Post by Thoithoi O'Cottage on Jun 5, 2014 9:03:50 GMT 5.5
O. Henry's short story By Courier (United States, 1906) opens with this:
It was neither the season nor the hour when the Park had frequenters, and it is likely that the young lady, who was seated on one of the benches at the side of the walk, had merely obeyed a sudden impulse to sit for a while and enjoy a foretaste of coming Spring.She rested there, pensive and still. A certain melancholy that touched her countenance must have been of recent birth, for it had not yet altered the fine and youthful contours of her cheek, not subdued the arch though resolute curve of her lips.
The novel and the short story were born long before the cinema, but now it is quite convenient to speak about certain fiction techniques in terms of cinematography. Descriptive passages in fictions always have a perspective or point of view, presenting the scene from certain degree of distance, from certain angle. And good writers very consciously employ perspectives.
The first paragraph in the O. Henry quotation above establishes the scene, like an establishing shot in a movie does. It is a wide-angle shot, putting the character in the environment--the park, the time, the season. A time and season when a lady or even any person is not normally expected to be seen seated on that park bench. However, she is there, seated. Why? What has happened? The tension builds psychologically in the reader's mind. O. Henry sharpens the reader's curiosity, adding more details, a very much essential addition to the environment--"it is likely that the young lady...had merely obeyed a sudden impulse to sit a while and enjoy a foretaste of coming Spring."
Now the scene established, the author cuts to a closer look of the lady, her face filling the frame, because some signs on her face seem to tell a story. Everything bears a mark/scar, and that mark/scar tells a story. This lady's face has some signs on her face, and Henry traces them. It is to be done only with a close-up--you cannot see the texture of somebody's face, the fine wrinkles of the skin, the skin's health, the details of the scar, the details of the lips' curves, etc. if your eyes are near this person's face. If your eyes are so close, then you get a close-up view of that portion of that person's body. Not everybody is close to everybody else like this. People who are intimate to each other have such views of each other. A doctor examining a particular organ or portion of a patient has a close-up view of that organ, part. There can be any number of other cases in specific or exceptional contexts. Filmmakers, short story and novel writers often use close-ups independently of a viewer, or from another character's point of view (POV), to add texture/details to their work. The second paragraph in the quotation above is an independent close-up. When the story cuts from the establishing shot to this close up, O. Henry begins to tell the more personal story of the lady. It is written, at least vaguely, on her face.