Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/150

 a powerful charm, and he is an ideal director who can emphasize dramatic significance with that charm.

Violence, at least, is not a virtue in the movies, as so many directors seem to believe. Indeed, slowness and slightness may sometimes be more impressive than speed and volume. This is often demonstrated on the stage of the spoken drama, when, for example, the leading lady who speaks slowly and in low tones holds our interest better than her attendants who chatter in high pitch. The beauty of her speech is emphasized by its contrast with the ugliness of the others. So in the photoplay there may be more power in a single slight lowering of the eyes or in the firm clenching of a fist than in a storm of waving arms and heaving chests.

What has just been said refers to motions in a fixed setting, which operate either against or in spite of, each other; but two or more motions in a picture may work as a team, and may thus control our attention better than if they were operating singly.

First we observe that if a single object is moving along in a continuous direction it will pull our attention along in that direction, may, indeed, send our attention on ahead of the object. Thus if an actor swings his hand dramatically in the direction of a door he may carry our glance beyond his hand to the door itself. This law of vision works so surely that it can always be depended upon by a magician, a highly specialized kind of actor, when he wishes to divert the attention of his audience from some part of the stage or of his own person where a trick is being prepared. It is not true, as is popularly supposed, that we are deceived because "the hand is