10 Most Shocking Jump Cuts In Film History
9. Dan's Corpse - The Birds
Though the jump cut is a fairly elementary editing technique by contemporary standards, it was decidedly less common in decades past, as evidenced by its brilliantly jarring use in Alfred Hitchcock's masterful 1963 horror classic The Birds.
The scene in question sees Lydia Brenner (Jessica Tandy) stumble upon the corpse of poor Dan Fawcett, whose eyes have been pecked out by the crazed birds.
Rather than show the audience Dan's mutilated face in a single cut or even zoom into it, Hitch decides to employ two jump cuts, each inching us closer into Fawcett's face.
It's a simple but startling effect when viewed today, but back in 1963 it was surely positively terrifying.
Better still, the scene doesn't employ a bombastic musical score to emphasise the horror for the cheap seats: Hitch only uses diegetic sound, which makes it that much more believably unsettling in all of its quiet "banality."
As for why Hitch opted for an unconventional jump cut? It was simply another of his many conscious decisions to break with cinematic tradition. In his own words, "I wanted a change from the zooming in."