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REALITY INSTEAD OF TRUTH 87
the balance, the pointer of the scales is still oscillating and it is not yet certain in which direction it will finally point.
CRUCIAL MOMENT
Let us look at the final scene of Reisman's masterpiece: The Last Night. A military train steams into a railway station in Petrograd, which has been occupied by the revolutionaries. It is a mysterious, closed train. Has it brought friends or enemies? We don't know. Bayonets bristle at every window and door of the train, but not a face do we see. Rifle barrels point at the train from every door and window of the station buildings. Who is in there? Friend or foe? No man wants to be the first to step out on to the deserted platform. Expectation and silence. Only the hissing of steam is heard. All action has stopped. But the fate of the station, of the town, perhaps of the whole revolution turns on what will happen in the next few minutes. This frozen state of tension, of doubt and expectation is not really motionless however. Its elements are agog with nervous impatience. In the restless cross-cutting of close-ups, tiny gestures of boiling excitement sizzle and bubble. Finally an old peasant woman steps on to the platform alone and unarmed, goes to the military train and speaks, asks questions . . .
Of course this scene could not have achieved such powerful tension if the whole film had shown such immobility; the effect is similar to a pause suddenly occurring in a dynamic burst of music.
REALITY INSTEAD OF TRUTH
The development of the microdramatics of the close-up to a stage when experiments were made to produce, not only films without dramatic action, but even films without a central dramatic hero, will be dealt with in later chapters, together with other developments. But one thing should be noted here : if stories without plot and incident, single-situation stories escaped the reproach of being 'literature', this had disadvantages as well as advantages, for there was an increasing ten