Close Up (Jul-Nov 1927)

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CLOSE UP escapes single-handed, returns to the ranch, consoles girl, pats father on arm, re-mounts horse, flings villain over precipice, meets girl in gloaming, and so to close up. What impression of time do we carry away from this picture ? We will suppose that the actual sequence covers a period of roughty two years. How does our impression compare with a similar interval in any well-constructed play — say, the interval .between the second and third acts of "The Admirable Crichton", in which the march of the clock is clearly stressed in the passage of the action ? The answer to this question (which awaits our illustration from "Warning Shadows" for completion), seems to be that in the film, owing to the dispersion of the time factor by purely arbitrary captions, such as "Two years later. . . ; owing, again, to the advance of a climax which is fully anticipated by the audience, and which is not dependent on any logical intermediate struggle, or on any fatal (or timed) pressure of events — the answer seems to be that we are only aware in the very vaguest fashion that the years have gone by and their fruit fallen, despite the physical clearness of the story. But w^e do not see the fruit quietly ripening. We only see it sway and fall, and so far as our ideas of growth are concerned, the process from birth to fruition might be a matter of seconds. Indeed, the seconds, or rather minutes, which mark the hero's rise to fortune are accepted quite thoughtlessly as the equivalent of so many months or years. There is, in fact, no true belief in the time factor but only in the story factor. 58