Date: Fri, 21 Jul 95 16:13:53 EDT
From: ma-AT-dsd.camb.inmet.com (Malgosia Askanas)
Subject: Re: continuities


> m: have I got this right?  the impression of continuity of time is a 
> by-product of the film rather than a deliberate inscribed track 
> from the outset? 

Yes, that's what I think.  The editing style is used to achieve an
impression of seamlessness and fluidity.  We are used to reading this
kind of editing as expressive of temporal continuity, but in the case
of _Short Cuts_ this is not its primary function; the function is to
glide from scene to scene almost as if there had been no scene change 
at all.  

> and you think that what altman was doing or has "achieved" or the film has 
> achieved of its own chemistry, is actually to deny that continuity? in 
> otherwords, that there are blips or lags or losses of reaction or lines of 
> probable affect that do not come to any changes within or underneath the 
> distracting varnish of what appears to be a "traditional" timing 
> presentation? 

It is not so much that the film denies the temporal continuity, as that 
it doesn't really give a hoot about it.  Here is a good analogy for what 
I am trying to express: when the music carries over from a night-club scene
into the soundtrack of the next scene, a "literal" interpretation
would be that the next scene takes place within earshot from the nightclub.   
But this is hardly so, in most cases -- the purpose of the effect is
something else, not the signalling of a spatial continuity.  It is to 
impart a particular kind of smoothness to the transition, and also 
frequently to effect a certain kind of _removal_ from the second scene, 
as if the second scene was seen through a sonic filter.  Similarly,
a "literal" interpretation of smooth straight-cut passages between
scenes may be temporal continuity, but this is not how they are used here. 

I think your question has to do with my talk about denial.  The
denial, for me, doesn't necessarily have to do with temporality.  It
happens on two levels.  One is pretty trivial: if one makes very
smooth transitions between unrelated scenes, one is glossing over
their unrelatedness -- varnishing over it, as you say.  So smooth montage 
is simply a denial of the fact that one is dealing with pieces --
and in this case, _really_ pieces.  But furthermore, the result
of this glossing is, to me, very pleasing -- it resembles those magic
tricks where objects are seamlessly made to replace each other.  In
_Short Cuts_, the constant use of this device creates a feeling of gliding,
of lighntess, of exhilaration, similar to the feeling I get from the opening 
shot of _Player_, where the camera dances from attraction to attraction.  
This lightness is a denial of the painful and ugly content of most of
_Short Cuts_ -- it envelops things the way water, with its many fish,
envelops and beautifies the body of the mutilated young woman. 

> How, on a personal level, does this translate into a moral resonance?  

It acknowledges the fact that the film itself -- as aesthetization, as
entertainment, as part of an industry -- does not stand outside of 
the universe which it portrays, but is fully complicitous in the very 
mechanisms which are the target of its sarcasm.  In my perception,
Altman is a very rare example of a moralizer without any self-righteousness.  
This lack of self-righteousness is, I think, a product of the editing.


-malgosia 


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