>>True, although I wonder if an "idea" transmitted by continuity cutting
>>is qualitatively similar to the sorts of "idea" being decoded in your
>>example
very interesting question -- as was everything else in jim flannery's
note . . . actually i was thinking less of cutting in conventional
continuity editing [though the point certainly applies there as well]
and more about the kind of more provocative juxtapositions that
a clever director/editor can create . . . to wit: in MARNIE, hitchcock
has old man strut refer to the attractive woman who has just
robbed him . . . rutland [sean connery] hears this, and remembers the
woman [he calls her "the brunette with the legs"] . . . the camera
then dollys [dollies?] to a close-up of connery's face as he looks
dreamily
off-screen and, musing, refers to her as "resourceful" . . . we then cut
to a close-up of marnie's purse, an icon that has already been established
as representing both her criminality and her sexuality . . . the cut is
precisely of the kind that would normally be construed as an eye-line
match, rutland looking at marnie's pursue . . . problem is that
marnie is no where near rutland but is in fact checking in to a hotel
somewhere else entirely . . . so we get the syntax of an eye-line match
in a situation in which it cannot be a literal eye-line match . . . the
result
is, it seems to me, a powerful example of the full implications of the
kuleshov gambit in creating a meaning that could not possibly be
actual within the naturalistic confines of the diegesis
mike
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