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

Film Technique : 1. Analysis is Good. Pudovkin, however, made this a silent instead of a sound film, and renamed it The Story of a Simple Case. A woman had gone down to the station to see her husband off in the train. Her thoughts were in a tumult as time passed away, while all that she wished to say remained unsaid. The train, though in fact still beside her, seemed to be departing as it would shortly depart, since all the value to her of its standing there was lost through her confusion of mind. In order to convey this somewhat complicated feeling, Pudovkin proposed to use as his sound the roar of a train departing into the distance. Herr Arnheim, however, criticizes this suggestion with some justice, saying that the audience would merely suppose that another train, waiting behind the one seen, had left the station.1 Had the sound of the train been suggested by musical means, as in Honegger’s Pacific 2)1, no confusion would have arisen, for no realistic interpretation would have been possible. Herr Arnheim does not seem to allow sufficiently for the context of the sequence ; the audience wrould presumably have been prepared for the woman’s emotional state, and so would have assumed a subjective motion of the train, unless assured of an objective. Nevertheless, his broad contention remains firm. Contrast, where realism is impossible, is best contrived with the aid of clearly unrealistic music. 1Op. cit. p. 267. 184