A fascinating topic, thanks for raising it, Chuck!
Indeed, film theory has had some important things to say about 'errors'
- especially given that the 'continuity system' of seamless editing,
image-sound synchronisation, etc, is one great artificial construction
imposed on cinema since its early days! That is a position roughly
attributable to Noel Burch, and so it is no surprise that his '60s text
THEORY OF FILM PRACTICE (really one of the essential film books, still
today) has a sustained theory of what the French call the 'faux
raccord' - the 'bad match' or 'mismatch' is continuity-editing terms.
It becomes for Burch one of the 'stylistic parameters' of cinema.
Godard, of course, was and is a master of the faux raccord for
expressive as well as political purposes. There is a fascinating
account in a book of interviews with film editors (sorry, don't have
the precise reference on me) where Agnes Guillemot, Godard's great (and
rather unsung) editor throughout much of the '60s tells of how she
invented a particular 'editing error' in LES CARABINERS: cutting to a
closer shot of a character repeating the same gesture they performed in
the previous shot. When Godard saw it on the editing table, he was
surprised, and asked her: "Well, how are we going to justify that?" Her
answer is great! (and I'll leave the group members to discover it!)
Godard then realised he would have to spread the effect throughout the
film to 'systematise' it - and still today he uses it. Of course, the
'stutter' edit' or 'overlap' edit of this kind invented by Guillemot is
now a banal commonplace in ads, music videos and mainstream cinema.
Another form of 'overlap edit' which can still carry a jolt for viewers
involves sound more than image - Godard uses it frequently (and Harun
Farocki discusses it valuably in his Godard book with Kaja Silverman),
but I believe John Cassavetes (also a great editor) invented it in
SHADOWS: within a scene (not as a transition between scenes), he begins
a shot by repeating (from a different angle and different take) the
final line of dialogue in the previous shot (so that you hear, say 'so
what you think about it? - 'so, what do you think about it?'). If
people ever noticed it, they maybe put it down to Cassavetes' so-called
'improvisation' processes, but it's a very systematic formal technique!
(In Burchian terms, it acknowledges and brings into the text the fact
that most films are comprised precisely of repetitions across different
angles and takes.)
Even the most classical Hollywood films, of course, 'trick' continuity
in a thousand different ways - seamless continuity is itself highly
artificial! Bordwell and Thompson note in FILM ART (I think) how the
positioning of actors, close to each other, would have to be adjusted
in 'real' space to allow the effect of continuity in 'optical' space.
Every filmmaker knows some of these tricks. De Palma uses 'forced
perspective' in his set design in SNAKE EYES, etc etc. Hitchcock used a
thousand such tricks - paradoxical instances of actual discontinuity
that win the effect of imaginary continuity!
There is a lot more to be said on this topic!
Adrian
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