Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/87

 The figures, even as they stand, would then form a not unpleasing rhythm, and the line of heads, with expressions helping to give direction, would lead to the heroine.

A glaring example of wrong emphasis caused by the attraction of a right-angled shape is to be seen in a "still" from "Other Men's Wives," on opposite page, where the window, toward which the woman unconsciously points her wand, irresistibly attracts the attention of the spectator. Is it not evident from even a cursory analysis of these "stills" that, though the directors may have given some thought to the poses and groupings of the performers, they have failed to realize that every other visible thing within scope of the camera must also be harmonized with the figures in order to keep the dramatic emphasis where it belongs?

Keeping in mind what we have just said about the visual accents of right angles we turn to a "still" from the "Spell of the Yukon," facing page 28. The window catches our eyes before anything else in the picture, both because of its square corners and because of its sharp contrasts of black and white. Though this distraction may be only for a brief moment, it is enough to keep our attention for that moment away from the man and boy, set in fine atmosphere.

It is only common sense to aim at making the visual interest of a picture coincide with the dramatic interest. And this can be done by controlling such means of attraction as we have just mentioned. When we look at the painting entitled "The Shepherdess," facing page 21, our glance falls immediately upon the shep