Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/239

 some portrait is so skillfully painted that all the women want to stroke it.

The depressing thing about many movies is that they are to the ideal photoplay what the wax figure of a shop window is to sculpture. Instead of dancing lightly through a rich atmosphere of suggestion they are anchored heavily with bolts of dollar-marked material. And worse days are to come if the "stunt" workers are fed with applause. They promise us pictures in natural colors, more natural than any now produced. They promise us pictures that have depth so real that the beholder may be tempted to take a stroll into them. They promise us pictures that talk, and whistle, and chirp, and bark. And perhaps somewhere they are even promising pictures that will give off scents.

All these wonders will create industrial activity. They will make good advertising, and will doubtless bring crowds to the theaters. But they will not bring happiness to those fortunate individuals who can enjoy art because it is art, who can get a finer thrill from a painting that felicitously suggests interesting trees, than from one which looks so much like a real orchard that the birds and bees swarm in through the gallery doors.

Let the motion picture look like a motion picture of life, and not like life itself. Let the mobilization of characters in a photoplay start fancies and stir emotions finer and deeper than any which we can experience by observing our neighbors or by reading sensational newspapers. Let the lights and shadows on the screen, the lines and shapes, the patterns and movements suggest to our imaginations richer beauties than