Another idea developed in the early days at Disney was the importance of
staging an action in silhouette. In those days, all the characters were black
and white, with no gray values to soften the contrast or delineate a form.
Bodies, arms and hands were all black, so there was no way to stage an
action clearly except in silhouette. A hand in front of a chest would simply
disappear. Out of this limitation, the animators realized that it is always
better to show an action in silhouette. Charlie Chaplin maintained that if
an actor knew his emotion thoroughly, he could show it silhouette. [