Film technique and film acting : the cinema writings of V. I. Pudovkin (1954)

xvi PUDOVKIN shot it. The explosion was veritably colossal — but filmically it was nothing. On the screen it was merely a slow, lifeless movement. Later, after much trial and experiment, I managed to " edit " the explosion with all the effect I required — moreover, without using a single piece of the scene I had just taken. I took a flammenwerfer that belched forth clouds of smoke. In order to give the effect of the crash I cut in short flashes of a magnesium flare, in rhythmic alternation of light and dark. Into the middle of this I cut a shot of a river taken some time before, that seemed to me to be appropriate owing to its special tones of light and shade. Thus gradually arose before me the visual effect I required. The bomb explosion was at last upon the screen, but, in reality, its elements comprised everything imaginable except a real explosion. Once more, reinforced by this example, I repeat that editing is the creative force of filmic reality, and that nature provides only the raw material with which it works. That, precisely, is the relationship between reality and the film. These observations apply also in detail to the actors. The man photographed is only raw material for the future composition of his image in the film, arranged in editing. When faced with the task of presenting a captain of industry in the film The End of St. Petersburg, I sought to solve the problem by cutting in his figure with the equestrian statue of Peter the Great. I claim that the resultant composition is effective with