Fritz Lang - 1953
Lang's technique has changed. He now employs much longer scenes, and much longer takes. These are mobile takes, sliding on each axis around rooms. The postions they end up in are surely pre-destined, considering how he retains pictoral beauty. But would an earlier Lang have allowed the lighting to change so much within a single take, losing the precise control over the 'one action-one shot' rule I made up?
Here we have sexual violence foregrounded pretty blatantly. We have the central nasty man, we have a horrible, slow realisation of his intentions. Lang rarely makes it clear what a character's exact intentions are, what their mindset is; most evident here. What is most remarkable about the structure, especially so for the time, is how Lang has completely misled us through the whole course of the film (or is the twist at the end I sop? I would guess not, it's Lang's intention). I thought that was only allowed in Chandler adaptions. But Lang just, without ever having promised, makes us believe something completely false; most unclassical.
But back to the sexual violence; the newspaper man meant to be our hero seems to share rather the same attitude towards woman, it is worth noticing. This is more than a grubby world, it's a violent one.
The settings are lovingly, disgustingly, detailed. The bar is great, as is Nat King Cole's song (a wonderful mirror framing is used; reminiscent, as Lang's use of the vertical often is, of Murnau's scenes inside the dancehall in 'Sunrise', the dance reflected overhead). Most impressive, again.
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