The .gif file is a scene from the movie
Three Ages (1923), that's Buster Keaton.
In the scene, Keaton is being chased and is making his way across rooftops when he reaches a gap between buildings that is too wide to jump. From the moment he begins (in his performance) to process the distance between the rooftops and whether he could actually make such a jump to the actual moment he jumps, exactly seventeen seconds elapse. Such an amount of time feels rather insignificant, but the scene is performed in one unbroken take and is loaded with the suspense of what he will do coupled with the tension already felt in the pursuit. We are able to watch him as he (and we) are invited to solve the dilemma. Naturally, he being Buster Keaton and we being silent comedy spectators, there is an expectation that he will jump, and he does; there is also an expectation on our parts that the jump will not be perfect, but we are heretofore left guessing how exactly it will culminate.
What happens is ultimately beyond expectation. He jumps, but he misses the building, falls through a few awnings, grabs onto a gutter pipe which becomes unmoored and swings him down, sending him through a window, across the floor of firemen's quarters and to the firehouse pole, where he then falls through and lands abruptly onto the ground-level floor. This sequence is sharply edited with multiple cuts (but still not too many; Keaton always wanted the audience to know it was him on screen). Without missing a beat, he stands up, now as dazed as we, and sits down on the back of a fire engine bumper. The beat now is infinitesimally longer than the time between his landing and his move toward the fire engine, but it is nonetheless discernible, enough time for us comprehend what has happened. We are given just enough time before the fire engine, supposedly on this whole time, suddenly leaves the firehouse garage. That sequence — the film's most remarkable action sequence — is exactly twelve seconds, or five whole seconds shorter than the essential inaction that preceded. It is a crucial cinematic move for the comedian's part, and it is wondrous to see how deft Keaton at blending the art of his performance with the science of his editing to achieve the maximum comedic and disorienting effect.
http://www.kunst-der-vermittlung.de/...is-three-ages/ http://www.screensavour.net/2009/08/...ages-1923.html http://deleuzecinemaproject1.blogspo...hree-ages.html 
