Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/185

 than the dancers; yet the dancing figures are likely to distract attention from those seated at the tables, and thus throw the picture out of balance. Mr. Ingram in "The Four Horsemen" had this very problem, and he solved it in a very simple and convincing way. He allowed a thick haze of cigarette smoke to envelop the dancers till they seemed dim and distant. Or, rather, he used the smoke as a transparent curtain which separates the diners from the action in the background. Thus balance was restored and the spectator could follow the action in the foreground without a sense of disturbance.

A separation of planes somewhat similar to this was skilfully effected by Allan Dwan in "Sahara." One of the settings is a luxurious tent in the desert. The front of this tent had a wide opening over which hung a veil of mosquito netting. Viewed from within the tent, this veil became a soft background against which the figures moved, while at the same time it served as a thick atmosphere to give dimness and distance to the figures which were just outside the tent. By this device, which is as natural and unobtrusive as the smoke screen described above, Mr. Dwan, besides providing a peculiar pictorial quality of gradated tones, kept two sets of figures separate and yet combined them in rich restfulness.

When a director is composing a scene in which there is a single moving element with a very short path of motion and no strong fixed interests to counter-balance it, he should remember that an object tends to shift the weight of interest somewhat in advance of its own movement. Therefore, a picture will seem to be in better balance if a movement begins near one