The cinema : 1952 (1952)

THE TWELVE APOSTLES 167 And at the same time one must be just as elastic in the choice of the particular means for embodying the idea. One must be pedantic and know exactly how the thing will 'look' and yet open-minded enough not to reject objects and means, which, though unforeseen, can enhance the harmony of the picture. The director's plan indicates the exact degree of emphasis with which the shot fired on the cruiser shall break off into the shots fired on the Odessa stairway. It also outlines the methods the roughest outline. Chance leads to sharper and more effective solutions and chance effects are incorporated in the body of the film as an intrinsic, legitimate part. In the director's note-book, there are dozens of pages devoted to the mourning for Vakulinchuk, seen against the slow-moving details of the port. But through the port float the details of a chance fog, and their emotional over-tones fit exactly into the original conception of mourning. The unforeseen fog has grown into the very heart of the idea. In exactly the same way do the lesser episodes build themselves up, step by step, following the degree of brutality of the Cossack reprisals (on the streets, in the yard of the print shop, on thfc city outskirts, in the bakery) into one monumental stairway each step of which is, as it were, a rhythmic and dramatic echo of the individual tragedy being enacted on it. The scene of the shooting on the Odessa stairway was not included in any preliminary scenario or script of the picture. The scene sprang to life in the encounter of a moment. The anecdote that the idea for this scene began with cherry stones jumping down the steps as I spat them out