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

THE CINEMA AS A GRAPHIC ART Fig. 128. — Shot from the film " Petersburg Nights " (Dmitri Feldman, cam.). almost never uses contoural lighting ; the steroscopic quality of the shot is achieved not by a harsh isolation of the light contour, but by a softened transition from one tone to another. This, for instance, is the way he has taken almost all the close-ups in the picture, the relief quality of which is achieved exclusively by lowering or heightening the tone of the background, while the mid-shots and close-ups reveal no tonal distinction from the long-shots. At the same time the softening of the optical design, which is almost always associated with loss of detail in the working up of the texture, never passes beyond the limits of the necessary distinct visibility. An intelligent exploitation of lighting enables one always to see clearly on the screen the highly characteristic texture of silk, granite, and marble, or the very characteristic texture of the actors' faces. We have already remarked that the absence of a definite editing composition worked out beforehand deprives the camera-man's work of its main and most valuable quality : its logical and true succession in the transition from one compositional form of shot to another. As an example of this in " Petersburg Nights I we may mention the episode of the parade, in which individual shots, filmed dynamically by the camera-man, did not give the necessary effect of dynamic growth when edited. For this reason the chief influence of the entire scene passed to the sound treatment, which, so to speak, bore the entire parade on its shoulders. The absence of general editing composition reacted to the same extent on the final scene of the convict transport, in which the main line of rhythm and tempo potentially introduced by the camera-man was completely lost during editing. Here the camera-man was faced objectively with the necessity of shooting individual 208