the shot you refer to is the zoom in/track out shot (or zoom in/ dolly out,
depending on if you're using a track or a dolly to move the camera quickly
backwards) and was made famous by Hitchcock when he used it to visually
describe Jimmy Stewart's vertigo in (naturally) Vertigo. Using a zoom lens,
the camera zooms into the subject while simultaneously being pulled back
quickly on the track or dolly - therefore the background seems to suddenly
stretch, while the center stays disconcertingly the same. You can also
technically get the same effect in reverse, which is what you're describing-
a zoom out/track in shot, but the more common usage is zoom in/track out.
Hitchcock discusses his use of this with Truffaut on p. 187 of the
interviews - he remembers getting very drunk one night and having the
sensation that everything was moving away from him. He had first wondered
how to achieve this effect it for Joan Fontaine's fainting in Rebecca but he
didn't come up with a solution until fifteen years later, when he combined
the dolly and the zoom on a miniature staircase for Vertigo.
It is almost always used to show sudden shock, or knowledge, or disoriention
on the part of a character. Scorsese, for example, uses it in the diner
window in Goodfellas when the Ray Liotta character realizes he's going to be
betrayed by de Niro.
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