The pageant of Religious Splendor is the final photoplay form in the
classification which this work seeks to establish. Much of what follows
will be to reënforce the heads of these first discourses. Further comment
on the Religious Photoplay may be found in the eleventh chapter, entitled
"Architecture-in-Motion."
CHAPTER VIII
SCULPTURE-IN-MOTION
The outline is complete. Now to reënforce it. Pictures of Action Intimacy
and Splendor are the foundation colors in the photoplay, as red, blue,
and yellow are the basis of the rainbow. Action Films might be called the
red section; Intimate Motion Pictures, being colder and quieter, might be
called blue; and Splendor Photoplays called yellow, since that is the hue
of pageants and sunshine.
Another way of showing the distinction is to review the types of gesture.
The Action Photoplay deals with generalized pantomime: the gesture of the
conventional policeman in contrast with the mannerism of the stereotyped
preacher. The Intimate Film gives us more elusive personal gestures: the
difference between the table manners of two preachers in the same
restaurant, or two policemen. A mark of the Fairy Play is the gesture of
incantation, the sweep of the arm whereby Mab would transform a prince
into a hawk. The other Splendor Films deal with the total gestures of
crowds: the pantomime of a torch-waving mass of men, the drill of an army
on the march, or the bending of the heads of a congregation receiving the
benediction.
Another way to demonstrate the thesis is to use the old classification of
poetry: dramatic, lyric, epic. The Action Play is a narrow form of the
dramatic. The Intimate Motion Picture is an equivalent of the lyric. In
the seventeenth chapter it is shown that one type of the Intimate might
be classed as imagist. And obviously the Splendor Pictures are the
equivalent of the epic.
But perhaps the most adequate way of showing the meaning of this outline
is to say that the Action Film is sculpture-in-motion, the Intimate
Photoplay is painting-in-motion, and the Fairy Pageant, along with the
rest of the Splendor Pictures, may be described as architecture-in-motion.
This chapter will discuss the bearing of the phrase sculpture-in-motion.
It will relate directly to chapter two.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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