Theory of film : the redemption of physical reality (1960)

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260 III. COMPOSITION that 'you can not superimpose studio-fabricated plots on an actual setting without finding that the reality of the background will show up the artificiality of your story."23 A framing device Further evidence that the episode film is more in keeping with the cinematic approach than the theatrical story film may be found in a device which has been occasionally used to mitigate the uncinematic character of the theatrical story. The device consists in framing the theatrical film by scenes which are apt to divert our attention from its staginess and indeed pass it off as an episode. These surrounding scenes usually establish a real-life situation in such a way that the action in between them seems to grow out of it. An Ideal Husband, for instance, opens with a prelude in documentary style which affords a glimpse of Victorian splendor in Hyde Park. Dowagers in their carriages exchange greetings with men on horseback, and groups of well-to-do people are leisurely bandying small talk. Then some of these people, already recognizable as members of the cast, come increasingly into focus. The environment recedes and the Wilde comedy, a sheer drawing-room affair, takes its preordained course. It concludes as it began: Hyde Park with its cavalcades, carriages, and chance gatherings re-emerges. The idea is naturally to create the illusion that the comedy itself is not so much a theatrical job as an episode involving the Victorian smart set on display— an episode expressly marked as such by the fact that it issues from, and eventually rejoins, the glittering flow of life in the street-like Park. Does the magic work? The spell which the framing documentary shots cast over the spectator is likely to be destroyed by the penetrant theatricality of the bulk of the film. Similarly, the opening scenes of Olivier's Henry V show the London Globe Theatre in the times of Shakespeare, with the audience waiting for the curtain to rise; and when the performance is over, an appended finale reverts to the theme of the beginning. This frame is clearly intended to make the play appear as an episode in the everyday life of contemporary London. The whole arrangement does credit to Olivier's film sense. It is an attempt to put the theatrical spectacle in brackets and offset the effect of its stylizations by a touch of camera-reality.24 A striking counter-example is the Italian film Side Street Story (Ncipoli Milionaria), which features a number of people in a small and crowded Naples street and casually relates their destinies before, during,