Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/216

 of a painting is paint. In the motion picture without color the boundary line of a window or a table is described in exactly the same medium as the contour of an actor's face; and the actor's complexion differs from the wall paper only in being lighter or darker. It should be impossible, therefore, to consider that the photoplay setting is a complete, independent picture, and that the actors are separate visible things merely placed in front of the setting. And if the movie director makes the mistake of not fusing actor and setting into a pictorial composition, it is perhaps because he imagine the spectator with himself in the studio, where the scene and action are like those of the stage, instead of putting himself with the spectator before the screen.

But there are signs of awakening in the theater of the stage play. More and more the influence of such European masters as Max Reinhardt and Gordon Craig is being felt. According to their method of production the setting and the actors are interdependent and make a co-operative appeal to the eye of the audience. The young designers in the United States are beginning to think of the dramatic picture as a whole, rather than of the setting as a self-sufficient exhibition of their skill in painting. Mr. Lee Simonson, for example, not long ago, in commenting on his designs for the Theater Guild's production of "The Faithful," said that he purposely designed his sets so that they would seem top-heavy until the actors entered and filled in the comparatively empty zone near the bottom of the stage picture. Without the presence of the actor, he declared, one could never say that the set was good or bad; one could only say that it was