Expressive movement unit 2

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The process by which tension is built is staged through the interplay of the speech with the editing and the camera movement. The two physically separate spaces are bound together through the editing with the same speech transmitted by the loudspeaker and create, through camera pans and camera movement, a collective unit that overcomes material/physical separation. Concurrently, an increase of pathos in the rhetoric of the speech is conveyed in three stages–attentiveness, surprised expectation, tension—and supported by the editing and the camera movement.

First an image of attentiveness—started by turning on the loudspeaker—is staged through the editing, that connects the space to a second space (sleeping quarters) at the beginning of the speech. At the disclosure, after a pause, of the destination, there is a cut from two soldiers in the control room whose heads turn to look at one another to the soldiers next to the loudspeaker in the sleeping quarters—even followed by a turn of the body. This provides the transition to the image of surprised expectation that shows the soldiers in the sleeping quarters looking excitedly towards the loudspeaker, again by means of a slight pan. At the end, Colonel Thorwald pleads slowly and clearly for direct readiness for battle and aggressiveness towards the enemy, whereby the tension is built up rhetorically: “Six to one. How can we overcome that advantage? Platoon leaders, take over!” At the conclusion of this speech the camera films the Colonel’s face almost frontally, so that he is quasi talking directly to the viewer. The naming of the soldiers’ task is accompanied by cuts to the motionless soldiers in another room and slow camera movements through which tension is built.