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is created and then debunked. The phrasing suggests, at first, that the woman is mourning her husband : the reader feels a temporary sympathy for her and is unexpectedly — and comically— disillusioned. This is a very common comedy device. Shaggy-dog stories, for instance, all work in precisely this way.
The joke in Naked City is very similar. In the midst of the exciting chase, the shot of the weary policeman comes as an unexpected contradiction of what we have been made to expect. We are given to understand that the police are being faultlessly efficient in tracking down the criminal and are then suddenly shown one who is hopelessly out of touch with events. The unexpected contrast becomes funny. What is important from the editor's point of view is that the efficiency of the other policemen should have been well established before the joke is made, otherwise the shot will not come as a surprise. In other words, the editor must first convincingly evoke a false reaction before he can effectively surprise the audience.
There was a highly elaborate example of this kind of" debunking joke " in The Third Man, where Joseph Cotten is kidnapped by a sinister looking taxi-driver and conveyed to a mysterious castle : we assume that the abduction was planned by the ruthless blackmarketeering gang and consequently fear the worst. Instead we see Cotten being cordially greeted by the representative of a literary society who asks him to address a meeting. (An almost exactly similar incident is used in Hitchcock's Thirty-nine Steps, where Robert Donat, running away from his pursuers, lands in the midst of a political meeting.) Here again, the joke is created through the carefully constructed build-up : the more sinister the kidnapping, the funnier will be the final pay-off.
The editing device employed in this episode is entirely different from the one employed in the banana-skin joke. While Hardy is running along the pavement, the editor shows us a glimpse of the banana-skin before Hardy has a chance of seeing it. Well before Hardy actually falls to the pavement, we already know what is going to happen. In The Third Man incident the editor proceeds in another way. Not only does he not tell us what is going to happen, but he deliberately misleads us. The two incidents are edited in sharply contrasting ways — in the first case the joke is made by anticipating it, in the second by making it come as a surprise.
In the first case, the incident is designed to make Hardy look silly. The joke is against Hardy and the fact that the spectator
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