Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/200

 Two other discrepancies in these scenes may be noted. One is that in the close-ups the lantern does not appear to be lighted, and the other is that light-*houses do not, as a rule, send out light in pencil-like shape.

The scene above cited lacks pictorial unity, in spite of the fact that the neighboring scenes are in perfect unity of dramatic meaning. This illustrates the dangerous difference between saying things in words and saying them in pictures. If we write, for example, "she swings the lantern around slowly, etc.," no reader is likely to question whether the lantern is lighted or not, or whether it is rotated in one direction or the opposite. But the camera impolitely tells the whole truth. And some truths are full of fight when they are brought face to face with each other.

The suddenness with which one scene leaps to the next on the screen is a factor which many directors and most scenario writers fail to reckon with. In Chapter III we have discussed at some length the effect which these sudden jumps have upon our eyes. It remains now to see how the "flash" from one scene to another affects our minds. In "Barbary Sheep," directed by Maurice Tourneur, there is bad joining which may be illustrated by naming a succession of three scenes. They are: (1) A picture of a mountain sheep some distance away on the edge of a cliff, sharp against the sky, an excellent target for a hunter. (2) The hero out hunting. He sees something, aims his gun obliquely upward. Our eyes follow the line of the gun toward the upper left-hand corner of the frame. (3) Some society ladies in a room.

Perhaps the reader can guess, even from this incom