Pov 6
Pov 6
Pov 6
Aarhus Universitet
p.o.v.
A Danish Journal of Film Studies
Editor:
Richard Raskin
Number 6
December 1998
p.o.v.
number 6
December 1998
Udgiver:
Oplag:
750 eksemplarer
Trykkested:
Trykkeriet i Hovedbygningen
(Annette Hoffbeck)
Aarhus Universitet
ISSN-nr.:
1396-1160
Richard Raskin
p .o .v .
Number 6, December 1998
The Art of Film Editing
Mark Le Fanu. On editing.
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Richard Raskin. Five explanations for the jump cuts in Godard's Breathless.
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On Editing
Mark Le Fanu
Cinema has two beginnings: the first, when the photograph
originally budged, the limbs uncoiled, the human being walked, the
single spool of film flickered into life - on whatever occasion we
choose to date this (whether in 1893 or 1895).
Yet the second, in a way equally momentous, beginning of cinema
could be said to follow some time later - if we want to date it, let us
say in the years immediately prior to 1900 - when two strips of film
were first spliced together to form: what? Another mode of
narrative? Or maybe narrative itself - film narrative - for the first
time? Stories may indeed be told without editing - a little oneminute gem like the Lumire Brothers'
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Keuken from Holland, Chris Marker, Adam Curtis (from the BBC),
Frederick Wiseman, Dusan Makavejev (incomparable montage of
WR:Mysteries of the Organism), Agns Varda, Alain Cavalier, Alain
Resnais...
A handful of examples, then, some of them very well-known,
others a little more obscure.2 What binds such artists together is
that editing in their films seems to be used as an instrument of
thought, not merely as guarantee of rhythm. Maybe the distinction
sounds slippery - for all good art is thoughtful; and there is no
monopoly (how could there be?) on the artistic means used to
achieve depth and effectiveness. Yet it is one aspect of thought, at
least, to be alert; to cut through; to surprise; to forge connections;
just as it is the peculiar property of the work of the directors just
cited that we seem to see these connections being minted, as it
were, in front of our eyes.
An example would seem to be called for. But before I give one,
maybe it's apposite to recall that producing examples is not
always as easy as it looks. In film criticism, then, as opposed to the
literary variety, there is no such thing as a quote. The most the
critic can do is to prcis: that is, to reproduce, or attempt to
reproduce in words the effect of the extract he is talking about. He
(I mean she of course in the appropriate context) may use stills or
photograms to aid the evocation, but until (which may not, after all
2
Maybe I should mention also the contemporary Russian film director Oleg
Kovalev, whose poetic documentary on Eisenstein Sergei Eisenstein: An
Autobiography (St Petersburg, 1995) seems to me to capture, with extraordinary
gaiety and assurance, the editing rhythms of Eisensteins work in the 1920s. To
see this film in the right circumstances is to witness montage, in the old sense,
resurrected. Yet it is not a mere archeological exercise.
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Though one of the greatest masters of the seamless single take, Welles was no
less a master (this is the point I am making) of editing. Its worth recalling that
the reason editing gradually came to define his style was relentlessly practical:
filming Othello in his vagabond years in Europe, and frequently running out of
money, Welles found himself in the position of having to match a shot taken
in Venice with another one (from the same scene) taken in Spain, and a third,
perhaps, in Morocco. Hiding the joins was a task fully worthy of his
magicianship. (For a full account of the shoot, with many insights into Welless
personality, see Michel MacLiammirs memoir Put Money in They Purse
(London, 1952).) Editing is always in some way the issue with Welles, as the
recent controversy about the directors cut of Touch of Evil (withdrawn from
the 1998 Cannes Film Festival at his daughter Beatrices request) continues to
testify.
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tense from which however (in Hitchcock's famous definition) all the
boring bits have been miraculously evacuated.
This species of editing (in fact, for many professionals, the only
form of editing worth bothering about) is commonly associated
with Hollywood. In fact it is the vernacular of practically all filmed
entertainment - of television drama as much as of feature films
(formally, they are indistinguishable). Two of its most striking
aspects are these: that an individual scene is broken up into countless different shots; and that those shots, when stitched together ,
will preserve continuity of movement or flow - as well as respect
for the scene's geographical integrity. It is one of the pleasures of
studying film in the classroom to discover that these procedures,
which seem to us to be so natural (and which, for the ordinary filmgoer, are so natural as not to be noticed) do in fact possess history
and provenance. Thus, there was a first time ever, and we can still
marvel at it (the film in question - or a plausible candidate - exists in
the archive)4 when a director, or maybe just a cameraman, said:
Let's stop the camera and move in to see this thing closer. So they
stopped the shot, picked up the apparatus, moved a few feet
forward (or maybe just put in a new lens) and started shooting
again. And so, for variety and emphasis - since there were, in silent
cinema, neither words nor speeches to carry the audience along there arose the convention that the action should be seen from
many different angles, and from many different distances from the
actors. And the audience crossed the proscenium invisibly, as if in a
4
Barry Salt, in Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis (London, 1983),
suggests the British comedy Mary Janes Mishap (G. A. Smith, 1903). This (rather
delightful) movie is included in the two volume video selection Early Cinema:
Primitives and Pioneers issued by the British Film Institute a few years ago.
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not to emerge: the directors just cited are patient about the
possibility of failure); whereas edited cinema manufactures truth,
or rather, to put the matter polemically, it lies. Thus the underside
of magic - we needn't belabour the point - brushes the realm of
flashiness, cheap effects, virtuosity for its own sake, mendacity.
Any serious essay on editing, it seems to me, is required to raise
the question of manipulation as a moral and political issue. The
difficulty is to do it without recourse either to clich or to stale parti
pris. Does one really think of editing as lying? is a question that
needs to be answered rather personally - needs, at least, to be
open to the possibility that such judgements are not always easy;
unless one thinks (as some people do) that all films are emotionally
manipulative and, for that reason, morally suspect.
It is not a position I share. (I don't think, if one really believed it,
that one could write about cinema intelligently.) Still, there is an
element of my response to cinema that is in tune with this rather
Bazinian reserve, or austerity, about the very basis of editing itself.
Sometimes I think: one shouldn't make a fuss about editing. It is a
skill, and a very important one. I've been speaking about it as if it
were the director's prerogative but, in another sense, the people
who actually carry the task out - albeit in collusion with the director
- are merely anonymous craftsmen. It would be ludicrous to lose
sight of the fact that what matters overall, about cinema, is the
vision of the artist, and the integrity of the chosen actors'
performances.5
5 The self-effacing modesty of a practising film editor is brilliantly brought to
life in the classic study by Dai Vaughan: Portrait of an Invisible Man: The Working
Life of Stewart McAllister (BFI Books, London, 1983). See also, in this context,
representative interviews in the collection First Cut: Conversations with Film
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another
strand
of
film-making
(beautifully
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The phenomenon of editing deals with all aspects of filmic rhythm from the transition of one image to another or the detailed musical
rhythm in a small sequence of edits, to the most general balancing
of pace and rhythm in the overall narrative structure.
Major aspects of the editing of a film are created outside the editing
room. The editor may be primary contributor in some areas of the
editing, but the scriptwriter, the photographer and of course the
director are also involved in determining the editing of a film.
Editing is a means of expression, with its own language. This
language is created in the editing room as well as in the script
writing process and on the set. And the editing usually works best
if it is completely integrated with the other means of expression
used in the given film.
The creative decisions that are made in each phase of the process of
filmmaking have an influence on the editing process. When the
script is being written, the scriptwriter creates the psychology of
the characters and their mutual relations and actions as integrated
parts of the dramatic structure of the film: the overall structure, the
chronological order of events and the development of the plot. The
scriptwriter works to incorporate the physical surroundings as a
means of expression for the characters and the plot. Take, for
example, a typical clich such as the ticking of a clock: instead of
simply letting the editor insert a tick-tock on the sound track, the
scriptwriter can integrate the clock as part of the action by letting
one of the characters look at the clock to see what time it is, and
the clock may even become a dramatic tool in the development of
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Not until the editor begins to assemble the different images of the
film, is it clear whether - and to what degree - the intentions of the
script have survived the shooting.
Typical problems that emerge in the editing room are, for example:
1) lack of different kinds of continuity; 2) cases where the emotional
intention of a scene is not realized: you don't laugh at what was
intended to be funny, or you laugh at a scene where you were
supposed to cry; 3) the audience lacks information necessary to
understand the relations between the characters or the action; or 4)
the narrative creates expectations that are not fulfilled by the story
as it evolves.
Such problems might not arise from the quality of the individual
scenes, but from the fact that there are too many of them or that,
when assembled, they do not produce the necessary dramatic flow.
It is the task of the editor to structure the build up every single
moment of a scene and put those moments together into a whole
with all the possibilities involved in the scriptwriting and the
shooting this can be a lot (if the story structure gives many
possibilities to reverse the order of the scenes, or if the scenes
contains cross cutting), and this may be little (if the scenes are built
up by sequence shots or if the narrative development can be seen in
the development of props).
In any case, the editing creates the flow and energy in the scenes
and builds the scenes into sequences. This (re)creation of the
general narrative structure is the third writing of the film.
Only rarely is it possible for the audience to determine whether an
edit was conceived in the script, on the set or in the editing room. It
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what the character was thinking, and when he wasn't thinking the
same thought anymore, he would cut. Murch found out that very
often Gene Hackman blinked where Murch decided to cut.
Murch began to use the blink as a tool to determine how long to
keep a shot on screen: when he edited a dialogue sequence
between two characters, he would imagine that he was a third
person watching that scene, and he would try to duplicate in the
editing what that third person would do. As long he was thinking
one particular thought he would usually not blink. But when the
thought came to an end, he would blink and shift to another.
He realised that the purpose of the blink was to isolate images or
thoughts on either side of the blink, and that the blink in that sense
was a kind of mental punctuation mark.
So he came to see the cut as the equivalent, in filmatic terms, of the
blink in human behavior.
Consequently the film can be seen as a series of thoughts, and the
editor is helping the audience by determining how long each of
these thoughts are; how long the audience is going to think about
any given thing.
And ideally the audience would never notice the editing of such a
scene, because they would blink simultaneously with the cuts.
*
* *
Storytelling in film constantly deals with breaking and creating
continuity, as all films are based on fragments of reality (constructed or real).
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face that did not exist in reality, but only in the mind of the person a pure figment of the brain.
If the person afterwards was told to estimate/appraise/value the
looks of the three women (the two real and the figment), the
person would always pick out the figment as the most beautiful!
Murch concludes that the human brain has a sort of aesthetic
selection and an imagination that reality will never be able to match.
And consequently the best narrative is the one that is created in the
spectator's own mind. The film ideally works as a starter for the
human fantasy, and the narrative gains thereby a first-rate partner
and can benefit from this infinite co-poetic potential. The task of the
filmmaker is to create gaps as wide as possible in every aspect of his
storytelling and thus making the audience the other half of the
narrator.
*
* *
When filmmakers hear how theorists describe "the process of film
creation," they are often amused: it always sounds as if every step
of the process is carefully planned and constructed. The filmmakers
know how accidental or circumstancial filmmaking really is, to say
nothing of how unaware most filmmakers are of their reasons for
doing what they do, when they work. I think most film editors will
recognize Dede Allen's description of the editing process:
When I start cutting a movie, I always cut with ambivalence. I have a
definite intention, a definite starting point: the dramatic function of
the scene;. the psychology of the characters, etc. But when I become
absorbed in the material, I suddenly see all the possibilities the
material contains. The unexpected. Intended and unintended
possibilities. I can't help wandering into the material. I milk the
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material for all the small possibilities I see in it. A look, a smile after
the director has said cut!, an unintentional juxtaposition of two
images. Afterwards I form a general view again. But it is in the
ambivalence, in the collision between the general strategy and the
pleasant distractions along the way that constitutes editing as art; the
true life of the film.
References
Walter Murch visited The Danish Film School in 1985, and in 1987 Tmas
Gislason interviewed him for The Editing Symposium at The Danish Film
School.
Dede Allen visited The Danish Film School in 1997.
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What about the theorists? They should define the notions. They
cannot do what the film makers do, which is just to describe their
production procedures!
Kawin, 1992
The book contains a "Glossary of Key Words" (pp. 539-557) and
definitions of the subject matter in each chapter. The glossary
focuses on the production aspect of "editing":
Editing
The art of selecting, trimming, coordinating, integrating and cutting into
projection sequence the shots and/or recordings that will become the film;
organizing and assembling a workprint (p. 544).
Montage
(1) French for "mounting" or "raising"; the intensive or significant, and often
abrupt juxtaposition of shots;
(2) The dynamic editing of picture and sound; see "decoupage";
(3) a series of brief shots or overlapping images;
(4) loosely, film editing in general.
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Branigan, 1992
Branigan, who according to the title focuses on the comprehension
(of the narrative), does not give us a description or definition of
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"editing". The notion remains broad and vague and cannot be used
in the context of inference (as opposed to Carroll).
"Editing" is listed together with other notions:
I also believe that many basic concepts (e.g. realism, time, editing, the
camera, space, causality, voice, text) should be broken into components and
redefined according to their top-down and bottom-up aspects as well as
their declarative and procedural aspects. The result will be a new complexity
for some familiar concepts, but a better fit with the powers of narrative (p.
118).
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Bordwell
Narration in the Fiction Film (1985 /1995)
The index has many references to "editing". In some cases I was
unable to find the actual word "editing" on the pages indicated, but
they treat editing without using the word. As a matter of fact, the
notion is never described nor defined. Here again, the meaning of
"editing" is taken for granted; we all know what we are talking
about. Bordwell reserves the definitions and the precise
descriptions for the central concept of the book "Narration" (pp. xi xiv), not to mention such notions as "fabula", "syuzhet" or "style".
All we find is a description of "editing", albeit in the light of a text
written by Eisenstein: "(the camera) is an instrument for transforming the profilmic event so as to maximize effect. Nor does
editing mimic the attention of an invisible observer. Editing as the
most palpable stage of montage construction, will often violate
verisimilitude for the sake of impact" (p. 14).
As for "montage" we are not much better off, as shown by the
quote "editing, usually called montage" (p. 238) , referring,
however, to the Soviet theories of the Twenties.
In this book "editing" seems to be a practical term; it is used before
any theoretical definition appears. It does not require a definition,
in stark contrast to "montage" which is used in discussions by
others (Eisenstein, Pudovkin) of the subject matter of the book.
Thus it receives both a historical and descriptive presentation.
Film Art (1979/1997)
Art is different! There are many references to "editing" in the index
and many references to specific types of editing. We even get
general definition: "the technique that relates shot to shot, editing"
(p. 168), and we have a whole chapter giving definitions and
descriptions (pp. 270-314), beginning with this definition:
Editing may be thought of as the coordination of one shot with the
next. As we have seen, in film production a shot is one or more
exposed frames in a series on a continuos length of film stock. The film
editor eliminates unwanted footage, usually by discarding all but the
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best take. The editor also cuts superfluous frames, such as those
showing the clapboard (p.18), from the beginnings and endings of
shots. She or he then joins the desired shots, the end of one to the
beginning of another (p. 271).
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students who need to understand what it's all about may attend a
concentrated, theoretical study.
A Jack-of-All-Trades
Both as a personal characteristic of a future editor and to signify a
well-rounded training, versatility is the key word. In the same way
as film is comprehensive in its nature, the editor needs to be familiar
with and sensitive to a variety of professions. As a director I've had
the opportunity to collaborate with several editors, and my definite
experience is that the imaginative editor with poor technical skills is
only half good, as is the technically brilliant editor who pays little or
no attention to the inner meaning of the film itself. So valuable
personal qualities in an editor include: a good sense of composition
both musically and visually, analytic ability, basic technical
competence, tidiness, and last but not least: an ability to listen and
to communicate.
I've found that the ethical aspect of editing is important to discuss
with students. Ethics involves communication and how to deal with
one's influence. Many destructive conflicts can be turned round and
treated in a meaningful and constructive way if one listens calmly
and respects the importance of dialogue. To include this in teaching
is not common, but nonetheless important as an ongoing process.
Head, Hands and Feet
The process of learning to edit is very similar to that of learning to
play the piano. Whereas a completely practical study is possible, a
purely theoretical study is out of the question. I myself learned
editing as an apprentice without the opportunity to study and
analyze film theory. Yet the best thing - what I would like to have
had - is a combination of hands-on exercises and theoretical studies.
In his excellent book In the Blink of an Eye, Walter Murch (editor of
The English Patient among other films) writes of how he prefers
standing up at the editing table or the computer. His personal
preference is one I share because editing is very much a bodily
effort. To find the right place to put the cut may sometimes depend
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Construction Workers
In the overall plan for teaching editing, I would emphasize the
student's abilities to analyze and construct stories. The French word
for editing, montage, -mounting something, is the word that most
accurately describes the process of constructing a storyline.
Editing takes place on two levels simultaneously: joining shots into
meaningful sequences, such as continuity cuts, interviews, etc., and
building the overall narrative structure. I believe that one can work
very well from intuition on both levels, but a theoretical study of
dramaturgy is essential. These studies may very well be combined
with lectures on the genres which the editing students could attend
together with other students.
In film schools students are assigned to produce many short films
and documentaries. Of all the genres, the editor has the most
influence over documentaries. Thus I see working on documentaries
as a particularly valuable part of the training. The same
documentary material may be assembled in several ways, and there
is a lot to gain from scheduling ample time for editing, so that all
students may learn about directing and dramaturgy in the editing
room.
Which Pair of Scissors?
It's quite hard to recommend specific technical equipment. Every
training institution must consider its financial and practical situation,
and look for viable solutions. In many cases schools end up with
old-fashioned equipment. It could be flatbed editing tables or
videotape machines. Some computer-based tools are already
becoming outdated, too. A current discussion of the technical aspect
is going on in CILECT (Centre International de Liaison des Ecoles
de Cinma et de Tlvision. <www.cilect.org> ) and an outstanding
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Practice, Practice
When the primary technical level is reached, the focus ought to turn
away from the equipment and concentrate on a number of
exercises. All exercises can be looked on as primarily a training of
the cerebral abilities and secondarily an intellectual comprehension
of the assignments. The exercises can be mixed in such a way that
the students edit small pieces where several elements are included in
one piece. The elements include:
movement and continuity between shots
direction (geography)
eyelines
speech and breath
interviews
dialogues
rhythms and beats
treatment of time
The difficulty for the teacher can often be to find proper material
for exercises. My experience is that the material which functions
well, is originally shot to be training films, or rushes where a
selection has been made to fit the assignments. Unfortunately it
seems that some institutions have not given the preparation of
practice-material a high priority. It certainly costs money, but
without the material the teacher must spend time finding suitable
rushes, which is extremely time consuming and often gives a poor
result. In the end the quality of the training suffers from this lack of
investment. This may seem to be a minor issue, but I'm afraid many
editing teachers sweat over the lack of training films.
No Rules
I've often met students asking for the ultimate truth when they try
to master editing. How should I cut this or that? What's the best
way to cut a fist-fight? In responding to these questions, I have
tried to make the students aware that there are no rules, only
conventions which are constantly changing. I have taught rules of
thumb, and the ability to study and analyze films, rather than giving
instructions. I have encouraged the students to try their own
solutions and to trust their own taste instead of looking for right or
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order
to
make
the
film
(audio-visual
story,
poem,
The first we may also call separation in general. The second we may
call combination in general.
In his brilliant book "Elements of Cinema" Stefan Sharff has a
chapter on separation (p. 59-83). His first definition is:
Separation: fragmentation of a scene into single images in alternation
- A,B,A,B,A,B, etc. (Sharff, p. 6).
This is in line with what I have said above about shots, takes,
separation in general, and combination in general. In the same
breath it must be said that Sharff has another, more specific and
narrow definition, which he also practices, when he analyzes his
examples:
Separation: Shooting people in separate shots who are actually close
together. A conversation may be filmed with one person looking
right in medium shot and the other looking left in close-up (probably
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Fig. 3-4.
Another way of discussing selection and combination involves going one step
further from the concept of selection; to have something to edit, to combine,
first you have to make fragments of raw material, to separate your parts.
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Fig. 5-8.
Following Sharff's definition the scene starts with a two-shot followed by separation and closes by returning to a two-shot frame. It
is a beautiful case of separation, demonstrating that this editing
practice can almost eliminate the sense of distance between
characters that a two shot may show. The fact that the characters
are not shown beside each other in the same frame (and
consequently in a visible distance from each other), but in frames
that are edited on top of each other so to speak, brings them
visually together and demonstrates the psychological intimacy as a
gesture, a cinematographic articulation of space and time.
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Fig. 9-13.
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face/in profile; Zoret puts his hand around Michael's neck (Fig. 11),
saying, "'The Victory' is my best painting - I give it to you!"
Following this text, Fig. 12 shows a close-up of Michael left and
Zoret en face right; Michael looks down, Zoret to the right, saying,
"Everything will belong to you, eventually." In the medium close-up
in Fig. 13 (corresponding to Fig. 11) Zoret moves his hand from
Michael's neck and puts it on his left hand; Michael puts his right on
Zoret's and expresses his gratefulness. In a long shot (like Fig. 9)
Zoret disrupts/breaks the situation, and goes to the right in the
direction of the door out. Another long shot from the opposite end
of the room shows them from the back; they say goodbye, and
Michael leaves.
The scene is an early example of Dreyer developing a cinematic
language using editing patterns, rhythm, and picture composition to
move around and close in on his characters. In many scenes we find
a development with beginning/distance - middle/intimacy - and
end/distance. But at no time you will find a repetition of the same
type of shot. For example, a close-up will never be followed by
another close-up. With each cut a new step in the development of
the scene is taken. Every shot takes us further, but no shot is
placed only to get on. The string of frames is one small, complete
visual story. In this way a director, in this case Dreyer, is narrating
the story tightly, functionally, without unnecessary repetitions, but
with great visual variation. 3
Apart from different ways of connecting shots, like direct cut, dissolve, wipe, and others, Sharff has a special concept for certain
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Fig. 14-15
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Fig. 16-17.
The supernatural connections that John has a gift for but won't
admit to - the film can quite literally show. In this case Roeg's
editing is an incarnation of what is told about this way of "viewing"
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Fig. 18-22. 18-19 are two frames from one shot. The camera moves from closeup to medium long shot, while Maud half awake finds out that Hans Christian
has gone to the living room to do his gymnastics.
I. The Varns house. (Varns is the managing director of the local bank).
Shot 1. Medium close-up of Maud (Mrs. Varns). Without opening her eyes she
reaches out trying to find her husband, Hans Christian's face, but all she can
feel (opening her eyes) is the empty pillow. During this the camera pulls
backwards, and the shot ends in medium long shot, while Maud draws her
eiderdown over her head, staying in bed to sleep. She is clearly disappointed,
and although she can hear nothing, she knows. He's at it again. CUT TO
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Shot 2. Close-up of a modern, up to date radio. (Fig. 20). Capt. Jespersen: "Sit
down on the floor! (etc. ... giving instructions without stop). CUT TO
Shot 3. Medium long shot of Hans Christian starting the exercise (Fig. 21),
following the voice from the radio. The camera near the floor, below table level
and shooting him in a direction partly under the grand piano (fig 22). CUT TO
II. Dr. Hansen having breakfast in bed.
Shot 4. Close-up of an older and more primitive radio, a crystal set with ear
phones. In the middle of Capt Jespersen's explanations a cut brings us to Dr.
Hansen's bedroom. Camera pans right showing part of his body and the tray.
The camera's tilt up combined with a short pull backwards reveals the identity
of the man sitting in bed eating, but otherwise doing nothing in spite of the
captain's orders. When he starts showing his annoyance with the health fanatic,
we have a CUT TO
Fig. 23-25.
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family.9 The captain's "fitness programme" is carried on through all three parts
of the sequence. We hear it continually while the sound quality, the standard of
the technical equipment, and the rooms are demonstrating their own story
about social positions in the small town. CUT TO
Fig. 26-28
Shot 6. Medium long shot of Mads Skjern's wife, Ingeborg (Fig. 26). She wakes
up and gets out of bed stretching out to look for her husband, who is exercising
in the living room next door. To follow her eye line the camera pulls a little
away from her and pans to the left. In a long shot through the door we see
Mads work out, still in his pajamas (Fig. 28). CUT TO
Shot 7. Long shot of another door opening. From inside the same room as
Mads we see the maid looking in wonder at Mads (Fig. 29). Going towards the
kitchen she disappears to the left, but a pan left shows her take another glance
through another door (Fig. 30). When she turns away to go on with her work
Mads appears from the bottom of the frame (Fig. 31). He is still bending and
stretching his knees, moving up and down. The camera follows him, tilting
down and up one time; while he is on his way to a standing position again
Ingeborg arrives from the left and in the extreme foreground of the frame (Fig.
4 Mads Skjern has taken just a few steps up the social ladder on his way to
become the local "matador", building and expanding his hosiery shop and
eventually becoming a manufacturer himself.
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32). Going down again he ends sitting on his knees with an astounded
expression on his face (Fig. 33). CUT TO
Fig. 29-33
Shot 8 . Long shot (like the end of shot 6) showing Mads and Ingeborg through
the door (Fig. 34). She is sitting down right in front of him. CUT TO
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Fig. 34-36.
Shot 9. Close-up of Ingeborg, "You are going to be a father." (Fig. 35). CUT TO
Shot 10. Long shot (like 8). Mads lowers his arms, "Is this a way to tell it?"
Ingeborg gets up with a small laughter, while getting up: "I've always wanted
to beat Capt. Jespersen." (Fig. 36). CUT TO
Shot 11. Close-up, slightly from above, of Mads looking up at Ingeborg (Fig.
37) who continues, "He ought to see you now." Camera tilts upwards with
Mads, holding the close-up; "Thank you, Ingeborg." (Fig. 38). CUT TO
Shot 12. Close-up of Ingeborg: "Thank you!" (Fig. 39).
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Fig. 37-39.
For some shots (12-16) the editing and camera work is pure separation in the
Sharff sense, cutting back and forth between close-ups of the two characters.
Mads is asking, if she is sure, and Ingeborg assures him that Dr. Hansen has
confirmed that she is pregnant. Mads talks about taking special care of her from
now on. But in
Shot 16. Close-up of Ingeborg, she replies: "No, that certainly would be a
terrible idea!" She starts moving to the right and forward towards the camera.
(Fig. 40). CUT TO
Shot 17. Medium close-up in a reverse shot compared to shot 15; with Mads
standing to the right Ingeborg is seen from the back moving into the
background. The camera follows her in a pan left, in the doorway she tells their
son and daughter to hurry up. Pan right as she disappears on her way to the
kitchen. Mads now in medium close-up. From the other doorway Ingeborg
tells Mads, "And you too. Unless you are going to arrive in that outfit." (Fig. 4143).
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Fig. 40-43.
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something that will change as Mads takes his family to higher steps
on the social ladder. The separations, also shown in the setting of
their homes, come to resemble the Varns way of life more and
more).
In this way the audiovisual definition of chosen parts and their connections - or as we have called them: the separation and combinations characterizes these people socially and psychologically. This, too, is
what can be done by editing. Are things and characters shown or
brought together through direct cuts , or in pans or other uncut camerawork? The last part of the scene with Mads and Ingeborg
shows them in a separation series of shots (like Fig. 38-39) in the
strict sense, as defined by Sharff; and in accordance with what I
have written about the scene as a description of an "open" home, it
is true that their dialogue becomes a peak of intimacy. At this
moment "pure" separation is embedded within the larger pattern of
separation and combination that I have been trying to develop from
Sharff's concept.10 Principles of editing and details of camera work
give each of the three scenes their special internal qualities, and
across the sequence as a whole these features are brought together
in an interplay of variations which gives the audience further story
potentials to play with.
Editing another, artificial world
Not only during the production process (shooting), but also in
putting bits and pieces together in the editing process (that even if
they have been filmed as a kind of print from reality, are not reality
5
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Murch 1995, p. 7.
Discontinuity in this case meaning: not following the unbroken and homogeneous nature of time and space of the real world. And just as it is possible during shooting to make takes in any order of time and space, it is possible to edit
them in any order.
8 For instance the selection of elements of reality to be recorded/filmed in
order to become raw material; or drawings (for animations), or computer
generated material, etc.
7
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A comment as an attempt to position my own work in relation to what recently has been labeled Grand Theory and met with criticism by people (most
prominently David Bordwell and Nol Carroll) representing so-called Post
Theory: Grand Theory has been dominated by attempts to develop all
encompassing film theories inspired by and subsuming it under frameworks
taken from fields like semiotics, psychoanalysis, Marxism, postmodernism,
cultural studies, schools of philosophy. After having done research in such areas
as philosophical problems of film theory, narration and classical American film
style, Bordwell and Carroll in their articles in "Post Theory" suggest that
researchers at least for a period leave the grandeur of shaping the medium
after ideas about how the human race and the world are to be understood,
sociologically, psychologically, culturally, philosophically, politically - as a
whole. Instead, they prefer "piecemeal theory" or "middle-level research",
taking up more focused problems. This sounds very reasonable to me. What
may be a little surprising, is that their "programme" looks like a return to
detailed analysis and theorizing that has been going on "behind" the barricades
of the grand theorists (and, in fact, instead of a programme we may call it an
attempt to stimulate people to do a lot of very diversified research precisely
without being restrained by preconceived ideas). In this way I think I can say
that although I have been inspired by at least some of the "big guys" (like Metz,
the semiologist, or Hjelmslev, or Freud, himself, and others...) almost all of my
production exermplifies of what Bordwell calls "in depth inquiry" (Post Theory,
p. 29). This is because, in my opinion, it doesn't make much sense to fantasize
about grand perspectives, if you don't do your homework and try to
understand the aesthetics and the rhetoric of the cinematic language. So, in
many places around the world this kind of work has already been going on for
many years.
73
from any link to the experience of everyday life. You can't cut the
world - but it is perfectly possible to cut and edit a film.
Literature
Bordwell, David. Contemporary Film Studies and the Vicissitudes of Grand Theory,
in: Post-Theory. Reconstructing Film Studies. University of Wisconsin Press,
1996.
Bordwell, Davis & Thompson, Kristin. Film Art (4th edition). New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1993.
Eisenstein, Sergei. Film Form. Essays in Film Theory. New York: Harcourt, Brace
& World, 1949.
Juel, Henrik. Klip. Roskilde UniversitetsCenter, 1991.
Kau, Edvin. Dreyers filmkunst. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1989.
Mast, Gerald. Film/Cinema/Movie. A Theory of Experience. New York: Harper &
Row, 1977.
Murch, Walter. In the Blink of an Eye. A Perspective on Film Editing Beverly Hills:
Silman-James Press, 1995.
Sharff, Stefan. The Elements of Cinema. Toward a Theory of Cinesthetic Impact. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
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films can be seen even on the MTV channel, one of the heaviest
users and developers of the new editing style. The Massive Attack
music video Unfinished Sympathy, from the album Blue Line (1991), is
made as one long steadycam ride that follows the band as they
stroll down the street.
Correspondingly, the breaking up of continuity conventions, the
last step in our three step history of film editing, is far from new.
Some of these new principles date back to the European avantgarde movements of the twenties, others to the French 'Nouvelle
Vague' of the sixties, and documentary aesthetics, of course, have
always been less compulsory and conservative, probably because
this genre doesn't feel the tight limits of a narrative structure. And
even though this third step is the latest, the continuity tradition is
still in the best of health. The vast majority of films are still edited
according to continuity principles1, and the growing school of new
editing will probably co-exist with classical continuity well into the
future, maybe even forever.
When a film is edited according to the rules of continuity, you will
know exactly where everybody is and how the different persons,
locations and props are situated in relation to one another, and
there are no explicit time lapses - no elliptic editing. It is important to
remember, however, that even though the continuity system is
meant to give the impression of a coherent time and space, it is - de
facto - only an illusion. Even Hollywood continuity classics such as
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As I have described in the article Fresh Cuts; DOX no. 12, 1997.
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81
with the hand, our eyes are glued to the movement until it stops or
another stronger movement takes over. Accordingly, there are
basically two ways of using movement in editing.
A sudden, but relatively short movement can move the spectator's
eyes where you want them, and you can cut to a shot with the eyecatcher at approximately the same spot.
If the movement is longer, you have to consider its speed and
direction i.e. to get the movement to flow from one shot to the
other.
Meaning
An object always has a certain meaning, either for the narrative or
in the description of a person or a location. When a man suddenly
reaches for a gun, our attention obviously follows the hand because
of the movement. But if we know that our hero has a gun, and he
finds himself in a dangerous situation, our eyes check out the gun
even without the movement.
Imagine an untidy nursery, with toys lying scattered on the floor.
Between all the toys, there is a teddy bear, which a child got for
Christmas two scenes ago. This is what we are looking at.
Contrast
Eye-catching based on contrast is not only a question of light
versus darkness. It's obvious that our eyes are attracted by the
little black dot in the snow or the flashlight in the midst of the trees
in the big dark forest. But contrast can also be applied more
generally. If all but one of the elements in a picture are alike, the
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one sticking out - in size, colour, light, texture or any other quality will surely catch our eye.
Colours
You turn your head when you see bright red or yellow, nature's
own alarm colours. They are used to signify danger. Some animals
or flowers use them to warn other animals, since if they are eaten,
it doesn't help the brightly coloured entity that the predator dies
afterwards.
These colours catch our eyes before the message reaches our
consciousness, and only at a subsequent level, our cultural
background will add a conventional, coded meaning such as red for
love and yellow for cowardice.
But there are also other eye-catchers in colours. For instance, you
can apply the principles of contrast to colour, when a brightly
coloured object appears in a pastel-shaded environment. Or more
extremely, only one colour in a black and white film, such as the
little red girl in Schindler's List (Spielberg, 1993) or the red smoke in
Kurosawa's High and Low (1963).
All these elements should be considered relatively. In a red room
with red furniture, as in Cries and Whispers (Bergman, 1972), the
alarm colour is white, since red has become the general colour
backdrop. In a panicking crowd, a calm person is the one who
attracts our attention.
Focus
If every picture element but one is out of focus, our eyes will be
caught by the part in focus. Then if the focus changes so that a
83
different part of the picture gets in focus, our eyes will migrate
almost instantly to the new center of focus. If a new defocused
object enters the screen, our eyes will try to focus on it, and if the
camera doesn't try to do the same and the object remains in a
central position, we get annoyed. In good films this is rare. Either
the object (or person) is irrelevant and just passes through the
picture, or it is meant to take over focus as soon as it enters the
frame.
Tolerance in time
But how do you decide when to apply the above mentioned rules?
The answer is quite pragmatic. To find a strong eye-catcher at a
certain point in a shot is relatively easy. There is little difference
between the behavior of human eyes. All you have to do is watch
the screen and notice where you have your eyes - everybody else's
eyes will be there too.
There is always, most editors will claim, one specific frame - and
nowhere else! - to place a cut if it's to be perfect. Of course, it
depends on a lot of things, for instance what the next shot is like,
and certainly also the rhythm of the whole sequence as such. But
one thing is the perfect frame, the perfect split second for a smooth
cut, another the tolerance for an unacceptably bad one. This
tolerance is much greater within traditional continuity editing than
within new style editing.
When you have looked at a picture for a while, your eyes get
bored and start to move about to find new places of interest. This
process is not very consistent from individual to individual. The
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This is not a new trick either. One of the most famous places it's
used is Some Like it Hot (Wilder, 1959). Marilyn Monroe is trying to
seduce Tony Curtis at a yacht and at the same time Jack Lemmon is
dancing rumba with the actual owner of the yacht in a restaurant
ashore. A distance of several miles is covered only by panning the
camera.
But there is a difference between this swish-pan and the use of
swish-pan in for instance Lars von Trier's The Kingdom. In Some Like
it Hot and Hollywood-like productions the swish-pan always moves
left or right according to the continuity of space. The pan from the
yacht to the dance hall is in the opposite direction than the earlier
wipe from shore to yacht and thus perfectly in concordance with
the shore/ship relation as it's explained to us.
In The Kingdom (Part 1) there is a confusing morning-conference
where the camera is swish-panning from person to person. Here,
the swish-pans are used to cover up the breaking of the 180 degree
rule and there is even one special cut where two pans cut together
move in opposite directions, one left-to-right, the other right-toleft.
The sound-bridge
Sound is, however, one of the most frequently used distractions.
Obviously in MTV productions the music plays a very conspicuous
part and loud music seemingly makes almost everything look good.
To pick up on David Bordwell, you could say that the rhythmic
relation takes over.
But there is also another, more specific use of sound: the soundbridge. In traditional films, the slam of a door, someone's blowing
87
his or her nose or the shot of a gun often carries a bad cut from
one shot to the next. In new style editing, these sounds are added
without any connection to the story. Cartoon-like sounds such as
SSSWWWHISSS or WHOOOOWHH are added, almost as a kind of
auditive white flashes.
Structure
In many films based on two-dimensional editing, there is a tendency
towards more cross-cutting than in most films. In continuity based
films, cross-cutting is mainly used to show that two actions are
taking place simultaneously, but in new style editing this is far from
always true. To start in the extreme, music videos often have two,
three or more layers from totally different worlds. One might be a
narrative structure with actors, another the musicians on a moody
location, all mixed up with documentary footage from a concert and
so on, with an abstract connection only through the music and
lyrics.
This type of woven structure has been taken over by some of the
new style documentaries. For instance, in Heart and Soul, Tmas
Gislason's portrait of Danish documentarist and poet Jrgen Leth,
in one scene Leth is talking about the similarities between making
films and writing poetry. There are shots from three different
interviews intercut with Leth reading his own poetry and pictures
of the carnival in Haiti. And the interviews are shot in different
qualities, and, of course, intermingled with the rest of the film, as
though it was one long plait a 'plait structure' rather than the
'pearl-on-a-string structure' that most documentaries employ.
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It's difficult to say whether it's the freedom from spatial relations
that gives the possibility of making this structure or the wish to
make a kind of structure that makes the style necessary
In new style fiction, however, the narrative structure is normally
quite ordinary. Fictional TV-series, of course, may have a plait-like
structure, but this is only on a scene-to-scene level, which is a
general rule rather than an exception in soaps and series.
But why this new style?, a lot of people might ask. Isn't
continuity editing good enough? These questions sound like the
ones posed to the first modernist painters. Weren't realistic
paintings based on the conventions of central perspective good
enough?
Breaking down conventions gives a freedom to express feelings in
different ways. Carl Th. Dreyer once wrote5 that he was tired of
the fact that the grass was always green. That reality in itself isn't
art, only when it's made into a style. I don't think that the
confusion at the morning-conference in The Kingdom would have
been the same with continuity editing, nor the insecurity of Bess in
Breaking the Waves.
89
Bibliography:
Anderson, Joseph. The Reality of Illusion: An Ecological Approach to the Cognitive
Film Theory. Southern Illinois University Press, 1996.
Arnheim, Rudolph. Art and Visual Perception. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1954.
Aumont, Jacques. The Image. London: BFI, 1997.
Bordwell, David. Film Art: An introduction. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1979.
Bordwell, David. On the history af Film style. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1997.
Bottomore, Stephen. Shots in the Dark in: Elsaesser, Thomas (ed.). Space, frame,
narrative. London: BFI, 1990.
Carroll, Nol. "Toward a Theory of Film Editing," Millennium Film Journal no. 3,
1979.
Eisenstein, Sergei. Film Form and Film Sense. London: Faber and Faber, 1970.
Hjbjerg, Lennard. Visuel stil som reprsentation; in: Sekvens 1997.
Kimergrd, Lars Bo. Fresh Cuts; in: DOX #12, august 1997.
Kimergrd, Lars Bo. Tiden og det magiske mellemrum, in: Dansk Film #3,
November 1996.
Murch, Walter. In the Blink of an Eye. Australian Film, Television & Radio School,
1992.
Nilsen, Vladimir. The Cinema as a Graphic Art. New York: Hill and Wang, 1959.
Reisz, Karel and Gavin Millar. The Technique of Film Editing. London: Focal
Press, 1982.
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91
Term coined by the journalist Franoise Girard, who launched the expression
la nouvelle vague in the French newspaper L'Express on August 23rd 1957. The
term 'The New Wave' covers a group of rather diverse French film directors, all
of whom began making movies at about 1960. They had in common the fact
that they all made their debuts at this time, and that they all wished to develop
film as an art form under the slogan 'The Camera as Pen'. They wanted to
break with the film industry's standardized film language and use the camera
as personally as the writer used his pen. Directors generally thought of as
belonging to this New Wave include: Jean-Luc Godard, Franois Truffaut,
Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Alain Resnais, and Jacques
Demy.
p.o.v.
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progressing
continuity
and
are
often
experimental
and
93
Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, which won the 1976 Palme d 'Or at
Cannes, is one of the finest examples of this subdued modernism
which we find in the American movies of the 70s. The film was
written by Paul Schrader4 and stars Robert de Niro an actor
Scorsese has worked with often in the all-important lead role as
the taxi driver Travis Bickle.
In this essay I intend to look at urbanity, modernity, and
modernism in Taxi Driver. My focus will be on how the problems of
modernity are expressed through the aesthetics of the film. I will
look at the use of style, narration, and editing in an expressive and
modernistic context.
Urbanity, Modernity, and Modernism
Taxi Driver is a city film. It is about the city and human existence in
the city about how the city and the culture influence human life.
The cityscape of Taxi Driver is not idyllic; it is a city dominated by
unrest, noise, dirt and suffering, by a disintegrating culture. A city
in which man is lonely and alienated. A city where nature is absent.
A city modeled on Babylon rather than heavenly Jerusalem. The
city as an inferno.
example is Sergei Eisenstein's Strike (1924) in which intellectual montage is used
metaphorically, as when he cuts from the real plane of the film - the shooting of
the strikers - to the slaughter of cattle. In another instance, an orange is being
squeezed as a metaphor for the capitalist exploitation of the workers.
4
Apart from Taxi Driver, Paul Schrader has written the scripts of many famous
films, such as Raging Bull (1980), also for Scorsese, and Sidney Pollack's The
Yakuza (1975). Schrader has also directed a number of movies himself: Blue
Collar (1978), Hardcore (1979), American Gigolo (1980), Mishima (1986) and others,
and he has written on film theory in Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson,
Dreyer (University of California Press, 1972) and in articles on film noir.
p.o.v.
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of
modernity.
Urbanity
and
modernity
are
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of crime, drugs,
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logic is
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Protagonists keeping diaries are known from many movies, e.g. Robert
Bresson Journal dun Cur de Campagne (Diary of a Country Priest) 1950.
9 I discount the scenes from the presidential campaign, as Travis during these is
sitting in his taxi, looking in.
10
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and we see what he sees. But the city we see is in slow motion, it is
unreal and dreamlike. It is not the real city we see, but Travis'
experience of the city that is illustrated. The city of the film works
expressively as an image of Travis' mounting paranoia.
The aesthetics and narrativity of the film rather resembles a dream.
In general the editing is slow, with a lot of dissolves instead of cuts.
This dream-like quality is something that Scorsese purposely aims
at. He explains:11
Much of Taxi Driver arose from my feeling that movies are really a
kind of dream-state, or like taking dope. And the shock of walking
out of the theatre into broad daylight can be terrifying. I watch
movies all the time and I am also very bad at waking up. The film
was like that for me - that state of being almost awake.
In the film this is advanced by its constant blend of the very realistic
and the expressive. The film is narrated both with a camera outside
of Travis, and a camera within Travis, but both pass on Travis'
experiences and feeling to the viewer. About this Kolker writes:12
the world created by Taxi Driver exists only within its own space, a
space which is formed by the state of mind of its central actor, in that
strange double perception in which the viewer sees the world the
way the character sees it and sees the character himself, thereby
permitting both proximity and separation.
In a way the film is very realistic, it hasn't been shot in any artificial
settings, but in the real world. When you watch it you get the
feeling that the city life it depicts is real. But at the same time, the
what he sees, e.g. a beautiful woman. Finally, to emphasize the point, you can
cut back to the person. Now he is perhaps smiling.
11 Martin Scorsese, Scorsese on Scorsese (London: Faber & Faber, 1989), p. 54.
12 Robert Phillip Kolker, A Cinema of Loneliness: Penn, Kubrick, Scorsese,
Spielberg, Altman. (Oxford University Press, 1988; orig. pub. 1980), pp. 186-87.
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realistic ingredients, such as the taxi in the first scene of the film,
work expressively, as it runs in slow motion. From the presentation
of the taxi a cut is made, as mentioned above, to the eyes of Travis
watching the street. The eyes are filmed at normal speed. They are
looking back and forth, as if they are seeing something. In the next
shot we see what Travis has been watching, the street, recorded in
slow motion. This could indicate that what Travis sees is what is
shown in slow motion, but it is not quite that simple. For the taxi in
the first shot was also in slow motion, and often Travis is seen
moving at that speed, perhaps to emphasize a contrast to the other
people, who move at ordinary speed, as for instance in the night
cafeteria scenes, or perhaps merely to lend an ominous feeling of
incidents about to happen in the film.
In Taxi Driver there is both an outer and an inner expression, both
an explicit and an implicit narrator, but the point is that the film as a
whole, through the editing, is quietly woven together into Travis'
personal experience of the city.
In the editing of Taxi Driver a lot of attention is given to P.O.V. The
editing is mainly orchestrated through P.O.V. shots with the
protagonist Travis as starting point, but a surprising number of
P.O.V. shots from the viewpoint of other characters of the film are
in evidence. In this film, perception and psyche are bound up with
the multitude of the city, connected to modernity's emphasis on the
individual's perception and the individual's severance from former
social taxonomy. The changing P.O.V.s confuse and enhance the
feeling of fragmentation, of paranoia. An example of the changing
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the film we learn that he has got a family somewhere, but that he is
utterly out of contact with them.
Travis becomes a taxi driver, and we quickly learn that he is the
epitome of the isolated city-man, lonely and incapable of communicating with the world around him. This is also why he keeps a
diary: to have at least somebody to communicate with, even if that
is just himself. There are many examples of this lack of ability to
communicate, e.g. the scene when he approaches the father figure
Wizard for advice, and trouble arises from the fact that they are
talking about two different things. All in all, it is not very strange
that Wizard at the end of the conversation says "What do I know, I
don't even know what you're talking about."
A part of Travis' problem is purely linguistic; in the majority of the
longer conversations in the film some linguistic misunderstandings
are present. For example, in the introductory scene. Travis does
not know what 'moonlighting' means, and in the scene with Betsy
in the cafeteria, neither understands what the other means by
'organize'.
As already shown, Travis is a person with severe modernity
problems. His loneliness and ostracism are filmically depicted, for
instance in the scene with the other taxi drivers and the
dialogue-scene with Betsy, in both of which he is sitting alone, with
the thick line of a window frame between him and the people he is
talking to. It is no accident, either, that in the dialogue scene with
Betsy he is practically always shot alone, while she is filmed over his
shoulder, so that when he is in the picture, he is alone, but
whenever she is visible, there are two persons.
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Modernistic aesthetics
Above I have presented some examples of how the aesthetics of
Taxi Driver - with a starting point in the portrayal of Travis'
personal experience of the world - are built up around the themes
of modernity within the film. It is interesting that the aesthetics of
the film, on many levels, more or less explicitly communicate
modernity problems. Of course, this is done in a more subdued
manner than is the case for instance with Godard, but there are
also examples of a more explicit modernism in the aesthetics of Taxi
Driver. In closing I will present three examples of how Travis'
modernity trouble is described via the editing of the film. The first
example is the series of quick, almost rhythmical shots of flashing
lights seen after Travis has been thrown out of the campaign office.
To fully understand the examples it is necessary to explore the
relation in which they appear.
For Travis the world is divided into two groups, "the scum" and
"the people". He hates "the scum": the dirt, the whores, the gays.
He wants to be what is commonly associated with decent and
normal, he wants to belong to "the people". As he says: "I believe
that someone should become a person like other people." He tries to
fit in with 'the people' by taking Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) out; she
works for the presidential candidate Palentine, whose slogan is "We
are the people". Travis tells about how he has seen Betsy, and has
fallen for her because she is like an angel in all the dirt. Later we see
him spying on her, until he is removed by a male campaign worker.
The next shot of the film is of a stoplight. Travis cannot get any
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further; it is understood that his life has become tangled up and that
he does not know what to do. He drives around, and at a point he
sees a couple kissing and observes them with interest. It is as if
Travis thinks to himself, Why can they when I can't? Afterwards he
drives on, and there are many quick shots of green traffic lights. We
are in his head, in the movie, and while it is not explicitly shown, we
and he suspect possibilities in connection with Betsy, if he dares. In
this scene it is the editing that illustrates his optimism concerning his
project with Betsy.
The next example is the strange dolly movement during the
telephone conversation in which Betsy rejects Travis. This, too,
must be seen in context.
Travis tries to court Betsy. A complete stranger, he walks into the
campaign office and asks her out. All over the office are posters
with the slogan "We are the people". And they are the people, as
opposed to Travis, who in this scene seems strange and out of
place compared with the people in the office. He is not one of 'the
people'. This is also why his date with Betsy turns into a failure. He
does not know what is expected of him, he has to guess. When he
invites her to the cinema, everything goes wrong. He takes her to
see a porno movie (some Swedish sexual education film) and she
leaves the cinema in anger. Travis does not understand this, as
there are many couples in the theater for this film. His standards
are different from those of the rest of society. The scene in which
he calls Betsy to be unequivocally told that their relationship is over,
is a central one. Here the modernity problems are brought forth by
not cutting to Travis, which traditionally would be done, but by
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14
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107
Bibliography
Bataille, Georges. Den hovedlse. rhus: Anis, 1984.
Baudelaire, Charles. Le peintre de la vie moderne,(1863). Oeuvres
compltes. Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1982.
Bordwell, David and Thompson, Kristin. Film Art : An Introduction.
(1979). New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997.
Connelly, Marie Katheryn. Martin Scorsese: An Analysis of His Feature
Films, With a Filmography of His Entire Directorial Career.
Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Compagny, 1993.
Ehrenstein, David. The Art and Life of Martin Scorsese. New York:
Birch Lane Press, 1992.
Katz, Ephraim. The Macmillan International Film Encyclopedia, New
York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1994.
Keyser, Les.Martin Scorsese. New York: Twayne, 1992.
Kolker, Robert Phillip. A Cinema of Loneliness. Penn, Kubrick, Scorsese,
Spielberg, Altman. 1980. Second edition. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1988.
Kyndrup, Morten. Det postmoderne - om betydningens forandring i
kunst, litteratur, samfund. Kbenhavn: Gyldendal, 1986.
Larsen , Peter Harms. Faktion. Kbenhavn: Amanda, 1990
McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. New York: Methuen, 1993.
Pedersen, Lars. Filmen, byen og taxichauffren, Storbyens rum
(srnummer af tvrfags skriftsserie Prismer). rhus: rhus
Universitet, 1993.
Pye, Michael & Myles, Lynda. The Movie Brats; How the Film
Generation Took Over Hollywood. New York: Holt, Reinhardt and
Winston, 1979.
Schepelern, Peter (Ed.). Filmleksikon. Kbenhavn: MunksgaardRosinante, 1995
Schrader, Poul. Taxi Driver. London: Faber and Faber Limited,
1990.
Scorsese, Martin. Scorsese on Scorsese. London: Faber and Faber,
1989.
Siska, William Charles. Modernism in the Narrative Film: The Art Film
as a Genre. New York: Arno Press, 1980.
Stern, Lesly. The Scorsese Connection. London: British Film Institute,
1995.
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109
Closing arias:
Operatic montage in the closing sequences of the
trilogies of Coppola and Leone
Scott MacKenzie
In this essay, I wish to re-address the ways in which one can
conceptualize montage and mise-en-scne functioning in relation to
the creation of textual meaning in the cinema. To this end, I shall
address the way in which some combinations of montage and miseen-scne can create a mode of visuality which can only be
understood through adherence to a notion of cinematic specificity.
More specifically, I shall posit that certain films contain what I shall
call "operatic montage," a form of montage which manipulates
temporal and spatial relations in film, typically to melodramatic ends.
To undertake this analysis, I shall briefly examine the closing
sequences of Sergio Leone's The Man With No Name or Dollars
trilogy and Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather trilogy, both of
which employ strategies of montage and mise-en-scne which both
elongate and compress time to an extraordinary degree and,
combined with the musical score, produce a visual and temporal
experiencebased on accentuation and distortionwhich can only be
found in the cinema. The style of editing employed in these films I
call "operatic montage." In the case of both trilogies, the culminating
scenes contain stylistic elements which have operatic qualities,
reflected in the films formal elements, that cannot be simply
explained in terms of the realism of mise-en-scne or the 'plasticity' of
montage. Instead, it is the synthetic relationship between montage
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and mise-en-scne which give these scenes their power. The closing
sequences of both trilogies engage in a heightened, melodramatic
quasi-realism that is typical of opera; further, the instances of
"operatic montage" come at the end of films which concern
themselves with leitmotifsrevenge, greed, fratricide, forbidden
lovethat can be seen as staples of operatic narrative. But, to a
large degree, it is the editing strategies employed at the conclusion
of these films that accentuate the operatic qualities of the narrative.
111
and
movements
such
as
neo-realism
as
forms
Sergei Eisenstein, "Word and Image" in Eisenstein, The Film Sense. trans. Jay
Leyda (New York: Harcourt, 1947), p. 11.
of
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Andr Bazin, "The Ontology of the Photographic Image" in Bazin, What is Cinema?
vol. 1. trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 13-14.
113
the
114
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Nol Simsolo, Conversations avec Sergio Leone (Paris: Stock, 1987), p. 129.
115
Country (1962) and John Ford's The Searchers (1956) and The Man
Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) had begun to redefine the western
narrative in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it was Leone who
transformed the genre, by foregrounding and exaggerating the
dual roles of violence and mythology.
A Fistful of Dollars is a case in point. The film appropriates the plot
of Akira Kurosawa's Samurai film Yojimbo (Japan, 1961); indeed, the
concluding scenes of the Leone film seem to be story-boarded from
Kurosawa's earlier epic. Nevertheless, in the conclusion of A Fistful
of Dollars, we can also see the development of Leone's editing
strategy; Leone segments the iconographic parts of the western
hero's bodythe spurs, the guninto concise shots, cut together
rapidly. This process of segmentation allows the viewer to not only
seein a tight close-upthe preparation of the men as they wait to
draw, but also allows for Leone to build suspense, in a nonnaturalized manner, while at the same time foregrounding the
violence that is about to occur. That the style of the scene is antirealist only adds to the intensity, as the viewer's position jumps
from one iconographic image to another. The final showdown only
breaks from this approach once, and it is the least effective part of
the sequence. At one point, after the villain, Ramone (Gian Maria
Volont) is shot, Leone uses a point-of-view shot which attempts to
represent the antagonist's vision as he falls to the ground. This shot
is the least successful of the sequence, proving that the cinematic
and temporal space created by the combination of mise-en-scne and
montage is much more effective than the attempt to duplicate the
visual field of a character. In his phenomenological account of the
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Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "The Film and the New Psychology" in Merleau-Ponty, Sense
and Non-Sense. trans. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus (Chicago:
Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 58.
117
More, time itself plays a key role: both in terms of the narrative and
in relation to the final showdown between The Man With No Name
(Clint Eastwood), The Colonel (Lee Van Cleef) and El Indio (Gian
Maria Volont). As the final showdown occurs, Indio produces a
pocket-watch which both gives the amount of time until the shootout can begin ("when the chimes end, pick up your gun and shoot
me Colonel. Just try") and as a connotative link to the flashback
earlier in the filmwhere Indio rapes the Colonel's sister, which
leads to her suicidewhich gives For a Few Dollars More its narrative
trajectory. The conclusion of the film applies the same principles of
montage to the showdown as found in A Fistful of Dollars;
however, this time the elongation of time and the accentuation on
when
the
showdown
use of
the
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119
has a strongly operatic quality to it. As Harlan Lebo notes that: "[ .
. . ] in the film's exploration of the Corleone family, behind the
laughter, the bonding, and the dynamic personalities, every human
encounter in The Godfather was a portrait of treachery."6
It is this dualism between family and violence that, on a narrative
level, foregrounds the operatic nature of the narrative. Yet, it is the
use of montage that changes the trilogy from a series of films which
incorporate operatic qualities into narrative to a group of works
which, on a formal level, develop an operatic equivalent in the
cinema. For instance, the conclusion to The Godfather, Part One
weaves together two narratives: the baptism of Michael Corleone's
(Al Pacino) godson, and the murder of the Corleone family's
enemies. The conclusion to the film offers us insight into the ways in
which montage and mise-en-scne can be used together in order to
create both tension and a trans-temporal narrative flow. As William
Simon notes: "The most basic notion suggested by this intercutting
is that the shooting of rivals and the baptism are happening
simultaneously. However, the complexity of the structuring goes
far beyond the parallel editing principle."7 While Coppola's use of
parallel editing is far more advanced than most of his Hollywood
contemporaries, it is the synthetic relationship between narrative
and form that he develops which give the scenes their true power.
As Peter Cowie notes:
Harlan Lebo, The Godfather Legacy (New York: Fireside, 1997), p. 38.
William Simon, "An Analysis of the Structure of The Godfather, Part One" in R.
Barton Palmer, ed. The Cinematic Text: Methods and Approaches (New York: AMS
Press, 1989), p.113.
7
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Mascagni's
Cavalleria
Rusticana,
in
the
revenge-filled
121
his
mistress
Lola.
Meanwhile,
122
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123
124
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Bibliography
Baldelli, Pio. "Western l'italienne," Image et son 206 (1967): 31-42.
Baudry, Pierre. "L'idologie du western italien," Cahiers du cinma 233 (nov.
1971): 55-56.
Bazin, Andr. "The Ontology of the Photographic Image" in Bazin, What is
Cinema? vol. I. trans. Hugh Grey (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1967): 9-16.
Cowie, Peter. Coppola. London: Faber, 1990.
Cowie, Peter. The Godfather Book. London: Faber, 1997.
Eisenstein, Sergei. "Word and Image" in Eisenstein, The Film Sense. trans. Jay
Leyda (New York: Harcourt, 1947): 3-68.
Ferrini, Franco. "Leone spiega se stesso," Bianco e Nero 9/10 (1971): 37-42.
Frayling, Christopher. Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May
to Sergio Leone. London: Routledge, 1981.
Graziani, Sandro. "Western italiano-western americano," Bianco e Nero 9/10
(1970): 80-92.
Gressard, Gilles. Sergio Leone. Paris: ditions J'ai lu, 1989.
Jameson, Richard T. "Something to do With Death: A Fistful of
Sergio
Leone," Film Comment 9/2 (1973): 8-16.
Lebo, Harlan. The Godfather Legacy. New York: Fireside, 1997.
Lewis, John. Whom God Wishes to Destroy: Francis Coppola and the New Hollywood.
Durham: Duke University Press, 1995.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. "The Film and the New Psychology" in MerleauPonty, Sense and Non-Sense. trans. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen
Dreyfus (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1964): 48-59.
Simon, William. "An Analysis of the Structure of The Godfather, Part One" in R.
Barton Palmer, ed. The Cinematic Text: Methods and Approaches (New York:
AMS Press, 1989): 101-117.
Simsolo, Nol. Conversations avec Sergio Leone. Paris: Stock, 1987.
Wallington, Mike. "A Concordance," Cinema 6/7 (1970): 32-34.
125
126
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p.o.v.
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Cinema Paradiso
(1988),
where
the
protagonist
Terence Davies' third and latest full-length movie, The Neon Bible (1995), is
based on the novel by John Kennedy Toole. Once again, Davies takes up the
theme of the joys and problems of childhood and family life, but this time the
film is set in the USA, and for the first time Davies tells a linear story without
temporal jumps.
129
to
the
present,
in-between.
Secondly,
Davies'
memories
are
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The woman stops by the foot of the stairs calling out to her
children with an extremely soft voice: "It's seven o'clock, you
three!" (Fig. 3). The mother enters the kitchen while the camera
131
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
132
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133
shot in Distant Voices, where Terence Davies works with noncoordinated layers of the past, is exemplary in that respect.
The shot of the empty hall is set in motion when the voice-over of
the mother starts singing I Get the Blues When It's Raining. Slowly
the camera moves into the hall, to the staircase where it turns 180
degrees, untill the (now closed) front door is framed (Fig. 5).
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
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Fig. 9
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Fig. 10
135
136
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Suddenly the father gets up and in a fit of rage tears the table cloth
from the table, scattering both food and chinaware (Fig. 14).
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13
Fig. 14
Sculpting in Time
In this context, memories do thus not constitute a nostalgic
supermarket in which you can self-consciously go shopping.
Memories form an electric field in which wires connect criss-cross,
creating unforeseeable and interesting clashes, as can be seen in e.g.
Still Lives, where Davies cuts from a medium close-up of Maisie and
Eileen crying in the cinema (Fig. 15), while watching the tear jerker
Love is a Many-Splendoured Thing, to a high-angle shot looking
straight down on a glass roof (Fig. 16). Then Tony and Maisie's
husband fall in slow-motion through the roof to the theme from
137
Fig. 15
Fig. 16
Fig. 17
Fig. 18
of
pictures
director
Andrey
Tarkovsky
has
termed
138
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December 1998
when [...] not only does it live within time, but time also lives within
it, even within each separate frame." (Tarkovsky, p. 68).
Like Tarkovsky, Terence Davies erects through his movies "a vast
edifice of memories" (Proust). He sculpts time as Tarkovsky would
put it. But contrary to the labyrinthine and truly mysterious movies
by Tarkovsky and Resnais, in Davies there is always a possibility of
retrospectively constructing a fabula, even though this fabula turns
out to be rather jumpy and imperfect. Furthermore, Davies works
with cyclic structures (and well-defined thematic pivots) which
perhaps to an even larger extent than the linear structures are able
to invest a movie with a characteristic form:
The film constantly turns back on itself, like the ripples in a pool when
a stone is thrown into it. The ripples are memory. But above and
beyond this are the enduring constancy of my mother, juxtaposed
with the enduring, malign influence of my father. These twin themes
permeate the entire film (Davies, p. xi).
memories of
139
Bibliography
Davies, Terence. A Modest Pageant. Six Screenplays with an
Introduction. London: Faber and Faber, 1992.
Dessau, Frederik. "Kunsten at huske". Tusind jne vol. 14, no. 117,
1989.
Kennedy, Harlan. "Familiar Haunts". Film Comment vol. 24,
September-October 1988, pp. 13-18.
Nielsen, Niels Aage. "Tarkovskij: Skulptur i Tiden". Kosmorama 184,
vol. 34, summer 1988.
Tarkovsky, Andrey. Sculpting in Time. London: Faber and Faber
Limited, 1989, orig. pub. 1986.
Tygstrup, Frederik. "Bevgelser i rum og rid". Tusind jne vol. 12,
no. 103, 1987.
140
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141
142
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2
2
When asked in 1983 about the "new wave" directors, Autant-Lara said: "I
established the professional foundations for this metier in which these young
gentlemen made themselves at home while throwing us out." For the entire
interview conducted by Ren Prdal, see Claude Autant-Lara, "La nouvelle
vague: un prjudice norme," in La nouvelle vague 25 ans aprs, edited by JeanLuc Douin (Paris: Les ditions du Cerf, 1983), pp. 203-207.
143
3
According to an account given by Godard himself, the elliptical
editing of Breathless resulted from a need to reduce the length of
the film, but not under circumstances like those described by
Autant-Lara. While Godard refers to a contractual necessity for
eliminating up to an hour of the film's running time, he makes no
mention in this account of undue pressure on the part of the
producer, nor of any wish on his own part to preserve the film in
its original length of 135-150 minutes. If anything, he appears to
consider the original version of the film to have been too long as a
result of his own inexperience, and the requirement to shorten the
film as fully justified:
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...first films are always very long. Since after thirty years [of living],
people try to put everything into their first film. So they're always very
long. And I was no exception to the rule. I had made a film that lasted
two and a quarter or two and a half hours; and it was impossible, the
contract specified that the running time not exceed an hour and a half.
And I remember very clearly... how I invented this famous way of
cutting, that is now used in commercials: we took all the shots and
systematically cut out whatever could be cut, while trying to maintain
some rhythm. For example, Belmondo and Seberg had a sequence in a
car at a certain moment; and there was a shot of one, then a shot of the
other, as they spoke their lines. And when we came to this sequence,
which had to be shortened like the others, instead of slightly shortening
both, the editor and I flipped a coin; we said: 'Instead of slightly
shortening one and then slightly shortening the other, and winding up
with short little shots of both of them, we're going to cut out four
minutes by eliminating one or the other altogether, and then we will
simply join the [remaining] shots, like that, as though it were a single
shot. Then we drew lots as to whether it should be Belmondo or Seberg
and Seberg remained... 5
The scene described here may be the one in which Belmondo's offscreen lines are:
Alas! Alas! Alas! I love a girl who has a very pretty neck, very pretty
breasts, a very pretty voice, very pretty wrists, a very pretty
forehead, very pretty knees... but who is a coward.
145
146
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4
Other commentators have seen in the jump cuts a cinematic
expression of qualities embodied by the character played by JeanPaul Belmondo: Michel Poiccard, alias Laszlo Kovacs, who has no
pangs of conscience whatsoever when he kills a motorcycle
policeman in cold blood or knocks a man unconscious in a public
lavatory in order to supply himself with some needed cash.
147
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5
Godard's jump cuts have also been seen as part of a new esthetic, a
radical departure from worn-out modes of cinematic discourse, and
an attempt to carry out within the film medium revolutionary
developments found in other arts.
For an anonymous reviewer in Time, Godard brought cubism into
the language of film:
More daringly cubistic is the manner in which Godard has assembled
his footage. Every minute or so, sometimes every few seconds, he has
chopped a few feet out of the film, patched it together again without
transition. The story can still be followed, but at each cut the film jerks
ahead with a syncopated impatience that aptly suggests and stresses
the compulsive pace of the hero's downward drive. More subtly, the
trick also distorts, rearranges, relativizes time much as Picasso
manipulated space in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. All meaningful
continuity is bewildered... 9
149
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150
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151
2) a devious attempt on
152
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153
Works cited
Autant-Lara, Claude. "La nouvelle vague: un prjudice norme," in La nouvelle
vague 25 ans aprs, edited by Jean-Luc Douin. Paris: Les ditions du Cerf,
1983; pp. 203-207.
Benayoun, Robert. "Breathless," Positif 46 (June 1962), p. 27.
Croce, Arlene. "Breathless," Film Quarterly (Spring 1961), pp. 54-56.
Crowther, Bosley. "Breathless," The New York Times (February 8, 1961).
Durand, Philippe. Cinma et montage un art de l'llipse. Paris: Cerf, 1993.
Godard, Jean-Luc. Introduction une vritable histoire du cinma. Paris: Albatros,
1980.
Goldmann, Annie. Cinma et socit moderne. Paris: Denol/Gonthier,
1971/1974.
Gow, Gordon. "Breathless," Films and Filming (August 1961), p. 25.
Houston, Penelope. The Contemporary Cinema. Baltimore: Penguin, 1969; orig.
pub. 1963.
Moullet, Luc. "Jean-Luc Godard," Cahiers du cinma (April 1960), pp. 25-36.
Unsigned. "Cubistic Crime," Time (February 17, 1961), p. 56.
154
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155
156
p.o.v.
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Steve (Alan Alda) is having his heart checked by Dr. Hutton (Veronica Hamel).
Whenever she puts her hand on his shoulder while listening to his heartbeat,
Steve's pulse accelerates dramatically, only to slow down again whenever she
removes her hand. She suspects that this is happening, and smiles to herself when
her hypothesis is confirmed.
Having passed out when amniotic fluid was taken from his wife's uterus, and
unable to cope with preparations for giving birth, Steve is asked moments after
the birth: "Daddy, would you like to cut the cord?" At this moment of decision,
he manages to overcome his fears.
157
158
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ones who set the agenda for the men, to a very large degree. They aren't just parts of a
man's story, they shape their own stories. I learned just a few days ago that youve
been very active in campaigning for womens rights, 1and I assume that theres a
connection between that and the roles you give to women in your stories.
Alda campaigned extensively for 10 years for the passage of the Equal Rights
Amendment and in 1976, was appointed by President Gerald Ford to serve on
the National Commission for the Observance of International Women's Year.
159
160
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that you think is generally the case? That a story is generally one characters more than
any others? Or do you think that stories can also be shared just about equally?
161
162
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acting and good directing. And if the writer hasnt given the
character a strong want, something that theyre endeavoring to
accomplish, the actor is lost. You cant make it up with being cute or
charming. You have to find some way to bring that to it.
Its especially difficult when the author thinks it doesnt really
matter that they give you dialogue to say thats just expository.
Theyre really just giving the audience information, and theyre
making the actor be the messenger boy, the Western Union
delivery person. It shouldnt be permitted. There should be an
artistic law against that, because its boring and its demeaning to
the actor. The actor can bring so much life to to it if the actor has
somethng to achieve, something to accomplish, and in the course of
accomplishing it, gets the authors exposition across.
To me, one of the best examples of that are the opening lines in
Othello: Its a fight about something. Roderigo says to Iago:
Tush, I take it much unkindly that thou, Iago,
who hast held my pursestrings as thy very own,
should treat me thus.
Roderigo has been giving him money so that hell advance his cause
with Othello, and he doesnt think Iago is using the money right,
and Iago is saying: No, are you kidding, Im helping you, Im
helping you! and tries to show him, tries to convince him hes
helping him. So in the first couple of lines of dialogue, youve got a
want expressed. He wants his money back or he wants his moneys
worth. And the other guy is trying to convince him to keep giving
him money. And in the course of convincing him, we learn
everything we need to know about who Othello is, who Iago is,
and whats been happening up until the curtain went up. Thats
much better than the maid picking up the phone and saying:
Master isnt home now. He drove to Philadelphia. He should be
back in two days. And the Mrs. has been drinking too much
lately. This bald faced exposition is not only boring, its an affront.
Whereas if you can keep it active, its fun for everybody. Its fun
163
for the actors to play, and the audience doesnt even know youre
telling them stuff. Its carried on the back of this active animal.
Thats what I try to do. Those are ways in which I consciously try to
tell stories.
What do you see as hardest thing about telling stories in film?
There are a number of things, but one of the first that comes to
mind is the tension between the need to tell things visually and the
use of words. There is a real pleasure in language that we all
experience. And a pure silent movie without language isnt as
satisfying as good visual storytelling supported by rich language.
But its difficult to get the right balance. And it depends on the
kind of story youre telling and the kind of audience that will
probably come and see it.
And there are some films that are delicious and almost completely
verbal and hardly visual at all, in the conventional sense anyway,
like a couple of Eric Rohmer movies that I can remember, and My
Dinner with Andr [Louis Malle, 1981]. One of the most wonderful
movies Ive ever seen is Wally Shawns movie that Mike Nichols is
in? You have to see it. Its gorgeous. The people sit at a table and
talk to the camera. They dont even talk to each other. But its
brilliant! Mike Nichols gives a performance like nothing Ive ever
seen on the screen. The Designated Mourner its called. It was a play
that they did in London and then made a film out of it. Its brilliant
and it breaks most of the rules I just told you about. (Laughter.)
I think when youre really honest, you keep discovering exceptions to your own rules.
And its good. And I think its good to shake things up and try to
do things in a way youve never done them before.
I love it, what they say in their [Dogma] manifesto: From now on,
I renounce being an artist and I give up artistic taste and sthetic
considerations. I cant wait to see that movie, The Celebration,
because it sounds like an interesting movie. I think its really a good
idea to reconsider everything every once in a while.
May I ask what comes easiest to you in the storytelling process?
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I love dialogue. And that's why I feel tension between that and the
visual. When I was about twelve, I started playing with a movie
camera, shooting silent movies in my backyard. So I've always
loved telling stories through imagery too. But it was only a few
years later as a teenager that I was sitting on trains, when my
father was doing a play in Philadelphia he was trying out Guys
and Dolls and I would take the train down to Philadelphia to see
him. And on the way, I'd be writing down conversations I was
overhearing, trying to learn how people spoke. We all think we
know how people speak, but if you actually copy down a real
conversation, you find ellipses and repetitions that you're not
aware of when you're in a real conversation. And they're
fascinating. You can hear the brain working. And you can hear
what the people really desire of one another, that they may not
even be aware of themselves. So I would copy down those
conversations, and I had been reading Hemingway and Gertrude
Stein and had, I thought, learned something from the way they
listened to the way people talked. Especially Gertrude Stein. And
since then, I've given a lot of thought to it and I'm really interested
in the way people speak in short bursts, with a lot of repetititon.
And each repetition is a burst of its own, with its own energy. It's
like little packets of information. People don't speak in paragraphs.
And I think there's a lot I've learned about that from Shakespeare
too, because every clause of Shakespeare, and every clause within a
clause, is so difficult to parse. That's possibly just another way of
writing down the packets of thought that are being communicated.
There are probably very believable and recognizable familiar ways
to say that, that we think we can't do because we think we have to
make it clear in some other way. People are always parsing it
vocally instead of saying: what if this had been written down
verbatum on a train to Philadelphia? What was the person going
through when they said it? Now obviously people didn't speak in
iambic pentameter on the train to Philadelphia. But even if they had
been, they probably would have spoken in bursts. And I think you
have to find out where those little impulses come from.
I am fascinated with dialogue. I wouldn't say it comes easily to me,
so much as I just love it. So I have to make sure I don't get buried
in it.
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What do you see as the worst mistakes a beginning screenwriter can make when telling
a story? And is there any advice that you would want to give student filmmakers about
their storytelling?
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Another thing to watch out for is thinking you can impose on the
audience and they won't mind. They might not mind, but they'll get
tired of you and they'll leave. By impose on them, I mean: give
them a whole lot of exposition that's not active and not playable,
but just sort of "the daily news" about this character. It's tiresome
for an audience.
Those are just a couple of things. There are plenty of other things
for beginners to think about. But something that I don't think I've
heard anybody else say about what to look for in a beginning film
that I've noticed in most beginning films that I've seen, is that there
is almost always a moment in the film that's crucial to your
understanding what the film is about. And very often, that moment
isn't clear. The filmmaker knows what it means, and the audience
doesn't. And if you say to the filmmaker: "You know, this moment
doesn't work. Why don't you just cut it out?", the filmmaker will
grab his or her hair and say: "What do you mean? That's the whole
picture! That's where he decides to give the secrets to the Nazis..."
And you say: "But it's not there. You haven't shown that." He says
but that what he's thinking. So I say: "Then make him do something
that let's me know what he's thinking because I can't tell."
It's amazing how difficult it is, especially in the crucial moments, to
make it clear what's happening. I think you have to be able to say
to yourself: "Why is this shot here? What do I think is happening in
this shot? Is it really happening?" And you need to be able to take
it when somebody says to you: "That's not what I see happening."
You need then to go back and re-shoot it, and make it happen."
It may also be that you're trying to squeeze too much into it. You
need sometimes to be very simple about it and break it down into
simple steps so that people get it.
It's tricky because on the one hand, all art is more affecting the
more compressed it is. On the other hand, sometimes the more
compressed it is, the more confusing and obfuscated it is. So have
to just hit that right balance, or come in at the right angle, so that
you're not telling them everything, you're not telling them what
they already know, and yet you're telling them enough so they
know what's going on. They should be able to follow the story.
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And we're just talking about following the story. We haven't even
gotten into what does the story add up to, what does it mean. Are
there levels of meaning in it?
There's a wonderful movie that just came out here called Smoke
Signals the first movie written, directed and acted by Native
Americans ("Indians"). In that movie, the writer and the director
are able to take an image of a father and a son and allow it to mean
a half a dozen different things. They mean the actual psychological
relationship between the father and the son; they mean the
sociological implications of fathers and sons who behave like that
toward each other; they mean the religious, spiritual relationship of
us to our forefathers; and they mean the relationship between us
and the earth as the father or the father-mother... I mean it's just
amazing how, by virtue of the images that you see, and the way
the images are cut together, with not much dialogue and no stating
of the theme, literally, just by the way the images come at you and
how they're juxtaposed with one another, you get this layered
meaning. And that makes it tremendously satisfying sthetically,
intellectually. And yet it's completely understandable on a base level
of storytelling, of what happened to this boy and his father,
between him and his father. It's really good storytelling. I hope you
get a chance to talk to both of those people: to Duvall, and the
guys who made Smoke Signals. I think that they're both really good
examples of storytelling in film.
New York, 12 October 1998
p.o.v.
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169
The next issue of p.o.v. (number 7, March 1999) will focus on the
short films to be presented by their directors at the 4th
International Short Film Symposium to be held at the University of
Aarhus:
Marianne Olsen Ulrichsen's KOM (Norway, 1995)
Brad McGann's POSSUM (New Zealand, 1997)
and
Ariel Gordon's GOODBYE MOM (Mexico, 1997)
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171
The Contributors
Claus Christensen
Born in 1964. Completing his MA at the Institute of Scandinavian Studies,
University of Aarhus, on the representation of evil in mass media in the 1990s.
Teaches film at Testrup Hjskole. Film reviewer for rhus Stiftstidende. Articles
in Kosmorama, Dansk Film, Levende Billeder and a number of Danish newspapers.
Edvin Kau
Born in 1947. Ph.D., assoc. prof., Department of Information and Media Science,
University of Aarhus. Teaches film and television theory and media analysis.
Has written books and a number of articles on literature; multimedia; film
history, theory, and analysis. Books include Filmen i Danmark (Danish film
industry from the advent of sound till the 80'ties, with Niels Jrgen Dinnesen, 1983),
and Dreyer's Film Art (1989).
Lars Bo Kimergrd
Born in 1963. MA in film studies from the University of Copenhagen, 1992.
Free-lance film editor, Assistant Lecturer at the Department of Film and Media
Studies, University of Copenhagen. Publications on Carl Th. Dreyer, Lars von
Trier, documentary and film editing.
Sren Kolstrup
Born in 1936, assoc. prof. Teaches textual analysis at the Department of
Information and Media Science, University of Arhus, and visual analysis at
Danish School of Journalism. Articles in Mediekultur, Mscope and ReCall.
Mark LeFanu
Born in 1950. M.A. in literature (Cambridge University). Teaches film history at
the European Film College in Ebeltoft. Contributor to Positif and (in the 1980s)
to Sight and Sound. Author of The Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky (BFI Books,
1987). Currently preparing a book on Kenji Mizoguchi.
Scott MacKenzie.
Born 1967. PhD, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Dept. of Theatre, Film and Television
Studies, University of Glasgow. Teaches Canadian and Qubcois cinemas,
documentary film and video, theories of national cinemas, alternative media
and television history. Previously taught at McGill University (Montral). Most
recently published in Public, Cinaction and The Canadian Journal of Film Studies.
Co-editor (with Mette Hjort) of Cinema and Nation: Interdisciplinary Approaches to
Nationalism and National Identity (Routledge, forthcoming). Presently completing
a book-length study of Qubcois cinema, discourses of national identity and
the alternative public sphere.
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Sidsel Mundal
Born 1951. Cand.Mag. At present: staff training consultant and director/
producer at the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. Worked as film and
video editor for many years. Taught editing at the European Film College in
Ebeltoft, 1997-98.
Richard Raskin
Born 1941, New York. Dr.phil., assoc. prof. Teaches video production at the
Department of Information and Media Studies, University of Aarhus. Articles in
such journals as Zeitschrift fr Kunstgeschichte, Folklore, and Film History. Books
include: The Functional Analysis of Art (1982), Nuit et Brouillard (1987), and Life is
Like a Glass of Tea: Studies of Classic Jewish Jokes (1992). Has served as president of
the jury at international short film and video festivals in France and Belgium in
1997 and 1998, as "official observer" at the International Short Film Festival in
Clermont-Ferrand (1998) and as member of the international jury at the
Odense Film Festival in 1998.
Martin Weinreich
Born 1969. Currently completing an M.A. thesis on Lars von Trier at the
Department of Scandinavian Language and Literature at the Department of
Information and Media Studies at the University of Aarhus. Has worked for
Danish television (DR) as a director and on more than ten short films, often
both as director, producer and writer. Participant in Artgenda 98 in Stockholm,
the second biennial of young artists around the Baltic Sea.
Vinca Wiedemann.
Born 1959. Educated as film editor at The Danish Film School 1986. Teacher at
the film school since 1990. Since 1995 script and editing consultant for among
others Susanne Bier, Jesper Jargil and Christian Braad Thomsen, and on theatre
for Katrine Wiedemann. Is currently writing a screenplay for a Morten Korch
feature film in collaboration with Lars von Trier, and is the producer of Jesper
Jargil's documentary trilogy about Lars von Trier's artistic universe.