There is a moment early in David Lean’s 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia, where T.E. Lawrence (Peter O’Toole) looks into the burning flame of a lit match just prior to his transfer from London to Cairo.
The camera lingers over the orange and yellow flame, before the scene cuts suddenly from a domestic English setting to a sunrise over a vast desert. The colours here are of a similar hue, and through these visual connections we realise we have instantly traversed both time and place.
This strategy of connecting edit points based on visual (and in some cases aural) similarities is known as the “match cut”. The Lawrence of Arabia example is famed for its use of a literal match; the film won the 1963 Academy Award for best editing.
Today, the match cut remains an indispensable tool for editors and filmmakers – one that can shock us, move us, and help draw us into reality-defying fictional worlds.
How it works
The match cut is simply a process in which two images are cut together in the edit, where the transition from one shot to the next is matched across similarity in shape, colour or movement.
Sometimes, this technique is designed to appear seamless, or “invisible”, to suggest continuity between two visual states.
One example would be someone running towards a door, and in the next shot running through the other side. This match cut, on action, uses the form of the person in motion to connect both shots.
A tool for continuity
Like many editing processes, the match cut evolved over time as the language of cinema developed.
Early, crude versions can be traced back to the work of French filmmaker George Méliès, who employed the “stop-trick” process. This involved stopping and restarting the camera to display a sudden change or visual trick.
In his 1903 film A Trip to the Moon, two images are cut together to make it look like the moon is sneering after being penetrated by a bullet-shaped rocket. This early attempt paved the way for more sophisticated and creative approaches.
Inducing shock
In a more overt approach, match cuts can be harsh, poignant or deliberately jarring.
Luis Bunuel’s 1929 short film Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) offers one example, where a bright circular moon intersected by a thin cloud is cut to the image of a woman’s eyeball being sliced by a razor.
This cut draws a shocking graphic match between the natural celestial body at night and the young woman’s apparent willing submission to gruesome disfigurement. The forced comparison intensifies our response to both images.
Some match cuts also invite comparison as a way of highlighting the thematic or narrative concerns of a film.
One famous match cut from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) shows a prehistoric man using a bone as a weapon, which he throws above him. As the bone flies high into the air, editor Ray Lovejoy cuts to an image of a cylindrical space station moving out of frame, as if following the bone’s earlier trajectory.
Through this, Kubrick and Lovejoy draw parallels between the “uncivilised” violence of early man, and preempt the “civilised” violence of the future – embodied in the story by the murderous computer HAL.
This match cut reinforces the perspective of the film, by forcing us to draw an uncomfortable comparison between the cave man’s behaviour and our prospective technology-driven future.
Sound-based match cuts
Sound designers can also use a form of match cut for similar emotional or narrative impact. A specific sound can act as a sonic bridge between two separate scenes, connecting them narratively.
Consider the following transition in Saving Private Ryan (1998). The aged private (Harrison Young) stands in a cemetery by the sea as he begins to recall his war experience. He hears the sound of crashing waves, and this sound remains as the image cuts to the arrival of the allied forces on the beaches of Normandy.
In some cases, a sound in one scene may be closely replicated in the subsequent scene. For instance, in Joe Wright’s film Atonement (2007), the sound of a typewriter cuts to a scene of someone striking a match.
Emotional depth
The match cut is often used to deliver emotional impact. In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1961 film Psycho, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) collapses to the floor after she is brutally murdered in the shower.
The water circling the drain echoes her loss of consciousness as she slips into death, and the subsequent image of her sightless eye shows us the incredible emotional power of a well-staged match cut.
Beyond basic continuity editing, this technique has evolved as a creative approach to tell stories, foreshadow the future, and provoke the most keen-eyed viewers.