without it, unless a most inartistic use of printed words is made. The
close-up has to furnish the explanations. If a little locket is hung on
the neck of the stolen or exchanged infant, it is not necessary to tell
us in words that everything will hinge on this locket twenty years later
when the girl is grown up. If the ornament at the child's throat is at
once shown in a close-up where everything has disappeared and only its
quaint form appears much enlarged on the screen, we fix it in our
imagination and know that we must give our fullest attention to it, as
it will play a decisive part in the next reel. The gentleman criminal
who draws his handkerchief from his pocket and with it a little bit of
paper which falls down on the rug unnoticed by him has no power to draw
our attention to that incriminating scrap. The device hardly belongs in
the theater because the audience would not notice it any more than would
the scoundrel himself. It would not be able to draw the attention. But
in the film it is a favorite trick. At the moment the bit of paper
falls, we see it greatly enlarged on the rug, while everything else has
faded away, and we read on it that it is a ticket from the railway
station at which the great crime was committed. Our attention is focused
on it and we know that it will be decisive for the development of the
action.

A clerk buys a newspaper on the street, glances at it and is shocked.
Suddenly we see that piece of news with our own eyes. The close-up
magnifies the headlines of the paper so that they fill the whole screen.
But it is not necessary that this focusing of the attention should refer
to levers in the plot. Any subtle detail, any significant gesture which
heightens the meaning of the action may enter into the center of our
consciousness by monopolizing the stage for a few seconds. There is love
in her smiling face, and yet we overlook it as they stand in a crowded
room. But suddenly, only for three seconds, all the others in the room