The technique of film editing (1958)

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Ft. fr. 33 M.S. Kane (in different clothes Music continues. 14 6 from preceding shot), reading a newspaper. He glances up and then down again. Camera tracks slowly back bringing Emily into frame and continues tracking back until Kane and Emily are seen in LS. as at the beginning of shot 2. Slow dissolve to : 34 M.S. Leyland sitting on hospital balcony in his dressing gown. After a pause : Reporter : (off) Wasn't he ever in love with her ? The passage conveys the gradual breaking-up of a relationship. It is a flash-back of Leyland's account of Kane's first marriage : as such, the conception of the scenes underlines the sense of inexorable deterioration in Kane's relationship with his wife which Leyland implies in his account. The separate episodes are joined together to form a mounting pattern, and together make a selfcontained sequence. Each short episode in itself (9-14, for instance) is of little significance : it is the gradually developing estrangement in the incidents — progressing from passionate love to cold hostility — which gives the passage its point. Technically there are a number of points well worth attention. It was clearly the intention that the series should be more than a string of separate episodes : each incident should be implicit in the previous one. Hence the editing is devised to make the passage appear a unified whole. In each case, where there is a transition from one breakfast scene to another, the transition is carried out through a sort of flickering pan. This is in each case a switch from Emily to Kane, and is merely a variant on the constant to and fro cutting. More importantly, Emily's words are carried over each transition giving an impression of the continuous process of estrangement which is taking place. At the same time the director has been at great pains to establish the quick transitions from scene to scene as concisely as possible. He has done this with all means available : the changing mood is conveyed through the dialogue which gets terser and more hostile throughout the passage ; the scenes get shorter and shorter, giving the impression that Kane is finding the breakfasts increasingly irksome ; the music, though continuous, subtly underlines the mood of each scene and rounds off the passage in low, discordant tones suggesting an atmosphere of suppressed, dormant rage ; 120