This idea of telling sometimes being stronger than showing is starting to interest me. For example, the scene in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy where Smiley recounts his one face to face meeting with Karla. It's such a masterful scene that to cut away to some literal reconstruction of those events would be sacrilege. Of course, it helps to have Gary Oldman - or indeed, Jodie Foster - playing your lead! I wonder if the reason these two examples work is because the scene is not much about *what* happened, but about the way it haunts the protagonist in the present day? So their present day reactions really are what we want to see...

Really good stuff....