Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/230

 CHAPTER XI

THE MYSTERIOUS EMOTIONS OF ART

The end of all aspiring mastery in the movies is to provide for every beholder the thrills of art. These thrills are not like the emotions which are aroused by other experiences of life, by sports, for example, or adventure, or amusements, or industry, or war. They are stirring experiences quite different from those of him who makes a "home run" or a "touch-down," or "loops the loop" in the air, or sinks a submarine, or has a play accepted, or discovers a new way of evading some obnoxious law. It is true that the dramatic content of a photoplay may sometimes seem so real that the beholder forgets where he is and responds with such natural feelings as fear and triumph, love and hate, pride, selfish desire and hope; but it is also true that the pictorial form of a photoplay, that is, the mere arrangement of the substance, considered apart from its meaning, can arouse strange, pleasurable emotions which are peculiar to the enjoyment of art.

When we recall the masterpieces of painting which have thrilled us we must admit that much of their appeal came from other factors besides the content of the picture. Think of a portrait of some Dutchman painted by Rembrandt. The painting stirs you as the Dutchman himself in real life never could have