Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/235

 minutes later in the same play when Cesare carries off the heroine from her bedchamber. This scene reveals a broad sea of billowy linen, evidently a bed, yet large enough for a whole bevy of heroines. Cesare appears outside a window, which seems to crumble at his touch. He enters the chamber and, dagger in hand, reaches out toward the head of the sleeping lady. We gasp at her fate, because we forget that this is only a play. That gasp is an expression of pity, a familiar emotion. But a mysterious emotion is in store for us. Cesare is spellbound by the lady's beauty. He drops his dagger. Then suddenly he gathers her up, and, holding her against the side of his body, starts for the window. As he does so a sudden striking pattern is produced by the movement. In his haste Cesare has caught up some of the bed linen along with his prey, and this white expanse darts after him in a sudden inward-rushing movement from the remote corners of the bed. Instantly a strange sensation shoots through us. This sharp emotion, both painful and pleasing, is not pity, or hate, or fear. It does not relate itself to the villain's violence against an innocent, defenseless girl. It is merely a "queer feeling" caused by that striking motion-pattern of the snowy linen whisked unexpectedly from the bed.

To one who has been emotionally affected by such things as the "dissolve" and retarded motion and the peculiar effects in "Dr. Caligari" the above paragraphs may give some idea of what we mean by poignancy in composition. It is a real quality tinged with an unreality that allies it with the effects which we experience in dreams. Any cinema composer who can strike this note of poignancy at least once in every photoplay