Simultaneous Contrast

The strongest simultaneous contrast effects are sensed in contiguous areas, despite the fact that the eye does move about from area to area in a design or painting, relating part to part and part to whole. In color cinema we encounter a rather different set of circumstances: Not only does the eye rove here and there in any given scene, but the whole field changes and moves. In a painting, we have color without the dimension of time or duration, except of course the time it takes each of us to engage in an experience of a particular painting, and this depends on how much visual, feeling, and intellectual experience we are able to bring to the painting. In motion pictures, color combinations undergo continuous change before our eyes. Simultaneous and [I suppose one would have to call it] successive contrast, especially in certain "experimental" films involving rapid appearances of colored shapes, and of course color continuity, more than hint at opportunities in wait of a new Kandinsky. Cinema has the advantage over dance, drama, and the other arts of duration in that the total complex of form and field, figure and ground, can move with ease. Also, the emotional effect of color may become closely related to narrative sequence, sound, and dramatic incident. [p. 118]