been threatened, confirmed, and celebrated over
the course of twenty-three shots, ending with
shots [17–23].
When continuity returns, so does grim reality.
Shot 24 flows into shot 25 with a match on action—
that is, a transition that moves seamlessly from
the action in one shot to a continuation of that
action in the next shot. The shots show Harry and
Hermione’s whirling dance collapse into an affec-
tionate, but strictly fraternal, hug in shots [24] and
[25a]. These close-up shots let us see the charac-
ters’ faces as they slow to a stop. The music fades
along with their smiles as the gravity of their situa-
tion reasserts itself [25b]. Hermione walks out of
shot 26, and the final image [27] is then a lingering
close-up of Harry watching her go. The scene ends
as it began: with our characters alone, outnum-
bered, and seemingly out of options.
Speaking of options, the previous examples illus-
trate only a few of the virtually limitless approachesavailable to advanced students and scholars inter-
ested in interpreting the relationship between cul-
ture and cinema. But before we can effectively
interpret a movie as a cultural artifact, we must first
understand how that artifact functions. To begin that
process, we must return our focus to the building
blocks of cinematic language, starting with the prin-
ciples of film form, the subject of our next chapter.25b 26
27WAYS OF LOOKING AT MOVIES 3124 25a