In film, a match cut is a cut from one shot to another in which the composition of the two shots are matched by the action or subject and subject matter. For example, in a duel a shot can go from a long shot on both contestants via a cut to a medium closeup shot of one of the duellists. The cut matches the two shots and is consistent with the logic of the action. This is a standard practice in film-making, to produce a seamless reality-effect.
Wider context
Match cuts form the basis for continuity editing, such as the ubiquitous use of match on action. Continuity editing smooths over the inherent discontinuity of shot changes to establish a logical coherence between shots. Even within continuity editing, though, the match cut is a contrast both with cross-cutting between actions in two different locations that are occurring simultaneously, and with parallel editing, which draws parallels or contrasts between two different time-space locations.
A graphic match (as opposed to a graphic contrast or collision) occurs when the shapes, colors and/or overall movement of two shots match in composition, either within a scene or, especially, across a transition between two scenes. Indeed, rather than the seamless cuts of continuity editing within a scene, the term "graphic match" usually denotes a more conspicuous transition between (or comparison of) two shots via pictorial elements. A match cut often involves a graphic match, a smooth transition between scenes and an element of metaphorical (or at least meaningful) comparison between elements in both shots.
A match cut contrasts with the conspicuous and abrupt discontinuity of a jump cut.
Notable examples
Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey contains a famous example of a match cut. After an ape discovers the use of bones as a tool and a weapon, he throws one triumphantly into the air. As the bone spins in the air, there is a match cut to a much more advanced tool: an orbiting satellite. The match cut helps draw a connection between the two objects as exemplars of primitive and advanced tools respectively, and serves as a neat summary of humanity's technological advancement up to that point. The satellite is unidentified in the film, but the novel makes it clear that it is an orbital weapon platform, thus linking with the use of the bone as a weapon.
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale (1944) is a predecessor for the 2001: A Space Odyssey match cut in which a fourteenth-century falcon cuts to a World War II aeroplane. The sense of time passing but nothing changing is emphasised by having the same actor, in different costumes, looking at both the falcon and the aeroplane.
An early Hollywood example of the technique is the dream sequence in Buster Keaton's 1924 fourth feature film, Sherlock Jr.. The scene contains a number of match cuts as the protagonist's surroundings change sharply around him several times: at one point he dives off a rock into the sea but lands in a pile of snow on a hillside.
Another early example is Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941), which opens with a series of match dissolves that keeps the titular character's lit window in the same part of the frame while the cuts take viewers around his dilapidated Xanadu estate, before a final match dissolve takes viewers from the outside to the inside where Kane is dying.
Another match cut comes from Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962) where an edit cuts together Lawrence blowing out a lit match with the desert sun rising from the horizon. Director David Lean credits inspiration for the edit to the experimental French New Wave. The edit was later praised by Steven Spielberg as inspiration for his own work.
One earlier use of the match cut is shown in Satyajit Ray's film, The World Of Apu (1959). The cut starts from a movie screen, which the couple Apu and Aparna are watching, to the windowpane of the carriage they are returning home in. This technique allows for a rather sound montage, moving from a boy burning in fire in the movie they are watching, to the fire dissolving, and finally, to a rectangular faded glass pane as the camera rolls back and reveals the entire carriage.