How might you direct the audience's attention in the course of a scene? The Hollywood system favored editing together closer views of the characters, usually seen against an inconspicuous background. During the 1910s, some European filmmakers explored a rich alternative style: the dramatic and pictorial possibilities of depthstaging techniques (p. 43).
European filmmakers used editing more sparingly, tending to favor complex staging within quite lengthy shots. By creating deep sets, framing action in windows or other apertures, and moving actors slightly to block and reveal key details, directors choreographed the flow of the action with great precision.
In Assunta Spina (p. 59), the accused criminal Michele is on trial, and the director, Gustavo Serena, carefully shifts our attention from his plaintive expression in the distance to his distraught mother's reaction in the foreground (3.383.40). By the mid-1910s directors were employing much deeper interior sets than we saw in Afgrunden from 1910 (see 2.15-2.17).
3.38 Assunta Spina: after the lawyer sits, a woman rushes into the court, and Michele looks up toward the camera.
3.39 More women crowd into the foreground, blocking out the other figures in court but leaving Michele fully visible.
3.40 Finally, as Michele's mother turns in frame center to reveal her anguish, the other women comfort her, blocking out Michele so that we can concentrate on her reaction.
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World History
