Is there a kind of film historical encyclopedia - a little bit akin
to what the OED does for the English language - which would list
aesthetic/poetic procedures/effects, with a lineage of their
evolution including first uses in film/media history? Probably not,
but it's a question worth asking all the same.
Henry
>
> Third, on the matter of the jump-shots to the dead farmer's face in
> THE BIRDS, I can agree that Hitchcock may have been influenced at
> some level by the work of early Russian filmmakers, by James Whale,
> by Orson Welles - any or all of those! He knew all of their work!
> But, pragmatically, it was a case of a problem to be solved (not
> just a shock-point to be made): how best to convey the effect of
> the moment on Lydia Brenner who would have seen - half
> disbelieving, i.e., half denying - the terrible sight of the
> farmer's bloodied eye-sockets? The ellipses in those cuts = the
> element of disbelief, denial. (By contrast, the fast-zoom into
> Gromek's motorbike in TORN CURTAIN, after his killing, registers
> the sudden FULL realisation by Armstrong and the farmer's wife:
> 'Oops! There's incriminating evidence against us! What shall we
> do?!') In addition, of course, Hitchcock knew that he had to
> anticipate censorship, and reasoned that the jump cuts might make
> it more difficult for censors to think of simply snipping out the
> whole effect.
>
> - Ken Mogg
> http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/news-home_c.html
>
*
*
Film-Philosophy Email Discussion Salon.
After hitting 'reply' please always delete the text of the message you are replying to.
To leave, send the message: leave film-philosophy to: [log in to unmask]
For help email: [log in to unmask], not the salon.
**
|