Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/199

 of human performers are naturally very much of the same style. The gestures and postures of a performer in any given action are very likely to be followed by similar gestures and postures at frequent intervals during the play. Stage directors have developed their traditions of unity and harmony through centuries of theatrical history. They have learned to preserve, not only the "key" of the action, but the "tempo" as well. If they strike a certain pace at the beginning of the act or play they will maintain that pace with practically no variation to the end.

It would be most desirable if unity of motion could be sustained throughout the entire length of a photoplay, as in a stage play or in a musical composition. There should be a real continuity of pictures, as there is supposed to be "continuity" of actions described in a scenario. But such continuity is hard to find on the screen. In "The Love Light," for instance, the film which we have just discussed, there is little unity of motion except in the climactic scenes. The very action from which the title "The Love Light" is derived, is botched in composition. The light is that of a lighthouse and the heroine manipulates it so as to throw a signal to her lover. This action is shown in a series of cut-backs from a close-up of a girl in the lighthouse to a general view of the sea below and to a close-up of the hero. But the lantern with its apparatus of prisms makes a cylindrical pattern which does not harmonize in shape with the long white pencil of the searchlight sweeping the sea. Nor does it harmonize in motion, for the simple reason that the sweeping ray moves clock-wise, in spite of the fact that the girl rotates the lantern counter-clock-wise.