Finally the mere formal arrangement of the succeeding pictures may keep our attention in control, and here again are possibilities which are superior to those of the solid theater stage.  At the theater no effect of formal arrangement can give exactly the same impression to the spectators in every part of the house.  The perspective of the wings and the other settings and their relation to the persons and to the background can never appear alike from the front and from the rear, from the left and from the right side, from the orchestra and from the balcony, while the picture which the camera has fixated is the same from every corner of the picture palace.  The greatest skill and refinement can be applied to make the composition serviceable to the needs of attention.  The spectator may not and ought not to be aware that the lines of the background, the hangings of the room, the curves of the furniture, the branches of the trees, the forms of the mountains, help to point toward the figure of the woman who is to hold his mind.  The shading of the lights, the patches of dark shadows, the vagueness of some parts, the sharp outlines of others, the quietness of some parts of the picture as against the vehement movement of others all play on the keyboard of our mind and secure the desired effect on our involuntary attention.

But if all is admitted, we still have not touched on the most important and most characteristic relation of the photoplay pictures to the attention of the audience; and here we reach a sphere in which any comparison with the stage of the theater would be in vain.  What is attention?  What are the essential processes in the mind when we turn our attention to one face in the crowd, to one little flower in the wide landscape?  It would be wrong to describe the process in the mind by reference to one change alone.  If we have to give an account of the act of attention, as seen by the modern psychologist, we ought to point to several cooerdinated features.  They are not independent of one another but are closely interrelated.  We may say that whatever attracts our attention in the sphere of any sense, sight or sound, touch or smell, surely becomes more vivid and more clear in our consciousness.  This does not at all mean that it becomes more intense.  A faint light to which we turn our attention does not become the strong light of an incandescent lamp.  No, it remains the faint, just perceptible streak of lightness, but it has grown more impressive, more distinct, more clear in its details, more vivid.  It has taken a stronger hold of us or, as we may say by a metaphor, it has come into the center of our consciousness.