WARNING: Possible spoilers ahead if you have not seen The Sopranos. That being said, I’m still watching the series for the first time, so please consider carefully what thoughts you share with me after reading. Thanks in advance for allowing me to finish this show I am very much enjoying, without spoilers!
This is the strangest transition I’ve ever seen on The Sopranos. What the hell was that? Season 5, episode 10 of The Sopranos, titled “Cold Cuts,” features some strange choices regarding the editing of the episode, but this scene was the most obvious deviation from the norm. Never in any other episode of The Sopranos that I’ve seen (currently watching for the first time, so maybe I’ll be proved wrong as I near the end), has there been such a wild transition.
Carmela walks away from Wegler and then the video starts playing in staggered slow motion, ultimately freezing followed by a wipe transition. At first, I thought my connection was interrupted and the screen was tiling, but this is just part of the episode. It’s jarring.
Maybe whoever put that wipe transition in there was inspired by the Star Wars prequels—oh my god there are so many—or something. Did people like those transitions then? Maybe it was just something of its time? Either way, this scene’s questionable editing took me completely out of the story and I began to focus solely on the editing at that point. I had to stop the show and look up how this happened. When The Sopranos was on air with new episodes, the viewer couldn’t just freeze it and go back to figure out what just happened. I’d imagine viewers were distracted for the rest of the episode trying to understand if it was their television or just the show.
“Cold Cuts” was directed by Mike Figgis. Figgis directed Leaving Las Vegas, featuring Nicholas Cage, and stepped in to guest-direct this one episode. Maybe Figgis was trying to own this episode by adding some extra flair? According to this AV Club article, Figgis doesn’t remember being the one who made the choice.
If you listen to the commentary on the episode, Figgis seems as surprised by [the frozen Carmela scene] as you probably were, indicating that it was likely inserted in post, after he’d moved along”
In this 2013 tweet exchange, it’s still not clear whether Figgis had anything to do with the transition or not. He just agrees that it is “weirdly out of sync” with the rest of the series.
To me, this transition was pretty startling. It wasn’t scary, but it kinda disturbed me in some way because of how unexpected it was. Maybe it made you uncomfortable as well? If you’ve seen Citizen Kane, then you know what unpredictable editing can do to you if you’re a jumpy person. (For real though how did this make it to the final cut???)
I’m also reminded of La Jetée. La Jetée is a film completely made out of still images that transition into each other through fades. It’s all still images, except for one moment. The whole time you’re watching, you get into the groove of the still images, when suddenly you’re hit with blinking eyes! It kinda bothered me the first time I watched this. My viewing experience was disturbed and I was too! I enjoyed the change in style here in Chris Marker’s La Jetée more than in “Cold Cuts” because it was subtle, but it was just as disturbing.
Was this something beyond Figgis’ control? Maybe he just doesn’t want to own this choice? I don’t know for sure. It’s probably the only moment of this show that felt wrong, and there aren’t any good answers out there to explain how this came to be.
If you have any more examples of sudden shifts in style in your viewing experiences, let me know! I’m curious to hear about them.
Thanks for reading, here’s my favorite line from the pilot episode of The Sopranos.