The Cinema Within: The Film-Editing Doc (sort of)

In film-editing, there are good cuts, like those made by Oscar-winning editor Walter Murch and bad cuts, like those made by Harvey “Scissorhands” Weinstein, made solely to reach a target length. Yet, this film rarely addresses the question of why cuts are made. Instead, Murch and several cognitive psychologists study how those cuts are perceived in Chad Freidrichs’ documentary, The Cinema Within, which releases this Tuesday on VOD.

At first, the act of film-watching is considered something very unnatural, because the experience of seeing two completely unrelated images in immediate succession was impossible before the invention of motion pictures. Yet, our brains did not explode.

Somehow, the accepted language of cinema, still paralleled the way human perception works. At least that is what Murch suggests, while quoting an archival interview with John Huston. Essentially, they argue humans rarely pan and scan from one object to another. Instead, we turn are heads and blink. As they often say in this film: “the blink is the cut.”

So, we as human beings intuitively understand the language of film-editing—unless we don’t. Sermin Ildirar tested the hypothesis finding an aging traditional community living in isolation in the Turkish mountains, who watched films for the first time in their lives as part of her experiments. Their heads did not explode either. However, each cut essentially created a new film for them, because they did not perceive them as part of the same continuity.

The Cinema Within is a fascinating film, but it is not the tribute to film-editing many movie buffs might expect. Nobody talks about the process of editing any specific film, nor why certain edits were made or not made. Instead, it addresses scientific studies of perception and epistemology. Yet, the tone is never (or at least rarely) dry, largely thanks to the enthusiasm and eloquence of Freidrichs’ small ensemble of experts.

Arguably, Freidrichs and company do something in The Cinema Within that few documentaries can claim. They help viewers think about their subject in new ways. It is a smart film that should appeal to viewers who Psychology Today in its prime. Highly recommended, The Cinema Within releases this Tuesday (5/20) on streaming and VOD platforms.