PAINTING-IN-MOTION

This chapter is founded on the delicate effects that may be worked out from cosy interior scenes, close to the camera.  It relates directly to chapter three.

While the Intimate-and-friendly Motion Picture may be in high sculptural relief, its characteristic manifestations are in low relief.  The situations show to better advantage when they seem to be paintings rather than monumental groups.

Turn to your handful of motion picture magazines and mark the illustrations that look the most like paintings.  Cut them out.  Winnow them several times.  I have before me, as a final threshing from such an experiment, five pictures.  Each one approximates a different school.

Here is a colonial Virginia maiden by the hearth of the inn.  Bending over her in a cherishing way is the negro maid.  On the other side, the innkeeper shows a kindred solicitude.  A dishevelled traveller sleeps huddled up in the corner.  The costume of the man fades into the velvety shadows of the wall.  His face is concealed.  His hair blends with the soft background.  The clothing of the other three makes a patch of light gray.  Added to this is the gayety of special textures:  the turban of the negress, a trimming on the skirt of the heroine, the silkiness of the innkeeper’s locks, the fabric of the broom in the hearthlight, the pattern of the mortar lines round the bricks of the hearth.  The tableau is a satisfying scheme in two planes and many textures.  Here is another sort of painting.  The young mother in her pretty bed is smiling on her infant.  The cot and covers and flesh tints have gentle scales of difference, all within one tone of the softest gray.  Her hair is quite dark.  It relates to the less luminous black of the coat of the physician behind the bed and the dress of the girl-friend bending over her.  The nurse standing by the doctor is a figure of the same gray-white as the bed.  Within the pattern of the velvety-blacks there are as many subtle gradations as in the pattern of the gray-whites.  The tableau is a satisfying scheme in black and gray, with practically one non-obtrusive texture throughout.

Here is a picture of an Englishman and his wife, in India.  It might be called sculptural, but for the magnificence of the turban of the rajah who converses with them, the glitter of the light round his shoulders, and the scheme of shadow out of which the three figures rise.  The arrangement remotely reminds one of several of Rembrandt’s semi-oriental musings.

Here is a picture of Mary Pickford as Fanchon the Cricket.  She is in the cottage with the strange old mother.  I have seen a painting in this mood by the Greek Nickolas Gysis.

The Intimate-and-friendly Moving Picture, the photoplay of painting-in-motion, need not be indoors as long as it has the native-heath mood.  It is generally keyed to the hearthstone, and keeps quite close to it.  But how well I remember when the first French photoplays began to come.  Though unintelligent in some respects, the photography and subject-matter of many of them made one think of that painter of gentle out-of-door scenes, Jean Charles Cazin.  Here is our last clipping, which is also in a spirit allied to Cazin.  The heroine, accompanied by an aged shepherd and his dog, are in the foreground.  The sheep are in the middle distance on the edge of the river.  There is a noble hill beyond the gently flowing water.  Here is intimacy and friendliness in the midst of the big out of doors.

If these five photo-paintings were on good paper enlarged to twenty by twenty-four inches, they would do to frame and hang on the wall of any study, for a month or so.  And after the relentless test of time, I would venture that some one of the five would prove a permanent addition to the household gods.

Hastily made photographs selected from the films are often put in front of the better theatres to advertise the show.  Of late they are making them two by three feet and sometimes several times larger.  Here is a commercial beginning of an art gallery, but not enough pains are taken to give the selections a complete art gallery dignity.  Why not have the most beautiful scenes in front of the theatres, instead of those alleged to be the most thrilling?  Why not rest the fevered and wandering eye, rather than make one more attempt to take it by force?

Let the reader supply another side of the argument by looking at the illustrations in any history of painting.  Let him select the pictures that charm him most, and think of them enlarged and transferred bodily to one corner of the room, as he has thought of the sculpture.  Let them take on motion without losing their charm of low relief, or their serene composition within the four walls of the frame.  As for the motion, let it be a further extension of the drawing.  Let every gesture be a bolder but not less graceful brush-stroke.

The Metropolitan Museum has a Van Dyck that appeals equally to one’s sense of beauty and one’s feeling for humor.  It is a portrait of James Stuart, Duke of Lennox, and I cannot see how the author-producer-photographer can look upon it without having it set his imagination in a glow.  Every small town dancing set has a James like this.  The man and the greyhound are the same witless breed, the kind that achieve a result by their clean-limbed elegance alone.  Van Dyck has painted the two with what might be called a greyhound brush-stroke, a style of handling that is nothing but courtly convention and strut to the point of genius.  He is as far from the meditative spirituality of Rembrandt as could well be imagined.

Conjure up a scene in the hereditary hall after a hunt (or golf tournament), in which a man like this Duke of Lennox has a noble parley with his lady (or dancing partner), she being a sweet and stupid swan (or a white rabbit) by the same sign that he is a noble and stupid greyhound.  Be it an ancient or modern episode, the story could be told in the tone and with well-nigh the brushwork of Van Dyck.

Then there is a picture my teachers, Chase and Henri, were never weary of praising, the Girl with the Parrot, by Manet.  Here continence in nervous force, expressed by low relief and restraint in tone, is carried to its ultimate point.  I should call this an imagist painting, made before there were such people as imagist poets.  It is a perpetual sermon to those that would thresh around to no avail, be they orators, melodramatists, or makers of photoplays with an alleged heart-interest.

Let us consider Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of Washington.  This painter’s notion of personal dignity has far more of the intellectual quality than Van Dyck.  He loves to give us stately, able, fairly conscientious gentry, rather than overdone royalty.  His work represents a certain mood in design that in architecture is called colonial.  Such portraits go with houses like Mount Vernon.  Let the photographer study the flat blacks in the garments.  Let him note the transparent impression of the laces and flesh-tints that seem to be painted on glass, observing especially the crystalline whiteness of the wigs.  Let him inspect also the silhouette-like outlines, noting the courtly self-possession they convey.  Then let the photographer, the producer, and the author, be they one man or six men, stick to this type of picturization through one entire production, till any artist in the audience will say, “This photoplay was painted by a pupil of Gilbert Stuart”; and the layman will say, “It looks like those stately days.”  And let us not have battle, but a Mount Vernon fireside tale.

Both the Chicago and New York museums contain many phases of one same family group, painted by George de Forest Brush.  There is a touch of the hearthstone priestess about the woman.  The force of sex has turned to the austere comforting passion of motherhood.  From the children, under the wings of this spirit, come special delicate powers of life.  There is nothing tense or restless about them, yet they embody action, the beating of the inner fire, without which all outer action is mockery.  Hearthstone tales keyed to the mood and using the brush stroke that delineates this especial circle would be unmistakable in their distinction.

Charles W. Hawthorne has pictures in Chicago and New York that imply the Intimate-and-friendly Photoplay.  The Trousseau in the Metropolitan Museum shows a gentle girl, an unfashionable home-body with a sweetly sheltered air.  Behind her glimmers the patient mother’s face.  The older woman is busy about fitting the dress.  The picture is a tribute to the qualities of many unknown gentlewomen.  Such an illumination as this, on faces so innocently eloquent, is the light that should shine on the countenance of the photoplay actress who really desires greatness in the field of the Intimate Motion Picture.  There is in Chicago, Hawthorne’s painting of Sylvia:  a little girl standing with her back to a mirror, a few blossoms in one hand and a vase of flowers on the mirror shelf.  It is as sound a composition as Hawthorne ever produced.  The painting of the child is another tribute to the physical-spiritual textures from which humanity is made.  Ah, you producer who have grown squeaky whipping your people into what you called action, consider the dynamics of these figures that would be almost motionless in real life.  Remember there must be a spirit-action under the other, or all is dead.

Yet that soul may be the muse of Comedy.  If Hawthorne and his kind are not your fashion, turn to models that have their feet on the earth always, yet successfully aspire.  Key some of your intimate humorous scenes to the Dutch Little Masters of Painting, such pictures as Gerard Terburg’s Music Lesson in the Chicago Art Institute.  The thing is as well designed as a Dutch house, wind-mill, or clock.  And it is more elegant than any of these.  There is humor enough in the picture to last one reel through.  The society dame of the period, in her pretty raiment, fingers the strings of her musical instrument, while the master stands by her with the baton.  The painter has enjoyed the satire, from her elegant little hands to the teacher’s well-combed locks.  It is very plain that she does not want to study music with any sincerity, and he does not desire to develop the ability of this particular person.  There may be a flirtation in the background.  Yet these people are not hollow as gourds, and they are not caricatured.  The Dutch Little Masters have indulged in numberless characterizations of mundane humanity.  But they are never so preoccupied with the story that it is an anecdote rather than a picture.  It is, first of all, a piece of elegant painting-fabric.  Next it is a scrap of Dutch philosophy or aspiration.

Let Whistler turn over in his grave while we enlist him for the cause of democracy.  One view of the technique of this man might summarize it thus:  fastidiousness in choice of subject, the picture well within the frame, low relief, a Velasquez study of tones and a Japanese study of spaces.  Let us, dear and patient reader, particularly dwell upon the spacing.  A Whistler, or a good Japanese print, might be described as a kaleidoscope suddenly arrested and transfixed at the moment of most exquisite relations in the pieces of glass.  An Intimate Play of a kindred sort would start to turning the kaleidoscope again, losing fine relations only to gain those which are more exquisite and novel.  All motion pictures might be characterized as space measured without sound, plus time measured without sound.  This description fits in a special way the delicate form of the Intimate Motion Picture, and there can be studied out, free from irrelevant issues.

As to space measured without sound.  Suppose it is a humorous characterization of comfortable family life, founded on some Dutch Little Master.  The picture measures off its spaces in harmony.  The triangle occupied by the little child’s dress is in definite relation to the triangle occupied by the mother’s costume.  To these two patterns the space measured off by the boy’s figure is adjusted, and all of them are as carefully related to the shapes cut out of the background by the figures.  No matter how the characters move about in the photoplay, these pattern shapes should relate to one another in a definite design.  The exact tone value of each one and their precise nearness or distance to one another have a deal to do with the final effect.

We go to the photoplay to enjoy right and splendid picture-motions, to feel a certain thrill when the pieces of kaleidoscope glass slide into new places.  Instead of moving on straight lines, as they do in the mechanical toy, they progress in strange curves that are part of the very shapes into which they fall.

Consider:  first came the photograph.  Then motion was added to the photograph.  We must use this order in our judgment.  If it is ever to evolve into a national art, it must first be good picture, then good motion.

Belasco’s attitude toward the stage has been denounced by the purists because he makes settings too large a portion of his story-telling, and transforms his theatre into the paradise of the property-man.  But this very quality of the well spaced setting, if you please, has made his chance for the world’s moving picture anthology.  As reproduced by Jesse K. Lasky the Belasco production is the only type of the old-line drama that seems really made to be the basis of a moving picture play.  Not always, but as a general rule, Belasco suffers less detriment in the films than other men.  Take, for instance, the Belasco-Lasky production of The Rose of the Rancho with Bessie Barriscale as the heroine.  It has many highly modelled action-tableaus, and others that come under the classification of this chapter.  When I was attending it not long ago, here in my home town, the fair companion at my side said that one scene looked like a painting by Sorolla y Bastida, the Spaniard.  It is the episode where the Rose sends back her servant to inquire the hero’s name.  As a matter of fact there were Sorollas and Zuloagas all through the piece.  The betrothal reception with flying confetti was a satisfying piece of Spanish splendor.  It was space music indeed, space measured without sound.  Incidentally the cast is to be congratulated on its picturesque acting, especially Miss Barriscale in her impersonation of the Rose.

It is harder to grasp the other side of the paradox, picture-motions considered as time measured without sound.  But think of a lively and humoresque clock that does not tick and takes only an hour to record a day.  Think of a noiseless electric vehicle, where you are looking out of the windows, going down the smooth boulevard of Wonderland.  Consider a film with three simple time-elements:  (1) that of the pursuer, (2) the pursued, (3) the observation vehicle of the camera following the road and watching both of them, now faster, now slower than they, as the photographer overtakes the actors or allows them to hurry ahead.  The plain chase is a bore because there are only these three time-elements.  But the chase principle survives in every motion picture and we simply need more of this sort of time measurement, better considered.  The more the non-human objects, the human actors, and the observer move at a varying pace, the greater chances there are for what might be called time-and-space music.

No two people in the same room should gesture at one mechanical rate, or lift their forks or spoons, keeping obviously together.  Yet it stands to reason that each successive tableau should be not only a charming picture, but the totals of motion should be an orchestration of various speeds, of abrupt, graceful, and seemingly awkward progress, worked into a silent symphony.

Supposing it is a fisher-maiden’s romance.  In the background the waves toss in one tempo.  Owing to the sail, the boat rocks in another.  In the foreground the tree alternately bends and recovers itself in the breeze, making more opposition than the sail.  In still another time-unit the smoke rolls from the chimney, making no resistance to the wind.  In another unit, the lovers pace the sand.  Yet there is one least common multiple in which all move.  This the producing genius should sense and make part of the dramatic structure, and it would have its bearing on the periodic appearance of the minor and major crises.

Films like this, you say, would be hard to make.  Yes.  Here is the place to affirm that the one-reel Intimate Photoplay will no doubt be the form in which this type of time-and-space music is developed.  The music of silent motion is the most abstract of moving picture attributes and will probably remain the least comprehended.  Like the quality of Walter Pater’s Marius the Epicurean, or that of Shelley’s Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, it will not satisfy the sudden and the brash.

The reader will find in his round of the picture theatres many single scenes and parts of plays that elucidate the title of this chapter.  Often the first two-thirds of the story will fit it well.  Then the producers, finding that, for reasons they do not understand, with the best and most earnest actors they cannot work the three reels into an emotional climax, introduce some stupid disaster and rescue utterly irrelevant to the character-parts and the paintings that have preceded.  Whether the alleged thesis be love, hate, or ambition, cottage charm, daisy dell sweetness, or the ivy beauty of an ancient estate, the resource for the final punch seems to be something like a train-wreck.  But the transfiguration of the actors, not their destruction or rescue, is the goal.  The last moment of the play is great, not when it is a grandiose salvation from a burning house, that knocks every delicate preceding idea in the head, but a tableau that is as logical as the awakening of the Sleeping Beauty after the hero has explored all the charmed castle.