American Cinema - Violence and Editing

Psycho and The Godfather are two landmarks of American cinema, with some of the most famous scenes, tropes and characters of any film ever made. Psycho was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, known as The Master of Suspense, and released in 1960. It was shot in black and white in order to save money, after Paramount denied the film a larger budget, as they did not think it would be a success. It grossed over $32 million from its eventual budget of $800,000. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, The Godfather (1972) is the first in trilogy of films about the Mafia, considered the quintessential gangster film. Both films were renowned for their shocking use of violence at the time, but both manage to do this without being gruesome, showing very little actual gore. Instead violence was implied by the way these films were edited.

There is one sequence in particular that stands out in The Godfather as exemplifying how editing can increase the sense of violence. The scene takes place towards the end of the film, and is shown to us through parallel editing, or crosscutting. This establishes action occurring at the same time in different locations. The camera cuts away from one location of action to another, suggesting the simultaneity of these two actions. The scene can also be assumed to be taking place in near real time, with very few gaps in the characters’ actions.

The sequence begins with a Christening ceremony in a church, and then cuts between that and five scenes of gangsters preparing for, and then carrying out assassinations on the rival mafia families. The crosscutting between these scenes, one of a very calm and holy ceremony, and the others of strong violence, creates a strong contrast between them. By looking at a small baby being blessed with holy water one second, and men being riddled with bullets the next you are shocked more by this violence, as if it is taking place within this holy church, though of course it is not. The fact that the audio from the church is continuous throughout the entire sequence, and spills over into all the shots, helps with this. Even when watching these grisly murders, we can still hear the organ music and the priest’s incantation. At the beginning of the scene we go from the church, to a future scene of violence, and then back to the church. As the scene progresses however, we see several sequences of violence in a row` before returning to the church. This is matched by the organ music playing in the church, which at the beginning of the scene is playing relatively softly and gently. But this builds with intensity and volume as the scene progresses, and the murders take place. This might seem out of place or unusual for a Christening, but it helps to intensify the scene very well, keeping us on the edge of our seat as we bear witness to the violence.

We actually see very little violence: what we do see gives us the impression of quite extreme violence, when in reality we have not seen much in terms of physical wounds or gore. The first murder takes place off-screen. We see the victims and assassin confront each other, and the assassin draw his gun, but then the camera cuts to a shot where we see the assassin shooting through a doorframe, but we cannot see through this door.

In the second scene we see a man wearing glasses, and then suddenly we hear a gunshot, and a large crack appears in his right eyeglass, blood pours down from behind, and he collapses, dead. From this we infer that the man we saw entering the room before this, has shot him through his glasses. Of course we never actually see a wound; the cracked glass covers this up quite well. The blood flowing from behind might cause people to think that this is particularly violent, but really it’s just blood, a trick used for quite some time by this stage, and a very effective one that shocks many people and will cause them to think back on the scene with repulsion.

In the third scene, slightly more is seen, as we do see a gun firing into a man’s chest, and a spurt of blood coming out from the wound. Again this scene uses breaking glass to dramatize the event, and obscures the person behind it, meaning any gore can be implied rather than shown.

The fourth scene has two men run in to a bedroom and then unload automatic guns into a couple beneath the bed sheets. The woman screams, they both writhe around in pain, and holes and blood appear from the sheets. This is a very intense scene, with the most violent reaction from any of the murder victims, and it is also the shortest of these assassinations. The men rush in very quickly and spray bullets into this couple. The volume of bullets makes this seem over the top, gratuitous and quite extreme.

The fifth and final scene is where a man dressed as a policeman shoots two men standing next to him, then shoots a third man at a distance running away. The first two victims here simply collapse after being shot, and with the third victim we get our first glimpse of any sort of gore. Blood drips from a large open wound in the man’s back. It isn’t explicit, as his clothing covers a lot of it, but we can see enough to get a strong impression. Overall we actually see very little physical violence, as most of it is implied, or disguised, or even James Bond style violence where a gun fires and a person falls down, no more. Presenting the violence in this way requires the audience uses their imagination to fill in the blanks, usually resulting in a memory of something much more shocking and gruesome than reality.

The camera movements in these assassination scenes are nearly completely non-existent. Nearly every shot is static, and most are medium shots, with a few close-ups on the victims as they are dying or after they are dead. The camera tends to linger on the person after their death, forcing us to look at them and take in the reality of the shocking event in greater depth. After all the murders have taken place, we get another quick recap of all but one of the victims’ dead bodies, as if we are being reminded of the body count that has taken place in the last few moments. Other than this choice to use static shots to show the violence, the scenes are fairly standardly edited, obeying all sorts of continuity editing rules and formalities.

This following of continuity editing rules is very contrary to Psycho which portrays violence in a very unconventional cinematic style. Analysing closely, by my count there are 33 separate shots in one 40 second segment. This is a remarkably high amount of individual shots, compared with the typical average for films being about five seconds per shot; this is just above one second per shot. The scene referred to here is of course the shower scene, one of the most renowned sequences in all of cinema history. It begins with the protagonist, Marion Crane, taking a shower, with the viewer positioned looking outwards from within the shower, and facing the shower curtain. We see a shadowy figure appear on the other side of the curtain, and then they draw it back and brutally stab the protagonist to death. This is incredibly shocking as it is very sudden and unexpected, and it involves killing off Marion, who has been the main character up until this point, and the biggest star of the film. In fact for this reason, and others, Alfred Hitchcock instructed movie theatres that they were not to let anyone enter the film after it had begun, he wanted this scene to have its maximum possible impact.

The scene involves very rapid jump cuts, that is, a cut from one shot to another that doesn’t obey the 30° rule of continuity editing. This rule is that each separate shot should be at least 30° apart so as not to seem abrupt and jarring. It also doesn’t obey the 180° rule of spatial continuity, this is that when showing two people together, the camera should always stay on one side of them, and not flip over to the other side, crossing the 180° line. The breaking of these rules makes the scene feel very disorientating and jarring. It confuses the senses and incites feelings of uncertainty of what exactly is going on, as does the frequency of cutting. This scene involves many jump cuts and shots, from all different angles and distances, though most are in the “American Shot” to “Italian Shot” range, that is, 3/4 length shot to extreme close up, with a medium shot to start and finish the scene.

The shots move all over the place, from a close-up of the victim’s feet in the shower, to one of her mouth, to her upper body flailing, directly above her, and looking into the face of the killer, obscured by silhouette, plunging the knife down from up high. By keeping the killer obscured in darkness it performs two functions. First of all it disguises his true identity as Norman Bates, and second he appears much more threatening as this dark shadowy figure, emotionless and terrifying. These very rapid cuts seem frantic, and create the sense of panic that our ill-fated victim must be feeling at the same time. This is very effective at frightening the audience as we cannot see what exactly is going on. This is especially so as we never actually see the knife penetrate flesh, other than for three frames, and it is necessary to watch this sequence in slow motion in order to notice this. At normal speed it just looks like the knife speeding towards her body. By not seeing the knife enter her, we aren’t sure if it is; she’s screaming and recoiling certainly and there is a sound of a knife, but we can’t be sure. It’s not until almost the end of the scene that we get a shot of her feet, and her blood running down the drain in the bath, that we know for certain. It’s possible it was done like this because of the production code of American films at the time, forbidding films to portray violence of a graphic nature. This film surely pushed the boundaries at the time, both for sexual content and violence.

The staging of this scene is also important, in that she is in a shower and naked, which makes her very vulnerable. It is slippery and she is unable to fight back or even run away. She is trapped in the bath with the killer blocking her only exit, but even if she could get past her attacker, it would be impossible for her to run in her condition. The feeling of helplessness and terror is created, a feeling which transferred to some of the audience; stories of people refusing to have showers after viewing this scene are quite common.

There are also some very interesting rhythmic matches in the editing, as the shot frequently changes with the sound of the knife, or her scream, possibly even in time with the strokes of the violins on the soundtrack. The unrelenting sound of the string instruments, beautifully composed by Bernard Herrmann, drive the scene, like the knife, never stopping going in to her, just attacking over and over and again. This helps set the frantic pace of the scene, exaggerating it to our perception. Her very shrill scream also works well with the tone of the violins, thickening the audio track into a single piercing note of both adrenalin and fear.

The shots of Marion are all framed so that all we can see is a small portion of her body, usually flailing around. By never showing us the whole picture, they avoid the tricky business of us seeing either her naked or her being brutalised. The other effect this creates is that we cannot quite see what is happening to her, and though we sort of would like to, we would much rather avoid it. The camera movement is appropriate to her situation; it is as if we are watching her being cut to pieces, both visually and literally. All of these shots are also static, but with this scene it’s probably more a case of camera movement in such short shots would confuse the senses too much and make it seem messy, with such short shots it seems unnecessary. So we watch her spin in her futile attempt to stop the killer, and eventually we get a medium shot of the killer exiting, closing this dramatic sequence. But it’s not quite over yet; Marion still claws at the wall, and attempts to get herself up by pulling at the shower curtain. But it’s too late; the curtain falls on her, symbolic of her death, as with the curtain fall of the theatre. We watch the rest of her blood pour away, and the camera zooms in on the drain. There is then a graphical match cut, from the drain hole to an extreme close up of one of Marion’s eyes, totally still and wide open. The camera zooms out to show her full head, and this is more or less the last we see of her. As with The Godfather, we are treated to this last still look of her in death, settling in the final reality of the events to us, forcing us to comprehend what has just happened.

The real trick in both of these films is making the audience think the graphic violence they see is much worse than it really is. This is most effectively done through the musical score, making both these scenes very tense, forcing the audience to the edge of their seats and to watch through their fingers. By being in this state things are imagined beyond their reality. Neither is particularly gory, the worst in Psycho being what is actually chocolate sauce running along the bottom of a bath. The Godfather gets away with a gun being fired into a man’s eye and blood pouring out from behind his cracked glasses. Unlike modern films that go in much more for the full-on gore or brutality, showing us as many mutilations as possible, these two older films do it much more with the power of suggestion and atmosphere. These are brought together by the way in which the sequences are edited, paced perfectly to shock and engage the imagination the most. The Godfather portrays the harsh contrast between the Christening of Al Pacino’s godson, while he renounces Satan, his men brutally murder his rivals. It is all these subtleties of showing but not showing, being violent without being gory, all achieved through editing and cinematography, which gives these two films their intensity and power.

Final Mark: 61%, 2-1