The technique of film editing (1958)

Grapewin) and Ada (Elizabeth Patterson), after being evicted from their home, are seen slowly and sadly making their way to the poor farm. The sequence forms the end of their story and Ford has contrived to give a slow lingering impression of this tragic climax. All the six images say, in effect, the same thing, and it is this reiteration — as the figures get progressively smaller and more isolated — which gives the passage its emotional power. The three passages we have quoted can be taken to illustrate three different kinds of editing composition : the first, depending on the cumulative effect of a series of unconnected images ; the second achieving an effect by a direct contrast ; and the third, by reiterating a single theme. But to do this is merely to attach artificial labels to fundamentally similar processes. In each case the director's intention is to make the dramatic points in the images alone : it is the act of selecting the images which comes to constitute the important creative step and must therefore obviously be varied for different dramatic needs. Our extracts from Queen of Spades, Lady from Shanghai and Tobacco Road can equally well be taken as particular evidence of the great variety and elasticity of visual editing patterns. Whichever way one looks at it must depend on whether one approaches the art of film editing theoretically or in the empirical way more congenial to most artists. Either way, the three extracts must make one realise the wonderful eloquence of passages depending only on the basic attributes of the film medium : the selection and editing of exciting images. 255