nected in any way. In the French experiment, for example, whenever the physical space of the two pictures was deemed too different to be assigned to a single continuity, the viewers accounted for the discrepancy by turning whatever was in the second set of images into the dream, memory, or fantasy of the person observed in the first. The demonstration thus made clear that the same physical world does not have to be present underneath the cut for a visual narrative to take hold. On the contrary, a cut could stand up, be noticed, become the nodal point between radically distinct monads, yet bridge them in some fashion. It is this understanding that was explored to the fullest by the Russian filmmakers.
IV
To illustrate the point, we can look at the different editing approaches Soviet directors experimented with. In Film Technique, Vsevolod Pudovkin recalled an incident when he observed a man cutting grass with a scythe after the rain. As a Soviet filmmaker, Pudovkin was upset by the fact that movies generally did such a poor job of depicting working people and their labor. Hence, he imagined the following sequence:
1. A man stands bare to the waist. In his hands is a scythe. Pause. He swings the scythe (in regular motion).
2. The sweep of the scythe continues. The man's back and shoulders. Slowly the muscles play and grow tense (in slow motion).
3. The blade of the scythe slowly turning at the culmination of its sweep. A gleam of the sun flares up and dies out (in slow motion).
4. The blade flies downward (regular speed).
5. The whole figure of the man brings back the scythe over the grass at normal speed. A sweep-back. A sweep-back. A sweep. . . . And at the moment when the blade of the scythe touches the grass
6. Slowly the cut grass sways, topples, bending and scattering glittering drops.
7. Slowly the muscles of the back relax and the shoulders withdraw.
8. Again the grass slowly topples, lies flat.
9. The scythe-blade swiftly lifting from the earth.
