Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/168

 progression, moreover, in which both the similarities and the differences of the various phases can instantly be perceived by the spectator, he will immediately experience the emotion of rhythmical movement.

The above example illustrates how a single spot can move rhythmically over the area of a picture. A moving line, say a column of soldiers on the march, may have still more rhythm. We get a hint of this from the "still," facing page 133. It represents a scene from the Metro production of Ibanez's "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," which was directed by Rex Ingram. We see there that the soldiers describe a path of alternate curves, instead of the straight lines and square corners which a less imaginative director would have ordered. Mr. Ingram has further heightened the rhythm by placing gaps here and there in the main column, and by introducing a secondary movement in the detachment which turns off from the road just before reaching the village. These movements are truly pictorial in composition; yet their meaning is none the less military and dramatic.

In the scene just described the various motions are similar, and the handling of them is therefore comparatively easy. But it is very difficult to make a rhythmical combination of motions which differ widely in character. In "The Dumb Girl of Portici," for instance, we are shown Pavlowa dancing on the beach, while the stately waves and pounding surf of the ocean fill most of the area of the screen. But there is no rhythm in the combined movements of that picture. The dancer without the sea, or the sea without the dancer, might have been perfectly rhythmical. But when we try to view them together in this photo