Stroheim's Tactics of Comparison

Loading...
Thumbnail Image

Date

1968

Authors

Cameron, Evan Wm.

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Abstract

Three-quarters of Stroheim's GREED [1924] was cut from the film before its release at the insistence of the studio by a sequence editors who, in Stroheim's phrase, "did not know anything about my editing ideas", but the film, even in truncated form, remains among the most memorable ever made. What kind of "editing ideas" could have informed the making of a movie that remains powerful with only a fourth of it remaining? Stroheim, I suggest, had glimpsed the possibilities of a shot-by-shot 'tactics of comparison' within scenes comparable in aim and effect to the story-by-story 'strategies of comparison' that Griffith had foreshadowed in INTOLERANCE.

Description

Keywords

Archer, William, Ashby, W. Ross, Bell Telephone Laboratories, BIRTH OF A NATION, THE, Carr, Henry, Cinematography, Directing, Editing, Eisenstein, Sergei, Filmmaking, Filmmaking, Documentary, Flaherty, Robert, FOOLISH WIVES, THE, Geduld, Harry M., GREED, Griffith, David Wark, HEARTS OF THE WORLD, Identity, Information Theory, INTOLERANCE, MAN OF ARAN, Mayer, Louis B., McTeague, MOANA, Moussinac, Léon, Murray, Mae, Norris, Frank, Pudovkin, Vsevolod, Realism, Sargent, Epes Einthrop, Screenwriting, Screenwriting, History of, Seeing Movies, Shannon, Claude, Thalberg, Irving, Thompson, Kristin, Zola, Émile, Cameron, Evan

Citation