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comedy sequences, we have discussed how in some instances a joke can be achieved by anticipating it — by forestalling the actor who is later to find himself on the receiving end of a custard pie ; or, in other cases, by surprising the audience — having a joke " on " the spectator. In the sequence from Topper Returns the joke is timed to appear a good deal after it was first established that it would occur, and it is precisely this seemingly reversed way of showing the events that has produced the comic effect. In the passage quoted from The Third Man, the timing procedure was the exact opposite and a different kind of comic effect was achieved.
A similar choice is open in more serious dramatic scenes. In the passage from The Passionate Friends the spectator knows long before it actually happens that Mary will discover the programme. A feeling of suspense is created by delaying her reaction and finally showing it after the passage has gradually worked up to a climax. The order of events is precisely analogous to that employed in the Topper Returns example.
The alternative method of introducing an important event is to let it come as a surprise to the spectator. Here is an example.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS1
Extract from Reel I
The opening of the film. It is preceded only by a shot of the leaves of a book over which the commentator establishes the little boy in shot I to be Pip.
Ft. fr.
1 Exterior Thames Estuary. Sunset. The wind is making a high-pitched, 38 V.L.S. of a small boy — Pip — running ghostly whistling noise.
left to right along the bank of the Estuary. Camera tracks and pans with Pip as he runs round a bend in the pathway and comes towards camera. A gibbet is built on the edge of the path, camera right, and Pip glances up at it as he passes — he continues running and moves out of picture camera right.
Dissolve to :
2 Exterior Churchyard. M.S. Pip. Wind continues. 31 He is carrying a bunch of holly
in his right hand. He climbs over a broken stone wall and camera pans right with him as he walks past the tombstones and old graves in the churchyard. Camera continues panning as he makes his way towards one of the tombstones and kneels in front of it — he is now in M.L.S.
1 Director : David Lean. Editor : Jack Harris. Cineguild, 1946.
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