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

60 PUDOVKIN possibility of eliminating points of passage and interval, which we have already analysed and which obtains in all film-work, filmic space appears as a synthesis of real elements picked out by the camera. Remember the example of the man falling from the fifth floor. That which is in reality but a tenfoot fall into a net and a six-foot further leap from a bench appears upon the screen as a fall from a hundred feet high. L. V. Kuleshov assembled in the year 1920 the following scenes as an experiment : 1. A young man walks from left to right. 2. A woman walks from right to left. 3. They meet and shake hands. The young man points. 4. A large white building is shown, with a broad flight of steps. 5. The two ascend the steps. The pieces, separately shot, were assembled in the order given and projected upon the screen. The spectator was presented with the pieces thus joined as one clear, uninterrupted action : a meeting of two young people, an invitation to a nearby house, and an entry into it. Every single piece, however, had been shot in a different place ; for example, the young man near the G.U.M. building, the woman near Gogol's monument, the handshake near the Bolshoi Teatr, the white house came out of an American picture (it was, in fact, the White House), and the ascent of the steps was made at St. Saviour's