Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/161

 upon the mind. Thus some crazy Don Quixote may seem to cut and thrust with greater agility than the fighting which we actually see, provided his action is contrasted with the restful poking of his ham-fed servant, Sancho Panza. And thus a railroad train which really was running at a moderate speed, might seem to dash by on the screen, if it were contrasted with the ambling gait of a farmer's team driven in the same direction along the tracks.

A kind of emphasis which we may classify as contrast is that which occurs when movement is suddenly arrested. The unexpected stop not only makes the previous motion seem faster than it really was, but it also fixes attention more alertly on the thing which has just stopped moving. When you bump against a chair in the darkness you are always astonished to find that you were dashing along instead of merely walking slowly. But the shock has deceived you, for you really were walking slowly. If you are out hunting and your setter stops in his tracks, your eye is immediately upon him, and will remain so fixed until he or something else makes the next move. The same principle works on the screen. If an actor, or an animal, or a thing is in motion and then unexpectedly pauses, the effect of the pause is to attract immediate attention, as well as to make the previous motion seem to have been faster than it actually was. Sometimes this law may operate to distract our attention from the dramatic interest. If, for example, an out-*door scene has been "shot" on a squally day, and the wind has abruptly died down for a few moments during the climax of the scene, the effect on the screen will be to attract our attention instantly to the leaves