THE CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD

CINEMA
Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960

David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson

London
 16
The continuity system

If you have a diamond in the shape of a plot, give it the proper setting of continuity. Do not sink
it in the tar of unmatched action.1
Epes Winthrop Sargent, 1915

The concept of continuity

We have seen how the move to longer multiple-shot films and later to multiple-reel films brought about a
shift in narrative models. Filmmakers used the short story, drama, and novel as sources for new conceptions
of causal and temporal unity. At the same time, they needed to find means of creating a unified spatial
structure in which story events could take place. To a limited extent, these means could also come from the
other arts: the film frame is analogous to the proscenium of a stage; the sudden leaps of time and space
achieved by editing resemble the freedom of movement enjoyed by the novel’s narrator.
But again, the filmic medium imposed its own unique demands. The filmmaker juxtaposes a series of
disparate spaces, building from them an overall narrative space. That space is concrete, not the verbal
construction of the novelist. Hence the filmmaker must be able to guide the spectator’s understanding of
spatial relations if the film’s causal actions are to be clear. Editing, with its instantaneous changes of
vantage point, presented a new aesthetic challenge, and filmmakers had to a considerable degree to thrash
out their problems on their own. The resulting guidelines became the continuity system.
The formulation of the continuity editing system was not a direct development of devices from the
primitive period. Classical films of the teens did not involve more complex, more correct usage of the same
devices available to earlier filmmakers. Rather, fundamental changes in the systems of causality, time, and
space brought about a profoundly new approach to filmmaking, and the functions of individual stylistic
devices changed as well. Some techniques used infrequently in the primitive period—the cut-in, point-of-
view and eyeline structures, dialogue inter-titles, and so on—became central means of constructing space
and conveying narrative information in the teens. Key devices of the primitive cinema changed in their
function. The lengthy tableau shots became establishing shots; expository titles which formerly anticipated
action now merely established situations. The classical system is a change from the earlier one, not necessarily
an improvement upon it.
With the growing emphasis on calculating how a film could be understood came new normative systems
within the production sector. The growth of a trade press after 1907 (brought about by the nickelodeon
boom and regularization of production) contributed to making these norms uniform across the industry.
Almost from the beginning trade papers and instruction books emphasized a specific conception of what
288 THE CONTINUITY SYSTEM

constitutes a good film. In one of the earlier scenario books, Herbert Case Hoagland, of Pathé Frères, gave
this advice to writers:2

Let one scene [shot] lead into the next scene wherever possible. Motion picture theater goers don’t
yearn for mental gymnastics and shouldn’t be kept guessing as to who the characters are or why they
are in the story at all.… Keep your scenes in a sequence easily followed by the onlooker.

Increasingly, the conception of quality in films came to be bound up with the term ‘continuity.’ ‘Continuity’
stood for the smoothly flowing narrative, with its technique constantly in the service of the causal chain, yet
always effacing itself. Later, ‘continuity’ came specifically to refer to a set of guidelines for cutting shots
together, but the original implications of the term lingered on. The ‘continuity system’ still connotes a set of
goals and principles which underlie the entire classical filmmaking system.
One of the best descriptions of continuity was written before the term was being applied commonly to
film. In 1910, a commentator in The Nickelodeon outlined what constituted great films:3

Their greatness has been established through the medium of a strong story, interpreted by artistic
players and illuminated by splendid photography. Invariably the stories have been easily defined and
followed and every gesture correctly interpreted. The director who knows his dramatic technique, that
subtle, indiscernible thread or mesh, binding and blending scenes [shots] and parts into a harmonious
whole is, perhaps, the greatest influence in making the story thoroughly convincing; thrilling us when
we should be thrilled, making us laugh or cry at the appointed times, and leaving us, at the end of the
film, in a beatific frame of mind, without a doubt to be cleared, without the jar of a false gesture.

The basic principles of Hollywood film practice are here already: the story as the basis of the film, the
technique as an ‘indiscernible thread,’ the audience as controlled and comprehending, and complete closure
as the end of all. Moreover, these ideas soon came to be accepted as a set of truisms. This remark might
have appeared in virtually the same terms at any point in Hollywood’s history since 1910.
This is not to say that the continuity system was conceived of by 1910. Most of its principles were set
forth and tested in the years up to 1917. But given this set of goals for narrative filmmaking, each new
technique or device could easily take its place within an overriding formal system.
The term ‘continuity’ itself soon came into common usage. Initially it occurred in the scenario columns
and books. Filmmakers assumed that if a scenario were correctly constructed, shot by shot, they could
simply follow it literally in production, and their film would automatically have a continuously coherent
narrative. So, until the late teens, references to ‘continuity’ are usually addressed to scenario writers and
refer to a flow of story across changing shots. Compare these bits of advice:4

[From a 1912 Photoplay scenario column:]

Continuity of events is a feature of the best pictures ever made. Avoid these ‘twenty-year after’
stories.
[A 1913 definition of ‘continuity of action’:]
While unity of action is one of the fundamentals of a model dramatic action, this unity must be
visibly continuous to render it distinctly and easily perceptible.
[A 1914 scenario book:]
Unbroken continuity or perfect cohesion of story unity—of which every intelligent audience is ever
conscious—that knows no such things as gaps, breaks or retrogressive movement.
 THE FORMULATION OF THE CLASSICAL STYLE, 1909–28 289

[And a 1917 essay on the topic in Photoplay:]

It is the placing of the many scenes that go to make up the photoplay in a logical sequence, so that
the play may run perfectly smoothly, without breaks or jumps which otherwise would have to be
covered by wordy and explanatory subtitles.

Some of these advisors were themselves also scenario editors for the production companies; their guidelines
would help determine the kinds of material accepted for filming. In late 1913, Epes Winthrop Sargent’s
column in The Moving Picture World informed freelance writers that Phil Lang, at Kalem, wanted
‘continuity’ in the scripts submitted to him; these should have no ‘jumps,’ where the character in one shot
appeared in the next one in a new locale.5 By about 1915, trade journals like Motography began publishing
‘how I did it’ articles signed by filmmakers. In one of that year, William Desmond Taylor modestly
characterized his direction of a serial, The Diamond From the Sky, saying that ‘Its continuity is as near
perfection as it is possible to obtain.’6 In 1917, Ince described how films from his studios were always
viewed many times, ‘with the one idea of avoiding inconsistencies in continuity and technique.’7
‘Continuity’ quickly developed from a general notion of narrative unity to the more specific conception
of a story told in visual terms and continuing unbroken, spatially and temporally, from shot to shot. This led
to the word’s being applied to the shooting script itself. As Chapter 12 has described, the continuity was a
numbered list of shots used as a means of planning the entire production. Thus the shot became not a
material unit but a narrative one (as evidenced by the almost universal use of the word ‘scene’ for a ‘shot’).
The implication here is that filmmakers took the narrative of a film to equal the sum total of all its shots.
This procedure of decoupage precludes any notion of using segments of time and space for their own sake,
of elevating them above the narrative at any point. A scenarist at Huffman-Foursquare Pictures described
good continuity scripting in 1917: ‘No scene [shot] which does not advance the action can be allowed to
have a place in the script. Every scene must be in its proper place.’8 Most of the rules or guidelines that
were gradually formulated during the teens had as their common purpose the subordination of devices to a
dominant narrative. Not just shots, but everything, had to serve its narrative function. In 1914, Phillips
wrote: ‘We employ nothing—property, actor, scene [shots], spectacle, spoken word, insert, incident or
device —in the perfect photoplay that has not a bearing on the climax of the play.’9 In this chapter, we will
see how editing rules were introduced during the teens and assimilated into the dominant filmmaking
system.

Establishing shots
The long framing was the earliest device for creating and maintaining a clear narrative space. When other
spatial devices were introduced— cut-ins, multiple spaces—the long shot ceased to present virtually all the
action. Instead, it acquired a more specific function, that of establishing space. (The long shot can also have
other functions, such as displaying spectacular mise-en-scene or suggesting a character’s isolation in a vast
space, but these usually occur in addition to the basic establishing function.) Multiple spaces involve cutting
together shots that show entirely different locales, whether at a distance from each other or contiguous;
analytical editing cuts to portions of a single space. In the classical system, the establishing shot is so
important that these other devices usually are organized around it. A film can have multiple spaces without
analytical editing, and vice-versa; but to maintain ‘correct’ continuity according to the classical system, both
multiple-space cutting and analytical editing depend on establishing shots.
The earliest staged films of 1893 and several years thereafter were tiny scenes, single events hardly long
enough to be narratives. Edison Kinetoscope films usually ran less than a minute; one 1893 Kinetoscope
290 THE CONTINUITY SYSTEM

film shows a drunken man in medium-long shot, stumbling in a park; a policeman approaches and they
struggle. In such films, there is automatic narrative continuity— one event entirely visible throughout.
With the increasing length of films, an extended narrative action might be played out, still within a single
locale; historians have termed this one-shot scene the tableau. A one-shot film, Street Car Chivalry (1903,
Edison), for example, shows a row of men sitting in a street car; they move to accommodate a pretty
woman, then refuse to do the same for a homely woman until she tricks them. Here we have several events
forming a brief narrative, but still played in long shot within a single space; without cuts, shifts in space and
time do not occur, and hence continuity is not yet a factor.
But occasional films in the years 1897 to 1903 introduced multiple spaces. In most cases, such films
string a series of tableaux together, with each scene acted out completely within the space of the image and
without any movement of the action into a contiguous space. In some cases, each is preceded by an inter-
title, as in the most famous example of this type, Porter’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Edwin S. Porter, 1903,
Edison). There was no clear-cut progression from one technique to another during the primitive period.
Single-shot films (Street Car Chivalry) and series of tableaux (Uncle Tom’s Cabin) continued to exist side
by side, lingering into the phase of films involving multiple spaces and cut-ins.10
Later, in the teens, when scenes were regularly cut up into multiple shots, the single long shot showing
initial spatial relations became one portion of the scene, usually coming at the beginning. Its function then
became specifically to establish a whole space which was then cut into segments or juxtaposed with long
shots of other spaces. Early cut-ins to closer framings were rare and always came after longer views of the
same space and before a return to the same long view— a re-establishing shot. There was thus little need for
filmmakers to specify the placement and function of the establishing shot.
But in the mid-teens, close-ups were becoming standard: only a third of the ES films from 1912 had cut-
ins, and only one had two of them; of the 1913 films, slightly over half had cut-ins (several with two or
three, and a couple with cut-ins involving a distinct change of angle); by 1914, every ES film had at least
one cut-in.
Now that filmmakers were regularly dealing with more than one shot per scene, they formulated
guidelines specifying the placement of the establishing shot, cut-in, and re-establishing shot. Sargent
commented in 1914 on the increasing use of close-ups: ‘Lately we saw a subject in which a setting room
was used. At various times three portions of this room were used for close-up pictures, instead of always
using the full set.’ Sargent approved the close view, but cautioned that ‘it should be used sparingly, where
the close-up is but a part of a scene, the opening and closing of which uses the full stage.’11 This advice
suggests that filmmakers in the early teens still thought of the long shot as the basis of the scene, with the
cut-in an occasional, effective variant.
But in the second half of the teens, Hollywood’s discourse sometimes assigned a more limited, specific
function to the long view. Now it became a part of an overall scene consisting of many shots, and it served
to establish spatial relationships. A 1918 trade-paper review of Lois Weber’s For Husbands Only
recommends ‘a long shot placing the locations of the various situations during the time Miss Harris
overhears the conversation between Cody and Miss Kirkwood.’12 In the four years between Sargent’s
statement and this review, the conception of cutting had changed considerably. Earlier, a scene consisted of
long shots, book-ending one or more close shots. After 1917, filmmakers would build scenes up from a
variety of different angles, with the long shot often no more important than any other. Around 1920,
Hollywood usage dubbed the long shot’s function as that of ‘establishing’ characters’ relations in space.13*
By the mid-teens filmmakers had so normalized the establishing shot’s function that they could
systematically vary its placement within the scene. A film might begin its first scene on a close shot of a
character’s face, then later show an establishing view. Often an inter-title precedes the close shot, describing
 THE FORMULATION OF THE CLASSICAL STYLE, 1909–28 291

the character we are about to see for the first time. The first shot of The Fatal Opal (George Melford, 1914,
Kalem) frames a man in medium shot, then cuts back to a long shot of him in a courtroom, revealing the
man to be a judge. Some films insert a brief series of analytical close shots before establishing the whole
space. In the opening of The Case of Becky (Frank Reicher, 1915, Lasky) we see the villainous hypnotist
Balzano in medium close-up after a title introduces him; a cut to a plan américain shows him to be onstage
doing his act. Only later in the scene does a long shot frame both the audience and the stage. Another 1915
film, The Woman (a one-reeler, production company unknown) starts with a shot/reverse-shot conversation
between a couple, before a plan américain shows that they are at a party. We quickly learn the situation, while
seeing the two characters’ appearances. In all these cases, the function of beginning on a close shot is to
show the appearance of the characters and create first impressions about them. An initial close view would
also support the new acting style and would emphasize character as a source of narrative causality. None of
these films, however, begins on a close shot in any scene after the opening, and all move to an establishing
shot fairly soon.
In the later teens, filmmakers occasionally delayed the establishing shot for other purposes. A scene may
mislead the spectator for comic effect, as in the second sequence of Wild and Woolly (John Emerson, 1917,
The Douglas Fairbanks Corp.). The scene begins with a medium shot of Jeff seated in cowboy clothes by a
teepee; a track back to long shot shows us that the ‘campsite’ is actually inside his bedroom. Here we get not
only a clear view of a new character, but the delayed establishing view humorously undercuts our first
impression. Another function of beginning on a close shot is to emphasize important details which reveal
the narrative situation of the scene more clearly than a long shot would. In all these functions of the
delayed long shot, compositional motivation justifies the use of the less predictable schema; the variation on
the standard opening is not arbitrary.
Many films of the 1920s make subtle use of the delayed long shot. The opening of Mantrap (Victor
Fleming, 1926, Famous Players-Lasky) provides an example of a quick revelation of narrative situation
through detail. Without any introductory in ter-title, the credits lead directly to a medium close-up of a
woman’s foot touching a man’s, which he moves away (see fig 16.1); a tilt up shows the woman speaking to
a point off right front (fig 16.2). The dialogue title that follows gives the situation: ‘—and he said I flirted. A
clever lawyer like you should get me heaps of alimony!’ After the title, we see a medium closeup of the
woman, who raises a make-up case to cover her face (fig 16.3). The next shot shows her point-of-view of
her own face in the mirror, which she then lowers to reveal the lawyer, with an annoyed expression on his
face (fig 16.4); we later discover that his experience in handling divorces has led him to mistrust all women.
Finally a tight long shot establishes them at his desk, with law books prominently visible to confirm that
this is a lawyer’s office (fig 16.5). The delayed establishing shot, while not the most probable schema,
would remain a common alternative to the analytical breakdown of the scene.

Analytical editing

An insert is filmed matter which is inserted in appropriate place in a scene, the film being cut
for this purpose. This matter must appear and be known as an insert to the writer and
manufacturer only; to the audience, it becomes the normal, logical, and only natural phenomena
that could be presented under the circumstances.14
Henry Albert Phillips, 1914

In primitive films, cut-ins occurred rarely and served a number of different functions. Most frequently, the
move to a closer framing allowed the viewer to see facial expression more clearly,15* although the
292 THE CONTINUITY SYSTEM

expression might be broad comic mugging rather than the later ‘American’-style acting discussed in the
previous chapter. Another common function for the closer shot would be the revelation of a detail not
sufficiently visible in the main tableau shot. But the cut-in could also simulate the point-of-view of a
character within the scene, and occasionally it aided in the creation of a trick photographic effect.
Some of the closer shots to show facial expression were not, strictly speaking, cut-ins. Following the lead of
The Great Train Robbery, quite a number of films of 1903–5 begin or end with medium shots of the
characters; these may introduce the characters before the action proper begins, as in The Widow and the
Only Man (1904, AM&B), where we see the two title characters in separate shots posing against a white
background. The Bold Bank Robbery (1904, Lubin) begins similarly with a medium shot of the three
smiling robbers in evening dress and ends with a cut-in within a prison scene; now the three are in convicts’
stripes, frowning. Here the close shots structure the beginning and ending, providing a ‘crime doesn’t pay’
moral for the whole. Some close shots for facial expression may constitute the entire action of a brief film,
with no long shots to frame them, as in The May Irwin—John C. Rice Kiss (1896, Edison) and The Old
Maid in a Drawing Room (1900, Edison). So the close shot for facial expression could either comprise a
whole scene or come before a longer shot of the same action.
From its earliest occurrence until the early teens, the cut-in for detail comes between two long shots taken
from the same camera set-up. Barry Salt has pointed out an early cut-in in The Sick Kitten (1903?), which he
identifies as a rerelease of The Little Doctor, a 1901 British film.16 (Urban’s 1903 catalogue in fact
describes The Sick Kitten as an abridged version of The Little Doctor, offering both versions for sale. The
Little Doctor, possibly originally entitled The Little Doctor and the Sick Kitten, was apparently made c.
1901. Only the shorter version is known to survive, but the Urban catalogue specifically mentions the cut to
a closer view in The Little Doctor.) This brief film begins with a medium-long shot of two children
preparing to administer a dose from a bottle marked ‘Fisik’ to a kitten sitting in the girl’s lap (see fig 16.6).
The cut-in to a medium close-up of the cat (fig 16.7) shows clearly the action of the cat lapping at the spoon’s
contents. Such small actions would have been indiscernible in the original framing. The Sick Kitten ends
after a cut back to the medium-long-shot framing. A similar pattern occurs in The Gay Shoe Clerk Porter,
1903, Edison), in which the central medium close-up emphasizes the detail of the customer raising her skirt
to reveal her ankle; the cut-in thus explains to the audience why the clerk impulsively kisses her in the third
shot, a reestablishing view of the store. In both these cases, the motivation for the cut-in is compositional,
for without the closer view, we could not follow the action adequately.
Some early films motivate cut-ins as subjective shots. The subjective shot almost invariably is at least
partly motivated realistically, since the camera lens is assumed to be imitating what a character’s eye would
see. In Grandpa’s Reading Glass (1902, AM&B), a series of long shots shows some children examining
objects with a magnifying glass. These shots alternate with close framings, masked as if from the children’s
point-of-view through the glass, of unmoving people or objects. In The 100-to-One Shot (1906, Vitagraph),
there is a long shot of a grassy area in which horses are being walked before a race; the hero enters and
finds a paper dropped by a rich bettor (see fig 16.8). A cut to a medium close-up, point-of-view shot shows
his hands unfolding the paper (fig 16.9).
The earliest examples of point-of-view cut-ins occur in films which depend almost entirely upon the
novelty effect of the close view. Grandpa’s Reading Glass contains no other action and minimal causal
progression; the whole thing consists of the children’s series of examinations of objects and people. The cut-
ins are motivated realistically (the children would see the objects from these points in space) and artistically
(the close views are of interest in themselves), but not compositionally (they give us no new story
information). But The 100-to-One Shot embeds its subjective shot within a larger narrative chain,
motivating it compositionally by giving it causal functions; the paper in figure 16.9 contains a tip on a horse,
 THE FORMULATION OF THE CLASSICAL STYLE, 1909–28 293

which the hero reads and uses to win his bet. This compositionally motivated point-of-view cut-in later
becomes the norm in the transitional period 1909–17.
Besides enlarging facial expression, providing details, and representing optical subjectivity, cutins during
this period could construct a more limited space within which special effects could be created. Two
American Mutoscope and Biograph films which use extended and intricate pixillation shots are The Tired
Tailor’s Dream (1907) and The Sculptor’s Nightmare (1908). In each, the basic space of the scene is
established, then cutins eliminate the human figures in order to facilitate the lengthy stop-motion process of
animating objects. Vitagraph’s Princess Nicotine J.Stuart Blackton, 1909) cuts in numerous times to tiny
figures cavorting on a table. Here the special effects were mainly accomplished by building over-sized
matches and cigarettes, with actresses playing the parts of the princess and her friend. When trick films
declined after about 1909, so did the use of cut-ins for this purpose. But certain special effects would always
depend on cutting to a new view of the scene’s space.
Through most of the pre-1909 period, films seldom matched action or position between the long and
close views. At the end of the first shot of The Sick Kitten (fig 16.6 is the last frame of this shot), the girl
reaches for the bottle of medicine; at the beginning of the close shot (fig 16.7 is the first frame), her hand is
already holding a spoon to the cat’s mouth. There is no attempt to match on action or position, since the girl
had not even begun to pour the medicine before the cut. A similar mismatch on her arm’s position occurs at
the cut back to the third and final shot. In the cutin from The 100-to-One Shot (see figs 16.8 and 16.9), the
close shot shows the hands and paper against a light, neutral background; given the surroundings visible in
the long shot, the paper should be seen against grass. Here the mismatch is one of setting rather than
position or action. The Gay Shoe Clerk does match the clerk’s hand movement at one of the cuts. This may
have been an accident, but at least the film successfully conveys a continuous event over the cuts by
matching on position; The Lost Child (1904, AM&B) does the same thing on a cut-in to a pursued man holding
up a guinea pig. The only other example of a match on action in the early years of the ES occurred in a
much later film, The Unexpected Guest (1909, Lubin). In long shot, a man moves to a desk; then a cut to a
medium close-up has an imprecise match on his hands cutting the PS away from a letter. There are
undoubtedly other cut-ins with matches, but the usual use of a cut-in in the primitive period was to a static
object or character. The Unexpected Guest is moving toward a conception of skilled matching which would
become one sign of a well-executed classical film.
On the whole, however, before 1911 or so, cutins were not common for any purpose. Even when closer
shots became more acceptable, most filmmakers initially sought to avoid cuts within a space. Frequently
staging could render a cut-in unnecessary. If a filmmaker wanted to insure that facial expression was
visible, the actors simply moved closer to the camera. In the first shot of After One Hundred Years (1911,
Selig) a group of characters stand outside an inn; the innkeeper comes out to greet them (see fig 16.10). One
man and the innkeeper come forward to talk, thereby identifying the film’s central character (fig 16.11).
This practice contrasts sharply with the more decentered framings of earlier years; compare the stock
market shot from A Corner in Wheat (Griffith, 1909, AB) in which the bustling characters all claim equal
attention. No framing or staging device guides the spectator’s eyes to the most relevant actions in that shot.
Similar framings with the characters stepping forward occur frequently in the early teens. In Cinderella
(1911, Thanhouser), the Prince picks up the lost slipper in long shot, carries it forward, and extends it
toward the camera, then goes back up the palace steps. A Tale of Two Cities (William Humphrey, 1911,
Vitagraph) opens with a long shot of a party at the Marquis’s home, with the Marquis in the depth of the
shot (see fig 16.12). He comes into medium-long shot to give orders to a servant (fig 16.13). At Old Fort
Dearborn (1912, Bison ‘101’) contains a more elaborate example, with a long shot framing a soldier who
comes out of a saloon and accosts an Indian woman (see fig 16.14). As an officer and the woman’s father
294 THE CONTINUITY SYSTEM

enter to stop him, the whole group moves forward (fig 16.15). After the Indians go out, the two men take one
more step forward into plan américain as the officer berates the soldier (fig 16.16).
The practice of moving characters toward the camera has never entirely disappeared. But by the mid-
teens the cut-in had become an equally important way of providing a closer view of the characters. At the
same period, movement toward the camera was handled in a less obvious fashion, with a deeper setting
extending the acting space forward. Movement toward the camera became part of the realistically motivated
staging of the scene, rather than a movement made solely to allow the spectator a better view. In The Cheat
(Cecil B.DeMille, 1915, Lasky), for example, the husband and his friend stroll slowly and casually forward
in the parlor after dinner. Here the movement is motivated by their desire to discuss their investment plans
out of the earshot of guests in the depth of the room. There is no sense here, as there is in the earlier
examples just described, of the actors crossing an empty foreground space simply to get closer to the
camera. As with other devices, realistic and compositional motivation combine to make the mechanics of
film style less noticeable.
In spite of attempts to use staging to avoid cutins, after 1910 filmmakers increased their dependence on
closer shots. Sometimes the narrative situation necessitated a view of a detail which for some reason could
not be brought forward to the camera. In the first scene of After One Hundred Years, as we have seen, the
actors move into closer view. Later, in the last scene, the hero discovers a bullet-hole in the mantelpiece of
his inn room (see fig 16.17). As he inspects it, there is a cut-in with a match on action (fig 16.18). Shamus
O’Brien (Otis Turner, 1912, Imp) contains a plan américain in which the fugitive Shamus’s family read a letter
from him. Barely visible outside the slatted window is listening a treacherous neighbor who will turn
Shamus in (see fig 16.19). There follows a close-up of the neighbor (fig 16.20), partly in order to catch his
gleeful expression, but primarily to guarantee that we see this important bit of narrative information, which
is partly hidden by the window in the long shot. In each case, the cut-in emphasizes a detail associated with
a fixed portion of the set.
The Shamus O’Brien example shows how set construction could also necessitate a change of angle at the
cut. But once the cut-in had come into general use, filmmakers did not always need such a pretext to vary the
vantage point on the scene. The Girl of the Cabaret (1913, Thanhouser) establishes the hero, at foreground
right, sitting at a table watching a cabaret violinist (fig 16.21). A cut-in catches his reaction, moving nearly
180° to the other side of the table from the long shot (fig 16.22). But most cut-ins still moved straight in to
capture detail.
By the mid-teens, cut-ins routinely function not only to guarantee the visibility of narrative action, but to
aid characterization as well. We saw in the previous chapter how the new facial acting style encouraged
closer framings. This style may have been a major cause of the steadily increasing cutting tempo during the
teens. Cecil B.DeMille, commenting in 1923 on the increase in the number of shots over the past ten years,
attributed it to an increasing emphasis on character psychology:17

In the old days we would have ‘shot’ a struggle scene in a ‘long shot,’ showing, perhaps, two men
fighting on the floor with a woman at one side. In the long shot we could get only a suggestion of the
emotions being experienced. The physical action, yes, but the soul action, the reaction of the
mentalities concerned, the surging of love, hate, fear, up from the heart and into the expressive
muscles of the face, the light of the eyes, that, indeed, is something you can only get by a flash to a
close-up or semi-close-up.
And it is these flashes, short but telling, that have caused some scenario writers to increase scene
numbers.
 THE FORMULATION OF THE CLASSICAL STYLE, 1909–28 295

A more regular use of crosscutting and contiguous spaces would also tend to increase the average number
of shots per reel during this period. Along with the acting shift, the rise of the star system also encouraged
the use of closer framings. Filmmakers moved in upon the famous faces in order to allow spectators to gaze
upon their favourites. These closer shots were not the lingering glamor shots of the twenties and thirties, but
they served somewhat the same function. Pickford’s first appearance in her early feature The Eagle’s Mate
(James Kirkwood, 1914, Famous Players) epitomizes this usage. We see her first in a medium-long shot,
emerging from the forest (see fig 16.23). Even though she is clearly recognizable from this view, a cut-in to
a medium shot follows (fig 16.24). Here Mary plays with a bird on a branch—an action which helps to
characterize her, but which also allows the camera to dwell on her. These actions could have been handled
in one shot, but the division into two prolongs Pickford’s entrance.
During the mid-teens, the cut-in quickly changed from an occasional necessity to a standard device in
creating an omnipresent narration. For a few years, from about 1914 to 1917, practitioners seem to have
conceived of cutins as a way simply to add variety and interest to a scene. Scenario guidebooks advised
using cutins to speed up a scene, whether or not there was any specific reason to change framings. Consider
the following statements:18

[1914] The close-view has no rival for breaking dangerously long scenes in a manner so natural and
potential that oftentimes it makes a brilliant presentation of something that would in all probability
have become tedious.
[1917] Main scenes must not be too long. If they threaten to be so, they must be broken up by close-
ups or flash-backs [i.e., cutaways].

The cut-in thus contributed to the increasing tempo of editing in the teens. But after 1917, most writers
advocated the use of close shots for specific narrative purposes—not just to liven up a scene’s rhythm. A
1921 scenario manual echoed the earlier writers, saying: ‘Occasionally the close-up is used to “break up” a
sequence that would be too long and monotonous were the action therein contained shown in one lengthy
and sustained long-shot’; however, the same writer specified that the usual uses of the close-up are ‘to show
a close, detailed view of that which is not sufficiently clear or which lacks emphasis in a more distant and
general scene. In the case of a human face, it is occasionally necessary or desirous to show the details of
expression, conveying an emotion.’19 After 1914, no UnS or ES films lacked cut-ins, and about 1916, the cut-
in with a match on a moving object was almost as frequent as the static match. Certainly by 1917, the advent
of the classical period, filmmakers had formulated the analytical presentation of a scene through
establishing, cutting in, and re-establishing.
Moreover, by 1917, the cut-ins could be taken from a variety of angles, as the films of Fairbanks, Ray,
and Pickford show. A scene from a 1918 Ray film, The Hired Hand (Victor Schertzinger, Thomas Ince
Corp.), begins with an establishing shot of mother, daughter, and servant in a kitchen (see fig 16.25). A medium
shot of the mother follows; she looks off left and speaks (fig 16.26). This leads to a reverse medium shot of
the daughter looking right, listening (fig 16.27), and then to a re-establishing shot from a new angle,
emphasizing the servant as she comes forward to speak with the mother (fig 16.28). Here the back wall
provides a spatial anchor from shot to shot (note how the three lanterns on a shelf recur in each shot), but
the filmmakers no longer conceive of the space as a flat, frontal tableau. Rather than simply cutting straight
in, the filmmakers have created a new angle on the space for each shot. Guiding spectator attention through
frequent shifts in vantage point, analytical editing became a familiar schema that aided easy comprehension
of all classical films.
296 THE CONTINUITY SYSTEM

The introduction of the cut-in as a standard device and the resulting breakdown of a single scene into
multiple shots bring up the question of screen direction (later to be called the ‘axis of action’ or ‘180°
rule’). The maintenance of screen direction from shot to shot is one of the basic principles which American
filmmakers would use to orient the spectator to the story action. There never was a period in the history of
the US cinema when screen direction was random. Originally the tableau staging and framing precluded the
need for any question of direction; space was presented whole. Furthermore, early cut-ins failed to disturb
the clarity of this space. There was seldom any question of moving to the other side of the action. The
standard painted sets had only a backdrop and perhaps two small segments of other walls at the sides. In
order to keep the setting in the background of the closer shot, the camera had to stay on the same side of the
characters. Since filmmakers usually did close-ups directly after the long shots, by simply carrying their
cameras forward, problems seldom arose, even in exteriors done without sets.
Occasionally, in later films, there are closer shots, especially of characters, taken from the side of the
action opposite to the vantage of the establishing shot. Such breaks in continuity are rare, and probably
result from successive shots being done at different times from the long shot. (We have seen how shooting
‘out of continuity’ was necessary to maintain efficiency in the production process.) In Girl Shy (Fred
Neumayer, 1924, Harold Lloyd Corp.), close-ups of Harold’s typewriter after each fantasy scene, a close-up
of the villain stroking the maid’s hand, and a medium shot of Harold pulling the lever to dump a workman
from the back of a wagon, are all filmed from the opposite side to the establishing shot. Only one of these
disjunctive cuts is compositionally motivated: since the villain conceals his gesture with his hat, we can see
it only because the camera crosses over the axis of action. In the other two cases, we must assume either
that the staff confused the direction when making the close shots or were willing to overlook a few
irregularities. On the whole, however, violations of screen direction were so rare that contemporary writers
did not refer to screen direction as a problematic aspect of cutting in, but only in relation to scenes of multiple
contiguous spaces.
There can be little doubt that the concept of screen direction stems from the primitive period, when the
spectator viewed the action from a distance, as if in a theater seat. In a play performed on a proscenium-arch
stage, one does not suddenly see the action from the other side; stage right and left remain consistent. Later,
as analytical editing became more common, the film spectator ceased to see the bulk of the action from a
fixed point. The shifts created at the cuts by the narration do not imply that filmmakers conceived of the
spectator as a disembodied spirit capable of moving anywhere within the space.
Analytical editing, Hollywood commentators tell us, follows the ‘natural attention’ of the spectator. First
the onlooker surveys the scene (establishing shot); as the action continues, he or she focuses upon a detail
(cut-in), or glances back and forth at the participants in a conversation (shot/reverse shot), or glances to the
side when distracted by a sound or motion (cutaway). But while the attention may flit here and there, it
never departs from the physical ties of the spectator to the degree that it crosses the line to view the opposite
side of the action. Arbitrary as this conception of the spectator is, it has governed Hollywood practice from
the earliest years.
By 1917, analytical editing was used consistently through whole films. And as early as 1915, Sargent
offered a remarkable summary of the closer shot’s use in a hypothetical scene:20

It is worth while noting the growing tendency to use the close-up. This was very intelligently handled
in a recent Kalem when, to borrow an expression of a writer, ‘they shot all over the darned room,’ and
got strongly effective results.
For an illustration let us say that the scene is laid in the Senate Chamber in Washington. Hawkins, a
newcomer, is trying to force through a bill ‘for the relief’ of his sweetheart’s father. Jorkins, one of
 THE FORMULATION OF THE CLASSICAL STYLE, 1909–28 297

the old Wheel horses and senior senator from the same state, seeks to defeat the bill because of his
dislike for the girl’s father. Hawkins is to make his big speech.
To show the matter adequately would require a tiresome stay in the same big set. One or the other of
the leading players would be too far from the camera to show up well. In this case the large scene
would show the floor of the chamber, but instead of holding the action there it would flash back and
forth between the two men, to the girl and her father in the balcony, and perhaps to the press gallery
where Hawkins’ friend, a correspondent from the home paper, helps to swing the tide. All of the
players would be seen in the occasional big set, but there would be a succession of close-up pictures
of the principals, with an occasional return to the big scene. It would be perhaps a threehundred-foot
scene, yet divided up into perhaps twenty-five or thirty sections, avoiding monotony.

Sargent’s description could almost apply to the filibuster scene of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank
Capra, 1939, Columbia). His reference to ‘the occasional big set’ advocates the periodic return to a re-
establishing shot, but no longer does Sargent consider the close-up as a brief interruption of the basic single
long shot comprising the scene.
Analytical editing breaks a single locale into different views; cutting to create multiple spaces expands
the narrative space outward. There are two basic patterns for editing multiple spaces together: joining
contiguous spaces and crosscutting (i.e., joining non-contiguous spaces). I shall examine the former first,
since it was the first to develop into a standard way of constructing space.

Multiple spaces
Movement between spaces and screen direction

The film cutter must know continuity, have a slight knowledge of directions, and an eye keen and
embracing.21
Frank Atkinson (cutter at Universal), 1924

When a film presents contiguous spaces in separate shots, it needs some method for showing the viewer that
these spaces are indeed next to each other. There are different ways of providing cues: a character or object
moving from one space to another might link them together; or a character looking offscreen in one
direction might lead the viewer to surmise that the next shot shows the space that character sees.
Character movement was the most common cue for linking contiguous spaces in the early cinema; it
appeared widely from about 1903. In The Somnambulist (1903, AM&B), we see the interior of a bedroom
and three shots of various parts of a rooftop outside as a woman gets up and sleep-walks across the roof.
There is a match on the action of her coming through the door that gives a strong cue for contiguous spaces;
at the other cuts, she exits to and enters from offscreen. A Search for Evidence (1903, AM&B) presents
several segments of a hotel corridor, shifting laterally two doors at a time, as a woman and man move
through from right to left, peeking through each keyhole. The Great Train Robbery (Porter, 1903, Edison)
contains a pair of shots in which the robbers move from their hold-up of the passengers by the side of the
train to the engine, in which they make their escape.
The year 1903 also saw the release of some early chase films. The chase, with its characters moving from
shot to shot, became one of the standard ways of using multiple spaces in subsequent years. The Pickpocket
(1903, AM&B) begins with a long shot as a thief robs and beats a man. The thief runs out at the foreground.
Other people run in to help the victim; then this group runs out at the foreground as well. There follow
298 THE CONTINUITY SYSTEM

thirteen more shots of various spaces, with characters in different combinations running through, usually
toward the front and from left to right (the main directional variation being that sometimes they exit to the
right of the camera, sometimes to the left). The multiple spaces even include locales above and below each
other as several policemen chase the pickpocket over high stacks of lumber.
The movement from shot to shot in such films is usually fairly comprehensible, as long as the characters
are recognizable. This is true whether or not they keep constant screen direction. In the case of The
Pickpocket, screen direction is not always strictly maintained. But again, films tended from the start to keep
the characters moving from space to space in a reasonably consistent direction. These chase films were
probably the earliest to standardize a dependence on screen direction to link multiple contiguous spaces. As
in The Pickpocket, all the characters in such films would exit entirely, and a cut would reveal a new space
nearby, with the characters entering after the cut. In most outdoor chase shots, the characters moved
diagonally from the rear to exit in the foreground, just to one side of the camera. Examples occur in the first
film to popularize the chase genre in this country, Personal (1904, AM&B). Here a group of women pursue
a man through each of the eleven shots; they exit variously left and right, but always move toward the front,
passing close to the camera. Similar chases occur in the same company’s The Lone Highwayman (1906),
Her First Adventure (1908; see fig 16.29), and Trying to Get Arrested (Griffith, 1909).22* During the
decade, movements through contiguous spaces appeared more frequently in non-chase situations as well.
As with analytical editing, the conception of screen direction between contiguous spaces probably derives
in part from the fixed position of the spectator in proscenium theater. In the later decades of the nineteenth
century, spectacular productions sometimes employed a series of perspective backdrops to change locales
quickly; at times, characters might move across the stage repeatedly through several represented settings,
suggesting a progress through contiguous spaces. For instance, Nicholas Vardac describes an 1887
production of David Copperfield which staged the famous shipwreck scene in which Steerforth dies. A
series of three settings, all changed without the curtain being closed, moved the characters through space:
beginning in ‘The Ark Interior,’ as the characters rush out to the rescue, moving to an area ‘Near the Beach’
as the rescue party runs across the stage, and finally to ‘the Sea in a Storm’ with the ship sinking and the
characters rushing in to attempt the rescue. According to Vardac, the changes of backdrop were
accompanied by ‘sound effects, offstage noises, and the action itself running continuously.’23 For Vardac,
the three scenes resemble a series of film shots, with ‘dissolves’ between. But beyond this, one significant
aspect of this staging is the fact that the actors run across the stage to the left, exit, run across toward the left
again, and so on. Were they not to maintain this constant direction, it is not clear that the spatial
relationships among the Ark, Beach, and Storm backdrops would be apparent. There is but a small step from
such a series of contiguous spaces on the Victorian stage to the series of shots in a primitive chase film.
The early use of screen direction depended on the fact that there were few shots, and that the same
framing seldom recurred elsewhere in the film. But filming numerous shots which would later have to fit
together with other shots done in different locales, on different days, made screen direction harder to
control. After 1909, with the introduction of the shooting script and its attendant scene plot, it became more
convenient to shoot out of continuity. In 1911, Frank Woods commented upon inconsistent screen direction
and its possible production causes:

Attention has been called frequently in Mirror film reviews to apparent errors of direction or
management as to exits and entrances in motion picture production.… A Player will be seen leaving a
room or locality in a certain direction, and in the very next connecting scene, a sixteenth of a second
later, he will enter in exactly the opposite direction. Now it may be argued quite logically that this
need not necessarily be inartistic, because the spectator himself may be assumed to change his point
 THE FORMULATION OF THE CLASSICAL STYLE, 1909–28 299

of view, but (oh, that word!) the spectator will not look at it that way. Any one who has watched
pictures knows how often his sense of reality has been shocked by this very thing. To him it is as if
the player had turned abruptly around in a fraction of a second and was moving the other way.

Woods suggests that: ‘It is probable that the trouble is due in some instances to the fact that interior scenes
are made first and exteriors cannot always be made to accommodate themselves.’24 Indeed, most changes in
screen direction in films of the early teens seem to result from shooting in different locales, then trying to
match up the results. Particularly problematic are movements between interior and exterior locales. There
are also instances where the different interior sets were not planned to take entrances and exits into account,
so that the character repeatedly changes direction between the two settings. Allan Dwan’s The Fear (1912,
American) shows an instance of a reversed screen direction which must have resulted from out-of-
continuity shooting. Throughout the film, we see shots made on a rocky beach; in one such shot, a character
exits toward the left front (see fig 16.30). In the next shot, he should approach from the right side of the
frame, but he comes in left (fig 16.31). Since these two spaces are never seen in a single framing, we can
assume that Dwan’s unit probably filmed in two locations far separated from each other and that no one kept
track of this particular movement. As a result, several movements and eyelines between these two spaces
are regularly mismatched in the same way.
Despite such occasional inconsistencies of screen direction, both films and contemporary writings
indicate that most filmmakers considered it an important factor. Of all the ES films for the period 1910 to
1915, inclusive, about two-thirds contained structures of multiple contiguous spaces through which
characters moved. Of these, less than one-fifth contained any violations of screen direction. Charles
G.Clarke, who became a cameraman in 1915, confirms that screen direction was a rule in force when he
began to work. He describes the belief current at that time: ‘If they exit left and enter left, they’re bumping
into themselves.’25
A 1912 Vitagraph one-reel film, Alma’s Champion, exemplifies the standard adherence to constant screen
direction. At the end of one shot the hero runs out front left (see fig 16.32), leaving the frame entirely. The
cut reveals a nearby space, into which he runs from the right (fig 16.33). Note here the carefully balanced
reverse angles, with the camera at the same basic mirror-image vantage in relation to the railroad tracks in
each shot. In The Warning (Donald Crisp, 1914, Majestic), the heroine runs out left, again exiting entirely
(see fig 16.34); in the next shot she runs in from the right (fig 16.35). This pattern is typical of the use of
movements to cue contiguous spaces in the early teens.
In 1914, an occasional film avoided the complete exit and entrance by using frame cuts (that is, cutting
with the character passing over the frameline itself). This sort of match is more difficult technically than
simply cutting when no figures are visible onscreen. The Eagle’s Mate has a cut as the Pickford character
moves away from the sick man she has been tending. The cut comes exactly as she is halfway out of the
frame (fig 16.36); in the next frame (fig 16.37), the new shot begins with her already halfway into the
image. (As we shall see, these shots lead directly into a shot/reverse-shot conversation; this, combined with
the sequence’s initial establishing shot, constitutes a fairly complex construction of the scenic space.)
After 1915, quite a few films continued to violate screen direction in relation to movements, but often
only once or twice in an entire feature film—no more than might occur in a film of the thirties or forties.
One reason that violations of screen direction occurred at all is that there was no established method for
avoiding them until the late teens, when the ‘script girl’ began to be a regularly assigned position. In the
early teens, there seems to have been some attempt to solve the problem by specifying screen direction in
the continuity script, extending its function as a blueprint guiding all aspects of production. Two 1913
screenplay advisers give the following instructions:26
300 THE CONTINUITY SYSTEM

Describe where each character enters or exits when necessary and how and with whom, i.e., tell where
he enters or exits—whether from the house, garden, or door—tell how he enters or exits—whether
arm-in-arm, frightened, walking, running, mounted, breathlessly, etc.
Describe when and where the characters are to enter the scene, giving the entrance, or the direction.
If they are to be in the scene at the beginning of the film, state that they are ‘discovered’ and give
their position.

In each case, the authors seem anxious to get the scenario writer to specify as much as possible about the
characters, not only to maintain screen direction, but also to aid in matching on action.
This attempt to make screen direction part of the written plans apparently did not work, however. While
some published specimen scenarios of this period mention directions of entrances, most fail to do so. And
set designers went on making an occasional set that did not allow for the matching of exit and extrance from
one locale to another. The Italian (Reginald Barker, 1915, New York Motion Picture Co.), for example,
consistently mismatches movements from the outside of Gallia’s house to the inside. Planning, then, did not
always ensure proper screen direction.
In the mid-teens, the task of watching for directions of entrances and exits fell to someone on the set
during shooting. A 1913 account suggests that it was perhaps partly the cinematographer’s job; he ‘must
keep accurate account of every motion made during the run of the film. In this way he is also an assistant
stage manager.’27 When asked who was responsible for keeping track of the directions of the actors’
movements in the mid-teens, Clarke also credited the cinematographer: ‘I knew what the next shot would be
and kept track of exits and entrances.’28 Cameraman Hal Mohr confirms that at least some
cinematographers watched for screen direction. Mohr had worked as an editor during the teens, but was
behind the camera by 1921. Asked if his editing experience had helped him as a cameraman, Mohr
replied:29

It helped me a lot. Script girls used to get kind of mad at me, because they’d never have a chance; I’d
put pictures together, so I knew instinctively that the man had gotten off the horse and gone into the
saloon on camera left, so he had to come in the next scene from camera right, or from center down. So
I’d set up accordingly.

Clearly some cinematographers would be better at keeping track of continuity than others; all would have
other duties that would preclude their devoting complete attention to screen direction.
As Chapter 13 has pointed out, directors and assistant directors also tried to watch for this. When the number
of shots increased and screen direction became a normative rule, firms added a specific production role—
the ‘script girl,’ or continuity clerk—to keep continuity notes during the shooting. Apparently the role of the
script person emerged between 1917 and 1920.
By the late teens, not only did filmmakers watch for screen direction in shooting, but editors had
developed tactics for correcting problems when they arose. Helen Stair’s major 1918 Photoplay article on
editing discusses screen direction:30

The matter of progression is most important. If an actor is seen in a dining-room set and if he goes out
a door on the left of the set, it is obvious that when we next ‘pick him up’ in the parlor he must be
seen entering the parlor at the right of the screen. But sometimes the cutter finds that the director has
made a mistake in this regard. If so he can turn the film negative over.31*
 THE FORMULATION OF THE CLASSICAL STYLE, 1909–28 301

Note Starr’s assumption that the need for maintaining screen direction is ‘obvious.’ William Hornbeck, an
editor who began as an assistant cutter at Keystone in 1917, discusses other ways of covering a problem; in
describing how an editor would cut together two shots in which the screen direction was reversed, he
recalled:32

You’d try to get a movement that would excuse it, a turn of the head or something—there were various
tricks that you could try. You’d go to a closer shot or a longer shot. Oh, there’s dozens of things you
could devise. Make an insert even; if they were handling something, put an insert in.

In some cases, editors might even arrange to have shots redone—especially a close shot which would cost
little to make and which could cover an error.
By the late teens, filmmakers counted on audiences’ ‘reading’ screen direction in specific ways. Starr
discussed how an editor could save money on a production; using a recent battle scene as an example, she
quotes the editor’s description of how the sequence was done:33

‘There were only seventy real soldiers in that scene,’ explained the cutter. ‘We cut the picture so that
it seemed as if thousands took part— first a long shot of the seventy fighting amid battle smoke on
one side, then closer shots of a dozen or two soldiers running in from the right, another dozen running
in from the left, another long shot of the seventy soldiers but now wearing the uniforms of the enemy
and fighting on the opposite side, then back to a shot of the hero and his forces and so on throughout
the picture.’ It was just a matter of reverse camera shots and joining them together so carefully that
any audience would be deceived.

In spite of Stair’s casual conclusion, the passage (with its use of the term ‘reverse camera shot’ to mean
basically what it means today) indicates an extensive grasp of the principles of continuity editing. The
filmmakers understood and were putting into practice the effects of opposed screen direction and eyelines
that the Soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov was to study in his famous experiments on editing conducted
during the early 1920s. Screen direction, we may assume, had virtually reached the status of a rule by 1917.

The eyeline match

If character movement can cue contiguous spaces, so does character glance. Quite early, around 1902,
filmmakers began using glances to create optical point-of-view (POV) shots, placing the camera in the
spatial position of the character. Then, during the early transitional period, after about 1909, eyeline
matches appear in films; in this device, the character glances to a point offscreen in one shot, and a cut
reveals the seen space, but not from the spatial position of the character.
The POV shot can show either a portion of the space seen in the establishing shot, or it can show a
contiguous space. Filmmakers who first employed the POV shot used it in both ways. In the early years, the
POV shot was usually indicated not only by position but also by a mask. Grandpa’s Reading Glass (1902,
AM&B) uses a series of round masks to represent a magnifying glass; the POV shots show details of the
larger space of the establishing shot. Similarly, the hero’s view through binoculars in The 100-to-One Shot
(1906, Vitagraph; see figs 16.38 and 16.39) shows a space already seen in the first shot. But in A Search for
Evidence (1903, AM&B), POV shots done through a keyhole mask reveal a contiguous space, a series of hotel
rooms behind closed doors.
302 THE CONTINUITY SYSTEM

In rare instances, an unmasked POV shot might be used in these early years. The Runaway Match (1903,
AM&B) even contains a POV tracking shot. When the pursuing father’s car breaks down, the camera
continues tracking back from him along the road; he stands angrily gesticulating toward the camera as it
moves to extreme-long shot. A reverse medium-long shot tracks forward following the car containing the
eloping daughter and her fiancé, who wave and laugh directly into the camera; the preceding view of the
father is revealed as their POV shot. The Runaway Match provides a good example of a device which was
later to become a recognizable part of Hollywood’s repertory of devices, but which at the time was more
likely an isolated experiment.
The unmasked POV shot occurs more regularly from about 1911. Since most camera angles were at this
point nearly horizontal, they were not particularly serviceable as POV cues. Nor had filmmakers developed
a set of other cues for indicating that the camera occupied the character’s place. The glance through a
window provided virtually the only such cue, since the window frame within the image placed the character
spatially. Thus A Friendly Marriage (1911, Vitagraph) contains a shot of the wife stopping by a church and
looking off left front (see fig 16.40), followed by a view of her husband through the rectory window
(fig 16.41). A Tale of Two Cities (1911, Vitagraph) also contains a window POV, with the bank clerk
looking out a window in plan américain, followed by a plan américain of the mob outside. Lois Weber’s
The Cry of the Children (1912, Thanhouser) ends with a scene of the factory owner and his wife looking out
a window, followed by an extreme-long shot of the factory. Other spatial cues soon began to appear. In
Kirkwood’s American Biograph drama, The House of Discord (1913), the heroine stands by the gate of an
estate and watches her daughter ride past with a groom; there follows a POV shot of the pair going away
down the road. Here the position of the road and the direction of movement of the couple on horseback tell
us that the camera has been placed in the heroine’s position in the second shot. In Behind the Footlights
(1916, Vim Comedies), the hero looks out from behind the curtain of a vaudeville stage (see fig 16.42) and
sees his girlfriend in the audience (fig 16.43). Here camera angle as well as the placement of orchestra
members in the lower part of the frame signals POV. By 1917, most of the UnS and ES films use POV at
least once, usually employing continuity cues of spatial relations from shot to shot to indicate POV, only
occasionally including windows and binocular or keyhole masks.
By the late teens, the masked POV shot returned, but not with shapes suggesting binoculars or keyholes.
Instead, masking became a conventional means of marking POV shots as such. In *Love and the Law (Edgar
Lewis, 1919, Edgar Lewis Productions), one scene contains a lengthy series of POV shots as the hero stands
by a parked wagon, turns slowly around, and sees a series of shop signs; there are five shots of him looking
in various directions, each followed by a masked shot of a sign (see figs 16.44 and 16.45). The
sophistication of POV usage by the late teens is apparent in this series: each sign is at the precise angle and
distance it would be in relation to the character’s position, those on his side of the street being closer than
ones across the street or further down the street. In accordance with Hollywood’s growing use of
redundancy, the spatial and masking cues supported each other in indicating POV. In later years, additional
POV cues reinforced the principles formulated in the teens.
The eyeline match, where the second shot shows a space seen, but not from a character’s spatial position,
came into occasional use about 1910–11. In The Gambler’s Charm (1910, Lubin), the gambler runs to the
door of a saloon and fires his gun at a man running away outside, offscreen right (see fig 16.46). The cut
leads to a shot of the man falling, with the gambler’s stare offscreen giving us one important cue as to where
this second space is (fig 16.47).
Of the 1912 ES films, one-fourth had eyeline matches. Only one violated screen direction: Dwan’s The
Fear, in the same situation described on page 205. At the end of the film’s first shot, the father looks off
front left (see fig 16.48) and sees his daughter by their house (fig 16.49). We assume at this point that in the
 THE FORMULATION OF THE CLASSICAL STYLE, 1909–28 303

second shot the father is offscreen right. As we discover later when the other character moves between the
two spaces (see figs 16.30 and 16.31), the father really had been offscreen left. In contrast, The Girl at the
Cupola (1912, Selig) maintains screen direction in a scene of a labor strike: the first shot shows the workers
and the sympathetic boss’s daughter looking off front left (fig 16.50), with the cut revealing her fiancé, who
is trying to keep the factory running with scab labor (fig 16.51). This second shot suggests that the group
looking on is offscreen to the right, and indeed they are, as we discover when characters move between the
two spaces.
Of the 1913 films examined, nearly half used eyeline matches, with only one across the line. By 1914, the
majority of films have them, and by 1917, only an occasional film is without an eyeline match. Weights and
Measures (1914, Victor) has a scene in which a man in a car is being followed by a woman in another car;
he stops to get a drink at a well, with his car in the background facing left (see fig 16.52). The cut to the
woman, who has stopped her car and is watching from a distance, matches correctly on the direction of her
gaze. Being behind him, she should be off right in the first shot, and the direction of her gaze—off left—
confirms this (fig 16.53). In The Wishing Ring (1914) the couple looks off right (fig 16.54), and the cut
reveals that they see a gypsy camp (fig 16.55). They should be off left here, and indeed they are, as their
subsequent entrance from that direction proves. These examples are typical of eyeline usage in the teens.

Shot/reverse shot

Scene 202—Close-up of John’s face, smiling at the wrongful accusation. He casts a glance
toward the jury box. Scene 203—Fairly close-up of the members of the jury looking fixedly in
the direction of John.34
Capt. Leslie T.Peacocke, 1917

If a single eyeline provides a strong spatial cue, then a second eyeline on the other side of the cut should
create an even stronger spatial anchor for the spectator. This principle is commonly used to create the shot/
reverse-shot (SRS) schema, one of the most prevalent figures in the classical Hollywood cinema’s spatial
system. The SRS also depends on screen direction.
As we have seen, the concept of the eyeline match existed by 1913–14. Cuts that change screen direction
after a glance were distinctly in the minority. The same is true of the shot/reverse-shot pattern. (It is true
that several early SRSs in the ES crossed the line, but these are from 1911 and 1912, when writers were just
beginning to refer to screen direction.) No doubt one can find occasional violations throughout the teens.
But this does not indicate the absence of a guideline— filmmakers in the thirties occasionally crossed the
line on SRSs as well.
SRS was introduced near the beginning of the transitional period. Early instances of this technique show
it already performing its classical function of presenting a conversation situation; balanced pairs of shots
form the centerpiece of a scene that contains other contiguous cuts as well. Barry Salt has pointed out35 an
early example of SRS in Essanay’s The Loafer (1911), a film which is generally remarkably advanced in its
application of classical principles. The shots he describes come in the middle of a classically constructed
sequence which opens with an establishing shot of the hero by a buggy (see fig 16.56). He has been a
drunken loafer, was given a loan, and now is a respectable farmer. After the shot begins, the camera pans
right to reframe a stranger approaching the hero to beg for money (fig 16.57). After the hero refuses him,
the tramp goes out right (fig 16.58). A cut reveals a grassy stretch of ground, and the tramp comes in from
the front left, turns, and begins to berate the hero (fig 16.59). In the next shot, we see the hero’s reaction
(fig 16.60); then he runs out right threateningly. Cut to a shot of the beggar (as fig 16.59), as he runs out
304 THE CONTINUITY SYSTEM

right. There follows a long shot of the field, and both men dash in from the left. The scene continues with the
hero running out left after the struggle. Next we see a shot of a farmhouse door, and the hero comes into
frame from front right. This relatively extended sequence of nine shots (including a dialogue title and return
to the same framing as fig 16.59) combines several movements to contiguous spaces maintaining screen
direction, plus a SRS framed three-quarters on each figure, again obeying screen direction. An establishing
shot and two reframings give further indication of careful planning along the lines of continuity principles.
SRS is rare in the early and mid-teens, typically used when characters are so far apart that an ordinary
two-shot is not feasible. Here SRS serves to indicate that characters are close enough to see each other. In Old
Madrid (Ince, 1911, Imp Co.) has a scene in which two groups converse across a river. The shots of both
are plan américain, and in each the characters face off left. (The movements through contiguous spaces in
this film do obey screen direction, however.) In Solax’s 1913 A Comedy of Errors, a wife waves to her
husband as he departs for work (see figs 16.61 and 16.62).
SRS became more frequent around 1914, now occurring in some cases between people who are close to
each other; a two-shot could easily have been used in these cases, but the director cut in for a pair of closer
shots to catch reactions during conversations. The Eagle’s Mate (Kirkwood, 1914, Famous Players) has a
couple of SRS patterns. In one, a plan américain establishes the heroine taking care of an injured relative. A
cut-in to medium-long shot shows her by the bed; she then moves to the foot of the bed in the frame cut
illustrated in figures 16.36 and 16.37. Returning to a medium shot of the man, the film sets up a SRS
between the two, with two shots of each (figs 16.63 and 16.64).
SRS was still minority practice in 1914, but many films use it more than once and in ways which are
quite sophisticated in terms of the continuity system. The Wishing Ring has several instances of SRS, one in
the comic first scene as two old men lean out different windows of the same building to talk to each other.
Here the medium shot of the man in the higher window is taken from a low angle (fig 16.65), that of the
man on the ground floor from a high angle (fig 16.66). Later SRSs involve the young couple in situations
where they are not spatially separated, as the figures in this example are.
A remarkable scene from a 1914 film, Detective Burton’s Triumph (a Reliance two-reeler) shows how
subtle some filmmakers could be by this point in their application of eyeline directions in SRS. The scene
occurs near the end of the film, when Burton and two other detectives go in disguise to a bar to spy upon the
three robbers they have been trailing. An establishing shot (see fig 16.67) shows the robbers at the rear table,
Burton alone at the center left, and his colleagues at the foreground table. In the medium shot that follows,
Burton looks front, then glances off right at the crooks (fig 16.68). Next we see the two other detectives, one
of whom glances off left, at Burton (fig 16.69). The cut returns us to the framing of Burton, who looks front
at his friend and covertly signals to him (fig 16.70). In the next shot, the same framing as figure 16.69, the
man at the right returns the signal. A shot of the robbers follows, with the one at the right glancing front and
left at Burton, then drawing the center crook’s attention to the signals; he, too, looks front and left
(fig 16.71). There then follows an extended SRS series of fourteen additional medium shots with these
framings, as the detectives glance at the robbers and at each other, exchanging signals, while the robbers
look at both other tables and become more suspicious. Finally, after a total of nineteen medium reverse
shots among the three tables, there is a return to the establishing shot, and a gun battle breaks out
(fig 16.72). This sustained control of six eyeline directions is certainly not typical of its period; yet it is
difficult to imagine the creation of such a scene if the basic principles of the eyeline match and SRS were
not known by this point. Their widespread use would soon follow.
By 1915, SRS had become majority practice, and I found no film from 1916 and 1917 that lacked it. Films
of 1915 that use the device range from the most prestigious features (The Cheat [Cecil B.DeMille, Lasky])
to extremely clumsy comedy shorts (Cupid in a Hospital [an L-KO Chaplin imitation]), indicating the
 THE FORMULATION OF THE CLASSICAL STYLE, 1909–28 305

widespread adoption of the SRS pattern. Not a single one of the SRS patterns in 1915 ES films violated
screen direction.36* There are probably films from the late teens which avoid SRS, but certainly the pattern
is almost universally accepted by this point. Figures 16.73 through 16.77 show other examples from the late
teens, demonstrating how uniform this device had already become. Feature films were now using SRS
throughout, and not only for distantly separated characters. These examples show characters who are within
a few feet of each other and who have previously been seen together in establishing shots.
There is one striking difference between SRS in the teens and SRS as practiced in the 1930s. Sound films
often place the camera behind the shoulder of one character when framing the other; shoulders provide one
more spatial cue to orient the spectator. Occasional silent films do use shoulders or other portions of the
body for such a function, although this remains minority practice until the sound period. Maurice
Tourneur’s *Victory (1919, Tourneur) provides an early example (see figs 16.78 and 16.79), and Mantrap
(Fleming, 1926, Famous Players-Lasky) uses compositions very similar to those of sound films (figs 16.80
and 16.81). Such framings show up not infrequently during the twenties. Thus SRS became one of the most
basic devices of the late teens and twenties classical cinema, appearing in most scenes. We may be surprised
to find this particular device so common in a cinema in which characters’ speech could not be heard, but
passages built around dialogue (only partially conveyed through dialogue inter-titles) were an important
basis of many silent films. By the late twenties, the handling of conversation situations was schematized in a
way which would barely differ from that of sound films.
The classical cinema’s dependence upon POV shots, eyeline matches, and SRS patterns reflects its
general orientation toward character psychology. As Part One stressed, most classical narration arises from
within the story itself, often by binding our knowledge to shifts in the characters’ attention: we notice or
concentrate on elements to which the characters’ glances direct us. In the construction of contiguous spaces,
POV, the eyeline match, and SRS do not work as isolated devices; rather, they operate together within the
larger systems of logic, time, and space, guaranteeing that psychological motivation will govern even the
mechanics of joining one shot to another. As a result, the system of logic remains dominant.

Crosscutting
Part One has defined ‘crosscutting’ as editing which moves between simultaneous events in widely
separated locales. ‘Parallel editing’ differs in that the two events intercut are not simultaneous.
Interestingly, crosscutting was seldom used before 1910. In The Great Train Robbery, Porter’s narration
returns from the robbers’ flight to the situations at the telegraph office and dance hall, but he does not
alternate shots in these locales. Similarly, in The Kleptomaniac (1905, Edison), Porter first shows the rich
woman’s actions and then the poor one’s, in order to contrast the treatment of the two when they are
arrested for stealing, but he does not alternate between them. In A Corner in Wheat (1909, AB), Griffith
suggests cause and effect by cutting between the Wheat King and the poor people in the bakery.37 Here the
time scheme is unclear; Griffith’s editing device could be crosscutting or parallel editing. But as Chapter 15
discussed, the classical narrative seldom depended entirely upon parallel construction; A Corner in Wheat is
one of the rare exceptions. On the whole, parallel editing, with its non-simultaneous lines of action, was also
rare in American filmmaking from its earliest years.
The more conventional ‘rescue’ pattern of crosscutting, involving two persons or groups who eventually
meet, occurs at least as early as 1906, in The 100-to-One Shot (Vitagraph). In this film, the hero goes out
and wins money on a long shot to aid his fiancée and her father, who are about to be evicted. As they are
being thrown out of their house by the landlord, the following brief series of shots creates suspense:
306 THE CONTINUITY SYSTEM

29 ELS: A street. A car in the distance drives straight forward and out right fore-ground.
30 LS: Interior of the house, as earlier, but with furniture gone. The landlord enters from the right,
and, with the help of two officials, starts to lead the father out right.
31 ELS: A road. The car comes in from the background, drives forward, stops, and the hero gets
out and runs out right.
32 As 32: The hero enters from the right (a violation of screen direction), tears up the landlord’s
paper, and pays him. The villains leave, and the film ends with rejoicing and an embrace.

Another example occurs in Her First Adventure (Wallace McCutcheon, 1908, AM&B), which is generally
handled as a conventional chase until toward the end. Then a few shots alternate between pursued and
pursuers. From 1909 on, Griffith begins to use the device occasionally and was probably responsible for
popularizing it.
Crosscutting did not become widespread immediately, however. By 1912, slightly fewer than half the ES
films used any crosscutting. Some of these include chases, as in The Bandit of Tropico (1912, Nestor) and
The Grit of the Girl Telegrapher (1912, Kalem). Others simply use crosscutting to show two related events
occurring in separate spaces. In The Haunted Rocker (1912, Vitagraph), there is one instance of crosscutting
when the disapproving father goes to his club while his daughter’s lover visits her secretly at home. The
following sequence occurs:

13 LS: The steps outside the house. The father goes out, then the lover goes to the door.
14 MLS: The parlor. The heroine sits in the rocking chair. Her lover enters and they embrace.
15 MLS: Interior of a men’s club. The father comes in, has a drink, and leaves.
16 MLS, as 14: The heroine sits on her lover’s lap in the rocker.
17 MLS: The front gate of the house. The father comes in, drunk.
18 New MLS: The rocker. The lovers stand hurriedly and hide behind a screen. The father enters,
sees the moving chair, and is puzzled.

One noticeable trait of this sequence is the considerable compression of time made possible by the
crosscutting. At each return to the previous action, a move forward in the narrative has occurred. The
crosscutting represents simultaneous events, but also creates large ellipses which are less obvious because
of the move away to another line of action. As crosscutting became more common, this ability to shorten
plot duration remained one of its most important functions.
Contemporary writers recognized that cross-cutting could condense narrative material, as well as create
suspense. A 1914 scenario manual referred to the ‘cutback’ (as crosscutting was known at the time) as being
‘employed to accelerate action and maintain suspense.’38 In 1923 the American Cinematographer described
how an editor could reduce an excess of footage to a finished film:39

By careful cutting and recutting the editor can establish all the preliminary motivation necessary and
yet do it in a simple manner both entertaining and retaining the full values. This is usually handled by
‘splitting sequences’ or in other words, handling two sequences at one time, hitting the highlights or
important parts of each one yet telling it in the same amount of film required to handle one of them if
cut individually.

Thus by elliding the relatively inessential moments of each story line, the omnipresent narration guides the
spectator’s attention through a string of the most salient actions.
 THE FORMULATION OF THE CLASSICAL STYLE, 1909–28 307

In a sense, this compression through crosscutting carried on the basic approach of the early teens, when
short film lengths led to highly condensed presentations of action. At that point, summary titles, telegraphic
pantomime gestures, and other devices had combined to pack a great deal of action into a short span. Now
crosscutting could create a similar effect, but in a less obtrusive way.
With the feature film, such extreme condensation of action was not always necessary. Sometimes the
opposite problem arose: how to sustain an action through a whole sequence. Some filmmakers found
crosscutting to be the solution. Crosscutting permitted the action of a single sequence to be drawn out,
where showing the actions in separate short scenes might make the film episodic. Cecil B.DeMille’s feature
The Whispering Chorus (1918, Artcraft) is an example. This seven-reeler has thirty sequences, eleven of which
employ crosscutting between two lines of action which do not come together within any one sequence (as well
as two others which juxtapose action in two locales without cutting between them). The story covers a long
time span and involves a large number of separate locales and incidents. Without crosscutting, the film
would consist of a string of brief scenes; with it, there is less sense of choppiness.
By 1914, most ES films used crosscutting, and after 1915, only a few films avoided it. Once crosscutting
had been established, filmmakers continued to add more and more lines of action, the most famous
instances being the multiple simultaneous rescues near the ends of The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance.
Griffith, who was universally assumed at the time to have invented the cutback, was the prime experimenter
in this. But apparently even he went too far; a review of his 1918 feature The Great Love (now lost)
comments:40

With the genius that Griffith alone commands, three almost separate stories have been carried through
this picture. And in this point we think he went a trifle too far. In several places he is carrying as high
as six different situations along simultaneously by means of cutbacks.

Crosscutting became standardized as the interweaving of two or three lines of action— seldom more.
The crosscut scene had become a staple of the silent cinema by the late teens and twenties. More often
than not, crosscutting provided a simple way of constructing an exciting story without the script writer’s
having to sustain a single line of action. It seems to have reached its most frequent usage for this purpose in
the few years after 1915. By the twenties, script writers had gained more experience at creating situations
which could sustain themselves for whole sequences. Crosscutting did not disappear, but became a more
localized device, occurring mainly in scenes where the narration demanded the juxtaposition of multiple
lines of action.

Parodies of continuity
Contemporary writings and stylistic usage in the sample films suggest that the continuity guidelines were
known and widely accepted by 1917. But beyond this, there are a small number of films from the teens and
twenties which parody various continuity guidelines and ‘mistakes.’ Artists are not likely to parody
something which is not already established and familiar. Hence the existence of such films helps confirm
the idea that the continuity system was in force at this early stage.
The earliest continuity-parody among the ES films is the extraordinary 1915 split-reel comedy, Ye Gods!
What a Cast! Made by a very minor independent company, Luna, this film is an extended joke on the
eyeline match. In the opening scene, the impoverished Hardluck Film Co. assigns the various roles in its
new film to a woman and a man: she is to play the heroine, while he takes all six male roles. The man tries
on all six costumes in this first scene, in order to establish the various characters’ appearances in the
308 THE CONTINUITY SYSTEM

audience’s mind. The bulk of Ye Gods! What a Cast! consists of the resulting film, with the male actor, as
six different characters, chasing himself, looking at himself, and conversing with himself in SRS. Ye Gods!
What a Cast! contains 103 shots, all of which maintain screen direction. Here not only does the whole film
depend on the eyeline match, but the humor in the situation would be incomprehensible unless we assume
the audience could understand the play with eyelines.
Other films make fun of inconsistent mise-enscene over the cut. In Hoodoo Ann (Lloyd Ingraham, 1916,
Triangle-Fine Arts), Ann and her boyfriend attend a Western, Mustang Charlie’s Revenge, at their local
cinema. The film is a parody of old-fashioned, New-Jersey-made Westerns (its producer is The Hoboken
Film Co.’), done in a deliberately crude style that contrasts sharply with the remainder of Hoodoo Ann. At
one point, a title announces ‘Father’s Dear old tin pale’ (a reference to the not infrequent misspellings of
early-teens inter-titles), followed by a shot of the heroine inside a shack, going to the door while swinging
the pail. A cut to the well outside follows, and the woman comes in carrying a wooden bucket, which she
holds up prominently. Later, when she runs back into the shack, she has the tin pail again. This delightful
film-within-a-film demonstrates Hollywood’s awareness of its own changes in the space of a few years.
Other films made similar jokes. In 1918, Photoplay described Nut Stuff, another story about a filmmaking
establishment, the ‘Hardly Able Feature-Film Company’; this comedy short parodies ‘the careless direction
that permits a player to enter a room in one costume and leave it in another.’ The film also contains
exaggeratedly stock character types and canted framings which simulate bad cinematography.41 Finally, a
1923 comedy short, Uncensored Movies (Hal Roach, 1923, Hal Roach) has Will Rogers imitate various
movie stars of the day. As Tom Mix, he repeatedly tramples, rips, or dirties his elegant white hat, yet puts it
on again in pristine condition after the cut.
There are undoubtedly other such parodies. Clearly filmmakers felt that at a simple level at least,
audiences could notice and appreciate the humor of continuity errors.

The ready-made center of interest

The various continuity rules—establishing and re-establishing shots, cut-ins, screen direction, eyelines, SRS,
crosscutting—served two overall purposes. On the one hand, they permitted the narrative to proceed in a
clearly defined space. On the other hand, they created an omnipresent narration which shifted the
audience’s vantage point on the action frequently to follow those parts of the scene most salient to the plot.
Two statements from the twenties summarize these purposes succinctly and demonstrate that Hollywood
practitioners understood their editing system as fully then as have practitioners ever since. A former editor
for Ince wrote in 1922: ‘The value of every scene and sequence must be carefully weighed and the man who
attempts to do this must most surely be able to prepare and smooth the production for audience
consumption.’42 The second statement comes from a lecture given by actor Milton Sills in 1928; he begins
by discussing how developing methods limited the length of shots:43

This limitation proved desirable. It was found that by telling the story in flashes [contemporary term
for very short shots], flitting from spot to spot in the fields of action, eliminating irrelevancies,
isolating and emphasizing the significant moment, the film could do what the eye does naturally;
namely, select and focus on the quintessential drama. The eye of the spectator did not have to seek the
center of interest. It was there ready-made for its pleasure…. This practice spelt economy in attention,
vividness of effect, and dramatic intensity. The close view, the medium shot, and the long shot could
be intermingled by the skill of the director and the mechanics of the cutting room in such a way that
the narrative was constantly moving from high light to high light.
 THE FORMULATION OF THE CLASSICAL STYLE, 1909–28 309

Thus continuity editing constantly organizes the spectator’s attention. In doing so, it acts in concert with other
principles of the classical cinema— principles of depth and centering that guide the eye within shots.
 NOTES TO PAGES 18–30 691

38 Clayton Hamilton, A Manual of the Art of Fiction (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page, & Co., 1918), p.
61.
39 Pattee, The Development of the American Short Story, p. 135; Pattee reprints Poe’s review in full, pp. 134–7.
40 Brander Matthews, ‘The philosophy of the shortstory,’ [1885], rep. in his Pen and Ink (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1902), pp. 75–106.
41 J.Berg Esenwein and Mary Daroven Chambers, The Art of Story-Writing (Springfield, Mass.: Home
Correspondence School, 1913), p. 107.
42 Quoted in Hamilton, A Manual of the Art of Fiction, p. 177.
43 Esenwein and Chambers, The Art of Story-Writing, p. 106; Phillips, The Photodrama, p. 134.
44 Hamilton, A Manual of the Art of Fiction, p. 186.
45 For a survey of the well-made play, see Stephen S. Stanton, ‘Introduction,’ Camille and Other Plays (New York:
Hill & Wang, A Mermaid Dramabook, 1957), pp. vii-xxxix.
46 For examples, see Elizabeth Woodbridge, The Drama: Its Laws and Its Techniques (Boston/ Chicago: Allyn &
Bacon, 1898), p. 77; Alfred Hennequin, The Art of Play Writing (Boston/New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,
1897), p. 98; W.T. Price, The Technique of the Drama (New York: Brentano’s, 1892), pp. 76–109. For the
original formulation, see Gustav Freytag, Freytag’s Technique of the Drama, trans. Elias J.MacEwan, 2nd ed.
(Chicago: S.C. Griggs & Co., 1896), pp. 114–40.
47 Hennequin, The Art of Play Writing, p. 89. For similar discussions, see Price, The Technique of the Drama, p. 64,
and Woodbridge, The Drama, p. 20.
48 William Archer, Play-Making: A Manual of Craftsmanship (Boston: Small, Maynard & Co., 1912), pp. 331, 214–
15.
49 Andrews, The Technique of Play Writing, pp. 75– 106.
50 See, for examples, Archer, Play-Making, p. 85; Andrews, The Technique of Play Writing, p. xi.
51 Archer, Play-Making, p. 191.
52 Andrews, The Technique of Play Writing, pp. 122–3.
53 Archer, Play-Making, pp. 201, 207.
54 Andrews, The Technique of Play Writing, pp. 122–3.
55 Archer, Play-Making, p. 177.
56 Esenwein and Chambers, The Art of Story-Writing, p. 108.
57 Perry, A Study of Prose Fiction, p. 309.
58 Matthews, ‘The Study of Fiction,’ p. 105.
59 Andrews, The Technique of Play Writing, p. 32.
60 Woodbridge, The Drama, p. 15.
61 Hennequin, The Art of Play Writing, p. 86.
62 Esenwein and Chambers, The Art of Story-Writing, p. 180.
63 Matthews, ‘The study of fiction,’ p. 94.
64 Brander Matthews, ‘The art of the stage-manager,’ in his Inquiries and Opinions (New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1907), pp. 301–2.
65 Esenwein and Chambers, The Art of Story-Writing, p. 166.
66 Archer, Play-Making, p. 113.

Chapter 15
The formulation of the classical narrative

1 David S.Hulfish, The Motion Picture, Its Making and Its Theater (Chicago: Electricity Magazine Corporation,
1909), p. 55.
2* Throughout the silent period, the prevalent term for what we would today call the ‘shot,’ was ‘scene.’ This arose
from the fact that most scenes were only one shot long in early fims. Even when scenes began to be broken up
regularly into several shots, ‘scene’ kept its initial meaning. Surprisingly, there seems to have been no word
692 NOTES TO PAGES 4–18

during this period to designate the extended dramatic unit we term a ‘scene’ or ‘sequence.’ Scenarios labelled
shots ‘Scene 1’ and so on, with perhaps a gap between shot descriptions to indicate a major change of action.
3 John Nelson, The Photo-play (Los Angeles: Photoplay Publishing Co., 1913), p. 167.
4 Eileen Bowser, ‘The Brighton Project: an introduction,’ Quarterly Review of Film Studies, 4, no. 4 (Fall 1979):
p. 520.
5 ‘How to write a scenario,’ Photoplay, 2, no. 2 (March 1912): 71.
6 Herbert Case Hoagland, How to Write a Photoplay (New York: Magazine Maker Publishing Co., 1912), p. 6.
7 Peter Milne, ‘The Regeneration,’ MPN, 12, no. 13 (2 October 1915): 83.
8 Quoted in William Lord Wright, ‘For those who worry o’er plots and plays,’ MPN, 8, no. 13 (27 September 1913):
22.
9 Frederick Palmer, Palmer Plan Handbook, rev. ed. (Los Angeles: Palmer Institute of Authorship, 1921), p. 27.
10 Louis Reeves Harrison, ‘Characterization,’ MPW, 8, no. 17 (29 April 1911): 937. Emphasis in original.
11 James Kirkwood, ‘Motion picture stories scarce,’ Motography, 16, no. 2 (8 July 1916): 80.
12 Henry Albert Phillips, The Photodrama (Larchmont, New York: Stanhope-Dodge Publishing Co., 1914), pp. 75–
6.
13* A ‘split-reel’ is a short (500 feet) film, spliced together with and rented with another split-reel to make up a
standard, 1,000-foot length. These were usually minor films—often comedies, animated films, or newsreels. The
fact that classical devices appear in split-reels is one of the best indications that the new guidelines were being
standardized throughout the industry—not just in the most expensive, outstanding films.
14 Jesse L.Lasky, ‘Production problems,’ in Joseph P. Kennedy, ed., The Story of the Films (Chicago: A.W. Shaw Co.,
1927), p. 121.
15 Eustace Hale Ball, The Art of the Photoplay, 2nd ed. (New York: G.W. Dillingham Co., 1913), p. 50.
16 Palmer, Palmer Plan Handbook, p. 38.
17 Nelson, The Photo-play, p. 167.
18* The contemporary term was not ‘inter-title.’ During the early teens, writers called inserted titles ‘leaders’ or ‘sub-
titles’ (the latter because the credits were the main titles). By the mid-teens, ‘leader’ had largely been dropped in
favor of ‘sub-title,’ which persisted through the silent period.
19 Kemp Niver, The First Twenty Years (Los Angeles: Artisan Press, 1968), pp. 34, 80, 91, 98, 101.
20 Epes Winthrop Sargent, ‘Technique of the photoplay,’ MPW, 9, no. 5 (12 August 1911): 363.
21 Robert Saunders Dowst, ‘Technicalities of scenario writing,’ Motography, 7, no. 1 (January 1912): 16.
22* The four dialogue titles in A Tale of Two Cities (1911, Vitagraph) all come where spoken, and the same is true of
the single dialogue title in A Daughter of Dixie (1911, Champion). On the other hand, the following films use one
to four dialogue titles, all placed before the shot where spoken: The Dynamiters (1911, Imp), A Friendly
Marriage (1911, Vitagraph), In Old Madrid (Thomas H. Ince, 1911, Imp), and The Loafer (1911, Essanay).
23* In The Bells (1913, Edison), two of the three titles are placed where spoken; in A Comedy of Errors (1912,
Solax), the titles divide two and two in placement; in The House of Discord (James Kirkwood, 1912, Biograph),
five of the six dialogue titles precede the shots in which the lines occur.
24* Barry Salt has suggested that the placement of dialogue titles at the point in the scene where they are spoken was
minority practice around 1911 to 1913, adding, ‘It is doubtful that the principle had yet been realized.’ (See Barry
Salt, The early development of film form,’ Film Form, 1, no. 1 [Spring 1976]: 99.) Yet, as we have seen, both
placements were in equal use, and contemporary accounts demonstrate that commentators were aware of the
difference.
Salt’s claims tend to perpetuate the notion that the early teens was a relatively crude period, with filmmakers
groping toward the discovery of a preordained film grammar. In general, Salt’s admirable attempts to outline the
usage of various techniques in the early American cinema are limited by a neglect of evidence from written
sources. Although one can learn much from the films—as Salt does—certain aspects of contemporary awareness
of style can emerge only from documents.
25 Sargent, ‘Technique of the Photoplay,’ p. 363.
 NOTES TO PAGES 18–30 693

26 Quoted in William Lord Wright, ‘For those who worry o’er plots and plays,’ MPN, 6, no. 26 (28 December
1912): 12.
27 Nelson, The Photo-play, p. 181. Emphasis in original.
28 ‘The Reviewer,’ ‘Views of the Reviewer,’ NYDM, 68, no. 1752 (17 July 1912): 27.
29 Phillips, The Photodrama, p. 53.
30 Marc Edmund Jones, ‘Why my photoplays do not sell,’ Photoplay, 4, no. 3 (August 1913): 8.
31 George Blaisdell, ‘Adolf Zukor talks of Famous Players,’ MPW, 15, no. 2 (11 January 1913): 136.
32 Genevieve Harris, ‘The Aryan,’ Motography, 15, no. 14 (1 April 1916): 766.
33 Arthur Edwin Krows, ‘Once more—consider the status of motion pictures,’ The Triangle, 3, no. 3 (4 November
1916): 13.
34 Robert Emmett Welsh, A-B-C of Motion Pictures (New York: Harper & Bros., 1916), p. 100.
35 ‘Unique captions in Road o’ Strife,’ Motography, 13, no. 13 (27 March 1915): 470.
36* William C.deMille’s The Bedroom Window (1924, Famous Players-Lasky) has one or two expository titles in nine
of its eleven sequences, none in the other two. It uses an average of ten dialogue titles per sequence. Peter Pan
(Herbert Brenon, 1924, Famous Players-Lasky) goes further, with only seven expository titles spread over its
nine scenes (with none in five scenes), yet 277 dialogue titles. Relatively small numbers of expository titles are
used in such films as: Are Parents People? (Malcolm St Clair, 1925, Famous Players-Lasky), The Goose Woman
(Clarence Brown, 1925, Universal-Jewel), Lady Windermere’s Fan (Ernst Lubitsch, 1925, Warner Bros), Ella
Cinders (Alfred E.Green, 1926, John McCormick Productions), La Boheme (King Vidor, 1926, MGM), Exit
Smiling (Sam Taylor, 1926, MGM), A Gentleman of Paris (Henry d’Abbadie D’Arrast, 1927, Paramount
Famous Lasky), and Hula (Victor Fleming, 1927, Paramount Famous Lasky). These are mostly fairly prestigious
films by major directors, but the practice filtered down to some of the more standard films as well, as is evident
in Footloose Widows, a Louise Fazenda comedy (Roy del Ruth, 1926, Warner Bros), which has only nine
expository inter-titles among a total of 184.
37 Nelson, The Photo-play, p. 177.
38 Epes Winthrop Sargent, ‘Technique of the photoplay,’ MPW, 9, no. 5 (12 August 1911): 364.
39 See, for examples, William Lord Wright, ‘For those who worry o’er plots and plays,’ MPN, 6, no. 16 (19 October
1912): 16; Nelson, The Photo-play, p. 178; and Phillips, The Photodrama, p. 56.
40 Victorin Jasset, ‘Le cinéma contemporain,’ Ciné journal (October-November 1911), quoted in Jean Mitry,
Histoire du cinéma Vol. 1 (Paris: Editions universitaires, 1967), p. 413.
41 Quoted in Kevin Brownlow, The Parade’s Gone By (New York: Alfred A.Knopf, 1968), p. 16.
42 Robert E.Welsh, ‘David W.Griffith speaks,’ NYDM, 71, no. 1830 (14 January 1914): 49, 54, rep. in Pratt,
Spellbound in Darkness, pp. 110–11.
43 ‘Temptations of a great city,’ MPW, 8, no. 24 (17 June 1911): 1367.
44 Epes Winthrop Sargent, ‘Technique of the photoplay,’ MPW, 9, no. 4 (4 August 1911): 281.
45 ‘Too near the camera,’ MPW, 8, no. 12 (25 March 1911): 633.
46 H.F.Huffman, ‘Cutting off the feet,’ MPW, 12, no. 1 (6 April 1912): 53.
47* Even this can only be inferred from the film’s title and opening, although Eileen Bowser suggests there may have
been an insert of the ad itself at the beginning, missing from existing prints. Bowser, ‘The Brighton project: an
introduction,’ p. 523.
48 Henry King, ‘Too much action,’ Cinema News (March 1918): 9.

Chapter 16
The continuity system

1 Epes Winthrop Sargent, ‘The photoplaywright,’ MPW, 23, no. 7 (13 February 1915): 977.
2 Herbert Case Hoagland, How to Write a Photoplay (New York: Magazine Maker Publishing Co., 1912), p. 12.
Emphasis in original.
3 H.Kent Webster, ‘Little stories of great films,’ The Nickelodeon, 3, no. 1 (1 January 1910): 13.
694 NOTES TO PAGES 4–18

4 ‘How to write a scenario,’ Photoplay, 2, no. 2 (March 1912): 71; John Nelson, The Photo-play (Los Angeles:
Photoplay Publishing Co., 1913), p. 78; Henry Albert Phillips, The Photodrama (Larchmont, New York:
Stanhope-Dodge Publishing Co., 1914), p. 52; Capt Leslie T.Peacocke, ‘Logical continuity,’ Photoplay, 11, no. 5
(April 1917): 111.
5 Epes Winthrop Sargent, ‘The photoplaywright,’ MPW, 18, no. 12 (20 December 1913): 1405.
6 S.S. Hutchinson, ‘From the master producer’s standpoint,’ Motography, 14, no. 1 (3 July 1915): 5.
7 Thomas H.Ince, ‘Ince makes war on inconsistency,’ Motography, 19, no. 8 (23 February 1918): 361.
8 Pierre V.R.Key, ‘Continuity is important factor,’ Motography, 18, no. 20 (17 November 1917): 1034.
9 Phillips, The Photodrama, p. 49.
10 For discussions of this non-linear pattern, see Noël Burch, ‘Porter, or ambivalence,’ Screen, 19, no. 4 (Winter
1978/79): 91–105, and Charles Musser, ‘The early cinema of Edwin S.Porter,’ Cinema Journal, 19, no. 1 (Fall
1979): 1–38.
11 Epes Winthrop Sargent, ‘The photoplaywright,’ MPW, 20, no. 1 (4 April 1914): 56.
12 ‘Hellfire and brimstone,’ Camera!, 1, no. 19 (18 August 1918): 7.
13* Throughout the teens, the term ‘long shot’ was the principal one used to designate the overall view of the set.
Mae Marsh’s 1920 Screen Acting guide defines the long view’s function: The long shot is usually taken to
establish the atmosphere and setting of a scene.’ A 1922 guidebook glossary defined ‘establish’ as: ‘To make
known the relationship of a character to other characters or to his environment, or to make known his identity and
type.’ This is essentially the meaning the term has had ever since. This usage appears in reviews as well; one
writer criticized The Perfect Sap in 1926: ‘There is one entire sequence played entirely in close-ups. It is an
interior scene, played in a room, but the room is not established. There are four characters in it, but at no time is
their relation to one another shown. It is just a succession of faces.’ These uses of the term ‘establishing’ confirm
that filmmakers and critics were aware of this specific function of the long shot, but such awareness preceded the
term itself. See Mae Marsh, Screen Acting (New York: Frederick A.Stokes Co., 1921), p. 91; Opportunities in the
Motion Picture Industry (Los Angeles: Photoplay Research Society, 1922), p. 110; Welford Beaton, ‘This one
killed by poor direction,’ The Film Spectator, 3, no. 4 (16 April 1927): 9.
14 Phillips, The Photodrama, p. 54.
15* Eileen Bowser claims that the display of facial expression ‘remains the most common use of close views for the
whole period 1900–1906.’ (‘The Brighton project: an introduction,’ Quarterly Review of Film Studies, 4, no. 4 (Fall
1979): 518.)
16 Barry Salt, ‘Film form 1900–06,’ Sight and Sound, 47, no. 3 (Summer 1978): 150.
17 Cecil B.De Mille, ‘What psychology has done to pictures,’ in Ruth Wing, ed., The Blue Book of the Screen
(Hollywood: The Blue Book of the Screen, Inc., 1923), p. 380.
18 Phillips, The Photodrama, p. 60; Peacocke, ‘Logical continuity,’ p. 112.
19 Frederick Palmer, Palmer Plan Handbook, rev. ed. (Los Angeles: Palmer Institute of Authorship, 1921), pp. 101,
100.
20 Epes Winthrop Sargent, ‘The photoplaywright,’ MPW, 23, no. 4 (23 January 1915): 510.
21 Frank Atkinson, ‘Pause before you become a film cutter,’ in Laurence A.Hughes (ed.), The Truth about the
Movies by the Stars (Hollywood: Hollywood Publishers, 1924), p. 343.
22* Historians have argued persuasively that the chase film originated in England with such films as Fire! and Stop
Thief (both J.H.Williamson, 1901 and 1900)—see particularly Barry Salt, ‘Film form 1900–06,’ p. 149. Certainly
the popular import, Rescued by Rover (Cecil Hepworth, 1905) keeps perfect screen direction, with the dog
moving always out from the rear to exit foreground left as it goes to the gypsy’s lair. Rover then goes in exactly
the opposite direction as he returns home.
23 Nicholas A.Vardac, Stage to Screen (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1949), p. 32.
24 ‘Spectator’ [Frank Woods], ‘Spectator’s Comments,’ NYDM, 65, no. 1681 (8 March 1911): 29. Emphasis in
original.
25 Interview with Charles G.Clarke, conducted by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, 12 June and 3 July 1980,
in Hollywood, California.
 NOTES TO PAGES 18–30 695

26 Nelson, The Photo-play, p. 219, emphasis in original; John B.Rathbun, ‘Motion picture making and exhibiting,’
Motography, 9, no. 13 (28 June 1913): 472.
27 John H.Rathbun, ‘Motion picture making and exhibiting,’ Motography, 9, no. 8 (19 April 1913): 278.
28 Interview with Charles G.Clarke.
29 Quoted in Leonard Maltin, The Art of the Cinematographer (New York: Dover Publications, 1978), pp. 79–80.
30 Helen Starr, ‘Putting it together,’ Photoplay, 14, no. 2 (July 1918): 54.
31* William Hornbeck has confirmed that Starr was right in claiming that editors sometimes turned the negative over
to correct for errors:

Yes. You would have to be careful about haircombs and be sure that there wasn’t a design on one arm
that wasn’t on the other. You had to be very careful. But often, if there was no identification to show that
everything was lefthanded instead of righthanded, that was done a lot.

Interview with William Hornbeck, conducted by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, 9 July 1980,
Ventura, California.
32 Ibid.
33 Starr, ‘Putting it together,’ pp. 53–4.
34 Peacocke, ‘Logical continuity,’ p. 112.
35 Barry Salt, ‘The early development of film form,’ Film Form, 1, no. 1 (Spring 1976): 98.
36* Noël Burch has claimed that the SRS lagged behind other guidelines within the continuity system of editing. At
one point he states that ‘the system thus constituted as a visual entity had become fully operational in the United
States before the end of World War I,’ with the exception of the ‘full head-on reverse-angle’ (his term for what I
have been calling the shot/reverse shot); see Noël Burch, ‘Film’s institutional mode of representation and the Soviet
response,’ October, no. 11 (Winter 1979): 83. Elsewhere he specifies further how he considers the development
of the SRS to have proceeded: ‘from alternating views of characters facing one another in profile shots, to head-
on views of them facing each other “through” the camera spectator.’ More importantly, Burch claims that the
reason the SRS eyelines did not obey screen-direction guidelines was that such guidelines did not yet exist. The
move into the story space involving analytical editing and the SRS pattern was, he says, fraught ‘with moments
of contradiction, one of the most significant, perhaps, being the period (around 1915) when the possibility of face-
to-face opposing shots had begun to appear, but not yet the concept of the eyeline match.’ Burch cites no
examples from the period. See Noël Burch, Correction Please, Or How We Got Into Pictures (Arts Council of
Great Britain, n.d.), p. 8.
Doubtless there are many SRSs from the teens that mismatch eyeline direction, but most do not. As we have
seen, the directional eyeline match existed as minority practice from at least 1910, and certainly by 1915, SRSs
would usually obey the 180° rule. If Burch were correct in his claim that the principle of the eyeline match was
not known by 1915, the scene from Detective Burton’s Triumph described in the text would have been
impossible. I have found no films from the silent period in which SRS patterns consistently involve characters
looking into the camera; there may be some such films, but head-on SRS would certainly be exceptional. In
general Burch’s claims about this period are hampered by a lack of evidence, both from the films and from
contemporary sources. For an analysis of his historical work on American film, see David Bordwell’s and my
‘Linearity, materialism, and the study of the early American cinema,’ Wide Angle, 5, no. 3 (1983): 4–15.
37 According to the recently discovered shot order of the original negative; see Eileen Bowser, ‘Addendum to “The
reconstitution of A Corner in Wheat,’” Cinema Journal, 19, no. 1 (Fall 1979): 101–2.
38 Phillips, The Photodrama, p. 140.
39 Leroy Stone, ‘The importance of film editing,’ AC, 3, no. 12 (March 1923): 4.
40 ‘Hellfire and brimstone,’ Camera!, 1, no. 20 (18 August 1918): 7.
41 ‘A film satire,’ Photoplay, 14, no. 1 (June 1918): 61.
696 NOTES TO PAGES 4–18

42 Del Andrews, ‘The film editor: his training and qualifications,’ in Opportunities in the Motion Picture Industry
(Los Angeles: Photoplay Research Society, 1922), p. 77.
43 Milton Sills, ‘The actor’s part,’ in Joseph P. Kennedy, The Story of the Films (Chicago: A.W. Shaw Co., 1927),
pp. 184–5.

Chapter 17
Classical narrative space and the spectator’s attention

1 John B.Rathbun, ‘Motion picture making and exhibition,’ Motography, 9, no. 13 (28 June 1913): 471.
2 Untitled, MPW, 8, no. 15 (15 April 1911): 815. Recall that this journal published several articles opposing
framings that showed anything less than full figures.
3 ‘The Reviewer,’ ‘Views of the Reviewer,’ NYDM, 68, no. 1761 (18 September 1912): 24.
4 Mae Marsh, Screen Acting (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1921), p. 92.
5 Frederick A.Talbot confirms that ‘A photograph at a distance of twelve feet presented people of normal height.’
See his Moving Pictures: How They Are Made and Worked, new ed. (London: William Heinemann, 1914), p.
201.
6 David S.Hulfish, The Motion. Picture: Its Making and Its Theater (Chicago: Electricity Magazine Corporation,
1909), p. 36.
7 For descriptions and a diagram of a vaudeville stage’s areas, see Brett Page, Writing For Vaudeville (Springfield,
Mass.: Home Correspondence School, 1915), pp. 27–31.
8 Arthur Edwin Krows, Equipment for Stage Production (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1928), p. 31.
9 C.H.Claudy, ‘Pictorial possibilities in movingpictures,’ Photo-era, 22, no. 4 (April 1909): 173; ‘Spectator’
[Frank Woods], ‘Spectator’s comments,’ NYDM, 66, no. 1723 (27 December 1911): 28; ‘The Scarlet Letter
(Imp),’ MPW, 8, no. 16 (22 April 1911): 881–2.
10* The practice of shooting into a corner rather than perpendicularly toward a backdrop may have moved cinema away
from vaudeville, but comparable things were going on in the popular theater of the period. In 1916, Arthur Edwin
Krows wrote of the ‘now-familiar “V-shape”—that is, the walls of the room being slanted backward to meet each
other, so as apparently to show just a corner of the interior.’ See Arthur Edwin Krows, Play Production in
America (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1916), p. 174. This did not mean that film and theater devices were
identical in effect, however, since the theater spectator could never have a sense of the side walls extending out to
surround him or her. But by cutting in and placing the camera close to a section of the playing space, the
filmmaker could create that sense.
11* Again, attempts to suggest space beyond the walls of the set parallel similar tendencies in the theater. Stage
settings used backing flats to suggest adjacent rooms and exteriors beyond doors and windows; the cyclorama for
representing sky and other atmospheric effects was becoming common usage. Several contemporary critics and
historians made much of the production of Clyde Fitch’s The City (1909) for its use of space beyond the back
wall. A door in the main room opened onto a hallway and staircase; when one central character exited through
this door, his subsequent collapse and death were conveyed entirely through sound and glimpses of neighbors
hurrying past in the hall. See Clayton Hamilton, Studies in Stagecraft (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1914), pp.
20–1; Krows, Play Production in America, p. 174.
12 Marc Edmund Jones, ‘Why my scenarios do not sell,’ Photoplay, 4, no. 3 (August 1913): 91; John Nelson, The
Photo-play (Los Angeles: Photoplay Publishing Co., 1913), p. 79.
13 Marc Edmund Jones, ‘The photoplay forum,’ Photoplay, 4, no. 4 (September 1913): 108.
14 ‘Six-room “set,”’ Motography, 16, no. 14 (30 September 1916): 752; ‘Artisans of the motion picture films,’
Scientific American, 115, no. 10 (2 September 1916): 225.
15 Hugo Ballin, ‘The scenic background,’ The Mentor, 9, no. 4 (1 July 1921): 22. Emphasis in original.
16 Max Parker. ‘The art director—his duties and qualifications,’ Opportunities in the Motion Picture Industry (Los
Angeles: Photoplay Research Society, 1922), p. 58.
17 ‘Artisans of the motion picture films,’ p. 225.