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THE FILMIC COMPONENTS 133
shot was used not only as a cutaway shot but also, first, because it was not thought advisable to waste footage by showing the entire process of blowing up a balloon; second, because Gwenn was probably unable to blow a bubble balloon; and third, because even if he were capable, the uncertainty of obtaining a large-sized bubble that would burst with a pop would make trying to photograph it a Quixotic adventure. All of these objections were overcome, and the dramatic effect was heightened, simply by resorting to a reaction cutaway that indicated the whole business by indirection.
Cutaway from death. But it is with murder that indirection finds its most fruitful source of inspiration. Because, according to the Morals Code, the murderer cannot be seen pulling the trigger or slashing the knife in the same scene with the victim, the resources of implication, indirection, and suggestion must be tapped by the creative screen-play writer.
A close-up on curtain rings being torn away from a curtain rod as the murdered victim grabs the curtain on his way down to the floor has become a favorite since its introduction a few years ago. In The Informer, where the escaping Sinn Feiner leaped out of the window and was then shot by a British soldier outside, a close-up on the Sinn Feiner's hand, with the nails clawing and scraping on the window ledge, before the body started to fall, was sufficient to suggest that he had been mortally wounded.
Foreshadowing cutaways. Death can also be suggested by a sort of reverse indirection. That is, instead of implying death by using a cutaway after the deed has been perpetrated, it can be suggested before it takes place. In Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux, as Chaplin takes his last drink of rum in the death cell, he throws his head far back and displays a long, living expanse of throat pulsing as the rum goes down— the same throat the audience knows is going to be slit soon by Madame Guillotine's razor-edged blade.
The same type of foreshadowing technique can be used to build suspense and heighten dramatic intensity. Cutaway shots to a bridge wrecked by a flood, a loosened wheel, a booby-trap bomb waiting passively, a highway torn up by storm, a rail torn loose from its tie —all intimations of impending disaster, natural or concocted— can be indicated before the accident occurs. These will foreshadow the