A grammar of the film : an analysis of film technique (1950)

Change o f Focus hitherto appeared. In Der Traumende Mund (Czinner, 1932), a violinist was playing on the concert platform, while a woman in the audience, having fallen in love with him at first sight, was watching him with rapt attention. The camera was set up just behind the violinist’s left shoulder, so that his bow was visible in the near foreground. This at first was kept in focus, presumably so that the spectator should be made forcibly aware of the violinist (though indeed Beethoven’s Violin Concerto was to be heard throughout the sequence). The audience was seen in a dim blur in the background. Next, the camera-focus was altered, so that the audience became sharp, and Elisabeth Bergner was clearly seen; simultaneously, of course, the violin faded into obscurity. This process was subsequently twice repeated. The dissolve which seems indicated here (a cut might have been a little abrupt) would, it might be urged, have occupied too much time; it would at least have avoided keeping a large misty object in the foreground from which the attention was supposed to be diverted. This objection applies wherever the method applies; though slight, it has only to outweigh slight advantages. 25. Lastly, we turn to superimposition, the limiting case of which is reduplication. In the silent cinema the difficulty of conveying thoughts in the 169 '