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130 A PRACTICAL MANUAL OF SCREEN PLAYWRITING
Cutaway to relieve tension. The cutaway can also be used as a means of relieving tension. In the picture M, starring Peter Lorre, the tension created by the build-up to Lorre's murder of the little girl was relieved by a cutaway shot of the girl's rubber ball as it rolled from behind the hedge and stopped near by. At the same time, the balloon that Lorre had given the girl was released by her dead hand and floated up to be caught in the telephone wires overhead, which action was also shown in a cutaway shot. That these cutaways were effective is attested to by the fact that in the 1951 remake of the older version most of the effective cutaway shots were duplicated.
In his novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce used this type of relief perfectly in the scene in which the boy, Stephen, witnesses a violent quarrel between his uncle and aunt. As the aunt gets up to leave, she knocks over her napkin ring which falls to the floor, rolls around, and comes to rest under the boy's chair. By switching the reader's attention from the peak of the quarrel to a seemingly insignificant detail, Joyce was able to relieve what could have been almost unbearable tension.
Carol Reed is a master in the art of cutting away to details that appear to be visual non sequiturs. In The Fallen Idol, he heightened the psychological drama of the boy's flight by cutting away to a hose spraying the glistening cobblestone street. At another time, he used a ladder leaning against a wall for a similar purpose. This oblique use of significant detail, however, can be dangerously confusing if it is not done at the psychologically correct time, and if it is the least bit out of line with the locale, the action, or the emotional mood of the scene.
Scene-capping cutaways. Cutaways within the scene can serve as perfect scene cappers. Although not strictly a cutaway, the trucking shot in the French picture Devil in the Flesh is a good example. It started with the camera on the boy and girl embracing in bed. Then the camera trucked behind the bedstead, so that intermittent glimpses of the amorous pair were seen. Then the camera panned over to the roaring log fire in the fireplace, to symbolize the paralleling action taking place near by and to cap the scene significantly. It was not done in the picture, but a perfect way of coming back to the same scene, after the boy and girl had spent their emotion,