Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/203

 action jumped in a flash from Christ and the two thieves writhing in crucifixion to the three ships of Columbus heeling gracefully in a light breeze.

Merely to hint at the contents of such a play is, we hope, sufficient criticism. Without harmony of subject matter there certainly can be no harmony of treatment. And if the director of "The Birth of a Race" offers as his defense that he did not write the story, we can only retort that he should not have picturized it. Even when the subject matter is in continuous unity it requires a skillful, painstaking, sincere director to weave its various materials into a single harmony of impressiveness.

Perhaps we have continued long enough the discussion of the many-sided nature and the artistic value of pictorial motions at rest. Let us simply add that the kind of rest we have in mind is never the rest of inaction, of sleep, or of death; it is rather a dynamic repose. Just as the still portions of the motion picture may be active upon the spectator's mind, so the motions may be reposeful while they are both at work and at play. Such harmony of pictorial motions on the screen is not too high an ideal for the lovers of the cinema. The glimpses we get of that ideal now are enough to assure us that as time goes on more and more directors will be filled with inspiration and will achieve triumphant expression through their chosen art.