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We have learned how each element reveals information. We can now proceed to investigate the multitude of information which can be expressed by a combination of elements.
Combination
It goes without saying that there is such an infinite variety of informational combinations that we cannot hope to classify them. But we can bring to the fore various principles which will help us learn the use of these sources of information. Even an old and experienced literary writer must learn from the beginning the method of expression in motion pictures.
The only comparison we can give is to the animated cartoon. There we have a similar combination of elements with the purpose of telling us something. There may be the set, props, object, the expression of the cartoon character, and, underneath, a line, which can be considered the equivalent of dialogue, such as “sufferin’ succotash!”.
The combination of elements must be understood as follows: a set, for instance, can reveal the “place.” Several props in connection with the set may reveal characteristics such as beautiful or poor, luxurious or dirty. The action of an actor can reveal his relation to the set. For instance, a man who is asleep in a bedroom reveals that in all probability it is his own. A man who offers drinks to other people in a living room demonstrates that it is most likely his home.
Having thereby effected a relation between elements, the combination begins to reveal new information. If we know that a large mansion belongs to a certain character, we know that he is affluent. If we show the charred ruins of a house, nothing more is expressed than that the house burned down. But if we show the expression of an actor sifting through the ruins, we assume that it is his house or the house of a friend of his. Thus these elements give information about each other.
If the different sources of information are exposed at one time, the combination is simultaneous. But the combination can also be consecutive; that is, a fact may be combined with another which was exposed previously or which will be exposed at a later stage.
Once information has been given, it remains valid throughput the story, or until altered by further information. If we learned that a house belongs to a dentist, we continue to believe this until we are informed that he sold or rented it or that it has been destroyed.
Because of the constancy of information, we assemble a certain amount of knowledge during the course of the story. This knowledge, piled up through previous information can add new meaning to new information. Or the new information can add to the previous knowledge. For instance, we see a man stepping into a car. If we know already that he wants to catch a plane, we conclude that he will drive to the airfield. Or to give an example for the reverse process: we see a man taking a gun from a drawer. We do not know whom he wants to shoot. Later on, we see him enter the home of his enemy. We understand why he took the gun along.
Furthermore, the constancy of information may continue to represent a combination of elements for us regardless of the fact that we see only one of them. If we learned that a child always played with a certain toy, the presence of the toy in a strange place will indicate that the child is there or was there. If the child is dead, the object may still represent the child to his mother.
When new information relieves a former fact of its validity, we understand that change has taken place. A change can only occur through a development or through an action. Thus the motion picture can reveal an entire development simply by indicating a change. For instance, we see a field and afterwards we see a house in the same place. Or a young couple moves into a new house. There is a large double bed in the bedroom. Later we see two single beds instead of the one. Still later, there is only one. The development, implied in this change, is the weakening of their love and their final separation. Or a husband talks to his wife at breakfast. Years later, he reads the newspaper. Or a man steps into a car which is standing before his house. In the next scene he comes out of the car, but this time the car stands before a bank. The change of locale implies the action. The novelist could have expressed this action by a simple sentence: “He drove from his house to the bank.” The screenwriter has to make use of the visual manifestation of a change of sets.
The means of expression at the disposal of the novelist are altogether more facile. The screenwriter is severely hampered by the difficulties of the motion picture language. He must constantly search for new combinations to express his story developments. Only through the most poignant use of all the means of expression can he achieve his goal. Let us not forget that the motion picture requires a much fuller and richer and more varied story than the stage play. Not with respect to its content, but with respect to the amount of information given. There are more incidents, more side-actions, more places, more characters, more bit players. In order to fulfill these demands, we must give more information. With the exception of dialogue, the motion picture possesses no easy or direct means of expression. Therefore we must carefully study the meaning, purpose, characterization, potentiality of set, prop, object, actor, lighting, sound, noise and color.
Duplication
School teachers tell their pupils that they should never repeat anything in their writing. They may be right as far as elementary writing is concerned. But as soon as the difficulties of understanding grow, repetition becomes very useful. In playwriting repetition is allowed because it is not easy for the audience to understand the play. An old stagecraft axiom states: Tell every important factor three times to the audience if you want to be sure they understand it. The same holds true for public speaking. Every great orator — beginning with Demosthenes and Cicero and Marc Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar — has applied repetition in his speeches so as to facilitate understanding.
The motion picture has a way of repeating itself which cannot be called repetition. Because it has different means of expression, and because each of them can express the same thing in a different way, it should be called duplication rather than repetition.
Duplication is the use of different means in the motion picture to express the same thing. At first we might be reluctant to use duplication because we think that it is a waste of space, a grave violation of the demand for economy. But there are cogent reasons which speak for duplication.
The fatigue of concentrated attention during the whole run of a picture is very considerable. Sometimes our ears do not pick up certain parts of the dialogue, sometimes our eyes get tired, sometimes we have difficulties in following and understanding the plot. In all these cases we shall be grateful if certain facts are brought back to our attention by duplication.
Duplication also may be used to remind us of information which was given to us previously. The audience is liable to forget facts even though they may have been very clearly established at the beginning. If these facts are important enough, it may be advisable to bring them back or to remind the audience of these facts throughout the picture. If we were to do that by the same means of expression, we would have repetition, with its effects of boredom and waste of space. But by expressing the same things in different ways we have duplication, with its agreeable effect of variation.
This reminiscence through duplication of information requires careful handling, for the audience must be reminded of the right factors at the right time. For instance, if it has been established that a man has a brutal character, it may be a correct reminiscence to duplicate this information concerning his brutality just before his wife wants to ask him for a favor. If you have a love scene between a rich girl and a poor boy, you may remind the audience of youth and beauty, or when you have a scene of dispute between the two of them, you might bring out the contrast between poverty and wealth. The pertinent reminiscence of facts may improve the strength of the scene considerably.
Duplication may also be used to elaborate on certain information. Anyone who has seen pictures in small neighborhood houses knows of women in the audience who suddenly exclaim: “See, now he is angry,” when the actor makes a face angry enough to scare a bull. “Now he laughs” — when the ham giggles his head off. Even though their desire to fully understand the implication of a situation is absurd in such extreme cases, we must take it into serious consideration for other less obvious examples. We must keep in mind that the picture moves fast and that the audience has little time to lean back and think to the end what it is being told. For instance, the word “wealth” alone is not expressive. Even the novelist will sometimes arouse our imagination by elaborating on the word. He will enumerate what wealth means: good food, beautiful clothes, butlers, comfort. Likewise, if the screenwriter tells us only that a certain artist is admired, it does not mean very much to us, especially since we have no time to force our imagination to realize what this word implies. It would be advisable to express this admiration in a few “touches” or incidents.
Of course, duplication can also become a dangerous instrument. If a man comes from the street dripping wet and somebody asks, “Is it raining outside?” duplication becomes an idiocy. If a person is bleeding and the writer in his dialogue asks, “Are you hurt, dear?” the question does not make much sense. Yet the question may have looked meaningful on paper because the writer was considering only the one means of expression and overlooking the visual exposition of facts.
Coordination
No other art has as many means of expression as the motion picture. Sculpture has only the plastic form, music has sound, painting has color and line, the novel has the word. Even the theatre, which comes closest to the motion picture in this respect, has primarily only dialogue. Therefore a play can be understood by reading only the dialogue, whereas the motion picture script will not make sense if you consider only its dialogue. As a matter of fact, it needs experience and concentration to read the script of a motion picture which intends to make use of all the means of expression.
The playwright is the primary creator in the theatre, because his writing, or his dialogue, is practically the only essential means of expression. Producer, director, and actor are essentially his assistants. But in the motion picture, where the dialogue represents only one part of the final creation, the use of many different means of expression demands the imposition of a coordinator, who guides and directs and chooses the right employment.
Usually the director is this coordinator. He is, in some ways, both the arranger who orchestrates the writer’s composition and the conductor who brings the score to life.
However, there are no precise lines of demarcation between the writer’s and the director’s creations. Many a famous “director’s touch” was invented by the writer and can be found in the screenplay. Conversely, many a screenplay bearing only the writer’s name contains the creative suggestions and inventions of the director. Ideally what is captured on celluloid should be the result of a collaborative effort. And although there is much rivalry as to the relative importance of the screenwriter and the director, neither can hope for a successful picture without the very best contributions of the other. In the final drafts of a screenplay, they often join to discuss the most effective use of the means of expression. Sometimes a speech may be deleted because the director feels that a close-up of the actor would render words superfluous. Then again a line of dialogue may be added to cover an actor who crosses the set.
Occasionally, at that stage, errors arising from an unintentional juxtaposition are discovered. Since each element reveals information independently, a combination of elements may give wrong or contradictory information. For instance, we would be surprised if we saw a man who was introduced as a professor of biology working in a drugstore. The same may be true of a newsboy delivering papers from a Rolls-Royce, a diver plunging into an empty swimming pool, a man in a wheel chair sitting at the starting line of a hot-rod race.
If such a contradiction of information is an inadvertent error, then it is simply absurd. Yet it can also be used to achieve a comic effect — for instance, by showing the drained pool only after the man has started his dive. But if the visual paradox is based upon some specific cause of which we have not yet been informed, then it must be explained: the newsboy’s bicycle broke down and a customer lent him the Rolls-Royce to finish the route.
Unfortunately, many pictures are filled with contradictions of information which are confusing at times and occasionally detrimental to the values of a scene. However, contradiction should not be confused with contrast, which is one of the important effects in simultaneous combination of information. In a famous shot in the picture M (1931), which Fritz Lang directed, a mother whose child has not returned from school cries down the stairway the name of her child. The shot shows the stairway; we hear the cry of the mother. The sound stands for the anxiety of the mother; the silent stairway represents the failure of the child to come home. This is effective coordination. If we had watched the mother cry and only afterwards in silence seen the stairway, the effect would have been weaker.
Practically speaking, there will always be one main fact which gives a purpose to the shot or to the scene. But at the same time, we can use other sources of information to add further information. We should not be satisfied with the sole expression of the main-purpose, but we should try to put minor developments or less important information into the same space. For instance, the set exposes some sort of a store. Several props indicate that it is a pawn shop. A young man enters. His clothes betray that he is hard up. He carries a guitar. The tenderness with which he holds the instrument reveals his sentiments toward the object. At that point, we make use of dialogue; he says that he needs money because his pal is sick. Still we are not satisfied with this exploitation of the scene. We show how the man behind the counter counts money while he is listening. This additional side-action betrays the avarice of that man. In this way we can triple and quadruple the content in the same space. We must spread information thickly over every inch of film.
In concluding this chapter about the various means of expression, it must be made clear that these sources of information should not be confused with symbolism. Symbolism is a very dubious form of pictorial coordination. The difference could be stated in this way: To show an innocent girl with a lily is symbolism. The realization that the lily stands for innocence is a complicated process for which the average moviegoer never has time. To show the girl in a simple white dress and pigtails would be a correct expression of facts. The realization is subconscious. To show a running back charging into the opposing team’s defensive line and in the next shot a bulldozer moving mounds of earth would be symbolism. But to show the football player reacting to a bulldozer advertisement could be a natural revelation of his thoughts.