The Obvious and the Code

Bellour begins by highlighting the distinction between a scene and a segment. To illustrate an important segment, he examines the 12 shots in between two scenes in The Big Sleep. A segment, as the author describes is “a moment in the filmic chain that is deliminated both by an elusive but powerful sense of dramatic or fictional unity and by the more rigorous notion of identity of setting and characters of the narrative." This scene is difficult to read upon first viewing because in this segment the audience is only left with a sense of vague unity. We make sense of the scene through picking up on certain codes. The author emphasizes thinking of scenes as containing multiple codes, giving the audience something to grasp onto. I found it very interesting how the author broke down exactly the means through which the director ensures continuity. He emphasizes the importance of using the same camera angle, maintaining the same duration for each shot, and using shots that contain each character. When watching this segment at home, I failed to notice the importance of the use of silence. The juxtaposition of speaking in shots 8 and 9 against the silence in shots 11 and 12 is a unique narrational technique that is very powerful. Overall, I thought this was a great reading. It got me thinking more closely about the techniques used to create certain effects, continuity, or stand-out segments like the one analyzed in the essay.