So here's a new feature for all us RDers if anyone's interested. I've posted a clip from Sam Fuller's Forty Guns that I found on You Tube for your analytic pleasure, a little sharpening of the skills, a chance to display your critical footwork. Dig in and share your thoughts on the clip and what's at work in the shot/scene. When we've exhausted it (as if that's possible -- it's Sam Effing Fuller for goddsakes) someone find another clip and post it and we'll do it all again! Okay. Who's game?
5 comments:
I'll be game tomorrow, once I finish getting the dissertation into proper fucking format.
cool, Mookie. Otherwise i'd say this feature went over like gangbusters!
How's everyone doing out there?
OK, here's what I picked up from it. Jessica (the Barbara Stanwyck character) is hiding something -- hence her silence and the shadow that crosses her lower face. She can't look the gunslinger (whom I presume to be Barry Sullivan) in the face as he explains his cynicism, his reluctance to use lethal force anymore and his decision to leave town after an upcoming wedding. He's obviously an outsider, not least because he speaks with an East Coast accent, and this is obviously a Western (according to imdb.com, the film takes place in Arizona). He also seems to be hiding something, or to be attempting to manipulate Jessica -- he keeps her off guard by "talking too much" and idly plays a piano. The long take builds tension, as the shadows and subdued conversation remain unresolved -- no analytical editing provides the opportunity to study the setting or characters in more detail. Then, the gunshot and the static long take suddenly becomes a rapid tracking shot, followed by more violence. I'd say the scene fairly neatly represents themes of duplicity and barely repressed violence, and thus makes it a comment on America's concept of its manifest destiny.
And this was a damn good idea, Paul. Perhaps others are too busy to post?
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