Regard oblique, bifurcation et ricochet, ou de l’inquiétante étrangeté du carrello

The carrello, that punctuates time and again Giovanni Pastrone's famous Cabiria (1914), is one of the most intriguing figures in Italian cinema of the 1910s. Traditional historians of cinema generally consider it as an ancestor of the traveling shot. Now, such would not be the case, according to the authors of this article. Even if it is indubitably part of the family of camera movements, and even if it implies the movement of a camera on a dolly, as in a traditional tracking shot, the " cabirian " carrello is endowed with several specific characteristics that make it a unique case in the history of cinema.