Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/165

 and variety. It is not forced, like work, which aims for some definite practical result; and it does not have the rigidity and uniformity which in work sometimes develops into dullness. If the emphasizing of dramatic expression may be called the work of pictorial motions, then the spontaneity and variety which accompanies this work may be called the play of pictorial motions. And that play is essentially the same as rhythm.

We think immediately of two of the elder arts in which rhythm is all important—dancing and music. Music leads us to the thought of song, and poetry, and oratory, arts which also are dependent on rhythm. Dancing suggests sculpture, and sculpture suggests painting, arts which would have little beauty without the quality of rhythm. Even architecture must have it. From art we turn to nature, and we see the poignant beauty of rhythm in cloud and wave, in tree and flower, in brook and mountain, in bird and beast. The motion picture, which is the mirror of nature, and at the same time the tablet upon which all of the elder arts may write their laws, must bring to us the inheritance and reflection of rhythm.

This quality has already been discussed in connection with the laws of the eye, in Chapter III, and in connection with static composition, in Chapter V. We come now to the pictorial problem of weaving the individual and combined motions of a photoplay into a totality of rhythm. First, let us consider the case of a single moving spot. Suppose that we have before us a barren hillside of Mexico, an expanse of light gray on the screen. Down that hillside a horseman is to come, dark against the gray. If he rides in a