October
1, 2013
A Comparative Analysis of
the Editing Styles in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless
Howard
Nemerov is quoted in A Short Guide to Writing About Art as saying, “If you really want to see something look
at something else” (Barnet 135). By deconstructing and comparing Alfred Hitchcock’s
The Birds and Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, a filmmaking student can gain a better
understanding of the motivations and influences, mise-en- scène, point of view,
camera and shot structure, and other elements that contributed to the creation
of these films. After briefly outlining the stories and motivating influences,
this paper will analyze the similarities and differences in editing techniques
that these respective directors used to assemble each of these films. It will
show that while their editing styles were vastly different, each filmmaker in
his own right was a progenitor in his time.
The
Birds was released in 1963 and was
Alfred Hitchcock’s 51st film, and first following his box office success Psycho. It was a high-budget Hollywood suspense/horror film
about Melanie Daniels, a beautiful affluent blonde, who arrives in Bodega Bay,
California, looking for handsome lawyer Mitch Brenner. The town becomes
terrorized by thousands of birds, and Melanie and Mitch fight against the
invasion.
Breathless was released in 1960 and was Jean-Luc Godard’s break
out film. It is about car thief Michel who kills a policeman and drives to Paris
to get money to escape to Italy. He tries to convince Patricia, an American
writer with whom he is infatuated, to go with him. The film has elements of the
1940s Hollywood film noire (“dark film”), outlaw movie, involving gangsters,
detectives and ordinary men drawn to crime (Bordwell and Thompson 399). Michel
Poiccard lives out his life like an American gangster, modeling himself after
Humphrey Bogart by wearing the characteristic hat, having a cigarette
constantly dangling out of his mouth, and rubbing his thumb across his lips like
Bogey (Andrew 13; Bordwell and Thompson 399).
Released in the same decade on two separate
continents, the filmmakers’ inspiration and motivations for their films were
different. The Birds was
conceived at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the threat of nuclear
war, and Hitchcock wanted people to be aware of the danger all around them
(Moral 15). Hitchcock had said that this film is about complacency and how
people like Melanie ignore the more serious aspects of life and don’t assume
any kind of responsibility. He believed, however, when catastrophe strikes,
people do rise to the occasion and can be strong (Moral 125). Additionally, on
the heels Psycho’s box office
triumph, Hitchcock was determined to make a film that matched or exceeded its
popularity and financial success (Moral 24). According to Tony Lee Moral, The
Birds was ahead of its time,
starting a cycle of horror, man versus nature, and disaster films (16). To
bring it to fruition, Hitchcock had to orchestrate a production combining many
technical and filmmaking innovations.
Complacency is also a theme in Breathless because Godard’s Michel exhibits self-satisfaction
in spite of the dangers he would face as a criminal on the run. Godard’s film
represented a rebellion against the French filmmaking establishment. He was a
film critic for the Paris film journal, Cahiers du Cinéma, along with François Truffaut and others who also
wanted to make movies. They produced films that were low-budget, made with
borrowed money, shot entirely on location around Paris, rather than in the
studio (Bordwell and Thompson 465), and defied the camera and editing
conventions of the time. Collectively they formed the New Wave movement whose
films were similar in style and form (Bordwell and Thompson 465). In
characterizing Breathless, Godard
said, “[it] was the sort of film where anything goes: that was what it was all
about. Anything people did could be integrated into the film. As a matter of
fact, this was my starting-point” (Andrew 16).
To begin the discussion of the editing techniques
used in each of these films, one must first have an understanding of the
terminology:
Continuity
editing is the leading style of
editing used by filmmakers where a narrative is constructed out of hundreds of
segments to form a coherent story (Edgar-Hunt 150). It follows a series of
rules to preserve continuity: the 180 degree rule, which says that the camera should stay on one side
of the action to ensure spacial relations between individuals or objects from
shot to shot (Bordwell and Thompson 480); match on action, which juxtaposes two different views of the same
action together that take place at the same moment, making them flow together
seamlessly (Bordwell and Thompson 480); eyeline match, where the first shot shows a person looking off in
one direction and the second shows what he or she sees (Bordwell and Thompson
478); the 30 degree rule where
every camera position is varied by at least 30 degrees from the previous one
(Bordwell and Thompson 303), otherwise the cut will produce a noticeable jump
because the angles are too similar to be cut together (Edgar-Hunt 152); and shot/reverse
shot, where two or more shots are edited
together that alternate characters, like in a conversation (Bordwell and
Thompson 481).
Discontinuity
editing is less concerned with the
narrative experience in film and tends to use techniques that disrupt the flow
of space and time in a film (Edgar-Hunt 158). While it may be thought of as
“bad” editing by some because it breaks the rules of continuity editing, the
viewer should try to understand the underlying meanings behind the deviations
(Edgar-Hunt 159). It can often refer to the psychology of the characters or be
a statement on the ideological form of the medium (Edgar-Hunt 158). The jump
cut is an example of discontinuity
editing when the character changes instantly while the background remains
constant or when the background changes and the character remains constant (Bordwell
and Thompson 479).
Montage refers in general to editing in film and also to
non-realistic editing that
creates meaning out of unrelated material (Edgar-Hunt 162).
Hitchcock’s
goal for The Birds was to
construct a narrative to form a coherent story and, therefore, he follows the
rules of continuity editing. When Melanie goes into the pet store to pick up
the Mynah bird for her aunt, Hitchcock uses classic shot/reverse shot editing
for the conversation between the saleslady and Melanie. Similarly, he uses
eyeline match when he shows Melanie witnessing the fire from the restaurant
window in Bodega Bay. Hitchcock deviates from classical cutting in the scene where
Lydia, Mitch Brenner’s mother, discovers her neighbor Dan Faucett’s body after
he had been attacked by birds. He uses a triple jump cut starting with a wide
shot of Dan, then a mid-shot of his face, and ending with a close-up of his
eyes to show Lydia’s reaction to Dan’s body (Moral 132).
Hitchcock is known for his mastery of montage. As
Melanie sits outside the school in front of the jungle gym, more and more birds
perch behind her. Hitchcock creates suspense as he cuts back and forth between
Melanie smoking her cigarette oblivious and the birds gathering behind her.
Interestingly, this montage was filmed both on location and in the studio: the
close-ups of Melanie smoking a cigarette were filmed in the studio whereas the
long shots of her and the crows on the bars were filmed in Bodega Bay (Moral
113). By showing the audience something that is hidden from the character,
Hitchcock uses montage to create suspense (Steritt 133).
In the editing room, Hitchcock had the challenge of
making the scenes involving the birds—of which there were many—seem realistic.
The mise-en-scène included a combination of live (25,000), mechanical, and
dummy birds. For the scene where the crows attack the children, Hitchcock had
footage of birds flying in front of the camera superimposed on original film
footage of the children running down the street in Bodega Bay where there were
no birds (Moral 153). His technique, therefore, expanded to include special
effects editing.
Goddard does at times use conventional techniques in
the editing of Breathless. When
Michel is looking at a Bogart poster, Godard uses standard shot/reverse shot
editing. However, he breaks tradition continually throughout the film. When
Patricia and Michel are riding in the car, Goddard uses jump cuts repeatedly in
their conversation. In one example, Godard jump cuts from Patricia turned
toward Michel telling him that she doesn’t want him to spend the night, to her
looking in a hand mirror and fixing her hair. When the editor Van Doude speaks
to Patricia while they are sitting at a table in a restaurant, the image pulses
with small jump cuts (Andrew 64). In each of the jump cuts, the camera angle
does not differ by more than 30 degrees. In the words of Dudley Andrew, “The
jump cuts were the most blatant celebration of technique, occurring seemingly
in disregard to the story, to the dialogue, and to the construction of the
cinematic illusion” (11). This jolting style of editing was frowned upon in
Hollywood films made before the 1960s (Bordwell and Thompson, 9th
ed., 412). One of its positive effects, however, was to enliven the energy and
rhythm of the film (Bordwell and Thompson 403).
In another break with convention, Godard crosses the
180 degree line in the editing process. When Patricia decides to turn in
Michel, her trip to the café to make the call consists of three shots, each
reversing her screen direction. Furthermore, Godard cuts between shots that
have drastic differences in scale as for example, the close up of Michel’s
revolver against the long-shot of the policeman (Andrew 11).
In contrast with the jump cut, Godard used long takes
with no cutting at all at three points in the film: in the travel agency, in
the Herald Tribune office, and in
the Swedish model’s apartment. In the travel agency, cinematographer Raoul
Coutard weaves the camera in a 360 degree path for a lengthy two and a half
minute tracking shot following Michel Poiccard (Andrew 11).
In Goddard’s film, the editing style contributes to
its meaning and essence. Jump cuts and crossing the line are used to remind the
viewer of the unnaturalness of the film narrative (Edgar-Hunt 159) and to
contrast with continuity editing that strives to create a seemingly natural
reality.
There are drastic differences in the editing styles
of Hitchcock and Goddard, even though Goddard does occasionally use
conventional techniques, and Hitchcock occasionally resorts to the jump cut.
Ironically, in spite of Godard’s clear objective to defy the editing
conventions of the time, neither he nor the other members of the New Wave
movement were critical of Hollywood. In fact, Godard revered Hitchcock as an auteur.
In his book Godard on Godard, he says,
“We won the day in having it acknowledged in principle that a film by
Hitchcock, for example, is as important as a book by Aragon. Film auteurs,
thanks to us, have finally entered the history of art” (Andrew 10). Both
Hitchcock and Godard impacted editing styles for future generations of
filmmakers. While Godard helped launch a new stylistic movement that paved the
way for others to defy convention, Hitchcock, by expanding upon traditional
editing techniques, was a progenitor of horror, man-versus-nature and disaster
films. In the analysis of these two films, the filmmaking student gains a
comprehensive understanding of the editing process and learns that risk taking
can sometimes yield extraordinary results.
Works Cited
Andrew, Dudley, ed., Breathless:
Jean-Luc Godard, Director. New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987. Print.
Barnet, Sylvan, A Short
Guide To Writing About ART, Boston:
Pearson, 2011.
*Bordwell, David and Kristin
Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. 5th Ed. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, 1997, Print.
*Bordwell, David and Kristin
Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. 9h Ed. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2010, Print.
Breathless. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard. Perf. Jean-Paul Belmondo,
Jean Seberg. The Criterion Collection, 1960. DVD.
Edgar-Hunt, Robert, John
Marland and Steven Rawle. The Language of Film. Lausanne: Ava Publishing, 2010. Print.
Moral, Tony Lee, The
Making of Hitchcock’s The Birds. Harpenden:
Kamera Books, 2013. Print.
Sterritt, David, The
Films of Alfred Hitchcock.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Print.
The Birds. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Perf. Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy. Universal
Pictures, 1963. DVD.
*All citations from Bordwell
and Thompson are from the 5th edition except for one, which is from the 9th
edition. For this citation, I indicated the edition.
No comments:
Post a Comment