for the sake of order in our discussion, I wish to offer the following as my working definition. The best cinema composition is that arrangement of elements in a scene or succession of scenes which enables us to see the most with the least difficulty and the deepest feeling.

A remarkable thing about composition is that it cannot be avoided. Every picture must have some kind of arrangement, whether that arrangement be good, bad, or indifferent. As soon as an actor enters a room he makes a composition, because every gesture, every movement, every line of his body bears some pictorial relation to everything else within range of our vision. Even to draw a single line or to prick a single point upon a sheet of paper is to start a composition, because such a mark must bear some relation to the four unavoidable lines which are described by the edges of the paper.

To place a flower in a vase is to make a composition. If the arrangement contains more meaning, more significance than the exhibition of the flower and the vase separately, and if this meaning can easily be perceived, the composition is good. A bad composition would doubtless result if we placed the flower and vase together in front of a framed photograph, because the three things would not fuse together into a unity which contained more meaning than the things had separately. In fact, even the separate values would be lost, because the vase would obscure the photograph, which in turn would distract our attention from the vase. In other words, the arrangement would not help us to see much with ease.

On the other hand, to place the flower and vase against some hanging or panel which harmonizes with them in color and emphasizes the beauty of the flower, is good composition, providing the rest of the environment is in harmony. The vase must, of course, stand on something, perhaps a table or a mantel-piece. This support must have shape, lines, color and texture, all visual elements which must be skillfully wrought into our design if the composition is to be successful. We see, therefore, that the artistic arrangement of simple things which do not move, which stay where you put them, is by no means a simple matter.

What we have just described may be called composition in a general sense, but it represents only the initial process in pictorial composition. The picture maker’s work only begins with the arranging of the subject. It does not end until he has recorded that subject in some permanent form, such as a painting, a drawing, or a celluloid negative. In the recording, or treatment, the painter tries to improve the composition of his subject. He changes the curves of the vase and the flower somewhat in order to obtain a more definite unity. He softens the emphasis in one place and heightens it in another. He balances shape against shape. He swings into the picture a rhythm of line and tone which he hopes may express to some beholder the harmony which he, the artist, feels. In other words, the painter begins by arranging things, he continues by altering the aspects of those things until they fit his conception of the perfect picture of the subject before him, and he finishes the composition only when he leaves a permanent record of what he has seen and felt.

The Shepherdess, a painting by LeRolle, illustrating several principles of design which can be effectively used in photoplays. See page 55.

Now it is evident that the painter might begin, without an actual flower or vase or panel or table, by merely arranging his mental images of those things. But the process would, of course, still be composition. If, for example, he were to say to himself “To-morrow I shall paint a picture of a rose in a slate-blue vase standing on an antique oak table backed by a gray panel,” that very arrangement of images in his mind would be the first phase of his composition. Or if a customer were to come to him and say “To-morrow I want you to paint for me a picture of a rose,” etc., the process of bringing things together would still be composition; only in that case it begins with the customer and is completed by the painter.

If we apply this reasoning to the movies it is clear that as soon as a scenario writer writes a single line saying that a hydro-airplane takes off from the sea, he has already started a pictorial composition. Although he may not realize it, he has already brought together the long straight line of the horizon, the short curving lines of the waves, and the short straight and oblique lines of the plane. He has already made it necessary to combine certain tonal values of airplane and sky and sea, though he may not have stopped to consider what those tonal values might be.

But the writer does other things of greater consequence than the combining of shapes and tonal values. He prescribes motions and locomotions of things, and he orders the succession of scenes. Even if he writes only that “a plane rises from the sea,” he makes necessary the combination of a great number of movements. On the screen that plane will have at least four movements, namely, rising, tilting, going toward the right or the left, and the movement of diminishing size. And the sea will have at least three movements, namely, undulation, flowing, and the movement of the wake. Now if the scenario writer adds something else to the same scene, or prescribes the mutual relation of things and movements which are to appear in the next scene, he is, of course, merely continuing the process of cinema composition.

Insofar as the writer makes the combination of these things essential to the story he circumscribes the power, he may even tie the hands, of the director. For the latter, unless he ignores the composition thus begun, can do only one thing with it; he can only carry it on.

Now it is a sad thing to relate that many scenario writers do not suspect the truth of what we have just said. Some of them are evidently unaware of the significant fact that their description is really a prescription, that even by their written words they are really drawing the first lines of hundreds of pictures, that they are actually engaged in pictorial composition. They may be without knowledge of graphic art and without skill. They may not be able to take a pencil or a piece of charcoal and sketch out a horse or a hut or the general aspect of a single pictorial moment as it would appear on the screen. They may never have given any thought to the question of how best to arrange simultaneous or successive movements in order to give the strongest emotional appeal to the spectator. Yet they are drawing screen pictures, and drawing them on the typewriter!

Of course, even the most intelligent scenario writers, even those who have the most accurate knowledge of pictorial values on the screen and the keenest power of visualizing their story as it will appear after it has been screened, are always handicapped by working in the medium of language. Words are not motion-photographs, any more than they are paint or marble. This is the scenario writer’s handicap. But, though we may sympathize with him because of the handicap, we cannot relieve him of responsibility as the designer of beginnings in the cinema composition.

The director has a handicap, too. He also does not work in the medium of motion photographs. He cannot do so. Even if he were to look through the view-finder of the motion picture camera during the entire taking of every scene, he would not see exactly what we are destined to see in the theater. He would see things only in miniature, in a glass some two inches square, instead of larger than life. He would see things, not in black and white, but in their true colors. And he can never, under any circumstance, behold two or more scenes directly connected, with no more than the wink of an eye between them, until after the negatives have been developed, positives printed, and the strips spliced together in the cutting and joining room.

In other words, neither the scenario writer nor the motion picture director can ever know definitely in advance just what the finished work will look like to us in the theater. If we are aware of these handicaps, it may help us to understand why ugliness so often slips through to the screen, but it will not permit us to tolerate that ugliness. We, as spectators and critics, must forever insist that the photoplay makers master their art, no matter how difficult the mastery may be.

It was held some years ago that the only thing the matter with the movies was that the stories were badly composed and of little originality. Hence, a number of prominent novelists and playwrights were hired to adapt their own literary work or prepare new stories for the screen. But these literary men were among the first to discover that better writing does not in itself guarantee better pictures. It is the director who is more truly the picture maker than any one of his collaborators in the work. Ideally, he should prepare his own scenario, just as the painter makes his own preliminary sketches, and the fiction writer makes his own first draught of a story. Ideally, too, the plot should be devised by the director (who might then truly be called a cinema composer), devised especially for motion pictures, and with peculiar qualities and appeals that could never so well be expressed in other mediums.

But that is an ideal to be dreamed of. And, meanwhile, we “movie fans” can enjoy the best that is being produced by collaborative methods, and we can help toward the achievement of still better things by developing a thorough appreciation of what is pictorially pleasing, at the same time that we train ourselves to detect and talk out of existence the common faults of the movies.