Hitchcock’s experiments in editing
An Introduction: Parallel Action
The two characters in Strangers on a Train (1951) are introduced through parallel action. They are introduced feet first, cutting between the first man’s feet walking left to right, and the second man’s feet walking right to left. This gives the impression that they will collide as we assume that they are in the same location. It is only when the two characters meet that we are introduced to them properly.
Dramatic Punctuation: The Sound Cut
In the discovery of a murder victim in The 39 Steps (1935), a woman opens her mouth to scream. However, the sound of her scream is replaced by the incoming audio from the next shot, which is the whistle of a train. This interlinks the two incidents – the murder and the character on the train.
Dramatic Discovery: Cutting On Motion
A sequence in Spellbound illustrated how editing can seem seamless even though the story locations in the narrative are completely different. John Ballantine is skiing down a slope. As he reaches a precipice he has flash backs of falling down some steps which resulted in accidentally killing his brother. During this moment of realisation we cut between falling down the steps and skiing down this slope. The action is matched by the similarity of the locations and incidents. Hitchcock cut from past to present to reveal a startling discovery.
Suspense: The Extreme Long Shot
In Foreign Correspondent (1940) there is a death that involves falling from a tall church tower. Firstly, the height of the location must be established and indicate the danger of this location. This is done in the film by showing a boy looking down at the ground. Cut to his pov of the distance. His hat blows off and we cut to a shot of it on the ground. The notable element of this shot is the distance down. The action of the murder starts with the perpetrator approaching the camera with his hands as if to push the protagonist. The next shot is and extreme long shot of a body falling to the ground. We see people running over to the body. Later it is revealed that the protagonist had stepped aside at the last minute and the body is o someone else. In this scene, suspense is built by cutting between a close up and a long shot.
Levels Of Meaning: The Cutaway
The situation in The 39 Steps is that Hannay is joining a married couple for dinner. He is responsible for a murder that is front page on a newspaper that lies near by on the table. Over a prayer before eating, glances are exchanged. Hannay fears discovery, the husband fears his young wife becoming attracted to this young man, and the wife is in fear of her life after a cutaway reveals that she has laid eyes on the headline. In this scene it is a single cutaway that is the key to all the drama.
Intensity: The Close Up
There is a suspected secret in the wine cellar of a dinner party in Notorious. Alicia and Devlin need to know what is in the cellar without giving away the game, however, her husband, who they are spying on, is getting suspicious. The key elements that the opening of the wine cellar depends on are the keys, the supply of wine, and the number of guests. Hitchcock uses subjective camera placement to convey the husband’s jealousy of the pair, and to the key elements involved in the decision to visit the wine cellar. In order to create suspense, something must be at risk. The risk in this scene is Alicia and Devlin’s discovery as a pair of spies spying on her husband.
The Moment As Eternity: The Extreme Close Up
The shower scene in Psycho is constructed of mainly extreme close ups of the elements of the murder. It is a montage of the actions that occur – the hands over her mouth that exclaims her shock and fear, the blood, the curtain, etc. To help the audience further identify with Marion, he uses subjective camera placement and shows the knife coming towards us. As we don’t see the entire action of the killing, which would have lasted only a few seconds, we can extend story time. Using short cuts and increasing the pace also extends how long he can make this scene as time does appear to the human to pass faster if there is action – the watched kettle never boils.
Dramatic Time And Pace
As in the Odessa Steps sequence in Battleship Potemkin, Hitchcock uses the dramatic action and emotion in the shower scene to lengthen real time. The moments leading up to the murder – Marion getting into the shower, and the moments after are in normal time. However, the length of the murder is drawn out by shooting it as a montage with no ‘master shot’ to count the time. The lead up counts 16 shots, the exit counts 18 shots. The murder action counts 27. This variance in shots is what creates drama. The variance in shot length also adds drama. Shots of the crime increase in endurance while shots of the victim gradually decrease. This, combined with subjective camera placement dramatically describes the murder and increases the viewer identification with the victim.
