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44 A PRACTICAL MANUAL OF SCREEN PLAYWRITING
A crude but effective application of this device has the baddie say, "If you don't hand over the papers by the time I count five, well . . ." Then he starts to count as the shot changes to an extreme close-up of his trigger finger squeezing relentlessly on his gun. And as the dread "five" approaches, suspense mounts almost to the breaking point.
When the fight-against-time device is used in a static situation, the result is suspense. When, however, it is used in a situation that requires sustained movement, the result is a chase (which see) containing the elements of suspense. This device has been used so often, however, that its effectiveness has been considerably blunted by repetition. It has been particularly handy in crime pictures, where the governor must be reached for a pardon before the innocent man is electrocuted; in Westerns, where the posse must be informed of the imminent arrival of the cattle rustlers; and in comedies where the husband must get home in time to warn the little wife, who cooks from tin cans, of the unscheduled arrival of his boss, who dotes on home cooking.
Regardless of its overuse, though, it can be adapted in some form or other as a device for carrying the movement forward and of thus sustaining interest through suspense. The creative writer should be capable of taking over this hoary mechanism and creating a freshly slanted twist, the originality of which can more than compensate for its ancient lineage.
A classic use of the device came up in Hitchcock's The Woman Alone, which featured the journey of a little boy carrying a time bomb that had been set to go off at one o'clock. The camera followed the boy in his meandering through the London streets, as he stopped to have his hair shampooed by an itinerant soap grifter, as he paused to get a puppy, etc., until finally he boarded a bus. All the while, the audience had been shown various shots of different clocks indicating that the time was dangerously approaching one o'clock. Finally, after an almost excruciating, ever mounting peak of suspense— and as the last clock indicated the creeping but insistent stream of minutes, then seconds— the time bomb exploded and the crowded bus blew up.
Actually, every story— if it is to show a struggle to achieve a definite end— must have some form of this fight-against-time element in its make-up. Someone must do something before something or