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86 THEFACEOFMAN
are three minutes left. They all stand still and stare numbly at the hands of the clock. They are waiting. Nothing moves in the vault save the hands of the clock. This utmost tension could not be increased any further by even the most frenzied movement of the characters. They even hold their breath, so complete is their numb immobility.
On the stage such immobility is possible only for very brief periods. After a few moments the scene would become empty and dead, because nothing happens in it. But in the film a lot of things can happen even when the characters are motionless. For the camera can move even while they do not. The quick cross-cutting of close-ups can move. In the bank vault just mentioned the camera rushes to and fro and the pictures move faster and more fiercely than the actors could. The actors are motionless and silent. But the flickering close-ups, the 'microphysiognomies' speak. They show not a general picture of fear, but the horrible symphony of every phase in nine distinct mortal agonies of terror. The crescendo of fear is shown by the increasingly rapid rhythm of ever shorter closeups in an ever-quickening montage.
An ant-heap is lifeless if seen from a distance, but at close quarters it is teeming with busy life. The grey, dull texture of everyday life shows in its inicrodramatics many profoundly moving happenings, if we look at it carefully enough in closeup.
COMMONPLACE DRAMATIZED
In the heyday of the silent film there was a vogue for realistic films featuring the commonplace and dramatizing the things we usually leave unheeded. It was at this time that King Vidor made his great film showing the workaday life of the average American man-in-the-street. It is a monotonous affair and yet, how many moving, terrifying, and happy little events occur in it, hidden melodies contained in a monotone.
Of course this technique achieves its greatest effects when it spreads out the crucial moment of an action film in the ritardando of detail close-ups, showing that crucial moment in instantaneous sections of time when everything still hangs in