to the gentleman who recalled a "jump cut" in the Odessa Steps sequence of

POTEMKIN -- in the print i have on tape, there is no such sequence of images:

what we see is two shots (with slight change of angle and shot distance; the

second is an extreme close-up) of a cossack raising his sword repeatedly --

cut-- close-up of the woman in the pince-nez, now shattered and her face

bloody.  this is one very good example of Eisenstein's  thesis v antithesis =

synthesis: the idea of violence/oppression is implied by (what he would have

called) the "collision" of shot 1 (the cossack) with shot 2 (the woman); the

violent act isn't shown but is conjured up in our minds.  of course this

whole sequence is built upon these kinds of spatial disjunctions, but why i

wouldn't call them  "jump cuts" is because the term jump cut refers to a

purposeful break in space-time continuity, whereas this kind of dialectical

montage, despite its being constructed, as i said, upon an *actual* spatial

disjunction in shooting, it is cut together to create an *apparent*

continuity.  anyway, earlier we did see this same woman in close-up as she

watches the baby carriage bump down the steps (again, this narrative link is

assumed by the editorial structure: baby carriage -- woman looking horrified

-- baby carriage). in this sequence of shots i noticed that there *is* a jump

cut in the shot of the woman, but my sense is that this resulted from a tear

and subsequent repair of the film, rather than an intentional break in

continuity.

-- [log in to unmask] (Renata Jackson, NYU Cinema Studies)

 

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