of what is seen. This is what mediation as a con-
cept implies. Unlike a video surveillance camera
or a webcam, the motion-picture camera eye is not
an artless recorder of “reality.” It is instead one of
a number of expressive tools that film makers
use to influence our interpretation of the movie’s
meaning.
Cinema’s ability to manipulate space is illus-
trated in Charles Chaplin’s The Gold Rush(1925).
This brilliant comedy portrays the adventures of
two prospectors: the “Little Fellow” (Chaplin) and
his nemesis, Big Jim McKay (Mack Swain). After
many twists and turns of the plot, the two find
themselves sharing an isolated cabin. At night, the
winds of a fierce storm blow the cabin to the brink
of a deep abyss. Waking and walking about, the
Little Fellow slides toward the door (and almost
certain death). The danger is established by our
first seeing the sharp precipice on which the cabin
is located and then by seeing the Little Fellow slid-
ing toward the door that opens out over the abyss.
Subsequently, we see him and Big Jim engaged
in a struggle for survival, which requires them to
maintain the balance of the cabin on the edge of
the abyss.
The suspense exists because individual shots—
one made outdoors, the other safely in a studio—
have been edited together to create the illusion that
they form part of a complete space. As we watch
the cabin sway and teeter on the cliff ’s edge, we
imagine the hapless adventurers inside; when the
action cuts to the interior of the cabin and we see
the floor pitching back and forth, we imagine
the cabin perched precariously on the edge. The
experience of these shots as a continuous record
of action occurring in a complete (and realistic)
space is an illusion that no other art form can con-
vey as effectively as movies can.
The manipulation of time (as well as space), a
function of editing, is handled with great irony, cin-
ematic power, and emotional impact in the “Bap-
tism and Murder” scene in Francis Ford Coppola’s
The Godfather(1972). This five-minute scene con-
sists of thirty-six shots made at different locations.
The primary location is a church where Michael
Corleone (Al Pacino), the newly named godfather
of the Corleone mob, and his wife, Kay (Diane
Keaton), attend their nephew’s baptism. Symboli-
cally, Michael is also the child’s godfather. Coppola
cuts back and forth between the baptism; the
preparations for five murders, which Michael has
ordered, at five different locations; and the mur-
ders themselves.
Each time we return to the baptism, it continues
where it left off for one of these cutaways to other
actions. We know this from the continuity of the
priest’s actions, Latin incantations, and the Bach
organ music. This continuity tells us not only that
these actions are taking place simultaneously, but
also that Michael is involved in all of them, either
directly or indirectly. The simultaneity is further
strengthened by the organ music, which under-
scores every scene in the sequence, not just those
that take place in the cathedral—music that picks
up in pitch and loudness as the sequence pro-
gresses, rising to particular climaxes as the mur-
ders are committed. As the priest says to Michael,
“Go in peace, and may the Lord be with you,” we
are left to reconcile this meticulously timed, simul-
taneous occurrence of sacred and criminal acts.
Many of the examples we shared earlier in this
chapter to illustrate pattern, cinematic space, and
the relationship between form and content can also
teach us something about how movies manipulate
time. The Matrix’s “bullet time” effect is dazzling
because we have not yet grown accustomed to see-
ing two time references share the same screen
simultaneously. Neo and his attacker’s bullets are
presented in stylized slow motion that expands our
experience of a moment in time (and is often used
to lend violence or action a balletic grace). Yet the
moving camera capturing Neo’s dodging dance
glides at a conventional speed that we associate
with “real time.” The parallel action sequences in
The Silence of the Lambs, Way down East, and The
Godfatherare evidence of cinema’s ability to use
crosscutting to represent multiple events occur-
ring at the same instant. Some movies, like City of
God(2002; directors: Fernando Meirelles and Kátia
Lund), do parallel action one better, using a split
screen to actually show the concurrent actions
simultaneously.
Movies frequently rearrange time by organizing
story events in nonchronological order. OrsonFUNDAMENTALS OF FILM FORM 53