Shades of truth: Encountering Kieslowski's 'Three Colours.'

John Ottenhoff

SHORTLY AFTER the triumphant completion of his Three Colors trilogy, Blue, White and Red, in 1994, Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski announced his retirement, citing his belief that cinema could not achieve the depth of literature or adequately show a character's inner feelings. His friends revealed, however, that Kieslowski was in fact planning new projects, including a trilogy provisionally titled Hell, Purgatory, Heaven. But his death at age 54 on March 13, 1996, ended that project and a brilliant cinematic career. His viewers must be content that his accumulated work stands as testimony to the powerful depth of vision that cinema at its best can attain. Kieslowski created films of artistic brilliance and moral depth, haunting inquiries into the modern condition that merit careful attention, and thereby stands with Bergman, Fellini and Kurosawa in the ranks of the most important modern film directors.

The Three Colours trilogy offers viewers a fine introduction to the director's artistry and moral vision. While all three films stand on their individual merits, they also form a closely linked trilogy that demands attention as a whole. The colours and the films represent the French flag and its symbolic values--blue, liberty; white, equality; red, fraternity; yet these films are much more than simple thematic sermons. They can be classified as "art films": with their superb production values and gorgeous colour themes they are a joy to look at. Yet Blue, White and Red are more accurately described as political, social and moral meditations, films that promote reflection more than superficial visual attraction. In Kieslowski's view, his films ask questions about ideals confronted by the contradictions of everyday life. They are not monuments to great ideals but inquiries: Do people really want liberty, equality, fraternity?

In Kieslowski on Kieslowski (Faber and Faber, 1993), the director identifies his motivation for the trilogy as growing out of his earlier ten films on the Ten Commandments known collectively as The Decalogue: "Why not try to make a film where the commanding dictums of the Decalogue are understood in a wider context? Why not try to see how the Ten Commandments function today?" he said in reference to the Three Colours project. The West, he points out, has implemented the concepts liberty, equality and fraternity "on a political or social plane, but it's an entirely different matter on the personal plane." While Kieslowski and his characters often face the abrasions of politics, he claims that all his films are about individuals--"individuals who can't quite find their bearings, who don't quite know how to live, who don't really know what's right or wrong and are desperately looking."
Kieslowski asks his questions with insistence and humanity. He also develops his themes with great complexity, irony and a tone of searching. Blue, the first of the trilogy, centres on Julie Vignon (Juliette Binoche), a Parisian woman who finds liberty when her husband, Patrice (Claude Denton), a famous composer, and daughter Anna are killed in an automobile accident. She frees herself from the past, renouncing worldly goods, her estate and human contact; she shucks off the fame that accompanied her husband's career. Yet the film also interrogates that concept of liberty, eventually showing liberation in Julie's case as meaning a break with loneliness and isolation. Does freedom mean having nothing left to lose? Or does freedom come only through being connected with others?

Similarly, White questions the actions of its comic protagonist, Karol Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski), who returns to Warsaw following divorce and humiliation in Paris. Karol finds economic equality in the blooming Polish capitalism and in getting even with his former wife, but do such achievements bring happiness? The triumphant but Chaplinesque Karol (Karol translates as Charlie) is left crying at the film's end. Is equality worth the price? Red too challenges its viewers to consider what fraternity might be in the disconnected world of modern Europe. Perhaps it might still be attainable--but it probably wouldn't look as we might expect it to.

IN ALL three films Kieslowski develops his themes with stunning visuality. He also highlights each film's respective key colour with rare cinematic finesse. Red, set in Geneva, especially captures the eye with red cars, red furniture, red awnings, red jackets, red bowling balls. Red is the colour of fashion--the world of its protagonist, the model Valentine (Irene Jacob)--a hot colour of jumpiness and disconnection. Yet red can also be warm, as the light so often is in this film after Valentine meets a thoroughly unpleasant retired judge, Joseph Kern (Jean-Louis Trintignant).

Exemplifying a central Kieslowski theme that life is made up of accidents, opportunities and chance encounters, Red's central episode involves Valentine running over Kern's dog. Upon returning the German Shepherd, she finds the judge to be not only indifferent and withdrawn but also felonious: he's a devoted eavesdropper, listening to the phone conversations of his neighbours. Nevertheless, her initial sense of disgust slowly changes to understanding and friendship, and she changes him. He turns himself in to the authorities, ceases his eavesdropping and rediscovers his humanity. Together they explore issues of truth and justice. The judge echoes King Lear in his musing about justice; now that he has shed the robes of the jurist, he sees how "deciding what is true and what isn't now seems ... a lack of modesty. Vanity." Again echoing Lear, he asks at one point, "Do you know who I am?" and seeks to know himself. Suffused in a rosy glow of twilight, Trintignant's judge discovers a kinder shade of red and offers hope that even the most alienated of humans can find themselves and redemption.

WHILE Red centres on a highly unlikely achievement of fraternity, it also highlights the distances between people in a modern communication culture. It's a film about messages--phone calls, busy signals indicated by flashing red lights, rushed and distant calls between lovers, silences, eavesdropping, malfunctioning pens, splashy advertising campaigns, hurtful newspaper articles--that show our inability to achieve human connections. The film's secondary plot underscores the point by tracing the parallel lives of Joseph and Valentine, and Auguste Bruner (Jean-Pierre Lorit), a lawyer studying to be a jurist, and his lover, Karin (Frederique Feder), who delivers "personal weather forecasts" by phone. The two couples don't know each other, never meet each other, yet, from the omniscient viewpoint of the film, we can see how human lives are intricately connected--their pathways interconnect constantly even though they just miss each other; their lives, seemingly on such separate tracks, parallel each other in eerily similar ways. Auguste, for instance, repeats many events that the judge experienced decades earlier (and could be seen as reliving the judge's life). Ultimately, the film shows how every action has consequences; the judge's trial for eavesdropping leads to Karin (one of the judge's victims) meeting a new man, leaving Auguste alone and despondent. Karin's optimistic weather forecast leads Valentine to take a ferry to England, resulting in her near-death--and survival in the company of Auguste and protagonists from the other Three Colours films.

Kieslowski's brilliant handling of colour in the trilogy goes beyond formal structure and thematic significance to a supple and flexible symbolism. In Blue, we see Julie visiting her aged mother (Emmanuele Riva). The old woman stares blankly at her television screen, on which an even older man bungee jumps from a tower; the blue screen shows him swimming through the air, paralleling the repeated images we've already seen of Julie swimming alone in a blue-lit swimming pool. We see images of liberty in both--humans freed from constraints--but also images of loneliness and struggle, humans flailing through the universe, seeking something they cannot find. Blue is also the colour of inspiration. Throughout the film, Julie hears bursts of orchestral music, signalled by brilliant blue screens. Here, too, the symbol is complex, for as Julie resists the pull of her late husband Patrice's music she also finds solace in it; ecstasy and pain seem joined in these blue visions. The film also teasingly suggests that Julie, perhaps, is the real composer of her famous husband's work. Do the visions represent the reawakening of her own music or a connection to her husband's?

Thus while the overwhelming tone of Blue is melancholic, a sad largo, blue takes on many shades, including affirmation. Ultimately, however, Kieslowski's sober meditation on freedom comes to optimistic conclusions. Despite Julie's attempts to isolate herself, to envelop herself in a blue world of isolation, she finds herself almost unknowingly drawn to human connections. Julie finds musical collaboration possible with Olivier (Benoit Regent), her husband's assistant, as they return to Patrice's unfinished "Song for the Unification of Europe." She finds friendship with neighbour Lucille (Charlotte Very), a stripper--and a fellow human in need. Finally, in a true act of liberation and fraternity, she befriends and provides for Sandrine (Florence Pernel), her late husband's lover who carries his child. The film ends with an aria from Patrice's "Song," the lyrics (unfortunately not rendered in the subtitles) drawn from 1 Corinthians 13: "Love is patience, full of goodness; love tolerates all things, aspires to all things. Love never dies."

Though white is perhaps the least visually interesting colour, White is probably the most appealing and popular of the trilogy films. White is both the purity of a wedding dress and pigeon guano raining down on poor Karol Karol as he enters a Paris courthouse. It's a white toilet and the white-screen blank-out signifying sexual ecstasy. It's the stark white walls of a new office for capitalists in downtown Warsaw. Most strikingly, we see shades of grey and white in the frozen Polish landscape and overcast, smoky skies. White appears in a snowy garbage dump in which Karol is discarded by thieves upon his return to Poland--smuggled in a suitcase they've stolen--an improbable scene that elicits Karol's enthusiastic "home at last." White fills the screen as Karol and his friend Mikolaj (Janusz Gajos) frolic on a frozen Warsaw lake.

White, like its counterparts, centres on a single theme but also illuminates themes in the other films. Karol not only discovers the complexities of equality but also the ambiguities of freedom. Like Julie in Blue, he finds himself alone, his marriage to Dominique (Julie Delpy) cruelly ended. Yet his fall ends comically--he's befriended by his countryman Mikolaj while playing Polish folk songs on his comb in the Paris metro and sent back to Warsaw in a trunk. It is with Mikolaj that he builds an importing business, discovering the pleasures and pains of economic freedom in Poland. The marketplace has been liberated, but is this cauldron of deals and hustling true equality and liberation? Similarly, prosperity allows him to plot his revenge on Dominique, but, more important, he finds fraternity--friendship and human empathy--with Mikolaj, one of many Kieslowski characters who claim that they want "nothing" from life but discover otherwise. Finally, after entrapping his former wife, he even discovers the love that had previously eluded him, much like Red's misanthropic judge finally recovers his humanity.

THE Three Colours trilogy rewards close and repeated viewings and gains accumulated power as one discovers the intricate connections. In Blue, for instance, we fleetingly see an old woman struggling to deposit an empty bottle in a trash bin on a Parisian street. Julie stares impassively at her, accentuating the loneliness of liberty underscored throughout the film. In White we see an old man struggling in a similar situation. Within its new context, the image now highlights the themes of social mobility and capitalism that White emphasizes. What are the cultural values in which these old people walk the streets in loneliness? the image now prompts us to ask.

In Red Valentine also sees a woman struggling to deposit a bottle. Valentine, however, stops to help her, showing the "fraternity" that the film addresses and once again re-contextualizing the previous images we've seen. Through such images Kieslowski stresses the unity and common humanity of people. "It doesn't matter who you are or who I am; if your tooth aches or mine, it's still the same pain. Feelings are what link people together," Kieslowski has said.

Other intriguing connections reveal themselves in the trilogy just as the music of fictional Dutch composer Van den Budenmayer (actually the work of Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner) floats through them all. In Blue, as Julie enters a court building, we hear an unidentified voice shouting "Where's my equality? Is my not speaking French a reason for the court to refuse to hear my case?" It's just a voice, a nameless person in the wrong room. But in White we learn that the speaker is protagonist Karol Karol, facing the humiliation of a divorce proceeding initiated by his wife, Dominique. The recognition chides us into realizing what individual stories of pain or triumph might lie behind our fellow citizens whom we so easily pass in the street. Red also blatantly connects the trilogy by drawing together characters from the three films through another intrusion of destiny at the film's end.

All three films touch on issues that face the new Europe. In Blue, set in Paris, Julie's late husband's "Song for the Unification of Europe" was to be played simultaneously in 12 European cities. Julie questions whether such an event can occur or unify a world that has lost meaning for her. White, in shifting from Paris to Warsaw, highlights issues of Eastern European democratisation and capitalism: the new world of Poland, neatly symbolized by the neon sign at the Karol brothers' hair salon, is a world of the hustle, of changing values, a world where anything--including a Russian corpse--can be bought. Is this a desirable change, an improvement over the old drab days? Red calls attention to unification through communication--instantaneous connections via phones and television as Valentine in Geneva talks to her boyfriend Michel in England and hears about his car getting stolen in Poland. Yet it also calls attention to the abiding lack of communication--their phone calls are lifeless, fraught with misunderstanding and tension--in the new techno-Europe.

The making and reception of the Three Colours films also reveal larger truths about commerce, cinema and capitalism. Red, for instance, was denied consideration as best foreign film because the American Academy of Film Arts determined it wasn't "Swiss enough"--it was truly a collaborative European effort and thus beyond the ken of cinema politics. Kieslowski has also spoken about the mixed effects of economic "freedom" on filmmaking in Poland: he found it easier to make films under political censorship in Poland than "under the economic censorship here in the West. Economic censorship means censorship imposed by people who think that they know what the audience wants." Just as Karol found equality to be of various shades in White, Kieslowski recognized that freedom and prosperity have exacted prices in his own work. Filmmakers can say what they want now in Poland, but audiences have stopped caring as much.

Kieslowski's directorial vision isn't flawless. At times, most notably in Blue, what he terms a "subjective" camera can become ponderous and his intentions obscure. Less sympathetic viewers than I have called this film "pretentious" art-film fare. At times, Kieslowski's metaphysical streak brings him close to the brink of unintelligibility. In Red, for instance, he not only traces the parallels between the judge's and Auguste's lives but asks, "Is it possible to repeat somebody's life after some time?" The film seems to float the possibility that the judge has gained a godlike power to relive his life through another man or to control the fate of other humans.

Some viewers might object to Kieslowski's self-described pessimism; others might reject his philosophy that "it's in everybody's nature to be good." Yet I believe that Three Colours as a whole presents a coherent vision both morally and artistically. What might seem artistically weak in Blue gains new meaning through the palettes of White and Red. What might seem a problematic philosophy is minimized in a cinematic world that presents fascinating characters and demands that viewers question the meanings of liberty, equality and fraternity in the context of moral actions.

While such visually effective films are best seen on large-screen cinema, the small-screen form in which most American audiences will experience them allows for the careful, repeated viewing (and rewinding) that Kieslowski's work deserves. Viewed and reviewed in the sequence of their creation, Blue, White, Red attain a cumulative effect like few other recent films. Despite Kieslowski's own protestations, cinema can be "equivocal" and "intelligent" enough--like literature--to "capture what lies within us."

KRZYSZTOF KIESLOWSKI stands with Andrzej Wajda as the most important of modern Polish film directors. Both are closely identified with the rise of Polish independence in the 1970s and '80s and with the "cinema of moral anxiety," and are a part of a loose confederation of Polish directors (including Agnieszka Holland, Wojtek Marczewski, Krzysztof Zanussi, Edek Zebrowski and Feliks Falk) devoted to exploring the moral dimensions of politics and social issues. Kieslowski's great last films, though rooted in the Polish freedom movement, became less politically charged and more preoccupied with individuals' moral decisions. Three Colours, set variously in Paris, Geneva and Warsaw, spans modern Europe. Similarly, recent film criticism has recognized Kieslowski as one of the great European art film directors, often linking him with Swedish director Ingmar Bergman.

Kieslowski was born in Warsaw in 1941. His application rejected twice, he finally entered the Lodz Film Academy in 1964. His early work was mainly for television, most of it documentary. The best known of these films are Workers '71 (Robotnicy '71; 1972), about the Polish labour strikes in December 1970; First Love (Pierwsza milosc; 1974), which won the Golden Dragon Prize at the International Festival of Short Films in Krakow; and Curriculum Vitae (Zyciorys; 1975), which attempts to understand a local Party Board of Control. Kieslowski has described his task in these documentaries as describing the world, since "the communist world had described how it should be and not how it really was."

After working for WFD, the State Documentary Film Studios, early in his career, Kieslowski joined the Tor production house. He became Tor's director in 1984. He was deputy chairman of the Polish Filmmaker Association from 1979 to 1981. While Kieslowski characterizes his films as being neither autobiographical nor political, his musings about his work (in Kieslowski on Kieslowski) reveal an artist affected very much by the material conditions of his environment.

His first feature film, Personnel (Personnel; 1975), was made for television. His first cinematic feature, The Scar (Blizna; 1976), centers on the disillusionment of an earnest party functionary charged with constructing a massive chemical plant. Camera Buff (Amator; 1979) centres on a factory worker who discovers the power, pleasure and dangers of filmmaking. Blind Chance (Przypadek; 1981) presents three possible versions of an incident in a young man's life, a "what if" consideration of chance, fate and politics. Created during the rise of Solidarity but banned after the declaration of martial law in December 1981, Blind Chance was finally released in 1987. These early films focus relentlessly on the price of living in a totalitarian system but also persistently highlight individual relationships and decisions.

Kieslowski's most significant collaboration, next to Tor, has been with the writer and Warsaw attorney Krzysztof Piesiewicz, a prominent opponent of the martial law imposed in 1981. Their first collaboration, No End (Bez konca; 1984), managed to offend the Polish authorities, the Catholic Church and many members of the opposition. Piesiewicz and Kieslowski next collaborated on the monumental The Decalogue (Dekalog; 1988), a series of 50-minute films meditating upon the Ten Commandments, made for Polish television. The fifth and sixth segments of the series were later re-edited and released as the feature films A Short Film About Love (Krotki film o milosci; 1988) and A Short Film About Killing (Krotki film o zabijaniu; 1988).

Kieslowski and Piesiewicz continued to collaborate on The Double Life of Veronica (La Double Vie de Veronique; Podwojne zycie Weroniki; 1991), turning now to Paris as a center of operations and the setting for the film. The trilogy Three Colours (Trois Couleurs; Trzy kolory): Blue (Bleu; Niebieski; 1993), White (Blanc, Biali; 1994) and Red (Rouge, Czerwony; 1994) has been Kieslowski's greatest commercial success, achieving wide distribution and critical notice in the U.S. and Europe.

VIEWING A FILM

Viewers of motion pictures come in various sizes and shapes, ages, and nationalities. Their backgrounds on every level, as well as their emotional and intellectual capabilities, are often different. The needs of this diverse audience have been met by different genres and types of cinema. In the face of such a complex situation, a writer who wants to discuss "viewing a film" in a couple of dozen pages or so, even after admitting that he is infected with hubris, must carefully indicate the limitations of his discussion. In this essay we will deal only with basic principles and premises and of necessity will ignore whole areas of the subject.

The first step is easy. An individual's experience of a motion picture involves three interrelated stages: his attitudes and responses before, during, and after viewing the motion picture. The next step, considering each stage in turn, immediately puts us on the slippery ground of distinctions and definitions.

Psychologists use the term sets to label the readiness of an organism to make a particular class of responses to an organization of stimuli. Although we are reluctant to describe a film as an "organization of stimuli," we should recognize that we do have different sets for different types of motion pictures. The most significant distinction is between the class of responses we are ready to make to the experience of watching a motion picture: is it solely entertainment or a work of cinematic art?

This distinction is not, of course, clear-cut and is even controversial. A few definitions will clarify our discussion. An entertainment amuses or frightens or titillates us, but what it does not do is to challenge our views of ourselves and the world around us. We escape from rather than confront our emotions and ideas. When we leave an entertainment, time has passed pleasantly, but our psyches have been unaffected otherwise by the experience.

A work of art engages our feelings and intellect and arouses us to ask questions about the experience and to what degree it has influenced our worldview. The greatest art even communicates to us insights into human nature that we might never have arrived at without its help. All works of art are entertainment in the sense that they hold our attention and cause us to move out of ourselves during the time that we respond to them. The crucial difference between art and entertainment, however, is the intensity of the experience in the case of art and, again, the effect it has on us after we are physically separated from it.

In cinema criticism there are no universally accepted terms that differentiate between a motion picture that is solely an entertainment and one that is a work of art. We will, however, follow the lead of John Simon in the introduction to his book of film criticism, Movies and Film (New York, 1971), and refer to the former as a movie and the latter as a film.

The borderline between movies and films is hidden in a forest of individual tastes and judgments. To complicate matters further, a movie may contain a moving and memorable scene and a film may have arid portions. Even if we agree that it is the effect of the motion picture as a whole that distinguishes the two types of cinema, there is still the problem of individual judgment. It is not unusual for one critic to evaluate a motion picture as an artistic masterpiece and another to dismiss it as a dull movie. The same diversity of opinions may occur when films of generally acknowledged value are compared with each other to establish their relative places in a hierarchy of artistic significance.

No more than in the other media that produce works of art does cinema criticism contain absolute criteria for judging between a movie and film or degrees of success within each category. There are even those who maintain that cinema is incapable of being an art. Some of their arguments are specious; others are disconcerting in pointing out the limitations of the motion picture medium. We do not have the space to engage in a defense of our position that cinema has and will continue to give us works of art, but we will make the following points: Critical judgment is always difficult in a popular medium, especially in the case of cinema, which has created far more movies than films. We should also keep in mind that the history of motion pictures is considerably less than a century old and serious criticism has appeared only during the last four decades. In addition, motion pictures are expensive to make (which restricts the possibility for experimentation with new ideas and techniques); specific works are not the creation of a single individual; and, most important, they are not as readily available as books are in print, paintings and photographs in reproductions, and music on phonograph records (a situation that could change radically when video cassettes are perfected).

What difference does it make, though, in viewing a motion picture if we consider it a movie or film? None, if an individual maintains the same sets whether listening to a symphony by Beethoven or tunes played by Guy Lombardo and his orchestra. Most of us, however, prepare ourselves to make a greater effort emotionally and intellectually when confronted by art than when exposed to entertainment.

The precept that an artistic work requires concentration and energy is particularly important when one is distinguishing between films and movies because many people have developed the habit of passivity when viewing a motion picture. Stanley Kauffmann insists on this point in the article, "Film Negatives," Saturday Review of the Arts ( March 1973), pp. 37-40, although he contrasts bad films and good films rather than movies and films. He argues that the chief problem of film appreciation is the ease with which a viewer can be seduced into an "aesthetic sloth." "There is something of a whorehouse feeling about this film ease, a whiff of lazy gratification in the darkness." On the other hand, "good films reprove us for indiscriminate rump-plumping. Good films ask us to do something in that seat, make demands on us, help dispel that brothel lethargy (without destroying pleasure)."

There are few cinema enthusiasts who have not discussed a significant film with a person who insists, "I don't know what you're talking about. It was just a movie." There is nothing wrong with movies in themselves. There are times when we want only to be entertained, and there are few media that can give us this type of pleasure with greater vitality than movies. To ignore films, however, is to deny ourselves the more profound experiences that they can offer. Motion pictures can never be anything but movies for individuals who do not open themselves to the possibility of being moved and influenced by what they see. And it is for this reason that there is no more important principle than the sets we have when viewing a motion picture.

Once this principle is accepted, it is evident why an individual should prepare himself intellectually and emotionally before viewing a film. For new films, one should read reviews by trusted reviewers. For older films, articles and books can be enlightening. Later we will discuss the value of understanding cinematic techniques, but now we will simply assert that the more one knows about these techniques, the easier it is to appreciate what a film is attempting to communicate and to judge its significance to the viewer himself. In this respect, books, film classes, and film clubs can help immeasurably. It is also important to learn the similarities and differences in purpose and approach of various film genre, such as fictive narrative, documentary, cartoon, and abstract film. If it is possible to do so, actually making a motion picture, no matter how short, can teach one more about cinema than a dozen books and lectures.
Our prepared viewer is now ready for the second stage of viewing a film--the experience itself. He has set himself to concentrate on the screen and to be alert to all details; now is the time to use these faculties. To look properly at a film, the viewer must as much as possible enter into its rhythms and empathize with the emotions it generates. At the end of a fine film, we may be exhilarated and emotionally charged, but we also may be as happily exhausted as after, say, two hours spent in an art gallery or at a concert.

There is a question often asked about experiencing a film. Should one analyze a film while seeing it? Our answer is one that not all will agree with. We believe that the first time an individual is viewing a film, he should not consciously consider what it is communicating or the techniques used. Anything that distracts from full, unswerving attention to the experience of the film itself should be rejected. This does not mean that a viewer will not mentally note an awkward scene or a particularly brilliant effect; it is simply that he should not dissect his reactions during the viewing. This process is reserved for the next stage, when he analyzes the film. We should mention, however, that the more experienced a person is in film viewing and the greater is his knowledge of cinematic techniques, the more details and devices he will notice. It seems that the mind develops a silent critical faculty that does not interfere with one's immediate responses to what is happening on the screen.

Because a film cannot be easily re-viewed, as in the case of a novel or a concerto on a phonograph record, memory is an essential tool in studying a motion picture. There is, as psychologists have proven, a direct correlation between memory and concentration. Here is another reason for developing the ability to focus all one's psychic energies on a film during viewing.

There is an approach that we recommend when viewing a fictive narrative film for the first time. This genre by definition contains a story. It makes no difference essentially if the story is as straightforward as in a film by Renoir or as diffuse and convoluted as often in one by Alain Renais. Although it will lessen suspense, it is worthwhile to find out the plot of a film before seeing it. It is even better to go through a script if one is available. Our justification for this suggestion is that plot is the most accessible element in a narrative film and knowledge of it allows a viewer to concentrate on other aspects while watching the film. Later it can encourage an analysis to move from "what happened?" to the more important questions of "why?" and "how?"

One naturally wants to see a significant film more than once. Each viewing will reveal new implications and subtleties. Hopefully, repeated viewings of a film will not dull the excitement of the original experience, but it is almost inevitable that an individual's critical faculties will operate with greater acuteness with every viewing. A person familiar with the over-all development of a film shifts his attention from the general to the specific, from the obvious to the elusive.

Ideally, a serious student of cinema should study a film after a first viewing on a Moviola or a similar instrument that allows him to slow down a print, even to a frame-by-frame speed. In that way he can peruse the miniature images and hear the synchronized sound. This is, however, not always possible, and most viewers must settle for taking advantage of every opportunity to see a worthwhile film more than once.

We have two recommendations for a person who is watching a film for the second time beyond the obvious one of reading any critical studies available. First of all, it is helpful to write in anticipation of that viewing and based on memory of an initial viewing a descriptive listing of the sequences that constitute the film and even a list of scenes within each sequence. Having a script in hand, of course, makes this exercise easier. The purpose is to expose the skeletal structure of the film; a sequence listing also helps to organize one's responses. Secondly, a person can make use of a portable cassette recorder during a second viewing. He can whisper into the microphone of the recorder--if this can be done without disturbing others--what he observes on the screen, such as details and techniques, and his own reactions. The value of this procedure is obvious. Not only does it aid one's concentration, but it is also an invaluable record for further study.

We are now ready to consider the third stage of viewing a film--the analysis after experiencing a film. Most of us enjoy discussing a motion picture that has excited us, yet we are often unsure of how to verbalize or to write about the experience. Perhaps we can best begin by stating our arguments against those who maintain that one should not go beyond personal, immediate responses to a film. We believe that if such responses go unexamined, in Socratic terms, then the individual is seeing without perceiving. Especially in a classroom, a supposed "analysis" of a film is very often only a justification of subjective reactions rather than a questioning, probing, and challenging of those reactions. Wordsworth may have been correct in asserting about art that to dissect is to kill. Equally restrictive, however, is the view that the mind plays no role in our appreciation of a work of art. As so often is the case with two extremes, a middle ground is the most productive. The original emotions and ideas aroused by a film must be preserved as much as possible, but now, in this third stage, they must be examined, studied, and placed in contexts that lift them from the immediate to the universal.

It is debatable just what critical apparatus one uses to dissect a film without killing primal responses to it that must always remain the foundations on which an analysis is based. Obviously, as the writers of a book of film analysis we have our own answer, which is both demonstrated and justified in the book itself. Because this volume, however, is confined to fictive narrative films, our comments will deal with this cinematic genre.

If there is one premise on which Film and the Critical Eye is based, it is that an analysis of a film must take into account both narrative elements and visual techniques--that the two are inseparable. Let us examine this premise.

A narrative is a series of events in time involving the relations of human beings to themselves, others, and their circumambient universe. It may describe events that have actually happened or are fictive (imagined by its creator). The narrative mode of expression has certain inherent characteristics that can be analyzed: there is a story or plot (the distinction, as E. M. Forster noted in Aspects of the Novel, is between a narration of events arranged in their time sequence and a narrative in which the emphasis falls on causality), characterization, conflict, themes, setting, symbols, and so on.

A narrative, however, can be communicated to an audience in various media and combinations of media. A narrative of, say, a hero on a quest can be told in a novel, poem, drama, motion picture, opera, or tone poem --to name only a few possibilities. Each form in which the narrative is cast can be explored in terms of the same elements of narration, but our experience of one form will not be the same as in another. Whatever the limitations and gains in each case, surely we respond in very different ways to the narrative of the journey of Siegfried in the medieval epic, Wagner's operas, Giraudoux play (Siegfried), and Fritz Lang film ( Siegfried's Tod). The reasons do not have to be labored. Every medium that uses a narrative mode conveys the elements of the narrative in accord with the very characteristics that define the medium.

These generalizations will become clearer if we return to motion pictures. This medium has its own unique visual language and rhetoric (which, since the early 1930s, includes the dimension of the auditory). We usually do not realize how many cinematic techniques we have absorbed unawares. We take for granted the difference between physical time and cinematic time, the two dimensions of a screen, the effect of a close-up, a cut, or parallel development. A glance at history, however, can give us perspective. There was a chorus of critics who maintained that when Edwin S. Porter used a flat cut and D. W. Griffith cross-cutting, viewers would be completely confused. This opinion proved to be wrong and audiences soon learned to accept these cinematic principles and others that were developed.

Today an audience may have no difficulties with elementary techniques of motion pictures, but a serious student of film should go beyond these basics. He should recognize the differences in the impact of a shot or scene when a director uses a high camera angle or low angle, a stationary camera or dynamic cutting, a long shot or a close-up, parallel asynchronization of sound or counterpoint synchronization, shadows or complete illumination--or any of a dozen other devices of cinema language and rhetoric. We are not referring simply to an intellectual exercise in labeling techniques, but a means of appreciating the reasons for the choices that have been made in the creation of a film. This, in turn, leads to more perceptive analyses of films.

An aspect of the language and rhetoric of film, although it is sometimes viewed as a separate area, is the role of each component of a film in its production. Film making is a group activity that requires a director, producer, actors, scriptwriter, cameraman, lighting and sound directors, composer (if there is background music), set designer for interiors, editor, and many other artists and technicians. A director is the most important figure, for he must coordinate the activities of the others. Occasionally, a director, such as Chaplin or Welles, will assume more than one role. A familiarity with how motion pictures are put together cannot help but increase a viewer's awareness of the potentials and restrictions of the medium.

Now to sum up our recommendations for analyzing a film. First the viewer attempts to recall as completely as possible his original impressions. Next he reinforces, corrects, or adds to these responses by reviewing any notes he has taken, such as a listing of sequences and what has been recorded on a cassette tape, and by rereading a script and any other printed matter that deals with what actually appeared on the screen.

The analysis itself will have as its goal the discovery of what the creators of the film were attempting to communicate and how they did it. Solid foundations for a critical study of a film require knowledge of the elements of a mode of expression and the language and rhetoric of the film (including the roles of individuals in a team of film makers). There is not, of course, a direct ratio, only a relationship between the degree of this knowledge and the quality of an analysis, for the latter depends also on the experience, intelligence, and sensibilities of the viewer.

In the case of a narrative film, one can perhaps best proceed in an analysis by examining individually each element of narrative, yet at every point considering how an emotion or idea was conveyed cinematically. The viewer should also recognize that no one element is independent of the others, and the same applies to specific techniques.

Thus far we have offered only suggestions for analyzing a film as a self-sufficient entity without going beyond--except for developing critical apparatus--what the viewer experiences directly. To complete an analysis, however, another step should be taken. It is also worthwhile to explore an individual film in larger contexts that may give insights into the "why" as well as the "what" and "how" of a film. In other words, how do we interpret a film? We feel that this complex problem must be dealt with separately, and we do so in the next chapter.

From: "FILM AND THE CRITICAL EYE" by Dennis DeNitto

DEFINITIONS OF COMMON TERMS

Adapt: To translate an original story, novel, play or nonfiction work into a screenplay for the purpose of making a narrative film.

Art director: The member of a film production staff responsible for the conception and design of the decor and, also, frequently for selecting the natural locations used in a film. In this sense, he is an artist in his own right, and many film directors consistently employ the same art director for all their films.

Aspect ratio: The relationship between the width and height of a projected cinema image, expressed as a proportion or ratio. Thus, the aspect ratio of a square image is 1:1; that of a standard sound-film screen is 1:1.37 and that of the Cinemascope wide-screen process is 1:2.33. Contemporary filmmakers have frequently preferred to work in aspect ratios somewhere between standard and Cinemascope.

Auteur: A French word, meaning author. The auteur theory of film criticism, evolved primarily by the French film critics writing for Cahiers du Cinéma from the late 1940s onward, suggests that every film in a director's canon bears the characteristic imprint of his style or artistic vision, as these have been realized by the actors and technicians working under his control. In this sense, the theory goes, the film director is as much the true author of his own work as is a poet, a painter, a composer or any other artist.

Background: That perpendicular picture plane farthest away from the camera, or, behind the subject in the foreground.

Back lighting: When the principal source of illuminating the subject comes from behind so that its rays are directed at his back, back lighting is said to be employed.

Boom: A long, flexibly geared, lightweight metal arm, on the end of which is usually fixed a microphone with which sound technicians record synchronous sound during filming. Sometimes a lighting instrument is affixed to the end of a boom in order to achieve more flexible control of the lighting of a particular scene.

Camera: The subject for a book; basically, the instrument with which shots are made; a mechanism, usually employing an electric motor and a claw engagement device (with which to grip film perforations), to advance a continuous run of film past a photographic lens. Professional filmmakers usually (but not always) employ cameras equipped to record scenes with synchronized sound (dialogue, principally).

Camera angle: The position of the camera vis-à-vis the subject to be filmed. See also high angle, low angle, eye level.

Camera leading: Denotes a moving shot, in which the camera tracks backward while the subject moves forward, keeping a constant distance between himself and the lens.

Moving camera: A shot in which the camera is transported from place to place, following or leading subject action. This is to be distinguished from other kinds of camera movement, notably the pan or the tilt in which the camera does not move from place to place but only pivots on either the horizontal or vertical axis.

Subjective camera: A concept in which the camera's point of view is that of the subject.

Camera operator: A technician, a photographer, who operates the camera during the shot. He is to be distinguished from the cinematographer.

Cheat shot: One in which an illusion is created "cheating" the spectator; for example, an actor leaps off a "cliff," but he is actually leaping into a net placed off camera; the cheat consists in the fact that the spectator does not know about the net and therefore thinks that the leap is a real one.

Cinemascope: A wide-screen process distinguished by its very high aspect ratio of 1:2.33. This process is effective when the subject matter is appropriate -- that is, for Westerns, epics, and so on, wherever mass action and sweep or movement are central to the narrative.

Cinematographer: Synonyms are director of photography and cameraman; sometimes also given in credits as "photographed by." The principal technician in a film crew, he is in charge of all photography, responsible for lighting and for the technical setting up of all shots. Working under the cinematographer's immediate supervision is the camera operator.

Cinéma vérité: The antithesis of the staged narrative film, cinéma vérité denotes film documentaries shot with lightweight portable equipment as the subject's life unfolds. There is no restaging of scenes from "life" in order to enhance or dramatize the action beyond its natural state; there is no elaborate postproduction dubbing or other interference with the kind of cinema truth thus made available. Indeed, cinema truth is the meaning of the French phrase, adapted from the watchword of the Soviet pioneer Dziga Vertov.

Clip: A short section of film that has not been especially made for the work in which it appears. For eg: real newsreel clips. Clips are synonymous with stock footage when they are obtained from a film library.

Close-up: The term derives from the fact that with a normal lens fitted to the camera the subject must be close up to the lens in order to appear very large on the screen. When the subject, usually but not always the actor's face, fills the screen in such a way as to virtually exclude everything else, we have a close-up.

Extreme close-up: A shot that gets closer to the subject than the close-up and therefore shows us less of that subject. In this shot, we are usually so close that part of the actor's face is beyond the edges of the frame. Tight close-up is a synonym for extreme close-up.

Composition: The arrangement of scenic elements, including actors, within the contours of the frame. Composition is a principal means of directorial control of the medium.

Continuity: Sometimes used in lieu of story. Continuity also denotes the unbroken smoothness of transition from shot to shot and sequence to sequence so that the spectator's attention is not jarred.

Contrast: The range of the tonal scale between the darkest and lightest values of the photographic image. The image is said to show high contrast if this range is small, with very few graded tones, and low contrast when it is wide, with a large number of graded tones. High contrast is usually employed to reflect heightened levels of dramatic action and vice versa.

Craning: A type of camera movement effected by mounting the camera on the arm of a flexible crane. In order to follow action up a flight of stairs or over the edge of a cliff, a cinematographer must employ a crane.

Cross-cut: A synonym is parallel editing. A method of intensifying suspense by cutting across, back and forth, between one set of related actions and another.

Depth of field: That property of a lens that holds subjects in focus through a depth (from foreground to background) of the field of view of the lens. The technique of deep focus photography depends on this property.

Documentary: A type of film that documents a state of affairs already in existence. Although the documentary can be and frequently is a form of non-fictive narrative, it is to be distinguished from fictive narrative by its purpose, which is to appeal not to the imaginative but to the discursive faculties.

Dolly: A transport for the camera in making moving shots; a vehicle for the moving camera. The word is often used as a verb -- for example, "The camera dollies in on her face." See also tracking, traveling shot, and trucking.

Double: An actor used in place of a star, usually to perform physically hazardous action.

Dub, dubbing. To dub a scene is to record the dialogue of that scene and substitute it for the original sound (usually recorded in a foreign language); dubbing is also necessary where the original recording was faulty in some way.

Editor: The technician responsible for assembling and editing shots and tracks into the finished work in its final form.

Establishing shot: This type of shot pictures the subject at a considerable distance in order to establish it in its environmental context and thus provide the spectator with a model of where the action takes place. The term is sometimes used interchangeably with long shot, but we take it to mean the long shot that begins the sequence, in order to distinguish it from one that does not establish a locale.

Exposure: The quantity of light permitted to fall on raw film stock for the purpose of laying down a latent image. Various degrees of exposure are used to control the surface texture, color, and density of the film and hence the quality of what is visible on the screen. Exposure is one means (lighting and type of stock are still other means) of controlling contrast.

Expressionism: A wide-ranging and influential aspect of modern art and literature. Cinematic expressionism, which is unrelated to the larger modernist movements, is represented chiefly by Wiene The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1924) and is characterized by the use of bizarre and distorted effects, chiefly in decor (settings, costumes, makeup, and so on) --but also in camera work--for the purposes of revealing and expressing, directly, interior states of mind and heart.

Exterior: Representation of an outdoor--as opposed to an indoor (interior) -- scene.

Extra: An actor hired by the day to work in crowd scenes or wherever else background populations are needed.

Eye level: When the camera lens is positioned at the height of the eye of a standing person, we may say that the camera angle is at eye level.

Fade in, fade out: As the camera is running we close down the aperture of the lens, thereby gradually reducing the quantity of light exposing the film stock. The visible effect of this procedure, the gradual reduction of light and detail until the image is dark, is called a fade out. A fade in is the exact reverse of the effect.

Fantasy: In the psychological sense, an internal image--on the conscious level--of superb vitality, ambition, possibility.

Feature film: A film of a certain length--in the United States at least 8,100 feet (of 35mm film) or 90 minutes--long enough to constitute the feature presentation on a film program.

Filter: A piece of optically ground glass whose function is usually to exclude certain bands of light from the visible spectrum and thus produce certain special effects, such as high contrast, low contrast, color saturation, soft focus, and so on.

Flashback: The return to a point earlier in fictional time than the present tense of the film action ongoing. Sometimes it refers to the brief repetition of a piece of prior action. In Wild Strawberries there are numerous flashbacks.

Focal length: The distance from the optical center of a lens to the plane of principal focus. It is an important property of a lens.

Focus: To adjust the lens so that the subject image is most perfectly resolved into a sharply defined picture; when this is done, the picture is said to be in focus.

Selective focus: Within the same shot, focus can be adjusted from a subject in the foreground to one in the background (or vice versa), thus affording the cinematographer the use of selective focus.

Soft focus: When the perfect degree of resolution of a picture in focus is slightly reduced to produce a degree of haziness in subject detail, the picture is said to be in soft focus.

Follow shot: Denotes the shot in which the camera follows behind, moving from place to place as its subject does. See also tracking, traveling shot, trucking , and moving camera .
Footage: Length of film measured in feet.

Foreground: That perpendicular picture plane closest to the camera lens. See also background .

Frame: (1) A single transparent photograph of the series that is printed consecutively along the length of cinematographic film. (2) At any one moment the contours and area of the screen image.

Dynamic frame: Sometimes used to denote the effects of masking portions of the image and then either enlarging or diminishing the size and dimensions of the screen by more masking or by filling in with more picture the masked portions.

Freeze frame: A synonym is frozen frame: A single frame from a shot re-photographed for a certain length and then spliced into the sequence will produce the effect of stopped or frozen action. The effect is identical with that produced when a still photograph is filmed. It is a device with many aesthetic possibilities. See especially the work of Truffaut (Jules and Jim).

Reframe: Used to denote slight adjustments in panning and tilting in order to recompose an original staging composition.

Grain: The experience of a pebbly texture. These are really particles of silver salts held in suspension in a photographic emulsion; that they are visible may be due to a number of factors. The deliberate production of a grainy surface texture is an element of aesthetic control.

High angle: A camera position vis-à-vis the subject in which the camera is angled downward from the horizontal; the camera height may be just a foot or two higher than the subject height, as is usually the case in a close-up, or it may be hundreds of feet higher, as is the case of establishing a long shot of, say, a whole town.

Insert: A tight (or extreme) close-up, usually of an inanimate object, or sometimes a part of the body--a hand or a foot--inserted into a sequence for normal dramatic purposes. When, in Wild Strawberries, Isak looks at the watch his mother is offering to him, we cut to an insert of it.

Interior: Used to describe a scene taking place indoors.

Iris effect: The progressive widening and growth of a tiny circular spot in the center of a black screen until the whole picture is revealed to cover the screen is called an iris in. The iris out is the reverse: a very large circle begins to appear around the outer edges of the frame, and, closing down to a tiny circular spot, blacks out the screen entirely. The effect has an emphatic function: it calls the viewer's attention to whatever image it either reveals or blacks out. An uncommonly uesd effect in films nowadays, it was frequently used during the period of silent films.

Jump cut. When a segment of film is removed so that a character moving toward a destination need not--now that the section is removed--traverse the distance toward his destination, we may say that the resulting transition is a jump cut. It has jumped across space to save time.

Lens: A transparent glass refracting medium, bounded by two surfaces, one curved and the other either flat or curved, its purpose is to concentrate or disperse light according to certain optical laws. The student of cinema should bear in mind two special properties of lenses.
Those of relatively long focal length (that is, telephoto lenses), in addition to bringing distant action closer, have (1) a relatively shallow depth of field and (2) produce a foreshortened perspective: background and foreground seem closer together than when seen by the naked eye. On the other hand, wide-angle lenses have relatively short focal lengths and are used to record action over a wider field than is permitted by long focal length lenses. They tend to (1) have a very great depth of field and (2) elongate perspective so that foreground and background seem closer together than when seen by the naked eye.

Location: A real environment used for filming, as opposed to studio settings especially made for such purposes. Documentary films, needless to say, are always made on location. Fiction films or parts of them are sometimes made on location as well.

Low angle: A camera position vis-à-vis the subject in which the camera is angled upward from the horizontal. The height of the camera lens is lower than the subject and is looking up at it. This is a frequently used camera angle; it sometimes produces distortion: the subject seems to tower above the spectator.

Main title: The card containing the title of the film; sometimes used to designate titles and credits at the start of the film.

Montage: Also called dynamic editing. The art of building up a sequence out of short strips or shots in such a way as to analyze space and time, synthesizing the separate shots into something more than their mere sum. A crucial element in the rhetoric of film.

Fast motion: A synonym for accelerated motion. The illusion of motion taking place at a greater speed than normal. The opposite of slow motion.

Reverse motion: When a shot is printed in reverse order the effect is to reverse the motion within the frame. This technique is frequently used for comic or bizarre effect.

Slow motion: The illusion of motion taking place at a slower rate than normal. The opposite of fast or accelerated motion.

Moving shot: When the camera is transported from place to place keeping pace with moving action.

Negative: Raw stock, when it is exposed and developed, produces a negative image from which positives are produced. Occasionally, negatives are projected in order to produce special effects.

Pace: A measure of the rhythm of movement, usually applied to editing. When relatively short (or progressively shorter) strips of film are spliced together, the effect is a fast pace. The opposite procedure produces a slow pace. A synonym for tempo.

Pan, panning: When the camera is moved about the vertical axis, we have a pan or a panning shot.

360° pan: A panning shot in which the camera revolves a complete circle about its vertical axis.

Point-of-view shot: A synonym for subjective shot . The second in a sequence of two shots, as follows: (1) close-up of character; (2) wider shot of what he sees.

Print: A positive piece of film. A copy of a whole film. Many prints are made for release and distribution to exhibitors.

Production: a synonym for a film while it is in the phase of principal photography or shooting.

Pre-production: That phase of making a film in which the script is being prepared, actors engaged, shooting schedules determined, decor being designed, and all else done preparatory to entering production or the phase of principal photography.

Post-production: That phase of film making after principal photography has been concluded; during postproduction, the film is edited, sound effects and music tracks are assembled, and the completed film is brought to its release stage.

Projection: The act of running the film through a projector so that it appears on the screen. Modern sound films are run at a projection speed of 24 frames per second (fps), the same speed at which they are shot. Because silent films were shot at 16 fps, they give the illusion, when projected at 24 fps of fast or accelerated motion.

Reaction shot: Usually a silent close-up of a character recording his reaction to some narrative turn of events.

Rear screen projection: Projection of a film clip onto a screen from behind the screen or, in certain cases, from overhead. The purpose is usually to provide a moving background against which actors working in a studio setup can be photographed. The technique is frequently used when a moving vehicle is to be depicted and synchronous dialogue is recorded.

Reduction print: A print of a narrower gauge than the original from which it has been struck; an example would be a 16mm print from an original 35mm master. Students nearly always see reduction prints in 16mm. The reduction almost always results in some loss of surface quality in the picture and clarity in the sound.

Reel: A standard size spool, or the amount of film that can be wound onto it; in 35mm film this amount is 1,000 feet, or slightly more than 11 minutes of projection time. The 16mm equivalent is 400 feet.

Rushes: The prints of takes that are made on completion of a day's shooting; these are immediately projected for the director and staff so that a close check can be made on the progress of the work. A synonym for dailies.

Scene: A designate a series of actions or shots in the narrative that tend to form a single unit for reasons having to do with locale or narrative movement. Also, a piece of continuous action; a convenient designation for parts of a screenplay.

Screenplay: Synonyms are scenario and shooting script. The form in which a film story is cast so that a director can realize it on film.

Sequence: The major division of a film; refers to the sequential order of shots, but it also refers to scenes which together form a single phase of narrative action or continuity,

Short: A film whose length is less than 3,000 feet of 35mm film (roughly less than half an hour). Films longer than this, although not feature length, are not shorts, either; but they are seldom made except for television.

Shot: The unit out of which scenes and sequences are made; the strip of film made from a single uninterrupted running of the camera, regardless of movement by the camera or the subjects.

Long shot: A type of shot in which the subject is pictured at a considerable distance; human figures must be fully visible, from head to toe, for the shot to qualify as a long shot.
Medium shot: Action is pictured in this shot considerably closer than in a long shot. Human figures are seen at least from the knees up in a medium shot.
Three shot: One in which three people are pictured, usually in a medium shot or closeup.

Two shot: One in which two people are pictured, usually in a medium shot or close-up.

Clapboard: A synonym for clapsticks. A slate board, set in a wooden frame, with a piece of hinged wood at the top; the hinged portions are set with painted lines that join at an acute angle when close together. The two pieces of wood are clapped together at the start of a scene in which synchronous sound is recorded in order to permit synchronization of sound and picture tracks. The scene number is recorded on the slate itself. The whole is necessary to keep orderly control over the cinematic materials.

Sound: Refers usually to the natural sounds indigenous to a particular scene--for example, footsteps, breathing, crowd and traffic noises, the wind, and so on. To be distinguished from dialogue and music, which are also recorded and finally mixed together onto a single sound track.

Non-synchronous sound: The principal non-synchronous sound is dialogue. Some purists of film criticism and theory, notably V. I. Pudovkin, have always insisted that non-synchronous sound is the only sound appropriate to artful film works.

Synchronous sound: Dialogue recorded and synchronized exactly to the lip movements of the actors who produce it.

Special effects: Any unusual effect introduced into the texture of a film, whether by means of laboratory opticals or special work on objects to be photographed during the normal course of principal photography.

Staging: The manner in which the movement of actors and objects is designed into the scene or sequence; a matter of in-frame movement and positioning.

Static: Stationary; a term applied to a shot in which the camera has been locked into position; without movement.

Still: A photograph of some moment in the action or behind-the-scenes production of a film. Where the still pictures some moment in the action, the action has been especially staged for the still camerman; a still is generally not taken from the actual cinematographic picture track for technical reasons.

Stop-action photography (stop-motion photography): The technique of photographing objects one frame at a time (the motion of the camera is stopped after a single frame), at regular but lengthy intervals, permitting great changes in the object being photographed. An often seen example is that of a plant or a flower; seen in stop motion photography, the growth seems phenomenal because it is instantaneous.

Studio: A place where interior settings are built for the purposes of film making. The property of a film production company.

Subjective camera: A pattern of usage of camera angle and point of view such that a spectator experiences the visual images as primarily the subjective view of a particular character.

Subtitle: The translation of foreign dialogue inserted across the bottom of the frame. The alternative to subtitles is dubbing.

Surrealism: A 20th century movement in several arts, which finds a heightened sense of reality in the objects of subconscious mental activity as these are directly represented.

Swish pan: A panning shot (real or apparent) at very high speed; a form of transition between shots.

Take: A single trial run of a shot made during production. Because several trials are usually made before one or more satisfactory recordings are made, each trial is given the designation of take and a number--for example, take ten.

Tempo: A synonym for pace.

Tilt: A movement of the camera around its horizontal axis. The camera is tilted up or down; sometimes the expression pan or panning shot is used to designate all movements of the camera (pans and tilts) that do not involve transporting it from place to place.

Time: Students of cinema should think long and hard about this seemingly obvious concept. First, there is objective time, a measure of so-called objective reality. Its chronological progression in a linear and irrecoverable direction affords an index to the order (or disorder) of events. Then there is psychological time, which is altogether different, for it is an index to wishes and personal freedom. Both kinds of time are treated in narrative films, in a judicious mixture ordinarily; sometimes, however, films pursue the elusive psychological time to the exclusion of the objective world.
Screen time is simply the time it takes the length of any film to run its course.
Narrative time is different from screen time, in that the latter usually condenses the former. There are, however, exceptions even to this rule.
In any case, objective time makes history and psychological time makes character.

Title Cards: Cards containing printed material. These are then photographed in order to provide information to an audience that cannot be otherwise conveyed. A device of the silent screen.

Track, tracking: A verb describing the moving camera . It derives from the fact that the wheeled vehicle for conveying the camera was frequently fitted into and moved along special tracks. Synonyms are trucking, traveling, and moving, dollying.

Transition: Any method of going from shot to shot. The generic name for this movement.

Cut: The simplest transition: simply the joining of two strips of film. The value of this type of transition can range from the smooth and imperceptible to the sharpest of impact--depending on the particular pieces of film to be joined.

Cutaway: A shot to which the major sequential shots of a scene are joined, usually as a means of relief from the concentration of cinematic material in that scene.

Match cut: A shot that matches in size or composition the preceding shot in the sequence. A good example would be a series of cuts featuring two people facing each other in conversation. Each cut in such a sequence would be a match cut. The value of the match cut is close association or linkage.

Dissolve: The overlap of the end of one shot and the beginning of another in such a way that the first shot is fading out and the second is fading in. The effect is of the first shot dissolving into the second. The value of the dissolve is a softening; very often it connotes a lapse of time, and at other times simply a softening of mood.

Wipe: In this form of transition, a line or margin moves across the screen, eliminating one shot and revealing the other as it trails behind the line.

Voice over: A voice heard over the picture which is not the synchronous speech of a participant in the scene. It may, however, be the non-synchronous voice of such a participant.

Zoom: The action of a variable focal length lens. Almost always the sudden change of focal length, the movement into a close-up or out to a long shot from a close-up, has the value of dramatic impact.