Page "History of film" Paragraph 106

In this period the word " Art " was mentioned more and more in connection with motion pictures, and as a result of the increasing artistic ambitions of film-makers, poems began to be transposed directly into films.

D. W. Griffith went further than this, by creating the visual equivalent of the poetic or musical refrain in The Way of the World ( 1910 ), by cutting in shots of church bells at intervals down the length of the film.

However, this was an exceptional case, and it is not until 1912 that there were the first signs of the special expressive use of Insert Shots ; that is, shots of objects rather than people.

In the Italian Ambrosio companies film La mala planta ( The Evil Plant ), directed by Mario Caserini, which involves a case of poisoning, there is an Insert shot of a snake slithering over the ‘ Evil Plant ’.

Another of the still very rare examples at this date is in Griffith's The Massacre, which was made at the end of 1912.

This includes an Insert Shot of a candle at a sick man's bedside guttering out to indicate his death.

Yet another is in the Ambrosio company version of Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei ( The Last Days of Pompeii ) ( 1913 ).

This film includes a scene, preceded by the title " The thorns of jealousy ", in which a rejected woman overhears the man she loves with another woman, and this is followed by a fade to a shot of a pair of doves, which then dissolves into a shot of a bird of prey.