The Sunday Intertitle: Borgnetto and Pastrone attempt a pan

THE FALL OF TROY, from 1911, represents a massive advance in scale and sophistication from NERO, OR THE FALL OF ROME, made just a few years earlier. But what it doesn’t have is a greater sense of real involvement with the action, since it’s still played out in a not-too-elaborate version of the tableau style, where the camera observes from a distance as the Italian cast move about and gesticulate. While other film-makers in Europe were moving their cast in depth as well as from side to side, so as to achieve medium shots while still shooting each scene as a static wide without cuts, these Italian epics more or less treat the action as a view from the front of the stalls.

One difference is that the intertitles are a little less anxious to spell out everything we see — in NERO, they tend to “spoil” every scene by telling us the outcome before we’ve had a chance to see the action. That’s a little less the case here, where using more title cards allows the filmmakers to deliver the story in smaller morsels.

But there’s one big moment (among many spectacular scenes) where Luigi Romano Borgnetto and Guiseppe Pastrone (who would go on to make CABIRIA) break out of the static pattern and attempt a pan. Tremulously, they scan the scene of the Greek armada anchored not far from Troy. A swimmer arrives with the news that the Trojans have taken the bait and wheeled the big wood horsie into their citadel. Oddly, rather than panning across the scene with the swimmer, they start on Agamemnon and company, then begin panning off, without obvious motivation. The Greeks suddenly point, as if urging the camera onwards, and we discover the intrepid spy  swimming past the impressive fleet (I think it’s one or two life-sized ships and some big miniatures). Now we follow him back to shore, and even pan back to the nearest ship as it’s prepared for boarding, then back to the Greek army, then back to the ship as they climb aboard.

It’s a mixture of traditional narrative movement, following that which is important to keep it in frame, and something new. When the Italians really got into camera movement, they moved the camera in order to explore the world of the film, rather than to follow the subjects around or to increase the sense of drama in a moment, which were and are the American uses of movement. I think you can still see this approach to the moving camera in Bertolucci, who likes to move without seeming motivation.

But for real dolly shots, you have to wait a week. That’s not so bad, the Italians had to wait three years.