The technique of film editing (1958)

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montage and the modern montage sequence ends, once it has been admitted that both use strings of rapidly following shots. The modern montage sequence, as most commonly used, is merely a convenient way of presenting a series of facts which are necessary to the story but which have little emotional significance. It is used to convey facts which it would be cumbersome to show in full or which, though essential to the story, do not merit detailed treatment. Take an example. Towards the end of Carol Reed's The Third Man, Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) has to try to convince Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) that the police know Martins' friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) to be guilty of various crimes. Martins is loth to believe this of his friend and Calloway therefore has to produce a great deal of evidence to prove his point. To let the audience know that Calloway does in fact produce this detailed evidence, it would have been necessary to show the evidence in full : this would have meant introducing a long, dramatically flat sequence just at a point when the story is reaching its climax. The difficulty was solved by making a short montage sequence with shots of finger-prints, documents, Lime's belongings, etc. In this way the audience was shown that Martins had in fact been convinced of his friend's guilt, while the pace of the action was only momentarily slowed down. This example shows the kind of use the montage sequence is commonly put to in contemporary films and also points to its limitations. The sequence, like most montage sequences used to-day, is devoid of any emotional effect. It is necessary for the smooth development of the plot :but is, in itself, emotionally neutral. The actual details of editing montage sequences are generally left to the end of the production when it should be obvious exactly how much clarification is needed. The script-writer will often simply say something like : " Dissolve to scene 75 ; Montage showing country-wide effect of General Strike." It is then the editor's job to sketch in briefly what the writer has asked for. To do this, he must first decide on a small number of points he will wish to stress and then, using library shots or specially photographed material, assemble them into some sort of developing continuity. When editing his sequence, his main consideration must be to make it fast, while keeping each image on the screen just long enough to allow its content to come across. There must be a balance of subject-matter to ensure that the effect asked for — " the country 113