Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/143

 CHAPTER VII

PICTORIAL MOTIONS AT WORK

All the movement which you see on the screen may be enjoyed, we have said, as something which appears beautiful to your eye, regardless of its meaning to your mind. But if that movement, beautiful in itself, also carries to your mind some significance, if it serves the dramatic plot in some positive way, then the picture will be so much the richer. Acting, of course, is visible movement that delineates character and advances plot. It is pictorial motion at work. And acting, curiously enough, is not limited to people and animals. In a sense there may be acting also by things, by wagons or trees or brooks or waves or water-falls or fountains or flames or smoke or clouds or wind-blown garments. The motions of these things also constitute a kind of work in the service of the photoplay.

One might say that the artistic efficiency of a motion picture may be partly tested in the same way as the practical value of a machine. In either case motions are no good unless they help to perform some work. "Lost motions" are a waste, and resisting motions are a hindrance. The best mechanical combination of motions, then, is that which results in the most work with the least expenditure of energy.

Doubtless every one will agree with us that if, while