Movies and Meaning- Pearson New International Edition

by Stephen Prince

  CAMERA POSITION, GESTURE, AND EXPRESSION By varying the camera-to-subject distance, the filmmaker can manipulate the viewer’s emotional involvement with the material in complex ways. What the camera sees is what the spectator sees. As the camera moves closer to a character, viewers are brought into the character’s personal space in ways that can be very expressive and emotional.

  People express emotion and intention in ways that go beyond the words they

  speak. Posture, gesture, facial expression, eye contact, and vocal inflection express feelings and help to define relationships. These signals vary by culture, but all members of a society learn how to read the expressions and gestures of other people as a way of inferring what they are thinking or feeling. By varying camera placement, filmmakers can call attention to significant expressions and gestures and thereby help viewers understand the meaning of the relationships and situations depicted on screen.

  When a filmmaker cuts to a close-up, the director can emphasize and clarify a character’s reaction, as well as bring viewers into the action and the personal emotional space of the character. Depending on how the viewer feels about that character, this can give rise to either positive emotions (e.g., compassion, empathy) or negative ones (e.g., fear, anxiety).

  23

  Film Structure

  In George Cukor’s A Star Is Born (1954), James Mason plays a tragic Hollywood actor, Norman Maine. With his acting career destroyed, the alcoholic Maine collapses into despair and considers suicide. He begins to cry. The camera draws in to a medium close-up, and director Cukor keeps the shot on screen for a surprisingly long time. Cukor said, “To see that man break down was very moving. All the credit for that goes to James [Mason]. He did it all himself. What I did was to let him do it and let it go on and on, let the camera stay on him for an eternity.” The shot is designed to elicit the viewer’s empathy by revealing an intimate glimpse of a man’s private hell.

  Facial expressions do not have to be realistic to express emotion or intention. Close-ups of Gollum (Andy Serkis) in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2004) emphasize his semi-human character, rendered with visual effects. These effects transform normal human reality but also correspond with real facial cues. The bulging eyes and open mouth accurately convey the character’s anger, but they do so with exaggeration.

  A STAR IS BORN

  (WARNER BROS.,

  1954)

  Changing facial ex-

  pressions in a single,

  extended shot from

  A Star Is Born convey

  the despair of Norman

  Maine (actor James

  Mason). As a photo-

  graphic medium, the

  cinema is especially

  powerful in its ability to

  capture and emphasize

  the smallest details of

  human facial expression

  as signs of emotion.

  The face is one of cin-

  ema’s most profound

  channels for emotional

  expression. Frame

  enlargements.

  24

  Film Structure

  THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING (NEW LINE, 2004)

  Unreal faces in fantasy films still can have a special expressive power. Gollum’s bulging eyes and snarling mouth accurately convey his greed for the ring and his anger at those who stand in his way, but the emotions are conveyed with some exaggeration. Frame enlargement.

  The application of digital tools in filmmaking has made great progress in little over a decade, with digital artists learning to represent a great variety of images and lighting conditions. Breakthroughs in the representation of water, for example, made possible the convincing digital oceans in Finding Nemo (2003) and The Perfect Storm (2000). (Compare the tidal wave in that film with the one in The Abyss (1989), a decade earlier.) But the emotional richness and complexity of facial expression have not yet been among these breakthroughs. The facial reactions of digital characters in Madagascar (2005), Shrek 2 (2004), or The Incredibles (2004) are conveyed very effectively as caricature rather than in a photorealist style.

  THE POLAR EXPRESS (WARNER BROS., 2004)

  To date, most digitally created faces have involved cartoon or nonhuman characters because their expressions can be rendered in broader terms. For this film, motion capture techniques converted the performances of live actors (such as Tom Hanks, pictured here) into cartoon figures. The results were disappointing. The faces look stiff and do not show the range of expression of a real person. Frame enlargement.

  25

  Film Structure

  Case Study CHARLIE CHAPLIN

  Few filmmakers understood the emotional implications

  of camera position better than Charles Chaplin. Chaplin

  used a formula to guide his camera placements: long

  shot for comedy, close-up for tragedy. He understood

  that the long shot was best suited for comedy because

  it allowed viewers to see the relationship between

  Charlie the tramp and his environment, particularly

  when he was causing chaos and confusion, as he might

  when tackling a waiter carrying a tray of food or step-

  ping on a board with a brick on one end, causing it

  to catapult onto the head of a policeman. Laughter

  depended on seeing these relationships and having

  sufficient emotional distance from the character. The

  long shot helped provide viewers with that emotional

  CITY LIGHTS (UNITED ARTISTS, 1931)

  distance. By contrast, Chaplin knew that the close-up,

  by emphasizing a character’s emotional reaction, could

  Chaplin’s sublime expression in the final image

  of City Lights . Chaplin intuitively understood the

  invite tears rather than laughter. Aiming for the heart-

  emotional implications of camera position, and

  strings of his audience, he used his close-ups sparingly

  he reserved the close-up for special moments of

  so that they would have exceptional dramatic intensity.

  pathos and sentiment. His extraordinary face,

  The ending of City Lights (1931) illustrates this quite

  the tentative gesture of his hand, the rose it

  well. Charlie has been courting a blind flower girl who

  clutches—these emphasize his romantic yearn-

  believes that he is a millionaire. Charlie happily plays

  ing and his pained embarrassment at being

  along. At the end of the film, the flower girl regains her

  revealed as a tramp and not a millionaire. Frame

  enlargement.

  eyesight, chances upon Charlie, the disreputable tramp,

  and realizes with disappointment who he is. At this mo-

  ment, Chaplin shows Charlie’s extraordinary expression

  and spatial intimacy with a terrifying or dangerous

  in close-up, a mixture of hope, love, fear, embarrass-

  character, as in The Exorcist (1973).

  ment, and humiliation. This is one of the most perfect

  The effects of camera position, then, are context-

  close-ups in film history. It emphasizes the complex feel-

  dependent, a matter of how a given position is related to

  ings between the characters, magnifies the emotions on

  the dramatic or emotional content of a shot or scene. By

  screen, and intensifies them for the film’s viewers.

  using camera position, filmmakers can enhance or inhibit

  This scene elicits positive emotions from viewers.

  the viewer’s emotional involvement with a character or

  Obviously, though, many films and genres, like horror,

  situation and can elicit both positive and negative emo-

  appeal to viewers by eliciti
ng such negative emotions

  tions. Good filmmakers are intelligent in their choice of

  as fear, disgust, and anxiety. Within the safe confines of

  camera position, understanding when to cut in to close-

  a fictional film world, these negative emotions can be

  up and when to pull back to long shot. Each position

  pleasurable to experience. In this context, a strategi-

  gives the viewer a unique perspective on the action, and

  cally placed close-up can be disturbing and frightening

  filmmakers understand that the effects of these positions

  if it brings the viewer into a relationship of proximity

  can be enhanced by a careful choice of camera angle. ■

  Camera Angle

  The camera’s angle of view typically varies from shot to shot. Camera angles are classified as variations of three essential positions: low, medium (or eye-level), and high.

  Low- and high-angle positions are usually defined relative to what the camera is filming. A low-angle shot in Spider-Man 2 (2004) shows Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) 26

  Film Structure

  throwing away his Spider-Man costume,

  having decided to stop being a superhero.

  The low-angle framing emphasizes the se-

  riousness and drama of this moment.

  Filmmakers use camera angles for

  a variety of expressive purposes. These

  include conveying information about a

  character’s view of the world and ac-

  companying emotions. In Citizen Kane ,

  director Orson Welles uses camera angle

  to evoke young Charlie Kane’s boyhood

  feelings of bewilderment and powerless-

  ness in his new foster home. Charlie’s

  imposing guardian gives him a sled for a

  THE EXORCIST (WARNER BROS., 1973)

  Christmas present. To magnify Charlie’s

  Facial close-ups can be a very powerful way of eliciting nega-

  feelings of helplessness, Welles shoots the

  tive emotion from viewers. When the possessed Regan (Linda

  man towering above him, from the boy’s

  Blair) stares into the camera, as here, it is difficult to avoid

  flinching. The camera’s proximity to a dangerous or frighten-

  point of view, using an extremely low cam-

  ing character can generate in viewers a sense of being threat-

  era angle that forces viewers to look up to

  ened. Frame enlargement.

  this figure, much as Charlie has to do.

  Camera angle also can complicate emotional responses by playing against the visual relationships viewers want to have with characters, as Hitchcock does in his use of high angles during moments of extreme emotional crisis. In Psycho (1960), he used one of these extremely high angles as a way of solving a dramatic and narrative problem and of working at cross-purposes with the viewer’s desired response. A first-time viewer believes that the psychopathic killer in the film is the deranged mother of motel owner Norman Bates. In the film’s climax, Norman is revealed as the killer. The mother has been dead for many years, and Norman has kept her alive in his mind, keeping her body in the house, even dressing up like her and speaking in her voice. Hitchcock’s narrative problem was to keep the audience from realizing midway through the film—when Norman moves her body from the upstairs bedroom to the basement—that the mother was dead.

  DR. STRANGELOVE

  (COLUMBIA PICTURES,

  1964)

  The psychotic General Jack

  Ripper (Sterling Hayden)

  launches a nuclear war be-

  cause he feels his “precious

  bodily fluids” are being

  drained by communist spies.

  The low camera angle em-

  phasizes Ripper’s looming

  presence and his madness.

  The oversized cigar points to

  his sexual anxieties. Frame

  enlargement.

  27

  Film Structure

  PSYCHO (PARAMOUNT

  PICTURES, 1960)

  Hitchcock solves a narrative prob-

  lem in Psycho by using this high

  camera angle. The bizarre, distort-

  ing perspective conceals the fact

  that Norman’s mother is dead as

  he carries her down to the fruit

  cellar. Frame enlargement.

  Hitchcock attached his camera to the ceiling and filmed from directly overhead as Norman carries the corpse down to the cellar. The extremely high angle, coupled with the jostling movement as Norman goes down the stairs, prevents the audience from realizing he is carrying a corpse. The viewer is even fooled into thinking that the mother is kicking in protest.

  ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (FOCUS FEATURES, 2004)

  Camera angle can visualize point of view, even one that cannot literally exist. When Clementine (Kate Winslet) and Joel (Jim Carrey) lie on a frozen pond and look at the stars, the camera looks down on the characters as if from the heavens. The stars cannot be gaz-ing at the characters, but the camera angle creates an effect that suggests something like this idea. The angle adds a moment of visual poetry. Frame enlargement.

  28

  Film Structure

  Hitchcock’s use of the high angle in this scene is an ingenious solution to his narrative problem. It introduces a bizarre, distorting perspective into the scene that plays against the viewer’s desired visual relationship with the characters.

  Because of the questions that the narrative has raised about this mysterious figure, viewers want to see Norman’s mother clearly and up close, not from the odd angle Hitchcock provides. But, by delaying the desired response, Hitchcock builds FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT

  Alfred Hitchcock

  Alfred Hitchcock was a consummate showman and

  entertainer and a serious artist who used film to

  explore dark currents of human thought and be-

  havior. He thrived in the classical Hollywood studio

  system because his films were popular with audi-

  ences and enjoyed considerable critical respect. As a

  result, Hitchcock became one of the most powerful

  Hollywood directors and one of the few known to

  the public by name.

  Born into a Catholic family in the East End of

  London in 1899, Hitchcock grew into a solitary boy

  possessed of an active imagination and fascinated by

  crime. Uncommonly anxious, he believed his many

  VERTIGO (PARAMOUNT PICTURES, 1958)

  fears motivated his preference for making films about

  James Stewart portrays a detective terrified of

  innocent characters suddenly caught up in an unpre-

  heights in Vertigo , Hitchcock’s most passionate

  dictable whirlpool of danger, madness, and intrigue.

  and poetic film. Stewart’s pose here is a classic

  “I was terrified of the police, of the Jesuit Fathers, of

  Hitchcock image of the individual haunted by

  physical punishment, of a lot of things. This is the root

  the darkness in his mind and beset by chaos in

  of my work.”

  the outer world. Hitchcock’s darkest films offer

  In 1920, Hitchcock entered the British film indus-

  no places of safety. Frame enlargement.

  try as a scriptwriter and set and costume designer.

  In 1924–1925, he worked as an assistant director,

  and then director, in Germany on several British–

  Hitchcock rapidly consolidated his reputation as a

  German co-productions. He studied and absorbed

  leading director and defined his unique screen world.

  the style of German Expressionism, and in all hisr />
  Using suspense as his method for drawing the

  subsequent films he relied on expressionistically dis-

  audience into the fictional screen world, Hitchcock

  torted images to suggest an unstable world.

  concentrated on stories of crime, madness, and

  Hitchcock rose to the peak of the British industry

  espionage in which ostensibly innocent characters

  with a cycle of elegant spy thrillers— The Man Who

  confront their guilt and complicity in unsavory or

  Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), The Lady

  villainous activities. In Shadow of a Doubt (1943) a

  Vanishes (1938). Seeking greater creative freedom

  psychopathic serial killer (Joseph Cotton) visits his

  and technical resources, Hitchcock left Britain for

  sister in a small California town, and his idealistic

  Hollywood and completed his first U.S. film, Rebecca ,

  young niece discovers his secret and the many ties

  in 1940. An auspicious debut, it won an Academy

  that bind her to him. In Notorious (1946), two U.S.

  Award for Best Picture. In the years that followed,

  spies (Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman) fall in love

  ( continued)

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  Film Structure

  while manipulating and emotionally betraying one

  Hitchcock had one more hit in the 1960s— The

  another. In Strangers on a Train (1951), a charming

  Birds (1963)—and then began a period of decline.

  psychopath (Robert Walker) proposes an exchange

  Marnie (1964), Torn Curtain (1966), and Topaz

  of murders to a celebrity tennis player. “You do

  (1969) were critical and commercial disappoint-

  mine, I do yours,” he tells the shocked but intrigued

  ments. The industry and the modern audience were

  athlete.

  changing, and Hitchcock could not adapt. The

  Hitchcock reached the height of his powers, and

  old studio system was dead, and many of the stars

  the zenith of his career, in the 1950s with a series of