The two black porters follow her and carry her luggage to the bench on the outside of the station, Jill sees the clock on the station read 7:55. Time passes and the trackside is now deserted; Jill looks at her watch which now reads 10:10 and her luggage is back at trainside where she stepped off, and the two black porters again follow her with the luggage past the same bench and through the station into Flagstone proper.
Cusser, I've got to thank you for bringing that scene to my attention. It caused me to study it more carefully then I ever had before. I was gratified to make a few discoveries.
I?d really never thought about Leone?s use of a time jump in that scene before, I?d always just read the whole thing as Jill waiting and then giving up, simple as that. But SL actually does something interesting there, involving the station clock and Jill?s watch. Breaking the sequence down: 1) CU of Jill looking at the station clock; 2) CU of clock face; 3) then apparently a reaction shot of Jill just after looking at the clock face, but in fact, an unrelated moment two hours and 15 minutes later where Jill?s expression shows worry; 4) then Jill looks down at her watch; 5) we see the time on the watch face indicating the passage of time; 6) reaction shot of Jill. As I say, I never concerned myself with the time jump before, but once my attention was drawn to it I was surprised to discover how misleading Leone?s direction was there. The jump doesn?t come with Jill looking down at her watch, it comes before that where it?s almost impossible not to miss. The reason is that Leone uses a match cut between shots 1) and 3). I re-ran the scene several times before I finally got it. It?s confusing because in both 1) and 3) Claudia is framed, in identical set-ups, against the background of a train car, but they aren?t the same cars! In 1) there is the word ?Morton? on the side of the car; in 3) there is no lettering. But because the cars are the same color it?s easy to miss this detail, especially as the viewer is focusing on Claudia?s face in the foreground. So maybe Leone was being just a bit too clever, even to the point of obfuscation. Or maybe he was slipping in an Easter egg for a fanboy watching the film 40 years later.
