Editing Film (film) (section)

==Synopsis==
Throughout the first two parts, almost everything is seen through the eye of the camera (designated in the script as E), although there are occasional moments when O's perception is seen. In the third part, much more of O's perception of the room and its contents is given. In order to distinguish between the two perceptions, objects seen by O were shot through a [[Scrim (material)|lens-gauze]], blurring his perception while E's perception was shot without gauze or [[Lens filter|filters]], keeping the images sharp.

===The street===
The film opens onto a rippled image that fills the entire screen. Without colour, it is difficult to discern what is being shown, but it is alive. As it moves, it is shown to be an extreme close-up of an eyelid; it fills the entire screen. The eye opens, slowly, closes, opens again, blinks and then fades into a different rippled image, still somewhat organic but changed, still.<ref>"When the rushes of the first frenetic day's outdoor filming were viewed, it was clear that it had been an almost total disaster … Yet the budget did not allow for the scene to be reshot … Hours were spent getting the exact close-up that they required of Buster Keaton's 'creased, reptilian' eye to replace the abandoned outdoor scene with the extras." – Knowlson, J., ''Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), pp 523,524</ref> As the camera begins to [[Panning (camera)|pan]] right and up, it is discernable as a wall; we are outside a building (an old factory situated in [[Lower Manhattan]]). It is summer, though it is hard to tell. The camera's movement is not smooth. It is as if it is looking for something. Eventually, it loses interest and pans left and down back to the wall.

Suddenly, the camera (E) shifts violently to the left. A man (O) is hurrying along the wall from left to right. He pauses, hugging the wall, and E gets a chance to [[Focus (optics)|focus]] on him. He has on a long dark overcoat, the collar of which is turned up and his hat is pulled down over his face. (Keaton had asked Beckett what O was wearing underneath. "I hadn't thought of that," the author admitted and then proposed, "the same coat", which appealed to both men.)<ref name="FilmWest 22" /> He is hanging onto a briefcase with his left hand whilst trying to shield the exposed side of his face with the other. He realises he's been seen and cowers against the wall; E quickly shifts behind him.

No longer conscious of being observed, O starts off again, knocking over a trestle and stumbling over a railway sleeper—anything to stay as close as possible to the wall. He charges into a man and woman, knocking the man's hat off. E looks from the man's face to the woman's and back again. The man has a [[moustache]] and is wearing a [[pince-nez]]. They have been consulting a newspaper, which the woman keeps hold of. They both look appalled at what has happened.

E moves back to a long shot and watches O barge through and on his way. The man replaces his hat, takes off his pince-nez. and looks after the fleeing figure. The couple look at each other and the man "opens his mouth to [[wikt:vituperate#English|vituperate]]"<ref>Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 165</ref> but the woman shushes him, uttering the only sound in the whole play. Together they turn to stare directly at E as an open-mouthed expression takes over their faces; they can not bear to look at what they have seen and turn their faces away. But what had they seen?
The action shifts back to O just as he reaches and turns a corner. He heads off down the street until he realises he is at the right doorway. He enters.

===Stairs===
The camera cuts to the [[Vestibule (Architecture)|vestibule]]. The viewer is directly behind O. Stairs lead up on the left, but O veers right and pauses, pulling himself together. He takes his [[pulse]] and E moves in. As soon as he becomes aware of E's presence he rushes down a couple of steps and cowers beside the wall until the camera retreats a little. When it does he reverses back up to street-level and then begins up the stairs.

A frail old woman is coming down. The camera gives us a brief close-up. "She carries a tray of flowers slung from her neck by a strap. She descends slowly and with fumbling feet."<ref>Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 166</ref> O backs up and hurries down the steps to the right again where he sits down on a step and presses his face against the [[baluster]]s. He glances up briefly to see where she is, then hides his head from view.

As the woman reaches the bottom of the stairs, she looks straight into the lens. The expression on her face changes to the one of wide-eyed horror that was displayed on the faces of the man and woman outside. She closes her eyes and collapses. E checks on where the man had been, but O has made his escape. His coat tails are seen flying up the stairs.

E chases after him and finds him at the top of the first flight. He looks around to see if there is anyone about. Satisfied, he turns left and, not without some difficulty, opens the door to a room and enters. E slips in unnoticed as O locks the door behind him and then takes his pulse once more.

===The room===
We find ourselves in a "small barely furnished room."<ref>Beckett's notes identify this as the man's mother's room. This recalls [[Molloy (novel)|Molloy]]'s return to his mother's room/womb/tomb to die. – Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) ''The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett'', (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), pp 195,383</ref> The man—and the camera following him from behind—survey its contents: a dog and a cat share a basket, a caged [[parrot]] and a [[goldfish]] in its bowl sit atop a small table. The walls are bare, apart from a mirror and an unframed picture pinned to the wall: a [[Sumer]]ian [[Tell Asmar Hoard|Tell Asmar]] figurine<ref>{{Cite web|last=Dukes|first=Hunter|date=2017-09-07|title=The Eyes of Statues|url=https://brooklynrail.org/2017/09/criticspage/The-Eyes-of-Statues|access-date=2021-07-25|website=The Brooklyn Rail|language=en-US}}</ref> with big eyes (described in the screenplay as "the face of [[God the Father]]"<ref>Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 167. The actual photograph was "suggested to him by [[Avigdor Arikha]] [and] was a reproduction of a Sumerian head of God [[Mesopotamian mythology|Abu]] in the Museum in [[Baghdad]]". – Knowlson, J., ''Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 523</ref>). There is also a couch with a filthy pillow, some blankets and a rug on it, a [[rocking chair]]<ref>The rocking-chair is a common Beckettian prop, appearing in the opening chapter of ''[[Murphy (novel)|Murphy]]'', ''Rockaby'', ''Molloy'' (''Trilogy'' p 108) and the abandoned ''Mime de rêveur, A''.</ref> with a "curiously carved headrest"<ref>Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 167</ref> and there is a window with a tattered [[Window blind#Solid blinds|roller blind]] with full-length net curtains to either side.

====Preparation of room====
Systematically, O takes each object or creature in the room and disables its ability to 'see' him: he closes the blind and pulls the net curtains across, he covers the mirror with the rug, the cat and dog (“a shy and uncooperative, little [[Chihuahua (dog)|Chihuahua]]”<ref>Knowlson, J., ''Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 523</ref>) are – with some difficulty – ejected from the room and the picture is torn up. Although stated simply, the mechanics needed to execute these tasks are laborious (e.g., as he passes the window, he hides behind the blanket which he holds in front of himself to cover the mirror and he carries the cat and dog facing away from him as he tries to put them out the door).

After all the above, he goes to sit in the chair. There are two holes in the headrest that suggest eyes.<ref>In his manuscript notes Beckett had not envisioned these 'eye' holes but had written "Make chair back memorable" and foresaw an “upright back, intersecting wooden bars or [[Lozenge (shape)|lozenges]]”. – Notes for ''Film'' (Reading University Library MS 1227/7/6/1 p 15), quoted in Knowlson, J., ''Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 802 n 54</ref> He ignores them and sits. O takes the folder from his case and goes to open it, but there are "two eyelets, well proportioned";<ref>Knowlson, J., ''Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 524</ref> he turns the folder through 90° but he's disturbed by the parrot's eye and has to get up and cover the cage with his coat. He sits again, repeats the same process with his folder and then has to get up and cover the goldfish bowl, too.

"Beckett initially contemplated setting ''Film'' in the evening, but had to decide against it for a practical reason: 'to remove all possibility of his putting off light in room.'"<ref>Pountney, R., ''Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett's Drama'' 1956-1976 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988), p 127</ref>

====Period in rocking chair====
Finally O sits down opposite the [[Denudation|denuded]] wall, opens the folder, and takes out seven photographs of himself, which he examines in sequence:

# 6 months old – in his mother's arms
# 4 years old – kneeling in an attitude of prayer<ref>The photograph in question is also referenced in ''[[How It Is]]'' (London: Calder, 1964), pp 16,17 and refers to a posed photograph of Beckett when he was four kneeling at his mother's knee. It was taken so that Beatrice Evelyn's sister, Dorothy could paint a subject called 'Bedtime' since it was impractical to have the young child pose for any length of time. – Cronin, A., ''Samuel Beckett The Last Modernist'' (London: Flamingo, 1997), p 20</ref>
# 15 years old – in his [[School uniform#United Kingdom|school blazer]], teaching a dog to beg
# 20 years old – in his [[Academic dress|graduation gown]], receiving his scroll from the [[Rector (academia)|Rector]]
# 21 years old – with his arm around his [[Engagement#Fiancé(e)|fiancée]]
# 25 years old – a newly enlisted man, with a little girl in his arms
# 30 years old – looking over forty, wearing a patch over one eye and looking grim

He spends twice as long on pictures 5 and 6. After he looks at the seventh photograph for a few seconds, he rips it up and drops it on the floor. He then works his way through the rest of the photos in reverse order, looking at each one briefly again and then tearing it up. The photograph of him as an infant must be on a tougher mount and he has some difficulty with that one. “[I]n Beckett the distant past is always more tenacious than recent events.”<ref>Robinson, M., ''The Long Sonata of the Dead: A Study of Samuel Beckett'' (New York: Grove Press, 1969), p 35</ref> Afterwards he rocks slightly, hands holding the armrests and then checks his pulse once more.

O is now in a similar situation to the man in ''[[A Piece of Monologue]]'', who has also destroyed all his old photographs and now stands facing a similarly blank wall.

====Investment proper====
<small>(See the opening two paragraphs of [https://web.archive.org/web/20070726060333/http://www.english.fsu.edu/jobs/num07/Num7Cave.htm Richard Cave's review of the 1979 version of the film] for a discussion of the possible definition of 'investment' here).</small>

As O begins to doze off, E begins to move round to his left. Suddenly, O realises he is being watched and turns his head violently to the right. E moves behind him again. He resumes rocking and dozes off. This time E whirls round to the right, passing the window, the mirror, the birdcage and fishbowl and finally stops in front of the space on the wall where the picture was.

E turns around and, for the first time, we are face-to-face with O, asleep in his rocking chair. All of a sudden he wakes and stares straight into the camera lens. He looks very much like the man in the seventh photograph only much older. He still has the eye patch.

He half starts from the chair, then stiffens. Gradually, the horrified look we have seen before on the couple and the old woman's faces appears on his. He is looking at himself, but not the scruffy, wearish man we have been watching. The man before him, standing with a big nail beside his head, has a look of "acute ''intentness''"<ref>Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 169</ref> on his face. O slumps back into the chair and starts rocking. He closes his eye and the expression fades. He covers his face with his hands briefly and then looks again. This time we see the face of E in close-up, just the eyes.

O covers his eyes again, bows his head. The rocking dies down and then stops. The screen goes black. We then see the opening image of the eye, which is frozen, and the credits are presented over it. Once finished, the eye closes and the film is over.