 |
 |
Hi, for audience startled but character not: see Polanski's "Repulsive": The scene where C. Deneuve closes the closet and we see the "hairy man" in the mirror. Polanski uses a clever way of framing, so that the audience does not expect to see anything in the mirror at all (he does not show the stereotypical establishing shot of the "empty" mirror, and then the same shot with the reflection of the man. Instead, he changes camera position, so the audience without implying anything threatening coming soon.) for character startled, but audience not: I think many Hitchcock scenes, in which he uses suspense to achieve this effect. The audience knows about a coming thread, but the character does not. However, one might argue that, even though the audience knows about the coming climax, there is still a moment of surprise (eg. see Psycho: shower scene and scene in which M. Balsam is killed). Hope to get more opinions on this, Catalin --- Robert Blanchet <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Hi everybody! > > In _Engaging Characters_ Murray Smith points to the > fact that the "startle > effect" in movies is typically used in such a way > that the emotional > response of the viewer and the emotional reaction of > the character we see > on screen run parallel (p. 102). E.g. at the end of > _Alien_ (1979) we are > startled by the sudden reappearance of the Alien and > so is Ripley. > > While I think that the startle effect is indeed used > in this "synchronous" > fashion most of the time, I'm wondering whether it's > possible to come up > with some examples where only the viewer is > startled, but the character on > screen is shown to remain unaffected or affected in > a clearly different way > than the viewer. > > What I'm not looking for are scenes where the > apparent threat simply turns > out to be a harmless object (e.g. Ripleys cat and > not the Alien). That is, > after the fact that both we and the character on > screen have been startled. > There are obviously "thousands" of these. > > Also of interest (and probably much easier to find) > would be scenes in > which the character is shown to be startled while > the viewer clearly > remains unaffected. Of course in this case the > unaffectedness should not > come from the fact that the startle effect was > simply executed so poorly > that it fails to deliver what the filmmakers > obviously intended. > > The point by the way is not to challenge Smith's > view, but rather to be > able to highlight his assessment that the startle > response per se is > structured differently than what he calls "emphatic" > and "sympathic" > engagements with the character. > > Thanks for your help. > > Robert Blanchet __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com