Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/195

 The orchestration of motions is, in fact, the proper work of the cinema composer. If he cannot control the objects which move before him, he is in as bad a way as the director of an orchestra who cannot make the musicians do his bidding. We can sympathize with the movie director, because some of the things he wants to bring into a picture are not so easily controlled as musicians. One can talk to a fiddler, but one cannot waste time talking to a brook or to a Dutch windmill. However, if a windmill will not behave itself, it can be dismissed no less promptly than a fiddler.

The average photoplay seen in the theaters to-day could undoubtedly be improved by retaking it with at least half of the material omitted from every scene. The simplicity thus obtained would help to give a more unified effect, would be less of a strain on the eyes, and would require less effort of the mind. But simplicity is worshiped by only a few of our best directors. The average director who is asked to film a scene of a country girl in a barnyard, a scene in which simplicity itself should predominate, will produce a conglomeration of chickens fluttering, ducks waddling, calves frisking, a dog trotting back and forth, wagging his tail and snapping his jaws, gooseberry bushes shaking in the wind (always the wind), a brook rippling over pebbles, and, somewhere in the center of the excitement, the girl herself, scattering corn from her basket while her skirts flap fiercely about her knees. From such a picture the spectator goes out into the comparative quiet of crowded Broadway with a sigh of relief, thankful that he does not have to live amid the nerve-wracking scenes of a farm.