On Thu, 24 Aug 1995, Renata Jackson wrote:
 
> 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)
 
In addition to the unity which grows out of the synthesis of the apparent
disjunctions, there is also a symbolic synthesis in that the cracked
eyeglass is both a reference back to the formal unity found in the first
half of the Odessa sequence, represented by circular imagery and now
synthesized through the disjunction of the *perfect* circle of the
eyeglass and the imperfection of the crack caused by the cossack.
 
[log in to unmask] (Ron Hoffman, NKU Media Services) > ----
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