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We cut to a closer shot of Pip (4) as he looks up from the grave. His look suddenly freezes as he notices what we see in shot 5 — a large, creaking tree with branches like weird limbs stretching towards him, shot from a low angle as if seen through the eyes of a child.
Again, we cut back to Pip (5) and again (7) are shown an even more hideous image of another tree : this time the trunk looks like some horrible mutilated body.
The boy and we can stand no more of this and it is a distinct relief to see that the boy is running away from this ghost-like, supernaturally frightening atmosphere. When he has gained some speed in his run and is well on his way to escape from the cemetery, suddenly we see that he has run into something horrible — horrible and alive. Before we can see any more, Pip starts to scream and we see him doing so in close-up.
Only after this do we see for the first time what the boy has run into — a large, horrible man ; then for the first time he speaks, with a voice like a rasp.
The whole of this passage was planned in cuts before it was shot, although the director did, of course, shoot a certain amount of cover. The most difficult thing to get over by photography was the sudden appearance of the convict. The effect was finally obtained by panning with the boy until he runs straight into the stationary convict.
The difficulty in the editing was to decide on the exact frame up to which to leave the panning shot on the screen and to cut to the boy screaming. The effect aimed at was to leave the shot on the screen sufficiently long to let the audience see that the boy had run into a man — and not a very nice man, at that — but not sufficiently long to get a good look and be able to decide that he was after all something recognisably human. As a matter of interest, there are fourteen frames from the time the convict appears to the close-up of Pip. The sound of Pip's scream starts four frames before the cut, at just the precise moment that the apparition is taken away from the audience's sight.
Here, then, is an instance where the intention was to take the audience by surprise, to introduce a new fact through a shock. It will be seen that, to do this, it is not enough to let the surprising fact merely appear in the course of the narrative : the shock must be planned from some way back. First, an atmosphere of mystery is conveyed, a danger is established. Then, just as a rather frightening image (shot 7) has been shown, Pip starts to run away : we are just ready to feel relieved when the really frightening image appears. It takes us unawares, just at the moment when the tension was beginning to slacken. The director and editor have deliberately contrived to make the spectator believe that the danger is over, and then caught him on the rebound.
If the director's intention had been to give suspense to the sequence, he would have had to edit it differently. He would have shown us a shot of Magwitch watching Pip and would therefore have warned us of what was about to happen. The surprise would have come to the boy. The audience's emotional reaction would have been the suspense of waiting for the moment it happened. 240