The cinema : 1952 (1952)

l66 THE CINEMA 'Looking for the end of the rainbow?' That's cameraman L. taking a gibe at us. He's working on another picture in Odessa. His lean, Don Quixotic figure is stretched lazily along the length of the other boat. Disappearing and reappearing in the fog, as if from blackout to black-out, he hurls derisive wishes of success at us. And success does come our way. A meeting with the fog, endowed with meaning by a chance moment of emotional perception, selection of detail, a vision of the scene all these combine at once into the chords of a dirge each of whose many subtle notes will be set in place later in the montage room . . . the notes of the symphonic requiem in memory of Vakulinchuk. This was the cheapest scene in the whole picture three roubles and fifty kopecks the cost of the boat's hire. Our third location find was the Odessa stairway. I believe that nature, the environment, the sets at the moment of shooting and the material shot are often wiser in montage than the author and director. To be able to hear and understand the voice of nature, to perceive unexpected details in sets conceived in your own mind, to discern what the separate shots have to say as they arrange themselves into their own plastic life on the screen, a life that sometimes reaches far beyond the boundaries set by the imagination that engendered them this is great work, great art. It requires that the creative individuality shall be humble and modest to the point of self-effacement. Nor is this all. There is still another requirement. One must know exactly, with the greatest precision, what is the creative goal of a particular scene or phrase of the picture.