The cinema as a graphic art : on a theory of representation in the cinema (1959)

THE COMPOSITIONAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE SHOT th yawls and the shore. The first group expressed the theme : ' the yawls carry greetings d gifts from the shore to the battleship '. The second group will express the fraternisation boats and battleship. The compositional dividing-point, and simultaneously the ideological unifier of both rnpositional groups, is the mast with the revolutionary flag. Shot VII, repeated by the first section of the second group XIV, is a kind of forearning of the second group and also the element linking the two groups to each other, though the latter group had made a ' raid ' into the first group. In the second group e same role will be played by the sections showing figures waving, cut in between the enes of fraternisation between the yawls and the battleship. It must not be thought that the shooting and planning of these pieces were irried out in accordance with these tables, drawn up a priori. Of course not. ut the assembly and distribution of these pieces at the cutting bench was alreadyearly dictated by the compositional requirements of the cinematographic form, hese requirements dictated the selection of these pieces out of all those at the irector's disposition, and they also established the logical sequence of their ternation. In point of fact, these pieces, considered only from the narrative id theme aspect, could be rearranged in almost any combination, but in that ise the compositional movement through their sequence being less logical in its instruction, the result would hardly be so effective even from the strictly narra|ve or thematic point of view. 119