Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/145

 trifle may help to give the correct atmosphere, it may also at the same time rob the heroine of the attention which is rightly due her. For example, in "The Love Light," which was conceived and directed by Frances Marion, there is the kitchen of the little Italian home where Angela (Mary Pickford) sits down to muse for a while. She occupies the right side of the picture while at the left is the fire-place with a brisk fire. The fanciful playing of the flames and smoke of that fire catch our attention immediately. We guess that this fire-place is not important in the story, and we turn our glances upon the heroine, but we cannot keep them there because the fire is too interesting.

When the spectator's reason tries to make him do one thing and his natural inclination tempts him to do the opposite, there is confusion and waste of mental energy; and during that hesitation of mind the opportunity for being impressed by the main interest of the play passes by. That rule may sound like a commonplace, but it is not nearly so commonplace as the violation of it in the movies.

If the director must have a fire in the fire-place, and if Angela is more important than that fire, then, of course, her motions should be made more interesting than its motions. It should always be remembered that the strangest, least familiar of two motions will attract our attention away from the other. The fire is strange, while Angela is familiar. In the preceding scenes she has walked, run, romped, laughed, cried, talked, and made faces; she has, in short, performed so many different kinds of motions that there is almost nothing unexpected left for her to do in order to take our eyes away from the fire. She