The technique of film editing (1958)

of the film director consists not of real processes happening in real space and real time, but of those pieces of celluloid on which these processes have been recorded. This celluloid is entirely subject to the will of the director who edits it. He can, in the composition of the filmic form of any given appearance, eliminate all points of interval, and thus concentrate the action in time to the highest degree he may require.1 Having thus stated the principle of what he called constructive editing, Pudovkin went on to demonstrate how it could be applied —and, indeed, had been applied by Griffith — in the course of film narrative. In order to show on the screen the fall of a man from a window five storeys high, the shots can be taken in the following way : First, the man is shot falling from the window into a net, in such a way that the net is not visible on the screen ; then the same man is shot falling from a slight height to the ground. Joined together, the two shots give in projection the desired impression. The catastrophic fall never occurs in reality, it occurs only on the screen, and is the resultant of two pieces of celluloid joined together. From the event of a real, actual fall of a person from an appalling height, two points only are selected : the beginning of the fall and its end. The intervening passage through the air is eliminated. It is not proper to call the process a trick ; it is a method of filmic representation exactly corresponding to the elimination of the five years that divide a first act from a second upon a stage.2 Up to this point, Pudovkin's writing merely provides a theoretical explanation of what Griffith had already done in practice. From here onward, however, Pudovkin's theory begins to diverge from Griffith's work. Where Griffith staged scenes in long shot and used inserted close shots of details to heighten the drama, Pudovkin held that a more impressive continuity could be obtained by constructing a sequence purely from these significant details. This change of attitude, as will be seen from one of Pudovkin's examples, is more than a matter of differently explaining a given method, for it affects the director's approach to his subject from the moment the script is conceived. Scene 1. A peasant waggon, sinking in the mud, slowly trails along a country road. Sadly and reluctantly the hooded driver urges on his tired horse. A figure cowers into the corner of the waggon, trying to wrap itself in an old soldier's cloak for protection against the penetrating wind. A passer-by, coming towards the waggon, pauses, standing inquisitively. The driver turns to him. Title : Is it far to Nakhabin ? The pedestrian answers, pointing with his hand. The waggon sets onward, while the passer-by stares after it and then continues on his way . . . A scenario written in this way, already divided into separate scenes and with titles, forms the first phase of filmic overhaul . . . Note that there is 1 Film Technique by V. J. Pudovkin. Newnes, 1929, p. 56. 4 Ibid., p. 57. 29