The director who has this realization of the proper tempo down to something approaching a practical science is the best director. To gauge the value of a certain sequence and then to think it out in minutes and seconds is a task of exceedingly difficult proportions. Then too, there is the circumstance of the speed at which the cameraman is grinding to be considered. A cameraman can manage the tempo of a picture by himself if he knows sufficiently and likewise if he is ignorant of the niceties of his work he may well ruin a picture through lack of proper attention to the timing of his scenes, despite all the efforts of the director.
While it doesn't take any unusual amount of judgment to determine the scenes that should be played in fast tempo, it does take considerable judgment to determine those that should be played in slow tempo. Many directors are inclined to award altogether too much film space (are inclined, in other words, to play in too slow a tempo) scenes of little importance. When a director has erred in this fashion a number of times in the production of one picture, the results show on the screen in the shape of lost interest on the audience's part. The spectator gets the idea that the picture is padded out with scenes just to fill in, whether this was the aim of the director or not.
Scenes that should be played in a rapid tempo are usually played at their normal gait on the studio stages but when it comes to a scene that is played slowly for the reason of registering a certain strong dramatic point, these scenes are as a rule played a little bit slower than they would normally be presented.
The question of tempo simmers down, therefore, to the question of how skilled the director of the picture is in securing desired effects on the screen. Tempo is so thoroughly a part of a director's manifold duties, a part of almost each and every one, that is, that it is extremely difficult to disassociate it from any of them. In dealing with it, it is impossible to go thoroughly into the subject without saying something on pictorial and dramatic detail, about the ability of the players themselves and about the camera and its master.
But the picture properly timed and keyed is undoubtedly the best picture. The drama that leads up to an inevitable climax that sustains the interest of the spectator through a considerable series of episodes before that climax is reached; the drama that, at the moment of the climax itself, fairly bursts forth on the admiring spectator in all its strength and force, is the drama made with close attention to the tempo of each of its episodes.