Cinema Retro is proud to present a major article by author and film historian Collin Stutz
“Contrast, Counterpoint, and Patience: The Vanishing Penultimate Moment in Film†by
Collin Stutz
In Daniel Raim’s Academy-Award nominated 2001
documentary The Man On Lincoln’s Nose,
the film’s subject, legendary film production designer Robert F. Boyle (North By Northwest, The Birds, The Thomas
Crown Affair - 1968, Fiddler On The Roof), profoundly states, “One of the
problems with a lot of films now is that we’re dealing with climaxes rather
than the penultimate moments which are more interesting.†Boyle defines the penultimate moment as the
moment before something actually happens. It is the scene before the climax (Scene 12). In the DVD audio commentary to their 2004
Pixar film The Incredibles, director
Brad Bird and producer John Walker discuss how “movies don’t have people
sneaking around anymore. I want some
sneaking around in my movie! People are
in such a rush to get the action sequences going fast that they forget there’s
pleasure to be had in the sneaking around part, taking a look at where you
are. So I have a few sneaking around
sequences in here, and I don’t think they’re a waste of time†(Scene 9). Whether one artist refers to it as “the
penultimate moment†or another calls it “sneaking around†is irrelevant; they
are both discussing the same thing. The
penultimate moment can be one of the most rewarding experiences for a cinema
audience, and there are three elements – contrast, counterpoint, and time
investment – that go into its creation. Unfortunately, the penultimate moment and its components are becoming a
lost art in today’s world of instant gratification.
Boyle uses Michelangelo’s Renaissance sculpture
masterpiece David as an example to
further illustrate his belief in the penultimate moment. He states that the sculpture of the Biblical
hero is “a young man standing, thinking. He’s got the sling over his shoulder and he has a frown on his face and
he’s obviously concerned. He’s concerned
about the coming conflict. The stone
that hits Goliath is momentarily interesting but only for that second. What went on before David meets
Goliath…that’s what’s interesting†(The Man On Lincoln’s Nose, Scene 12).
As the five minute, thirty second sequence where Mr.
Incredible sneaks around the island trying to discover Syndrome’s evil plan
plays, director Bird, in his Incredibles
audio commentary, goes on to say, “The filmmakers I most admire recognize the
value of “teasing†moments and “milking†moments. You think about a good storyteller or someone
who tells good stories in a bar. They
don’t blast through a story. They stop
and they savor certain moments. And they
know which moments they can milk. And
all of my favorite filmmakers have the confidence to slow down. Versus, I won’t name names, but a lot of
successful hacks, who, by having rapid-fire editing all the way through, never
have to deal with the issue of “Is anybody paying attention?†because they keep
throwing stuff at you. To me, there’s an
edge of desperation about that. The kind
of filmmaking I most admire takes a moment to savor things, because there are
so many things a movie can offer, particularly when you have a really talented
crew that works on getting sets to look great and is putting things up
there. You want a moment to take them
in. Like a good comic pauses, I think a
good filmmaker slows down†(Scene 15). Incidentally, five minutes of that Incredibles sequence is nothing but
sneaking around. The final thirty
seconds is the action climax where Mr. Incredible is attacked by goo balls and
captured. John Fawell, author of Rear Window: The Well-Made Film, elaborates on Bird’s thoughts in his DVD
commentary of the film, “People sometimes ask, ‘Why do we make such a deal of
these old films?’ Part of it is the professionalism on the smallest level. Even your most unimportant moment should have
a nice composition to it†(Scene 12).
The ultimate master of the penultimate moment was
Alfred Hitchcock. He provided us with
the best teases and build-ups to the climaxes. He felt the unimportant moments were often the most important. The much-discussed crop duster sequence from
his 1959 film North By Northwest is
nine minutes, forty seconds in length. A
bus drops off ad executive Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) at a deserted prairie
stop in the middle of farmland Illinois. He stands by the side of the road waiting for the elusive George Kaplan
to meet him. Cars and trucks pass and do
not stop. Finally, a car drops a
suspicious gentlemen off on the other side of the road. Is this Kaplan? Thornhill approaches, makes small talk, and
learns that this man is not the one in question. He is just waiting for the bus. Before he boards the bus, he provides the
clincher: “That’s funny. That crop
duster’s dustin’ crops where there ain’t no crops.†As the bus continues on its
way, Thornhill is left deserted once again. That is when the crop duster flies his way and attacks. How much time has passed in that nine minute,
forty second sequence? Five minutes and
thirty seconds - over half the sequence
– is devoted to standing around and watching. And yet, the viewer remains on the edge of his seat. As Boyle states, “Like this moment of these
two people standing here is a good example of the penultimate moment as nothing
has happened. And yet it’s a very
stressful scene. The scene before the
climax…these are things that always interested Hitchcock. He called it the penultimate moment†(The Man On Lincoln’s Nose, Scene 12).
Another great Hitchcock penultimate moment is the
Bodega Bay schoolhouse attack sequence from his 1963 horror masterpiece, The Birds. Before the attack occurs, there is another
five and a half minute penultimate moment. San Francisco socialite Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) arrives at the
school to pick up Cathy (Veronica Cartwright) to allay the fears of her boyfriend’s
mother (Jessica Tandy). The school
teacher Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette), leading her class in the singing of
the catchy children’s tune “Risseldy, Rosseldyâ€, motions to Melanie that the
class will be dismissed for recess shortly. Melanie steps outside and sits on a bench to smoke a cigarette. She waits and waits while the children harp
out verse after verse of “Risseldy, Rosseldyâ€, unaware that black crows are
slowly descending upon the jungle gym behind her. When Melanie finally spots a crow in the air,
she follows it with her eyes until the crow perches on the
completely-covered-with-crows jungle gym. She hurries inside to warn Annie. When the kids, Melanie, and Annie step out of the schoolhouse as if they
are conducting a fire drill and then start running down the hill to return to
their homes, the birds attack. Only two
minutes of that seven and a half minute sequence involves birds attacking and
trying to kill the children. Something
is going to happen, but when and how? The buildup, the teasing, the waiting, the sneaking around, the
suspense, the penultimate moment is what, in the end, makes these sequences so
satisfying.
Penultimate moments are not completely absent from a
modern filmmaker’s vocabulary, but they are becoming much less frequent in
cinema today. Besides Brad Bird,
director Martin Campbell successfully incorporates such a moment into the
thrilling thirteen and a half minute airport sequence in the 2006 James Bond
film, Casino Royale. For eight minutes, twenty seconds, Campbell
brilliantly builds the tension. Bond
(Daniel Craig) first follows terrorist middleman Dimitrios to the Miami Body
Worlds exhibit, then knifes Dimitrios at the exhibit, culminating in his
trailing of terrorist Carlos through Miami International Airport. After Carlos changes into a security uniform
and sets off the sprinklers to distract security, passengers, and airport
personnel, Bond puts two and two together and realizes Carlos is going to crash
a loaded fuel truck into the world’s largest commercial airliner. Only when Bond runs up a flight of airport
passenger boarding stairs and jumps on top of Carlos’s moving fuel truck does
the exciting five minute, ten second action climax begin. However, it is the penultimate moment of Bond
watching, following, sneaking around, and putting the pieces together that has
made it much more fulfilling. Campbell
has not forgotten to insert act one and act two into a sequence before arriving
at act three.
An element that contributes greatly to the
effectiveness of the penultimate moment is the idea of contrast between the
penultimate and the climactic moment. In
the first edition of Bruce Block’s book, The
Visual Story, Block discusses how visual structures are based on the
understanding of the principle of contrast and affinity. Contrast means difference. Affinity means similarity. Every visual component (space, line, shape,
tone, color, movement, and rhythm) can be described and used in terms of
contrast and affinity. The principle
of contrast and affinity states that the greater the contrast in a visual
component, the more the visual intensity or dynamic increases. The greater the affinity in a visual
component, the more visual intensity or dynamic decreases. Intensity of dynamic relates to the emotional
reaction members of an audience feel when they see a picture, read a book, or
listen to music. Usually the more
intense the visual stimulus, the more intense the reaction. A good writer carefully structures words,
sentences, and paragraphs. A good
musician carefully structures notes, measures, and bars. A director, cinematographer, production
designer, or editor structures visuals by applying the principle of contrast
and affinity to the basic visual components (10).
In one of the bonus scenes on The Man On Lincoln’s Nose documentary DVD, Boyle describes his
production design of the Van Damn house by Mount Rushmore in North By Northwest and the effectiveness
of contrast. “Most people from the time
they’re born are used to a kind of environment. If we are to believe an extraordinary story, don’t make the background
[at the beginning of the film] so extraordinary that you don’t believe it. I remember the concerns I had about the house
above Mount Rushmore [at the end of the film]. And it was a very difficult decision because I could either go for this
cantilevered rather extraordinary house or do something which would be less
controversial. Then I realized what we
were doing in North By Northwest. We had gone from a mundane ordinary
businessman at a meeting and we keep building it and building it until it
becomes more and more extraordinary and finally quite outlandish. Now there was no problem to being
extravagant. So I was able to do this
house which would never overpower the action because the action was
extraordinary, improbable. Who climbs
down Mount Rushmore? It doesn’t happen
every day. So whatever I did with the
house seemed to be appropriate†(Bonus, Van Damn House). If Boyle had created outlandish designs for
the first three-fourths of North By
Northwest, not only would the design not have matched the story content,
but the entire film would have also had a look of affinity. The contrast of design style from the
ordinary in the first three-fourths of the picture to the extraordinary in the
final quarter makes the look of the film much more interesting and gives it a
more intense dynamic.
Block’s principle can apply to more than just visual
elements. Besides the script, it can
also apply to the diegetic and non-diegetic elements of sound and music (Block
1). Diegetic sound is any sound
originating from within the film’s world. Non-diegetic sound is any sound originating from outside the film’s
world. In most penultimate moments, there
is limited diegetic sound and the non-diegetic musical score is either non-existent
or one of low intensity. When the climax
of the scene arrives, the sound and film score build to one that is usually
strong and intense. Think of a film that
is nothing but loud noise. Then think of
one that includes scenes with silences, limited diegetic sounds, and subtle
scoring mixed with scenes with loud bangs and a full orchestral score. The mix, the contrast, is much more
interesting, just as a film that juxtaposes long takes with quick cuts is more
interesting than a film that is nothing but quick cuts.
Block discusses contrast and intensity in his
description of the opening twelve minute, forty-seven second sequence in Steven
Spielberg’s 1981 action masterpiece, Raiders
of the Lost Ark. The audience
doesn’t know Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) or anything about him. The first five minutes of the film [it is
actually eight minutes, ten seconds] allows us to meet him and learn a little
about his character. The story intensity
is low at this point. There is a lot of
dramatic tension between Indy and his companions, but the conflict is just
beginning so the overall intensity is low. [This exposition and beginning
conflict comprise the penultimate moment.] Once Indy steals the golden idol, all of the tomb’s hidden traps are
activated, and he must run for his life. Suddenly, there is great intensity as Indy barely escapes the tomb
(183). The contrasts that occur between
the penultimate moment and climactic moment (including music, sound, and
editing) provides for a more intense movie-watching experience than if
everything was shot and edited like a climax. Spielberg has taken the time to give the audience something in which to
invest: the character of Indiana Jones. Imagine if he had opened in the middle of the
sequence when Indy prepares to steal the golden idol. The scene would not have been nearly as good
and the moments that follow with Indy being chased by the giant boulder would
not have been nearly as memorable. The
penultimate moment is the key ingredient in making these sequences work.
Every filmmaker wants to achieve moments of great
intensity, yet it is interesting to note that a number of directors today,
whose films this writer believes are supposed
to be some of the most intense experiences, are, in fact, some of the least
intense experiences. It is because
their films are all about affinity and climaxes. Even the scenes which should be penultimate
moments are shot like climaxes and moments of high intensity with a camera that
never stops moving, quick cuts, and loud diegetic sounds. They are only interested in the stone hitting
Goliath again and again, not in any of the moments before David met
Goliath. They keep throwing things at us
because they think we will be bored otherwise when, in fact, they are boring us
by never taking the time to slow down. In other words, never taking the time to slow down equals affinity, and
affinity is never as interesting as contrast.
In the documentary Pure
Cinema: Through the Eyes of the Master, filmmaker
Guillermo del Toro says, “Film can be punk music or film can be orchestral
music. Hitchcock is an orchestra
conductor. If you want to be punk and
have three cameras, three different lenses, moving all the time, cameras
jittery, and find it in the editing room, that’s perfectly valid and great, but
[when you have] the largos, the allegros, the tempo, the harmony, that’s
precision, and Hitchcock is a precise filmmakerâ€.
The idea of the penultimate moment can also be likened
to the idea of time, investment, and process, which the film and television
writer-director-producer multi-hyphenated wunderkind J.J. Abrams and Academy
Award-winning composer [for the Pixar film Up]
Michael Giacchino discussed recently in an interview at the Hammer Museum in
Los Angeles. Abrams discusses “the idea of
time, of investment, of process. Now we
are in an age where when we want the song, we click something that’s not an
actual button, we pay money we don’t actually hold, we get the song we can’t
actually see, there’s no evidence of anything that just happened. And we have it. I remember when I was a kid and if I wanted a
song or soundtrack, I’d go to the bin where they’d have the [records with]
punched holes, Demo albums, so they were $2 instead of $10 and I’d buy the
soundtracks and ride my bike home with my bag…and that investment of time [of
going to the store] meant you’d listen to every damn thing you had bought. I find myself downloading songs now that I’ve
never listened to. Oh, I’ve got it now,
so I’ll listen to it later. There’s no
sense of appreciation for it. When you
were a kid making movies and you had only three minutes of film, at 18 frames,
and you had to think about what I’m going to shoot because you can’t just undo
it…There wasn’t an undo button. If you
made a cut, that was it. And to
re-splice it, you knew there’d be a bump over that. At Bad Robot [Abrams’ production company], we
have an old Chandler and Price Letterpress that we use for cards and
stuff. And it takes forever. You have to set the type, the font, you’ve
got to put it in the frame, then you have to ink the rollers, you’ll have to
clean the rollers later, you finally print it, you get the card. And the card is imperfect, but it’s imperfect
in the most beautiful way because there was a process involved. There’s something about sending a letter and
waiting to get it back. There’s
something intangible about an e-mail. I
think as people, I sense a kind of hunger for that process and analog
experience because there’s an investment of time and energy and process that’s
being lost that’s hugely valuable.â€
Abrams is an eternal optimist, one who loves mysteries
and loves to keep secrets from his audience (If one thinks about it, his
television series “Lost†is essentially one long penultimate moment.) Based on the majority of his work, Abrams
seems to be a director who wants to make the audience wait and fidget in their
seats for the next big moments in his films. He does not want to provide the world with an instant fix. He knows instinctively that by making people
wait, the big moments in his films will strike an even bigger impact. In this day and age of instant gratification,
isn’t it refreshing that a director like Abrams takes his time to establish
character and reveal the answers?
As Abrams told a conference at TED in March 2007, “With
Die Hard, a crazy, great, fun, action
adventure movie set in a building, it’s about a guy on the verge of divorce
showing up in L.A. with his tail between his legs; there are great scenes,
maybe not the greatest dramatic scenes in the history of time, but pretty great
scenes. There’s half an hour of
investment in character before you get to the stuff you’re expecting.†Investing in the process of writing a letter,
physically going shopping, sitting through a five to eight minute penultimate
moment, or investing in character for thirty minutes makes what follows all the
more meaningful and valuable to people.
Abrams mixes the micro (the characters, their human
imperfections and flaws, and normal everyday bits of business) with the macro
(a spectacular adventure the characters and the audience go on). These normal everyday bits of business are
ultimately tied directly to the penultimate moment. As film historian Leonard Maltin indicates in
the documentary Topaz: An Appreciation by Film Historian and Critic
Leonard Maltin, Hitchcock was famous for finding suspense in the everyday,
the ordinary, the mundane. In these
moments, we have the opportunity to observe characters doing small, everyday
things (the micro) to which the audience can relate – moments that tell the
audience these characters are human, before the extraordinary occurs, the
macro, the climax, the ultimate moment. Wiping dust from a passing car off our face, reading a magazine at a
stand hoping someone doesn’t notice we are watching them, smoking a cigarette
outside school waiting for a boyfriend’s kid sister’s class to be dismissed,
walking through a forest or jungle reacting to all the unique sounds of Mother
Nature. These are the moments that
precede a crop duster spraying bullets on an innocent businessman, a British
secret agent stopping a terrorist from blowing up the world’s largest plane at
Miami International Airport, a rich society woman and numerous school children
running from a bird mass attacking them, and a noted archaeologist eluding
hundreds of booby traps in a cave followed by an enormous boulder which nearly
crushes him. These are, of course, not
your typical everyday events. But the
everyday, the ordinary, the mundane that precedes the climax makes it more
believable and human, and in the end, more intense and satisfying.
Hitchcock also used the idea of counterpoint,
especially in regards to music, to enhance and strengthen his penultimate
moments. As Jack Sullivan points out in
his book, Hitchcock’s Music, with
lesser directors, music is often a form of hyperbole, blasting defensively onto
the soundtrack to make up for a lack of pictorial distinction; with Hitchcock,
the latter is taken for granted, and the music is freed up to create its own
realm of meaning, deepening or counterpointing memorable images with sounds
that are far more sophisticated than what we hear in standard Hollywood scores
(xiv). With Hitchcock, often the music
does not complement the action at all or moves in sharp counterpoint to it
(Sullivan 179). The counterpointing
themes emphasize what Leonard Maltin says about Hitchcock finding suspense in
the everyday, the human, the mundane. In
Rear Window, the upbeat jazz clarinet
during Lisa’s delivery (Grace Kelly) of the letter to Thorwald’s apartment
(Raymond Burr) and the fizzy violin during his [Thorwald’s] hasty exit after
Jeff’s threatening phone call are in “tempo†with the scene, to use Hitchcock’s
term, but out of sync emotionally (Sullivan 179). When Miss Lonelihearts’ date forces himself
upon her, we see something tragic, sad, pitiful, and personal, but what do we
hear? People having a good time at a
party. This is why some people refer to
Hitchcock as a “poet of alienationâ€, because he’s very good at showing people in
moments of private tragedy and at the same time keeping an eye on a world that
doesn’t care at all (Rear Window,
Scene 13).
As in the Salvation Army marching band in The 39 Steps or the schoolyard song in The Birds, the cheery counterpoint
mysteriously increases the suspense in a way that a conventionally anxious
score would not (Sullivan 179). In the
documentary The Master’s Touch: Hitchcock’s Signature Style, legendary
sound designer Ben Burtt points out that in Strangers
on a Train, a murder takes place in an amusement park where this
happy-go-lucky song “The Band Played On†is playing while the murder is
committed. Of course, there’s
counterpoint right away, because it’s this happy song; it’s something with frivolity. Seeming to cry out for heavy suspense music,
these oddly exciting moments cut against every Hollywood musical norm and make
for a more intense, dynamic film-going experience in the process (Sullivan
180).
In the documentary Breaking
Barriers: The Sound of Hitchcock,
Academy Award-winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom analyzes Hitchcock’s use of
counterpoint during the penultimate moment of the previously-mentioned Bodega
Bay schoolhouse attack sequence in The
Birds: “When the birds are
collecting on the jungle gym, before the big attack of the kids…other directors
would have had ominous music or ominous sound effects even, but not
Hitchcock. He has singing children, so
that you have this contrast between the innocence of the victims that are going
to be and the visual of the threat that’s gathering onscreen. So he’s telling you two different parts of
the story, and it’s much more effective.â€
In fact, Hitchcock often wanted airiness and
playfulness in his film scores. Hitchcock told composer John Williams during the filming of his final
film Family Plot in 1976 that, “You
can’t always communicate with composers. I had this composer in London [most likely Henry Mancini, the original
composer of 1972’s Frenzy, whom
Hitchcock fired and replaced with Ron Goodwin]; it was a film about murder, and
I wanted something whimsical. I gave him
some instructions on the way the score should be. I went to the recording session, and the
composer had every double bassoon and timpani in the city of London capable of
making a lugubrious, ominous sound playing music.†Williams was puzzled: “Mr. Hitchcock, for a
film about murder, this seems very appropriate,†to which Hitchcock replied,
“Well, Mr. Williams, you don’t understand, murder can be fun†(Sullivan 312, 313).
Can one imagine a modern filmmaker instructing his film
composer to let cheerful diegetic music be the score for a suspenseful scene or
thrilling action sequence or to be so brave as to let such a scene go
unscored? How would a modern-day
filmmaker and writer handle Die Hard
today? Would they spend so much time on
the character of John McClane and the problems he is having with his wife
before the action begins? What about the
crop duster sequence from North By
Northwest? Would they allow the lead
character to stand by the side of the road for five and a half minutes? It is not likely.
We actually see a modern day filmmaker’s take on the North By Northwest cropduster sequence
with D.J. Caruso’s 2008 thriller, Eagle
Eye. Approximately forty-five
minutes into the film, Jerry (Shia LaBeouf) and Rachel (Michelle Monaghan) walk
down a road in the middle of nowhere under high voltage electrical transmission
lines. They have a heated discussion
concerning Jerry’s deceased war hero twin brother Ethan for about one minute
and thirteen seconds when a van pulls up behind them. A Middle Eastern man jumps out, hands Jerry
something, runs away from him, and is electrocuted by falling high voltage
transmission lines one minute and fifteen seconds later. The scene as presented is economical and
accomplishes the job, but this could have been an even more exciting and
intense sequence with a lengthier penultimate moment and climax.
One could make the argument that if we live in the
society of instant gratification to which J.J. Abrams refers, it is inevitable
that waiting for a climax would become tiresome. With shorter attention spans, what if the
abbreviated one minute and thirteen second penultimate moment from Eagle Eye feels like the lengthy five
minute, thirty second penultimate moment from North By Northwest to a modern audience? One could argue that the penultimate moment
is not vanishing. Perhaps it is just
becoming shorter because a modern audience needs less of it to get the same
feeling and effect. Is this to say a
climax with a shorter three to four minute penultimate moment can’t be
effective? Is this to say a film can’t
be effective with only a ten to fifteen minute investment in character before
the fireworks begin? Of course it
doesn’t. This writer believes, however,
that the more foreplay a filmmaker can offer his audience (sneaking around,
waiting, watching, following, making small talk, putting the pieces together,
etc. filmed using long takes, silences, limited diegetic sounds, subtle
scoring) before consummating his relationship with them by delivering big
action (filmed with the contrasting elements of quicker cuts, loud bangs, a
full orchestral score, etc.), the more fulfilling, rewarding and intense the
movie-going experience will be for any generation of movie-goer.
For more information on or to purchase Daniel Raim’s
documentaries, The Man On Lincoln’s Nose
and Something’s Gonna Live, go to www.lincolnsnose.com and www.somethingsgonnalive.com
For more information on or to purchase Bruce Block’s
book, The Visual Story, go to www.bruceblock.com or www.amazon.com
COLLIN STUTZ BIOGRAPHY
Collin Stutz is a graduate of Vassar College and The
American Film Institute. A serious James
Bond fan and collector, he is the co-author of two editions of the officially
authorized James Bond Encyclopedia. He has worked as a development executive for
Academy Award-winning director Barry Levinson’s and Emmy Award-winning producer
Paula Weinstein’s production company, has had one of his screenplays optioned,
and is a Writers Guild of America member. He has also been interviewed as a film historian for DVD documentaries
on the works of Alfred Hitchcock.
BIBLIOGRAPHY