Evidencia de reunión para solución de problemas

Ordinary stationary photography is not as funda- mentally remote from film as might be supposed. Still photographs may be used for other purposes besides the illustrated magazines and the showcases of movie

palaces. A still photograph inserted in the middle of a moving film gives a very curious sensation; chiefly because the time character of the moving shots is

carried over to the still picture, which therefore looks uncannily petrified. An ordinary photograph hardly ever gives an impression of rigid standstill because the dimension of motion is not applied to it, and the time spent looking at it is not considered as being the time that passes while the event shown in the pic- ture takes place. But a still photograph cut into a film acts like the curse on Lot's wife. In the film People on Sundays (Film Studio 1929) a beach photographer is shown at work. Various people of whom he takes pictures appear, half-length, each first moving in the film, and then cut-in suddenly as "portrait." A smil- ing, naturally moving person is suddenly petrified as if touched by a magic wand, and persists for whole seconds in an oppressive immobility.

The particular effect produced by cutting-in a still picture cannot be made simply by the actor suddenly arresting a motion and holding it. Firstly, there is an astonishing difference between such voluntary cessa- tion of motion and the absolute rigidity of a photo- graph; and, secondly, an actor can hardly hold the absurd momentary phases caught by a still photograph, which is not dependent upon the will of the actor and the laws of physical motion.

6) Fading in, Fading out, Dissolving

Sometimes in order to avoid sudden appearance a picture is allowed to grow slowly out of the darkness, or to disappear in the same way. Fading in and fading out can be used to show people's subjective perception;

for instance, when a person is waking up or falling asleep. But above all, it is a good means of keeping one scene^distinct from the next; for since shots that follow immediately on one another usually appear as part of an unbroken time sequence, it is often not easy to show that an episode has come to an end, and that the scene of action is changing. If, however, the scene is fadedjout, the spectator feels that there is a break as though a curtain had dropped, and when something else fades in a new scene is expected.

Dissolving means the gradual transmuting of one

shot into another. The two are not simply joined side by side by ordinary montage, but while the first shot becomes gradually fainter, the second begins indis- tinctly to appear, and by degrees gets stronger until it completely obliterates the first. Dissolving serves, like fading in and out, to mark a break between two scenes; it destroys the illusion of an unbroken passage of time and of one fixed place, because it presents a visible superimposition of times and places, and only sepa- rate things can be superimposed on one another, not things that follow one another in time or are immedi- ately next to each other in space. Dissolving is a visible relative displacement of the coordinates of time (or space) and therefore impossible within a scene in whichjthe unities of space and time are un- broken.

Dissolving often helps to heighten the effects of contrast and similarity in montage, for the more simply and easily one shot melts into another, the more strik- ing it is if a connection of subject (similarity or con- trast) between the two is suddenly noticed; and the more strongly is the connection emphasized. Two shots

that are combined on the principle of similarity can be so dissolved into each other that the vague, inde- terminate, neutral zone shows abstractly what is com- mon to both shots: for instance, the "swinging" as such of a pendulum and of a playground swing. 7) Superimposition, Simultaneous Montage

From the dissolve there is only a step to showing several shots simultaneously. This has the same effect, but in a higher degree, as exposing the same plate twice over in ordinary photography. It is a good means of depicting confusion and chaos. Attempts have often been made to give the feeling of the medley and bustle of street traffic by showing various shots one on top of the other.

Quite other effects may, however, be achieved by this device. In the scene mentioned above from Feyder's Les Nouveaux Messieurs, the interplay of the orator and the mechanical piano is shown. Feyder superimposes a close-up of the speaker, gesticulating despairingly in the direction of the .noise, upon a close-up of the drum inside the mechanical piano—the drumstick is seen moving up and down, and in the double picture it not only hits the drum but also the speakers head. Thus the conflict that is only acoustic and narrative is transposed into the realm of the visual. And this has been done by artificially superimposing two episodes which in reality were taking place in the same space, but could not be brought into a visual association that would express the required connection. A certain aesthetic objection to the process is contained in the word "artificial"

superimposition of dancers and the band. If these shots were simply put one after the other in ordinary montage it is fairly certain that they would make no more impression on the audience than simply indi- cating that the director wished to show that here is a band and here are people dancing. But superimposi- tion is a simple way of showing the abstract substance of all otrthese scenes; that is, their meaning and mood rather than merely the events.

The method is convenient but somewhat artificial. This is obvious if it is compared with the effects of the selection of the camera angle which was discussed above. It was shown there how a particular connection between objects or events could be induced by optical juxtaposition or superimposition without interfering with reality, simply by a careful selection as regards kind and position of the objects in question, and then by choosing a camera angle which would make the required connection clear without the real spatial relationships in the scene being artificially changed or destroyed entirely. Example; the perspective super- imposition of t)ie convict and the prison bars. It must be admitted that in a naturalistic narrative film a superimposition by double exposure may easily give the impression of a foreign body, which interferes with the style of^beTest; and, secondly, that the artistic effect of a scene is greater if it interprets and molds the material without doing violence to it. It is more striking, and more elegant. The abstract meaning which the artist brings into his production by the studied adaptation of visual devices should not appear as something external, arbitrarily introduced, but is much more effective if it is achieved simply by appro-

priate grouping and viewing of the material at hand. Multiple exposure is likely to give the feeling that the artist has achieved his effect too cheaply, and in too superficial a manner.

To be used and assessed in much the same way as superimposition is simultaneous montage—by which is

meant montage of scenes juxtaposed within one image. Its first application was in the artistically suspect method by which memories and forebodings used to be shown: The hero is sitting deep in thought, and suddenly what he is thinking of appears as a circular insert in a corner at the top of the screen. This pro- cedure is poor because the road from the idea to the visual form is too direct. "A man is thinking of his wife"—is primarily an abstract theme and difficult to render visibly unless it is in some way made concrete. A device may be adopted—the man may look at his wife's picture—and the situation is clear. Such a device is not original, but the abstract is thereby made suffi- ciently concrete. The artifice of simultaneous montage means an evasion of the effort to find an actual situa- tion which will make the abstract part of the scene clear to the eyes of the audience without constraint. Two conceptually related items are simply placed side by side visually as well and thus a comprehensible pictorial representation of the theme is given—but by an artless, artificial method. Something of this kind has characterized most of the experiments that have been made with simultaneous montage. In Eisenstein's

The General Line, where the vision of a gigantic stud bull suddenly appears over the cows, one has the feel- ing that—compared with his other inventions within the bounds of naturalistic style—the artist has made

things too easy for himself, and in approaching the problem has considered the theme too much and the picture too little. It is true, however, that since the shot in question is definitely symbolic, there is less need of unifying it with the style of the rest

Simultaneous montage is more impressive when it is meaningful not only in content but also in form. Thus Vertov^has sometimes shown two or three images of the same scene on top of each other—the same ma- chine, for instance, has driven across the screen three times—and from this a sort of symmetrical design has arisen which is not ineffective.

In the examples that have been discussed up to the present, simultaneous montage was so used that it could at once be recognized as such by the spectator, that is, so that the picture was bound to strike him as being a compound. Such amalgamations may, however, also be used to produce the illusion of a reality which does not exist. The same object may be present twice; a man may talk to himself. For this purpose separate shots are taken and are afterward so skillfully put to- gether that it; is impossible to detect the join. The device has enabled star players to shine in two parts at once. There was a great sensation when Henny Porten as a clumsy maidservant talked to Henny Porten the elegant Ikdy—(Fancy! she can not only play any kind of a part, but she can do them all at once!) Artistic use of the wraith was made in Conrad Veidt's

The Student of Prague and in Friedrich Ermler's The Fragment of an Empire. A symbolic battle scene occurs

in the latter film: a German soldier and a Russian attack each other with bayonets. There is a sudden close-up—and it is seen that they both have the same

face (both are being played by the same actor). They recognize each other and drop their bayonets. The generals in the German and Russian headquarters im- potently rage, and order the renewal of the battle, but the officers to whom they give their orders again have the same face as the two soldiers. The folly of war that forces "Man" to turn on himself in a different uniform—the paradox has hardly ever been put quite so impressively. "All men have something in common, a certain kinship"—this abstract idea is made concrete by the creation of an artificial reality in which this common bond is made visible. Men all have the same face, and the fact that their uniforms are different seems futile and absurd in comparison with the sur- prisingly revealed visible truth.

8) Special Lenses

A multiplication of one and the same object can, apart from montage, also be achieved directly at the time the picture is shot by specially cut lenses, the insertion of prisms, and other means. Nevertheless the potentialities of these means do not seem to be very great. The same face may be multiplied a hun- dredfold, it may be distorted—but these are after all very special and rigid effects, which allow little varia- tion and therefore must soon come to seem conven- tional and stale, Thus Granowsky in his Song of Life

shows champagne glasses, infants, and skulls, in sym- bolic multiplication. This trick appears stereotyped, too mechanical, and easily degenerates into the ri- diculous.

Charlie Chaplin managed to achieve unexpected and amusing effects by multiplying one man without

the benefit of montage or special lenses in his mirror- labyrinth scene in The Circus.