Pearlman, K. 2009 ‘Chapter 9: Style’, Cutting Rhythms: Shaping the Film Edit, Focal Press, Oxford UK  

In this chapter of Cutting Rhythms: Shaping the Film Edit, Pearlman discusses what a montage is and proposes that the decoupage – cutting shots together to form an impression of moving sequentially through real time and space – is the most prevalent editing used in Hollywood. Through case studies including Hitchcock’s Psycho, Pearlman writes on how rhythm controls shot and cut editing. Pearlman states, “The conflict of two shots (thesis and antithesis) produces a wholly new idea (synthesis)” whilst comparing this notion to other theorists – creating a credible argument (162). Pearlman determines that Kuleshov and Pudovkin theorised that the relation between shots A and B is AB whereas notable film theorist Eisenstein supported the notion of a “qualitatively new factor – C” (162). This chapter is useful to my research on the edit of the cut as it proposes a difference between theorists’ considerations of the relations between shots and, therefore, the extensiveness of relations is revealed. Pearlman did delve deep into understandings of the montage or rhythm and therefore further research on these areas will be undertaken.

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