Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/112

 you feel immediately that the distribution of weights is more pleasing. Now hold it as if the right end were the bottom, and the composition takes on a heavy balance, with a commonplace symmetry of four long, rising and spreading lines. This is so because the right half, which is really too heavy when the picture is viewed in the position intended by the director, seems to be a weight in place when considered as the bottom of a pattern.

Yet we may find beauty in this "still," if we only have the patience to corner it. Cover up three-quarters of the composition, that is, all of the left half, and all of the lower half; then the remaining quarter will contain a pleasant composition, and a delightful appeal to the imagination. There is in that upper right-hand quarter, both balance and rhythm, both repose and stimulation. The heroine's gestures carry our attention to the left, in the direction she is going; but her glances, and the attracting power of the converging trees, carry our attention to the right. And in the course of this easy playing to and fro our fancy swings out beyond the frame into realms of our own imagination.

But there is still another test for pictorial equilibrium. Besides the balance of one side against the other and of the top against the bottom, a picture should preserve a balance between the foreground and the background. This assumes that the picture really suggests the dimension of depth, which is usually the case. Interesting exceptions, however, may appear occasionally, as in the "still" facing page 61, and the painting facing page 76. One may even find entire photoplays with scenes done in two dimensions only.