Theory of the film : (character and growth of a new art) (1952)

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DRAMATIC QUALITY OF PANORAMA 141 make us conscious of distance and space. For this reason he did not cut, nor skip the intermediate space. In such a film, space is not merely the place in which people and things can be shown : it achieves a reality of its own and has its own significance, independently of the objects which fill it. Joe May, in his film Asphalt showed the room of a German police sergeant. With pedantic meticulousness, the camera panned from object to object. Wardrobe, table, cage with bird, clock, enlarged photo of parents. We see everything and know everything; we see and understand the stuffy narrowness of a petty-bourgeois life — and only after this does the camera turn to the man himself. First we see his environment; not only the objects themselves, but what is more important, their stifling nearness to each other. We see the narrow confinement of this world. The reality of the panorama can convey this much better than the perspective of a long shot. DRAMATIC QUALITY OF THE PANORAMA It often happens in the cinema that we see by the expression of one of the characters that he has caught sight of something, though we don't know what it is — as yet we see only its effect; a smile, an expression of fear or some other reaction. We are curious to know the reason for this reaction. Then the director does not jump to another shot, but pans over and does so slowly, ritardando, to increase our curiosity, like a clever narrator — until at last the cause and explanation of the effect appear on the screen. Or else: in a dialogue scene the cameras pan from one face to the other. Then one of the two does something or says something unexpected. The camera stresses this by suddenly slowing down the speed of the panning, so that it takes some time before we see the effect on the face of the other person, leaving us on tenterhooks. In such cases panning not only measures the real time that has elapsed, but may lengthen it for the sake of heightened dramatic effect. The panning is much slower than the turning of our head would be if the scene occurred in real life. A fine example of the effect that can be achieved by this