by Allan Fish
It’s said that it was Orson Welles’ favourite moment in Citizen Kane. The reporter Thompson sat in Bernstein’s office as the Chairman of the Board kills the time that’s the only thing he has. He begins to tell a tale of how back in the 1890s he was on the Jersey ferry and saw a girl. You know the details. The white dress. The parasol. He barely saw her for a moment, but barely a day went past when he didn’t think of her. All it took was a moment.
Can greatness be bestowed out of so little? Our cinematic memory banks are full of such moments, individual shots, throwaway lines. Yet we know these moments. We know the director who framed the shot that won’t go away, or in some cases the DP who literally shot it. For lines, we know who wrote the scripts. The DP may have won an award for his work, or been nominated. The writer, too, may have received plaudits. Yet these are moments borne out of much larger wholes. Yet what of the real moments, where the moment is all you have? (more…)