Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/229

 color photographs. In the first place, the value of the tint can be controlled by the director, or at least by the person who does the tinting. And in the second place, although the lights of the film take the strongest tint, the shadows are also affected by it; and the entire picture, therefore, gets a tonal unity which is never present in color photography. However, even "tinted" scenes should be used with caution, because, when they are cut into a film which is elsewhere black and white, they break the unity of tonal flow, and usually get far more emphasis than their meaning in the story demands. The effect is almost as bad as that of the old family photograph which baby sister has improved by touching up a single figure with pretty water colors.

Thus we have indicated the many departments and stages of development in a photoplay composition, the many pictorial forces which should be controlled by a single hand. That single hand holds the reins of many powers. And, if those powers cannot be so guided that they pull in the same direction, with similar speeds, and with balanced efforts, then their combination is disastrous, however elegant and blue-ribboned any individual power may be. In the photoplay neither the plot action, nor the acting, nor the setting, nor the cutting and joining, nor the titles, nor the coloring, nor any other element can be allowed to pull in its own wild way. And in any single section of the motion picture the fixed design and the movement, the accentuation and the harmony, the work and the play, must be co-ordinated and all this technique must itself be subordinate to spontaneous enduring inspiration. Without such mastery no movie-*maker can ever win to the far goal of art.