10 O'Clock Dot

As vaguely promised 10 days ago, here’s that new video essay.

In January 2014 Kathryn Schulz published an article in Vulture called “The Five Best Punctuation Marks in Literature” (here).

It got me thinking about what the five best “punctuation marks” in film might look like. I wanted to assemble a video essay with a rapidfire list of nominees of great moments of editing-as-punctuation in film. But as I started putting it together, the project grew into a twofold piece: an analysis of and response to Schulz’s article as well as an attempt to spur new insights about editing by examining it through the metaphor of punctuation.

So, here it is: 20 minutes long, clips from 100 films (101 if you count that Woody Allen quotes Duck Soup in Hannah and her Sisters), and, I hope, an inspiration to anyone else who loves film on a formal level and believes, as Bazin did, that the language of cinema isn’t done being invented yet.

Featuring the following films (in order of appearance):

Pulp Fiction | 1994 | dir. Quentin Tarantino
Sherlock, Jr. | 1924 | dir. Buster Keaton
Napoleon | 1927 | dir. Abel Gance
Man with a Movie Camera | 1929 | dir. Dziga Vertov
Orpheus | 1950 | dir. Jean Cocteau
A Serious Man | 2009 | dir. Ethan and Joel Coen
So Is This | 1982 | dir. Michael Snow
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World | 2010 | dir. Edgar Wright
Batman: The Movie | 1966 | dir. Leslie H. Martinson
All That Jazz | 1979 | dir. Bob Fosse
Collateral | 2004 | dir. Michael Mann
Bob le flambeur | 1956 | dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
Fantastic Mr. Fox | 2009 | dir. Wes Anderson
Jaws | 1975 | dir. Steven Spielberg
The Searchers | 1956 | dir. John Ford
The Godfather | 1972 | dir. Francis Ford Coppola
Guys and Dolls | 1955 | dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Wattstax | 1973 | dir. Mel Stuart
The Battleship Potemkin | 1925 | dir. Sergei Eisenstein
City of God | 2002 | dir. Fernando Meirelles
Come and See | 1985 | dir. Elem Klimov
The Bourne Supremacy | 2004 | dir. Paul Greengrass
The Wild Bunch | 1969 | dir. Sam Peckinpah
The Passion of Joan of Arc | 1928 | dir. Carl Th. Dreyer
Psycho | 1960 | dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Intolerance | 1916 | dir. D. W. Griffith
[image of Ivan Mosjoukine in footage used in the Kuleshov Experiment, ca. 1918]
Modern Times | 1936 | dir. Charles Chaplin
Koyaanisqatsi | 1983 | dir. Godfrey Reggio
The Graduate | 1967 | dir. Mike Nichols
All Quiet on the Western Front | 1930 | dir. Lewis Milestone
Psycho | 1960 | dir. Alfred Hitchcock
2001: A Space Odyssey | 1968 | dir. Stanley Kubrick
Touki Bouki | 1973 | dir. Djibril Diop Mambéty
Lawrence of Arabia | 1962 | dir. David Lean
Citizen Kane | 1941 | dir. Orson Welles
Hannah and her Sisters | 1986 | dir. Woody Allen (which features a clip from Duck Soup | 1933 | dir. Leo McCarey)
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt S1E6 | 2015 | dir. Michael Engler
Citizen Kane | 1941 | dir. Orson Welles
The Wizard of Oz | 1939 | dir. Victor Fleming
She’s Gotta Have It | 1986 | dir. Spike Lee
Shock Corridor | 1963 | dir. Sam Fuller
Stalker | 1979 | dir. Andrei Tarkovsky
Wings of Desire | 1987 | dir. Wim Wenders
The Picture of Dorian Gray | 1945 | dir. Albert Lewin
Moonrise Kingdom | 2012 | dir. Wes Anderson
Pierrot le fou | 1965 | dir. Jean-Luc Godard
La Ronde | 1950 | dir. Max Ophuls
All That Jazz | 1979 | dir. Bob Fosse
Fruitvale Station | 2013 | dir. Ryan Coogler
The Sacrifice [Offret] | 1986 | dir. Andrei Tarkovsky
Fail Safe | 1964 | dir. Sidney Lumet
It’s a Wonderful Life | 1946 | dir. Frank Capra
All About Eve | 1950 | dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Chungking Express | 1994 | dir. Wong Kar-wai
À la folie… pas du tout | 2002 | dir. Laetitia Colombani
Peppermint Candy | 1999 | dir. Lee Chang-dong
Funny Games | 1997 | dir. Michael Haneke
Lost Highway | 1997 | dir. David Lynch
Sliding Doors | 1998 | dir. Peter Howitt
India Song | 1974 | dir. Marguerite Duras
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai Du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles
| 1975 | dir. Chantal Akerman
Europa ‘51 | 1952 | dir. Roberto Rossellini
The Greatest Story Ever Told | 1965 | dir. George Stevens
Ceddo | 1977 | dir. Ousmane Sembene
Wanda | 1971 | dir. Barbara Loden
The 400 Blows | 1959 | dir. François Truffaut
The Cyclist | 1987 | dir. Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Late Spring | 1949 | dir. Yasujiro Ozu
Breathless | 1960 | dir. Jean-Luc Godard
We Need to Talk About Kevin | 2011 | dir. Lynne Ramsay
When Harry Met Sally | 1989 | dir. Rob Reiner
Pillow Talk | 1959 | dir. Michael Gordon
Requiem for a Dream | 2000 | dir. Darren Aronofsky
Casablanca | 1942 | dir. Michael Curtiz
King Kong | 1933 | dir.  Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack
Vertigo | 1958 | dir. Alfred Hitchcock
The Wizard of Oz | 1939 | dir. Victor Fleming
A Turn of the Century Illusionist | 1899 | dir. Georges Méliès
Black Narcissus | 1947 | dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
Cries and Whispers | 1972 | dir. Ingmar Bergman
The Age of Innocence | 1993 | dir. Martin Scorsese
Ikiru | 1952 | dir. Akira Kurosawa
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night | 2014 | dir. Ana Lily Amirpour
Gone Girl | 2014 | dir. David Fincher
Arnulf Rainer | 1960 | dir. Peter Kubelka
N:O:T:H:I:N:G | 1968 | dir. Paul Sharits
Sans Soleil | 1983 | dir. Chris Marker
Letter from Siberia | 1957 | dir. Chris Marker
La jetée | 1962 | dir. Chris Marker
Sans Soleil | 1983 | dir. Chris Marker
Fargo | 1996 | dir. Joel and Ethan Coen
The Rules of Attraction | 2002 | dir. Roger Avary
Daisies | 1966 | dir. Vera Chytilová
Ballet mécanique | 1924 | dir. Fernand Léger
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song | 1971 | dir. Melvin Van Peebles
Holy Motors | 2012 | dir. Leos Carax
Stay | 2005 | dir. Marc Forster
Passage à l'acte | 1993 | dir. Martin Arnold
Report | 1967 | dir. Bruce Conner
Detour | 1945 | dir. Edgar G. Ulmer
The Travelling Players | 1975 | dir. Theo Angelopoulos
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp | 1943 | dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
The Conversation | 1974 | dir. Francis Ford Coppola
Man with a Movie Camera | 1929 | dir. Dziga Vertov

Click through to Vimeo for the full list of editors.