End of training and transport*

Classification in categories

• Formation of a group body (corps)

Metadata

In the film’s dramaturgical structure, this scene is between the comically staged parting from two soldiers and the staging of close confinement in the submarine. It connects to the previous scene with images of the squad in motion and culminates in the staging of the excitement of departure.

The dynamic pattern is characterized in particular by two interruptions of the voice-over. If the voice-over marks a specific narrative mode that creates distance to that which is shown, each interruption leads to a more immediate staging—first of a sense of injustice and finally of the excitement of departure.

The sound design thus proves to be the dominant level of the staging.In both EMUs the voice-over which is dominant at first and which mediates the images imparting a feeling of historical distance, is replaced by the immediacy of the staging of experience (the sight of Pearl Harbor, the bad news on the radio, departure). Visually, this experience is transmitted mostly by indvidual soldier’s faces multiplied by montage,, their intense facial expressions are set free at the end of the scene by a concrete movement towards departure (closing long shot).

If the voice-over creates a pictorial story to the spoken word, the staging of emotions is related to the extrafilmic history which enters the film through the documentary formats of newsreel footage (Pearl Harbor, > EMU 1) and an—admittedly ficticious—radio report (> EMU 2).

The document thus becomes a prop of the staging. The affective course of the staging—from elegy to a feeling of injustice, from worry to readiness for battle—is interwoven with historical experience.    ML

Expressive movement units

Materials about the scene

Position of scene in film