A Director's Eye

The other day while watching Roman Polanski's, Chinatown, I happened to notice his use of frames to draw the audience into the last reel of the movie.
The images below show this, and to stress the point the staircase rail looks just like a strip of celluloid.

They don't make em like that anymore!

[Adrienne]

Very interesting thistle on the film clips. And yes, I did notice now that you mentioned it about the staircase !

I'm actually surprised someone has shown interest in this thread
So...here's something I hadn't noticed until I made the above images. There seems to be a direct correlation between the spectacles and the camera lens.

Earlier in the film the private investigator Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is hired to spy on Mr. Mullray, the head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
Here we see him play a game of peekaboo with a young woman in a new dress.

In a short interview with the director, he said that the image in the lens of the camera is incorrect. It should be reversed. He gave this a lot of thought before deciding to show it as it is, making it easier for the audience.

[Adrienne]

Hey !

It's an interesting thread, not the usual .....You are very observant to be noticing all these intricate details. And.... you have sparked my curiosity to want to watch the movie.

Originally Posted by Adrienne

Hey !

It's an interesting thread, not the usual .....You are very observant to be noticing all these intricate details. And.... you have sparked my curiosity to want to watch the movie.

I'm only observant after having watched the film and given it some thought.
And to illustrate how much a geek I am, the next time I watch Chinatown I'll be looking for any scene which contains a bird or a birdcage. I can't help thinking that the camera shot sets up an odd perspective when the young woman in the new dress enters the scene. She is seen to appear on the branch of the tree, like a little bird - "watch the birdie"!
As I'm within a hair's breadth of giving away the end of the movie, I'll leave it there.

Have you seen the Ridley Scott si-fi film, Prometheus?
I've been curious as to why the audience is led to believe that the character, Miss Vickers, is human. In hindsight it's obvious she's a robot.
So why the mystery?

[Adrienne]

ohhh the suspense ! now I have to find that movie and subconsciously or consciously, I will be looking for birds and birdcages.

No, haven't seen Prometheus..... mystery is good, its what draws people to certain films ! Maybe she is human so as not to create suspicion about herself, easily able to blend in with the humans ?

Originally Posted by Adrienne

No, haven't seen Prometheus.....

Maybe just as well. Having had a closer look the adult content is best discussed elsewhere.

t.

So, on with the show ...

There is a theme running through the Jaws movie that isn't as obvious as it might first appear to be. That being the focus Stephen Spielberg puts on the "tooth".

My favourite shot in the whole movie is this one:



I honestly can't say why. I just love that shot!

The frame on the left hand side is a shot from the mid point of the film. When Brody's son Michael is almost killed by the shark he realizes his only way to protect his family and home is to go after the monster.

As the camera slowly zooms in there is shown a revealing missing tooth.




The two frames have an interesting comparison. On the one hand, the enemy threat is shown in the gap and hidden beneath the surface of the sea. The other frame may suggest that the three hunters are in fact the hunted - which is odd! Can a shark really do that ?

Here is another comparison shot, in which we see that Brody's son Sean, and Quint, have something in common...a missing tooth.



And as if to emphasize the point, in the left hand frame it is interesting to note that the chair in the background looks uncannily like an upper lip and a toothy grin.



t.

Hooper finds a tooth of the Great White Shark.



Quint is killed by Jaws. In this close up we can see that he had replaced his false tooth.





And finally ... "Smile you sonofa..."





BOOM

Here's an interesting image caption from Jaws.



When Brody and Hooper do an unofficial autopsy on the shark that the townspeople believe is the one responsible for the death of the first two victims, a Louisiana license plate

007 D 981

is one of the items pulled from inside the shark's stomach.

This may be Stephen Spielberg paying homage to the James Bond film, Live and Let Die, which had been released a couple of years earlier.
James Bond had been chased in a speedboat through the Louisiana bayous by the bumbling, J W Pepper of the Louisiana State Police.
There was also a shark tank in that movie in which James Bond escapes and kills the villain with a shark gun gas pellet, inflating him like a balloon until he exploded.

It's possible that the Bond villain, Jaws, who didn't appear until the 1977 film, The Spy Who Loved Me, may have a been a nod to Spielberg, returning the compliment.

With respect - Richard Kiel, the actor who played the Bond villain, Jaws, died last month, September 11 2014, aged 74.

t