Rear Window - I Seeeeee You!

Throughout my (young) life I've noticed for some directors the desire to nail a truly significant 4th wall breaking moment in a film is compulsive but simultaneously terrifying. Acknowledging this almost sacred rule of law established between the audience and the screen can make or break a film-going experience. If it's too heavy-handed then it comes across as insulting stupid, if it's too subtle it won't be noticed at all, if the build-up isn't established then once it happens it doesn't feel properly earned, and if the 4th wall is used too many times it begins to feel like a cheap gimmick. Most directors go through their careers not acknowledging the 4th wall at all, content to not disturb that sanctified barrier. However, when done correctly, a shot that breaks the 4th wall can leave the viewer so viscerally vulnerable no matter how many times they've seen it.

Here is Hitchcock's such shot in Rear Window.

With almost Pavlovian conditioning, Hitchcock has established that whatever the protagonist Jeff sees, the audience sees too. This renders the camera lens non-omniscient. When Jeff expresses frustration that he can't tell what a person is doing because they've moved behind a wall, the audience does too. When Jeff wheels himself into the shadows to not be seen, the audience is right there with him while sitting in a dark theatre. But most importantly is the voyeuristic desire. Jeff is a mirror held up to the movie-goers. We pay the film industry to create stories to let us be peeping toms on people's lives. While watching films we witness people's saddest moments, happiest moments, scariest moments and darkest moments with shameless fascination. Our only form of salvation comes in the form of lights turning on in the theatre to remind us that those people we watched were acting. There's no need to feel guilty about being a privacy-invading monster, those characters aren't real, we're safe. 

This shot of a character looking into the camera at the audience is not new. In cinema history, this can be traced back to The Great Train Robbery made 1903 where the final shot is the leader of the bandits looking straight into the camera, aiming his gun and firing at the audience. While game-changing for its time, the scene itself is extremely artificial. It's a man sitting in a chair in front of a camera with a stone face firing a gun. 

In Rear Window, Jeff is our avatar. He represents what would happen if our film-going voyeurism had consequences. In the scene, Jeff watches from afar as the police rescue Lisa from Mr. Thorwald after breaking into his apartment to find evidence. Just like Jeff, we felt the anxiety when we realized Mr. Thorwald was entering his apartment. We felt relief when the police arrived just in time. We cheered with him when he saw that Lisa was able to secure the wedding ring. 

And we felt the intrusive anger from Mr. Thorwald when he looked directly back at us. Finally realizing he'd been watched all along. Hitchcock was able to capture that brief moment of visceral fear at the possibility where all the characters we've watched in movies suddenly turned around and acknowledged that could actually see us right back.

Fat Girl - The Wolf at the Truck Stop

Despite all of my hang-ups about Fat Girl, there is a scene in the movie that is absolutely brilliant. When the girls and their mother pull into the truck stop to rest, Elena says that she needs to use the bathroom. As an audience member, I'm already panicking. Fat Girl is a horror movie, no doubt about it. But like the great Hitchcock said, "There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it." Breillat goes that extra mile by making the bang horrific too, which is the rape of Anais, but her build up is masterful. Breillat primes our fears with the location of the truck stop, no doubt playing off the cultural implications that a truck stop is the next worst thing a woman can be in after an unmarked van with tinted windows.

Next, she adds bait. Elena says she needs to use the bathroom. She gets out of the car alone, her own mother doesn't even look up from her nap and Anais stays behind. The audience wants to shout, "Why are you going alone?! or What happened to the buddy system?!" because not only is Elena in a seedy location, to begin with, but now she's going to a second more isolated location. This lets the audience's imagination go wild about what horrible things might be happening to Elena off-screen while Breillat keeps the camera inside the car.

Then there's the herring, which is my favorite part of the scene. The herring comes in the form of a truck driver in an 18-wheeler driving past the family's car in the parking lot. The moment is shot wonderfully as the camera takes Anais' POV and she looks out the window and accidentally makes eye-contact with the driver. Breillat is hardly subtle. The Driver is a grizzled middle-aged man with hula-hoop girls on his dashboard while suggestive silhouettes of women decorate the side of his truck. The height of the 18-wheeler makes him look intimidating as he literally stares down at Anais. The truck itself is a loud beast compared to the family's tiny car as if to imply that only he can control it. The Driver ultimately drives off-screen to park somewhere that's not even in the camera's field of view, emphasizing how big this truck stop must be.

At this point, the audience fears the worst. If men like the Driver occupy this truck stop, then what kind of monsters are terrorizing poor Elena in the bathroom. The cherry on top is emphasized by Anais' face as soon as the Driver is gone. She furrows her brow as if to suggest that she realizes how vulnerable her family (a group of women) is, along with a tang of guilt that she let her sister go off by herself.

Breillat doesn't keep Anais and the audience in suspense for long as Anais looks at the window again...to see her sister perfectly fine walking back from the bathroom to the car. The audience breathes a sigh of relief and maybe thinks our fears were overreacting.  Breillat lulls the audience again into a sense of false security, where the girls have a heartwarming talk about being there for each other when they have to face their father and then get ready for sleep. The audience feels like they dodged a bullet.

Only for Breillat to smack us with a baseball bat in the form Anais' Rapist. Everything after him breaking the windshield is part of the proverbial "bang."

The Piano - The Womb Tomb

The ending of The Piano is one of my favorites. I've always had a fascination with innocent morbidness and Piano's ending is a perfect example. The tonal build up to the provocative ending shot is so deliberate and handled with care. The build-up begins with a close-up shot of Ada's new metal finger pressing a piano key as she explains that Baines has fashioned her a new metal finger and gleefully states that she's "quite the town freak." Campion primes the audience with a little morbidness with the form of Ada's extremely apparent artificial finger being attached to her organic stump. The stump itself is a harrowing reminder to the audience of the horrific trauma Ada endured to receive it, so in turn, it makes the metal finger tip look a bit more quaint in comparison.

As Ada continues her monologue, the audience learns that she's decided to try to start speaking again, but that she finds her articulation so embarrassing that she puts a veil over her face while doing so. Ada still suffers anxiety to speak. However, the audience is so happy that Ada is moving forward that we observe her isolating herself with the veil as endearing and a healthy coping mechanism that works just for her and her childlike logic. The scene cuts to her practicing her speech as she runs her finger along the wall and doesn't visually see Baines sneak in her hand's path. He is deliberately quiet so he can surprise her as if he's playing a game. Ada's hand realizes what blocks her path and she smiles. Baines then lifts the veil off her face like a groom would at a wedding and kisses her lips, and then her nose, then both her cheeks, then her forehead. The kissing exudes a tenderness that straddles the line between innocent and erotic. The audience is happy for Ada.

And then the shot immediately cuts to the piano underwater, as Ada says, "I think about my piano in its ocean grave..." and slowly but surely the camera pans back for the audience to see Ada's drowned corpse tied it. The piano music is gone, there's no sound but the muffled waves above and Ada's voice over. Ada talks about how she fantasizes about the stillness and quiet, how it's enough to lull her to sleep when she's restless. The shot remains firm on the piano and Ada's body, letting the audience experience it with her. The audience might find themselves enchanted by the serenity of it too if there wasn't a niggling part reminding us that this would have been the outcome had she been successful in her suicide. Ada ends with, "It is a strange lullaby, but it is mine," and the audience can't help but agree with her.

Ada's lullaby death very much mirrors a mother's womb (the piano also belong to her mother), with the rope serving as the umbilical cord. The tranquility of the womb is unlike any other. Her lullaby can be especially empathetic to people who have also been suicidal. Suicidal people often don't look forward to the act of killing themselves, but rather the peace that comes after it. 

Where Are My Children? - Thanks, Nazis!

If there is one thing I can thank Nazi Germany, it's for making the mentioning of eugenics instantly leave a bad taste in contemporary society's mouth. Eugenics was taken to the extreme by the Nazis as a blueprint to advance the great white race. Their plan was simple: kill or enslave anyone who wasn't white and then make sure that only white people -especially with blond hair and blue eyes- were having as many babies as possible. 

The film Where Are My Children? was deceptive during my first viewing. I almost fell for their silver-tongued ploy. I'm talking about the scene with Dr. Homer. While on the stand the good doctor makes some points about birth control. He talks about three scenarios. One where the child is born in a family that is too poor to afford food and will ultimately stave. Another where a child is born in a family with a drunkard father and is subjugated to abuse every day. And finally a baby victim to infanticide along with its mother's suicide as a reaction to having a child out of wedlock and her lover rejecting her. Dr. Homer argues that these children's tragic lives could've been avoided had their parents used birth control. He presents the idea that no child should be punished for being born, but that there are adults that are not ready/shouldn't be parents. As I watched I found myself nodding along to what he was saying while being astonished that such a film could be created in 1916. 

Then Dr. Homer pulls out a book. He says that it has all the information one needs about the benefits of birth control. As the camera changes perspective for the audience to read,  the book is titled "Eugenics." As Dr. Homer flips through he lands on a page that roughly states that eugenics will help stabilize and establish the prosperity of the white race. This set off my black person alarm bells, but another part of me handwaved it as an "every-film-before-blacksploitation-era-was-banana-bonkers-racist-and-is-definitely-the-norm-I-mean-it's-1916-for-christsakes." However, I would change my tune on the second viewing after doing a little research. After reading Shelly Stamp's analysis, the film took on a much more chilling tone. 

During this scene, Dr. Homer is presented as a man of reason. He's not only teaching the jury about birth control but the audience as well. The way he's shot in the cinematography and the words in his monologue contains the words, God, little angels, God-given, and heaven paint him in a pastoral light preaching to his congregation. As a doctor, he has the dynamic duo in a debate, arguing that not only science supports him, but that it's God's will as well. Who can argue with that? What he's essentially preaching is that birth control should be given in mass to those seen as inferior (aka black/brown/poor people) so that society can control their numbers enough to still be a disposable workforce while not big enough to leech a large number of resources or incite revolution. While those seen as superior (rich whites) will have no need for birth control and their next generation will guide the white race into a new era. Dr. Homer is only vilified when it's found out that he performed abortions on Edith and her friends. Edith and her kind are the rich women who should be having babies to grow the numbers of the great white race and now there's proof Dr. Homer is aborting them! 

What's troubling about this scene is that it frames Dr. Homer into the sympathetic villain. While he ultimately received his just desserts, the audience can't help but agree with some of his ideas and reasons. It's to imply that if only Dr. Homer was a different man or if his ideas were in the hands of someone nobler it would be heroic in another story. The Aesop is that it's up to the audience to take heed of the villain's ideas, but with a nobler outlook. What's even more frightening is that's what most likely happened due to Where Are My Children?'s popularity. The film packed theatres, in fact, it saved the theatre where it originally premiered from going out of business. With America's track record on sterilization of black/brown communities, it's chilling to think of a possible history where America wholly embraced the philosophy of eugenics had Nazi Germany not permanently damaged the perception of it.