An Introduction to Film

LOOKING AT EDITING 381

close-ups from handheld cameras—including a

man sharpening a knife; chickens waiting to be

slaughtered and put into the pot; men playing

musical instruments; people dancing, cleaning veg-

etables, making drinks, and lighting gas flames

under the pot. If this were all that was going on

here in terms of content, you might think you were

watching documentary footage of these activities.

But an analysis of the editing shows that there is

much more here than that. Instead of cataloging all

the shots here (as we did with the sequence in The

Birth of a Nation), we will look for patterns in the

editing that make meanings. For example, repeti-

tive shots of a man sharpening a knife (taken from

different camera angles) form a pattern that raises

our expectations about the future use of that

knife—whether it will be in cooking or violence

against others.

Suddenly, Li’l Zé, who we are seeing for the first

time, appears on the screen saying, “Fuck, the

chicken’s got away! Go after that chicken, man!” We

don’t have time to wonder why he would care so

much about one escapee, but we soon realize that

it’s the chase—precisely, winning the chase—that

matters, not the chicken.

In Part 2, “The Chase,” a group of boys and girls

(teenage and younger) begins the chase. When we

see that many of them are carrying guns, we have

our first clue that there may be violence. In fact,

they are members of Li’l Zé’s gang. The chase

begins in the yard from which the chicken escaped

and ends in a confrontation with the police in

(^12)
3
City of God: editing in Part 1, “The Preparation” In
[1], a man sharpens a knife (notice the dismembered chicken
claw in the background); in [2], a man beheads a chicken with
a knife; and in [3], we meet the chicken that is the “star” of
this sequence. (Here, you should remember the principle of
the Kuleshov experiment: two or more juxtaposed shots need
not have any actual relationship to one another for meaning
to occur when they are juxtaposed.) We’re watching the
action, but in another sense we’re also watching the chicken
as she watches the same action. We assume that she sees
the knife being sharpened and one of her fellow birds being
killed, and as a result of the editing of these two shots,
understands her possible fate. The chicken’s state of mind
(her instinct for survival) is conveyed in [3], in which she
stretches her neck and head and rapidly moves her eyes. She
appears to be nervous and very aware of her possible fate. In
subsequent shots, she loosens the string that holds her
captive and calmly walks away. We feel comfortable
identifying the chicken’s state of mind in this way because
that is suggested by the editing. It seems to be the
conclusion the editor wants us to reach.