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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
>

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