University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XI

ARCHITECTURE-IN-MOTION

This chapter is a superstructure upon the
foundations of chapters five, six, and seven.

I have said that it is a quality, not a defect,
of the photoplays that while the actors tend to
become types and hieroglyphics and dolls, on
the other hand, dolls and hieroglyphics and
mechanisms tend to become human. By an
extension of this principle, non-human tones,
textures, lines, and spaces take on a vitality
almost like that of flesh and blood. It is
partly for this reason that some energy is
hereby given to the matter of reënforcing the
idea that the people with the proper training
to take the higher photoplays in hand are not
veteran managers of vaudeville circuits, but
rather painters, sculptors, and architects, preferably
those who are in the flush of their first
reputation in these crafts. Let us imagine
the centres of the experimental drama, such as
the Drama League, the Universities, and the

stage societies, calling in people of these professions
and starting photoplay competitions and
enterprises. Let the thesis be here emphasized
that the architects, above all, are the men to
advance the work in the ultra-creative photoplay.
"But few architects," you say, "are
creative, even in their own profession."

Let us begin with the point of view of the
highly trained pedantic young builder, the type
that, in the past few years, has honored our
landscape with those paradoxical memorials of
Abraham Lincoln the railsplitter, memorials
whose Ionic columns are straight from Paris.
Pericles is the real hero of such a man, not
Lincoln. So let him for the time surrender
completely to that great Greek. He is worthy
of a monument nobler than any America has
set up to any one. The final pictures may be
taken in front of buildings with which the
architect or his favorite master has already
edified this republic, or if the war is over, before
some surviving old-world models. But whatever
the method, let him study to express at
last the thing that moves within him as a creeping
fire, which Americans do not yet understand
and the loss of which makes the classic
in our architecture a mere piling of elegant

stones upon one another. In the arrangement
of crowds and flow of costuming and
study of tableau climaxes, let the architect
bring an illusion of that delicate flowering,
that brilliant instant of time before the Peloponnesian
war. It does not seem impossible
when one remembers the achievements of the
author of Cabiria in approximating Rome and
Carthage.

Let the principal figure of the pageant be the
virgin Athena, walking as a presence visible
only to us, yet among her own people, and
robed and armed and panoplied, the guardian of
Pericles, appearing in those streets that were
herself. Let the architect show her as she
came only in a vision to Phidias, while the
dramatic writers and mathematicians and poets
and philosophers go by. The crowds should be
like pillars of Athens, and she like a great
pillar. The crowds should be like the tossing
waves of the Ionic Sea and Athena like the white
ship upon the waves. The audiences in the
tragedies should be shown like wheat-fields
on the hill-sides, always stately yet blown by
the wind, and Athena the one sower and
reaper. Crowds should descend the steps
of the Acropolis, nymphs and fauns and

Olympians, carved as it were from the marble,
yet flowing like a white cataract down into
the town, bearing with them Athena, their
soul. All this in the Photoplay of Pericles.

No civic or national incarnation since that
time appeals to the poets like the French
worship of the Maid of Orleans. In Percy
MacKaye's book, The Present Hour, he says
on the French attitude toward the war: —

To make a more elaborate showing of what
is meant by architecture-in-motion, let us
progress through the centuries and suppose
that the builder has this enthusiasm for France,
that he is slowly setting about to build a
photoplay around the idea of the Maid.

First let him take the mural painting point of

view. Bear in mind these characteristics of that
art: it is wall-painting that is an organic part
of the surface on which it appears: it is on
the same lines as the building and adapted to
the colors and forms of the structure of which
it is a part.

The wall-splendors of America that are the
most scattered about in inexpensive copies
are the decorations of the Boston Public
Library. Note the pillar-like quality of Sargent's
prophets, the solemn dignity of Abbey's
Holy Grail series, the grand horizontals and
perpendiculars of the work of Puvis de Chavannes.
The last is the orthodox mural painter
of the world, but the other two will serve the
present purpose also. These architectural
paintings if they were dramatized, still retaining
their powerful lines, would be three exceedingly
varied examples of what is meant by
architecture-in-motion. The visions that appear
to Jeanne d'Arc might be delineated in the
mood of some one of these three painters. The
styles will not mix in the same episode.

A painter from old time we mention here,
not because he was orthodox, but because of
his genius for the drawing of action, and because
he covered tremendous wall-spaces with

Venetian tone and color, is Tintoretto. If there
is a mistrust that the mural painting standard
will tend to destroy the sense of action, Tintoretto
will restore confidence in that regard.
As the Winged Victory represents flying in
sculpture, so his work is the extreme example
of action with the brush. The Venetians called
him the furious painter. One must understand
a man through his admirers. So explore
Ruskin's sayings on Tintoretto.

I have a dozen moving picture magazine
clippings, which are in their humble way first
or second cousins of mural paintings. I will describe
but two, since the method of selection has
already been amply indicated, and the reader
can find his own examples. For a Crowd Picture,
for instance, here is a scene at a masquerade
ball. The glitter of the costumes is
an extension of the glitter of the candelabra
overhead. The people are as it were chandeliers,
hung lower down. The lines of the
candelabra relate to the very ribbon streamers
of the heroine, and the massive wood-work is
the big brother of the square-shouldered heroes
in the foreground, though one is a clown, one
is a Russian Duke, and one is Don Cæsar
De Bazan. The building is the father of the

people. These relations can be kept in the
court scenes of the production of Jeanne
d'Arc.

Here is a night picture from a war story
in which the light is furnished by two fires
whose coals and brands are hidden by earth
heaped in front. The sentiment of tenting
on the old camp-ground pervades the scene.
The far end of the line of those keeping
bivouac disappears into the distance, and the
depths of the ranks behind them fade into the
thick shadows. The flag, a little above the line,
catches the light. One great tree overhead
spreads its leafless half-lit arms through the
gloom. Behind all this is unmitigated black.
The composition reminds one of a Hiroshige
study of midnight. These men are certainly a
part of the architecture of out of doors, and
mysterious as the vault of Heaven. This type
of a camp-fire is possible in our Jeanne d'Arc.

These pictures, new and old, great and unknown,
indicate some of the standards of judgment
and types of vision whereby our conception
of the play is to be evolved.

By what means shall we block it in? Our
friend Tintoretto made use of methods which
are here described from one of his biographers,

W. Roscoe Osler: "They have been much enlarged
upon in the different biographies as
the means whereby Tintoretto obtained his
power. They constituted, however, his habitual
method of determining the effect and general
grouping of his compositions. He moulded
with extreme care small models of his figures
in wax and clay. Titian and other painters
as well as Tintoretto employed this method
as the means of determining the light and
shade of their design. Afterwards the later
stages of their work were painted from the
life. But in Tintoretto's compositions the
position and arrangement of his figures as he
began to dwell upon his great conceptions
were such as to render the study from the living
model a matter of great difficulty and at
times an impossibility. . . . He . . . modelled
his sculptures . . . imparting to his
models a far more complete character than had
been customary. These firmly moulded figures,
sometimes draped, sometimes free, he suspended
in a box made of wood, or of cardboard
for his smaller work, in whose walls he made
an aperture to admit a lighted candle. . . .
He sits moving the light about amidst his
assemblage of figures. Every aspect of sublimity
of light suitable to a Madonna surrounded
with angels, or a heavenly choir, finds its miniature
response among the figures as the light
moves.

"This was the method by which, in conjunction
with a profound study of outward
nature, sympathy with the beauty of different
types of face and varieties of form, with the
many changing hues of the Venetian scene,
with the great laws of color and a knowledge
of literature and history, he was able to shadow
forth his great imagery of the intuitional
world."

This method of Tintoretto suggests several
possible derivatives in the preparation of motion
pictures. Let the painters and sculptors be now
called upon for painting models and sculptural
models, while the architect, already present,
supplies the architectural models, all three
giving us visible scenarios to furnish the cardinal
motives for the acting, from which the
amateur photoplay company of the university
can begin their interpretation.

For episodes that follow the precedent of the
simple Action Film tiny wax models of the
figures, toned and costumed to the heart's
delight, would tell the high points of the story.

Let them represent, perhaps, seven crucial situations
from the proposed photoplay. Let them
be designed as uniquely in their dresses as are
the Russian dancers' dresses, by Léon Bakst.
Then to alternate with these, seven little paintings
of episodes, designed in blacks, whites,
and grays, each representing some elusive point
in the intimate aspects of the story. Let there
be a definite system of space and texture relations
retained throughout the set.

The models for the splendor scenes would,
of course, be designed by the architect, and
these other scenes alternated with and subordinated
to his work. The effects which he
would conceive would be on a grander scale.
The models for these might be mere extensions
of the methods of those others, but in
the typical and highest let us imagine ourselves
going beyond Tintoretto in preparation.

Let the principal splendor moods and effects
be indicated by actual structures, such miniatures
as architects offer along with their plans
of public buildings, but transfigured beyond
that standard by the light of inspiration combined
with experimental candle-light, spotlight,
sunlight, or torchlight. They must not
be conceived as stage arrangements of wax

figures with harmonious and fitting backgrounds,
but as backgrounds that clamor for
utterance through the figures in front of them,
as Athens finds her soul in the Athena with
which we began. These three sorts of models,
properly harmonized, should have with them
a written scenario constructed to indicate
all the scenes between. The scenario will lead
up to these models for climaxes and hold them
together in the celestial hurdle-race.

We have in our museums some definite architectural
suggestions as to the style of these
models. There are in Blackstone Hall in the
Chicago Art Institute several great Romanesque
and Gothic portals, pillars, and statues that
might tell directly upon certain settings of our
Jeanne d'Arc pageant. They are from Notre
Dame du Port at Clermont-Ferrand, the Abbey
church of St. Gilles, the Abbey of Charlieu,
the Cathedral of Amiens, Notre Dame at
Paris, the Cathedral of Bordeaux, and the
Cathedral of Rheims. Perhaps the object I
care for most in the Metropolitan Museum,
New York, is the complete model of Notre
Dame, Paris, by M. Joly. Why was this model
of Notre Dame made with such exquisite
pains? Certainly not as a matter of mere

information or cultivation. I venture the first
right these things have to be taken care of in
museums is to stimulate to new creative effort.

I went to look over the Chicago collection
with a friend and poet Arthur Davison Ficke.
He said something to this effect: "The first
thing I see when I look at these fragments
is the whole cathedral in all its original proportions.
Then I behold the mediæval marketplace
hunched against the building, burying
the foundations, the life of man growing rank
and weedlike around it. Then I see the bishop
coming from the door with his impressive train.
But a crusade may go by on the way to
the Holy Land. A crusade may come home
battered and in rags. I get the sense of life,
as of a rapid in a river flowing round a great
rock."

The cathedral stands for the age-long meditation
of the ascetics in the midst of battling
tribes. This brooding architecture has a blood-brotherhood
with the meditating, saint-seeing
Jeanne d'Arc.

There is in the Metropolitan Museum a large
and famous canvas painted by the dying Bastien-Lepage;
— Jeanne Listening to the Voices.
It is a picture of which the technicians and the

poets are equally enamored. The tale of Jeanne
d'Arc could be told, carrying this particular
peasant girl through the story. And for a
piece of architectural pageantry akin to the
photoplay ballroom scene already described,
yet far above it, there is nothing more apt for
our purpose than the painting by Boutet de
Monvel filling the space at the top of the stair
at the Chicago Art Institute. Though the
Bastien-Lepage is a large painting, this is
many times the size. It shows Joan's visit
at the court of Chinon. It is big without
being empty. It conveys a glitter which expresses
one of the things that is meant by the
phrase: Splendor Photoplay. But for moving
picture purposes it is the Bastien-Lepage Joan
that should appear here, set in dramatic contrast
to the Boutet de Monvel Court. Two
valuable neighbors to whom I have read this
chapter suggest that the whole Boutet de
Monvel illustrated child's book about our
heroine could be used on this grand scale, for
a background.

The Inness room at the Chicago Art Institute
is another school for the meditative producer,
if he would evolve his tribute to France on
American soil. Though no photoplay tableau

has yet approximated the brush of Inness, why
not attempt to lead Jeanne through an Inness
landscape? The Bastien-Lepage trees are in
France. But here is an American world in
which one could see visions and hear voices.
Where is the inspired camera that will record
something of what Inness beheld?

Thus much for the atmosphere and trappings
of our Jeanne d'Arc scenario. Where
will we get our story? It should, of course,
be written from the ground up for this production,
but as good Americans we would
probably find a mass of suggestions in Mark
Twain's Joan of Arc.

Quite recently a moving picture company
sent its photographers to Springfield, Illinois,
and produced a story with our city for a background,
using our social set for actors. Backed
by the local commercial association for whose
benefit the thing was made, the resources of
the place were at the command of routine producers.
Springfield dressed its best, and acted
with fair skill. The heroine was a charming
débutante, the hero the son of Governor Dunne.
The Mine Owner's Daughter was at best a
mediocre photoplay. But this type of social-artistic
event, that happened once, may be attempted

a hundred times, each time slowly
improving. Which brings us to something that
is in the end very far from The Mine Owner's
Daughter. By what scenario method the following
film or series of films is to be produced I
will not venture to say. No doubt the way will
come if once the dream has a sufficient hold.

I have long maintained that my hometown
should have a goddess like Athena. The
legend should be forthcoming. The producer,
while not employing armies, should use many
actors and the tale be told with the same
power with which the productions of Judith of
Bethulia and The Battle Hymn of the Republic
were evolved. While the following story
may not be the form which Springfield civic
religion will ultimately take, it is here recorded
as a second cousin of the dream that I hope
will some day be set forth.

Late in an afternoon in October, a light is
seen in the zenith like a dancing star. The
clouds form round it in the approximation of
a circle. Now there becomes visible a group
of heads and shoulders of presences that are
looking down through the ring of clouds, watching
the star, like giant children that peep down
a well. The jewel descends by four sparkling

chains, so far away they look to be dewy threads
of silk. As the bright mystery grows larger it
appears to be approaching the treeless hill of
Washington Park, a hill that is surrounded by
many wooded ridges. The people come running
from everywhere to watch. Here indeed
will be a Crowd Picture with as many phases as
a stormy ocean. Flying machines appear from
the Fair Ground north of the city, and circle
round and round as they go up, trying to reach
the slowly descending plummet.

At last, while the throng cheers, one bird-man
has attained it. He brings back his
message that the gift is an image, covered
loosely with a wrapping that seems to be of
spun gold. Now the many aviators whirl
round the descending wonder, like seagulls
playing about a ship's mast. Soon, amid an
awestruck throng, the image is on the hillock.
The golden chains, and the giant children holding
them there above, have melted into threads
of mist and nothingness. The shining wrapping
falls away. The people look upon a seated
statue of marble and gold. There is a branch
of wrought-gold maple leaves in her hands.
Then beside the image is a fluttering transfigured

presence of which the image seems to be a
representation. This spirit, carrying a living
maple branch in her hand, says to the people:
"Men and Women of Springfield, this carving
is the Lady Springfield sent by your Lord from
Heaven. Build no canopy over her. Let her
ever be under the prairie-sky. Do her perpetual
honor." The messenger, who is the soul
and voice of Springfield, fades into the crowd,
to emerge on great and terrible occasions.

This is only one story. Round this public
event let the photoplay romancer weave what
tales of private fortune he will, narratives
bound up with the events of that October day,
as the story of Nathan and Naomi is woven
into Judith of Bethulia.

Henceforth the city officers are secular
priests of Our Lady Springfield. Their failure
in duty is a profanation of her name. A yearly
pledge of the first voters is taken in her presence
like the old Athenian oath of citizenship. The
seasonal pageants march to the statue's feet,
scattering flowers. The important outdoor festivals
are given on the edge of her hill. All
the roads lead to her footstool. Pilgrims come
from the Seven Seas to look upon her face
that is carved by Invisible Powers. Moreover,

the living messenger that is her actual soul
appears in dreams, or visions of the open
day, when the days are dark for the city,
when her patriots are irresolute, and her children
are put to shame. This spirit with the
maple branch rallies them, leads them to victories
like those that were won of old in the
name of Jeanne d'Arc or Pallas Athena herself.