Pictorial Beauty on the Screen

Vast armies of “movie fans” in massed formation move in and out of the theaters day after day and night after night. They may be trampled on, stumbled over, suffocated; they may have to wait wearily for seats and even for a glimpse of the screen, and yet they come, drawn by a lure which they never dream of denying. Yet the individuals in these crowds are not the helpless victims of mob impulses. Choose the average person among them, and you will find that he is able to criticize what he sees. He has developed no small degree of artistic taste during all the hundreds of nights which he has spent with eyes fixed upon the screen. He can, at least, tell the difference between a dull, common-place plot and one that is original and thrilling. He can distinguish between the reasonable and the ridiculous. He is perfectly aware that much of what he sees is plain “bunk,” that it is false, or silly, or of no consequence; and yet, after waiting patiently, he is quick to catch the honest message of significant truth when it comes. He is trained in the appreciation of screen acting, and does not confuse mere showy performance with sincere, sympathetic interpretation of a dramatic character. And now, at last, the “average movie fan” is beginning to demand that motion pictures have real pictorial beauty, that they be something more than clear photographs of things in motion.

Here we have struck the measure of the motion picture’s possibilities as a new art. The masses who pay for tickets have the situation entirely in their hands. Photoplays are improving year by year principally because the public wants better photoplays year by year. When the movies were new, people were satisfied with novelties, mechanical tricks, sensational “stunts,” pictures of sensational people, pictures of pretty places, etc., but, although they appreciated what was called good photography, they expressed no craving for genuine pictorial beauty. Later on came the craze for adaptations of popular novels and stage plays to the screen. This was really a great step forward. The motion picture was no longer a mere toy or trick, but was being looked upon as a real art medium. The public had developed a taste for the exciting, clearly told story, and this demand was satisfied by hundreds of excellent photoplays—excellent, at least, according to the standards of the day. Yet the “fans” might have asked for more. They got the story of a famous novel or play, with fairly well acted interpretations by screen folk in proper costumes, and with scenes and settings that usually answered to the descriptions in the literary work adapted; they even got, here and there, a “pretty” view or a chance grouping of striking beauty, but they did not regularly get, or ask for, the kind of beauty which we are accustomed to find in the masterpieces of painting. But taste has been developed by tasting, and at last the craving for pictorial art has come.