Découpage

Sequence 2

Olga’s story – 2.1. escape from jail

39 – Olga seen from below, behind the jail bars. Right-left pan over the outside wall of the jail up to the door. A man’s hand enters the scene from the left. Pan from bottom to top up to the man’s feet who enters the cell. Detail of the doors bottom part. Travelling backwards. Scene from left showing woman’s feet, then man’s feet leaving from the door. Pan from bottom to top up to the hands of both of them, who fight. The woman (Olga) leaves scene on the right. Detail of the man’s hands that leave the scene on the left. Left-right pan from the door up to the bars of the empty window.
40 – The road from bottom. Olga enters into frame from the left and leaves on the right.
41 – LS of the empty road. Olga enters the scene from the right and moves away.
42 – Travelling forward from bottom over the roof of the house.
43 – Travelling backward from bottom over the leaves of the tree.
44 – AS of Olga on her back who touches her hair up. The camera travels forward manually (travelling), turns around the woman until coming back to her back (pan from bottom to top). Olga gets out of scene to the left. Right-left pan follows. Travelling left-right over the empty road and afterwards right-left up to the fence where Olga is prostrated. Pan from top to bottom over her.
45 – LS of the road from top with telegraphic wire and Olga in the background.
46 – DS of the train wheel in movement from bottom.
47 – DS of the train wheel in movement from top.
Fusion

From fusion into the boat’s sharp edge there starts the micro-sequence-shot [39] that, from Olga’s shot from bottom with her look turned down and both hands firmly holding the bars of the cell’s window, goes forward over the white of the wall and the closed door. The camera frames the man’s feet who enters into frame and upon his leaving the frame under the door, moves back and waits. With the pan from bottom to top up to the arms shot that fight, operating a kind of metonymy by which a part of the body brings on all the action. The left-right pan conducts the camera to the start point: a very frequent circular dynamics. The fusion that joins this shot to the following ones turns over the white evoking the landscape by the white wall that arises during the PS and that at first sight could seem a fusion. Another recurring mode is the shot of a free frame where the character that is introduced in the scene goes through and leaves it afterwards [40], which could be intended as a variant of the camera-spectator mentioned before. Sometimes [41] a shadow enters into frame foreseeing the character. The consecutive travellings [42] and [43], being firstly forward and then backwards, determine an ulterior formal circularity, but in terms of content they allude to passing from a micro-urban context (roofs) to a country one (trees). Starting from the AS on Olga on her back [44], another micro-sequence-shot begins where the camera turns tactile, surrounding Olga’s body which in this sense is the closest character to the spectator. It is Olga indeed who in the beginning and in the end of the film looks directly to the camera. In this camera movement, we do not see the woman’s face whom we perceive on her back touching her hair up. According to Peixoto, this movement of the camera would be the materialization of the wind, in Pereira de Mello’s account. The camera then returns autonomous, travels to the right and returns backwards (formal circularity), coming closer to crouched Olga whose face is not yet revealed. The road’s telegraphic wires [45], recurrent elements that in this case as perspective directrixes converge onto Olga to the infinity, evoke, according to Fragelli, those elements used by the sewing machine a little further. The train’s wheel shot taken from bottom [46] an opposite shot from top follows [47]. Fusion.

Olga’s story – 2.2. the house

48 – Detail of the sewing machine wheel from bottom /
49 – Olga from top sewing /
50 – CU on Olga’s face with the sewing machine: touches her hair up, raises her eyes and bends her head /
51 – House window
52 – Detail of the sewing marker
53 – Detail of the automatic buttons
54 – Detail of the spool
55 – Detail of the buttons
56 – Detail of the sewers measuring tape /
57 – Detail of the scissors /
58 – CU on Olga’s face that arranges the thread and looks at the window /
59 – Detail of the hand that sews the fabric with the machine according to a drawn pattern.
60 – Olga from top who sews by hand /
61 – Detail of the scissors. The hand is cut.
Fusion
Still by fusion from bottom, the shot either of the wheel or the sewing machine, which establishes an immediate analogy, underlining as the escape (train’s wheel) ends up in a limitation (sewing machine wheel) [48]. The following shot [49] contextualizes the action introducing Olga at work. The woman touches her hair up and her face is finally seen [50]. She raises her eyes, looking at the jail’s window. From the white of the sky [51], it goes to the white of the sewing marker [52] that opens the succession of macrophotography of work aided objects also recognized by inscriptions (spool DMC – RETORS D’ALSACE 30, 25 gr, tailors measuring tape with number 13 in CU). The objects have shapes that can recall those rounded ones and are all framed from top and placed according to the bottom-left/top-right vector, with evident morphological relations among them. The arrangement of the four automatic buttons [53] is related to the button’s four holes [55] or the measuring tape [56] spiral arrangement is retaken under the form of a scissors handle [57]. Olga turns twice looking at the window [58] as Raul looks at Taciana (see [32]). A drawn pattern is beside the sewing machine: a kind of women’s magazine, first presence of the printed paper [59]. The second detail of the scissors [61] distinguishes the blade and its form in V bearing the idea of cut. Fusion.

Olga’s story – 2.3. escape from the factory

62 – Detail of the newspaper in V /
63 – Detail: Olga’s feet. Travelling from bottom to top up to the newspaper and travelling forward over the news: Escape from jail. The complicity of a jail-keeper. Olga turns the page showing her disheveled hair. Travelling from top to bottom up to the feet and travelling backwards still over the feet /
64 – Detail of the building’s superior angle /
65 – A house window pane. Travelling forward /
66 – Road with wind /
67 – Part of the house with the window open, from bottom. The window is closed /
68 – Detail of the door that slams /
69 – Detail of the train’s wheel from top
Fusion

By fusion, the V of the scissors is joined to the V of the newspaper [62]. The detail of feminine feet returns and the camera travels over her body, giving another example of the tactile camera, walking over the newspaper, whose white is distinguished. Travelling forward towards the newspaper makes it possible to read the news of the jails escape and also other publicity ads, a kind of diegetic caption [63]. The news is firstly read by the spectator-camera and then by Olga who, turning the page and at this moment showing her face, finishes her reading of the fact. This news is the exteriorization of a cut in the plot already taken place (escape from jail) and related to the scissors in the end of the previous sequence (which opens the escape from the factory) and to the format of the newspaper in the opening of this sequence. At the moment the second escape starts, the first escape is realized. When the camera moves still over Olga’s legs (the common circular movement of travelling forward and backwards), her socks show defibering, more precisely, cut of threads that metaphorically can be considered the narrative plot thread. The micro-sequence-shot being concluded, the contextualizing and manifesting shots are the wind on the road, with objects that wander and run away [66]. Among them there is a short travelling [65] over a window that is closed [67] in guillotine cut. (A particularly damaged part begins). The train’s wheel [69] reveals now also the second escape. Fusion.