Technique of Film Editing, Reissue of 2nd Edition, 2nd Edition

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We have been able to illustrate various editing devices until now by reference to genres of fi lms in which

they were appropriately used. So action sequences demand one type of cutting, and we have discussed thrill-

ers; comedy another, and we have looked at comedies; dialogue sequences, documentary realism, newsreels,

instructional fi lms, similarly. . . . It now becomes more diffi cult to follow this scheme. The reason is one we

have mentioned often enough in the last section. The cinema at its most representative and advanced in the

sixties is such a personal medium that the only category it makes sense to divide our discussions into is that

of individual directors. The fi lm director, as we have seen and shall see in more detail, uses the medium now

less to tell stories effectively, more as an instrument of thought. As in other arts, the cinema’s very devices have

become increasingly part of its meaning. The pan, the track, the dissolve, the fade, the zoom, like the brush-

stroke, or a form of words, can be looked at as well as through.

The four directors whose work we shall look at in this way are Truffaut, Godard, Resnais and Antonioni.

Fran ç ois Truffaut

Truffaut has said in an interview that what he is aiming at is “ un é clatement de genres par un m é lange de

genres ” — “ an explosion of genres by a mixture of genres. ” He always tries, he says, to confound his audiences ’

expectations, to keep them constantly surprised. When the fi lm seems to be going in one direction he likes to

turn it round and send it off in another. He thinks of his fi lms as circus shows with a dazzling variety of turns,

and likes at the end to take the audience out into the country or to some idyllic scene — snow or the sea — as

a reward for being cooped up in the dark for nearly two hours.

It should not be thought that Truffaut is being simply frivolous in saying this. In the fi rst place his fi lms bear out

the thesis: each of them

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does fl ick from moods of despair to exhilaration and does contain scenes of black comedy

alternating with scenes of real tragedy or simply good-hearted unaffected joy. As for locations: the last scene of Les

400 Coups has the boy hero running to the sea: the last scene of Shoot the Pianist takes place in a snowstorm by a

mountain chalet of fairy-tale improbability. Jules and Jim is such a lyrical medley of sea, river, alp and forest that few

spectators can surely have suffered from being cooped up with it. Fahrenheit 451 ends in a snowstorm, in a forest.

Chapter 19

Personal Cinema in the Sixties

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Les 400 Coups, Tirez sur le Pianiste, Jules et Jim, La Peau Douce, Fahrenheit 451 .