Ellipse (cinema)

See also: Ellipse

The ellipse is a literary Stylistic device used in the Cinéma. This process, with the cinema, consists in suggesting an action while showing simply what occurs before and what is observed afterwards. The great majority of films make use of ellipses to erase the actions which do not bring anything to the narration. Therefore one never sees a character going to the toilets or brushing the teeth if that does not make advance the action. But beyond these ellipses of “suitability”, others are used on the contrary to advance the account, for the rythmer and to sometimes even complicate it.

There are several kinds: Most used are the ellipse of suggestion by the sound and the ellipse of suggestion by the image , itself being able to be a temporal ellipse or a space ellipse (certain ellipses can be at the same time temporal and space).

the suggestion by the image is most current, one passes from the evocation of an action to its result, without showing the action itself.

the suggestion by the sound goes in the same direction, but this time the action is evoked by an implicit sound with the spectator (for example, a man finds a publicity. The following plan is black but implies the noise of a coin or a cash register to symbolize the purchase).

It is with the assembly that the ellipse is really development. Hitherto, of the plans can be turned without the realizer not being aware of their not required. The function of the ellipse is thus to avoid these redundancies in order to preserve the rate/rhythm of film. This stylistic device can appear very useful then for a realizer who would like to lose the spectator. Certain films are even entirely built on ellipses, thus creating misunderstandings, with the manner of Wong Kar-Wai in his film 2046 .

Some famous ellipses

Amadeus : Salieri implies with the professional singer whom she will certainly not sing in the next opera of Mozart, which occurs in a brothel. The following scene the watch singing Removal with the seraglio .

the Uncles flingueurs : Lino Ventura, in answer to the sarcastic remark of a guest, poses his satchel. The following image shows the mocker K. - O. in its sport scar.

the Man of Rio : one asks Belmondo which color it prefers for the car that one will provide him. Exceeded, he answers " Rose, with green stars! ". The following scene shows it travelling in such a car.

Me y' has some to want under : Following the success of his companies, Benoît Lepape (Jean Yanne) is elected president of the national council of employers. Its predecessor congratulates it warmly, and asks him with which new acquisitions of company it now will proceed. The following scene shows it driven out its company of electronics while a new sign there is posed: Electronic Benoit Lepape .

In the film Chacal , all the sequences of action except the last are suggested by ellipses, which highlights the character coldly given of the killer.

Towards an evolution of the Stylistic device

If one were to compare current films and films having about thirty years, we would note that the ellipse is much more used nowadays. That is understood by the fact that the cinema entered manners. Let us take for example film of Stanley Kubrick: 2001, has Space Odyssey (2001, the odyssey of space) , there is an ellipse of more than two millenia, when one sees the tool of the monkey which, by a connection in the movement is connected to most powerful tools: the spaceship. But in spite of that, the plans of films of the time were longer than what is done nowadays, people were to include/understand the course of the action, and the fact of using ellipses was a at the very least innovative concept. At that time, when the account advanced or moved back abruptly of several years, a classified with the bottom of the screen specified past time. This function of information is much used nowadays. It is on this principle even as is built the film The Hours of Stephen Daldry connecting the destinies of three women in three different times. The ellipse is based on an account written by one of these women, putting in scene another of the women of the history. The ellipse is thus a narrative ellipse because one spends times in times without having the least indication on these temporal transitions.

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