Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/78

 prayer; the very hurt might bring a certain thrill. An original and ingenious man, Mr. Griffith, for instance, may choose to show us a close-up of a little girl smiling in wistful innocence, her pretty curls quivering in the light breeze, contrasted suddenly with a reeking flood of soldiers pouring into a city street. Striking? Yes, exactly. The device is so striking that Mr. Griffith himself has learned to use it with restraint. Because once upon a time he composed a photoplay called "Intolerance," which was so full of striking contrasts that it failed. There were only a few thousand people in the world who could stand the strain of looking at it.

Thus as we analyze the optical aspects of a motion picture we are amazed at the number of things that may conspire to hurt our eyes, and we sympathize more than ever with the sincere cinema composer. He, the new hope of the movies, feels the need of other equipment than a line of talk and a megaphone. He no longer applies for a position in a studio on the strength of his record as an actor, as a stage director, as a city editor, as a college cheer leader, or as a drill sergeant in the army. He has begun to think in pictorial composition and not in words. He is never without his sketching pad and piece of charcoal, because, forsooth, his business is picture making. He makes hundreds of sketches by day, of shapes, and lines, and tones, and he goes over them again and changes them by night. His scenario contains almost as many drawings as words. He knows before he says "Good morning" to his queens and cut-throats just what places and spaces their figures will occupy during the pictorial climaxes, as well as during the