MOVIETONE NEW8 . - Parallax View Annex

A Piece of
THE COBWEB
By Dana Benelli
THE COBWEB (1955)
Direction: Vincente Minnelli. Screenplay: john Paxton, after the novel by William Gibson; additional
dialogue by Gibson. Cinematography (CinemaScope and EastmanColor): George Folsey. Music: Leonard
Rosenman. Production: john Houseman. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
The players: Richard Widmark, Lauren Bacall, Charles Boyer, Gloria Grahame, Lillian Gish, john Kerr,
Susan Strasberg , Oscar Levant, Olive Carey, Adele Jergens, Edgar Steh li, Bert Freed, Paul Stewart, Fay
Wray, jarma Lewis, James Westerfield. .
The following essay was originally prepared in fulfillment of a routine requirement in a
University of Washington film course on American Directors of the Fifties. It has been
edited only slightly for reprinting here.
Briefly, The Cobweb deals with a couple of dozen characters-about half of them key
figures-mutually involved in the increasingly disordered life in and around a mental
institution: doctors and other staff members, their families, the patients. The pointedly
absurd focus of the film's complex action is the need for a new set of curtains for the
library. Determining how and from whom these curtains will be acquired involves tortuous
power plays draining the energies of all concerned, and threatening the very existences of
several characters.
Filling the visual space provided by the widescreen
format offers both unique opportunities and problems
for filmmakers. Obviously a cast of thousands
can look less like a herd of sheep if they have more
room to move in. But in filming individuals or small
groups of people, the horizontality of the widescreen
has an advantage too. Corresponding more closely to
the eyes' breadth of vision, it can show-and hence
offer an increased sense of-natural milieu surrounding
individuals, particularly individuals in closeup or
medium closeup. In The Cobweb, Minnelli works
with our widescreen view in a more creative, expressive
way in his use of background actions by characters
other than those directly involved in a central
action going on in the foreground. These background
actions, which may not be dramatically relevant in
the present moment, may have an immediate thematic
appropriateness or an eventual dramatic effect.
Crucially, this usefulness is established without distracting
from the scene's main focus. Meg Rinehart
(Lauren Bacall), for example, is reading a magazine in
the background of a shot of Dr. Devanal (Charles
Boyer) and Vicki Inch (Lillian Gish) discussing new
curtains for the library and their place in the financial
scheme of the institution; after a moment she gets up
and exits, pausing briefly at the door in the extreme
right and extreme background of the Scope setup
before finally disappearing from view. Her attention
to the discussion, peripheral in the scene where we
note it, later proves to have been the source of her
idea that the patients themselves should create the
new curtains. This sort of CinemaS cope mise-en-scene
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