Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/30

 *sis to the intense drama of the pioneers battling against the hardships of the trail in '48 and '49. Here is entrancing change and flow of pattern, but here is human striving and performance, too; and the emotions of the audience are touched more directly and more deeply because picture and drama have been fused into a single art.

Shortly after "The Covered Wagon" had opened in New York an executive of a certain film company was heard to remark, "Well, no wonder it's a success. It cost $700,000 to make it! Any one could take that much money and make a great picture." I consider that reflection highly unjust and the argument entirely fallacious. Good pictorial composition does not necessarily cost a cent more than bad composition. In fact, it will be shown in the following chapters that a scene of cinematic beauty often costs less than an ordinary arrangement of the same scene.

The pictorial beauty discussed in this book is really a kind of pictorial efficiency, and therefore must have practical, economic value. When a motion picture is well composed it pleases the eye, its meaning is easily understood, and the emotion it contains is quickly and forcefully conveyed. In short, it has the power of art.

Pictorial efficiency cannot be bought. It cannot be guaranteed by the possession of expensive cameras and other mechanical equipment. The camera has no sense, no soul, no capacity for selecting, emphasizing, and interpreting the pictorial subject for the benefit of the spectator. In fact, the camera is positively stupid, because it always shows more than is necessary; it often emphasizes the wrong thing, and it is