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

ON FILM TECHNIQUE 9 a long film in several so-called serial parts. But this method is possible only to films of a special kind. Adventure-films, their content consisting chiefly of a series of extraordinary happenings in the career of the hero, little connected with one another after all, and always having each an independent interest (stunts — either acrobatic or directorial), can naturally be shown to the spectator in several episodes of a single/ cycle. The spectator, losing nothing in impression, can see the second part without acquaintance with the first, the content of which he gathers from an opening title. The relationship between the episodes is attained by crude play upon the curiosity of the spectator ; for example, at the end of the first part the hero lands into some inextricable situation, solved only at the beginning of the second, and so forth. But the film of deeper content, the value of which lies always in the impression it creates as a whole, can certainly not be thus divided into parts for the spectator to see separately, one each week.1 The influence of this limitation of film length is yet increased by the fact that the film technician, for the effective representation of a concept, requires considerably more material than, let us say, the novelist or playwright. In a single word often a whole complex of images is contained. Visual images having an inferential significance of this nature are, however, very rare, and the film technician is therefore forced to carry out a detailed representation if he desire to achieve an effective impression. I repeat that the necessity