CHAPTER II
THE PRACTICAL VALUE OF PICTORIAL COMPOSITION
The production manager of a large motion picture
studio in New York once declared to the author that
he was "against artistry in the movies because it usually
spoils the picture." "Emotion's what gets 'em, not
art," he added. "Besides, a director has to shoot thirty
or forty scenes a day, and hasn't got any time to fool
away with art notions."
Any one who has seen "The Covered Wagon" (directed by James Cruze for the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation) knows that such talk is nonsense. This remarkable photoplay charms the eye, appeals to the imagination, and stirs the emotions—all in the same "shot." One can never forget the pictorial beauty in those magnificent expanses of barren prairie, traversed by the long train of covered wagons, a white line winding in slow rhythm, while a softly rising cloud of dust blends the tones of the curving canvas tops and of the wind-blown sage brush. Again and again the wagon train becomes a striking pictorial motif, and, whether it is seen creeping across the prairie, following the bank of a river, climbing toward a pass in the mountains, stretching out, a thin black chain of silhouettes on the horizon, curving itself along the palisade-like walls of an arroyo, or halted in snow against a background of Oregon pines, it always adds empha-
