Pudovkin's Mechanics of the brain - continued...

The comparison of these scenes and their particular camera performances with each other shows that the opening and closing of the lens in the nature and hospital sections are much livelier and more noticeable than in the ones in the laboratory and studio: the lens opens in the beginning suddenly after a cut from a long shot at the beach into a close-up of a group of undressing boys. Correspondingly the lens is hardly opened when watching the birth procedure and later the feeding of the baby. Against this the shots at the laboratory give a permanent diffuse light with a slightly closed lense, just as the scene of playing children in the studio is also shown with a mainly constant objective.

If Pudovkin permanently holds the eye of the spectator on the presence of a camera focus, forces him again and again to the point of view of the lens itself, into the black box of the camera, it was to make him aware of his mediated perception. If Pudovkin pulls the attention of the viewer from detail into long shot and back again, if he repeats shots in changing situations, it was to make the viewer realize the functioning of his perception in a reflexological manner: "The lens of the camera is the eye of the spectator. It depends on the director if the spectator will become a good or a bad observer. It is clear that the turning of the attention there and back - it corresponds to the montage - is a process based on strongly regular forms. The forms must be properly observed and have to be completely transferred to the structure of the montage."