Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/156

 imbedded there long after the performance has ceased. The same method is often employed to give emphasis to a particular movement or pose in æsthetic dancing.

To show how repetition with variety of approach may operate on the screen let us remake in imagination some scenes from Griffith's "Broken Blossoms," a photoplay which was adapted from Thomas Burke's short story "The Chink and the Child." The wistful heroine, called simply The Girl, played charmingly by Lillian Gish, is shown in the wretched hovel of her father, "Battling" Burrows, a prize-fighter. We see her against a background of fading and broken walls, a bare table, a couple of chairs, a cot, and a stove. If she sits down, stands up, lies down, or walks across the room, she moves, of course, through a changing pattern of motion against fixed lines. And she ends each movement in a different fixed design. Now let us suppose that the most pictorial of all these arrested moments is the one which is struck when she pauses before an old mirror to gaze sadly at her own pathetic image, and that during this moment we see, not only the best arrangement of lines, patterns, and tones, and the best phase of all her bodily movements, but also the most emotional expression of her tragic situation as the slave of her brutal father. Wouldn't it be a pity if this pictorial moment were to occur once only during the play? How much more impressive it would be if she paused often before this mirror, always striking the same dramatic note. Such a pause would be quite natural immediately after she enters the room or when she is about to go out, or during her weary shuffling between the stove and the table while serving supper, or after she has arisen from a spell