Images of Beckett - Index of

When Beckett came to write his own film script for Film, he introduced seven
still photographs, which are inspected one by one by the protagonist O. The
effect is indeed ‘curious’ and for a number of different reasons: the rapid
overview of a life replayed in these various frozen images; the varying lengths
of time with which each photo is examined, depending on its subject; the
delicate, almost affectionate touch of the forefinger on the face of a little girl,
held in the arms of a man in uniform; the trembling of the hands as he holds
what are clearly personally moving photos five and six. The fact that shots of
the still photos also mostly include in the frame the head of O or his hands
trying to tear up the photos inevitably raises questions in the mind of the
spectator as to what the relationship is between O and those photographed
(except for one) seemingly long ago. But the contrast between movement
and suspension of movement certainly contributes to the effect of the scene.
And although Arnheim distinguished between the ‘absolute rigidity of a
photograph’ and the freezing of movement by an actor, it is quite possible
that it was as a consequence of thinking about these questions that Beckett
was prompted to lay as much store as he did in his theatre and his directing
on still, frozen moments. 81 Arnheim’s other section heading, the ‘Artistic
Utilisation of the Absence’, is paradigmatic of Beckett’s entire approach to
theatre, in which the silence, the pause and the ‘frozen tableau’ are so vital to
the impact of the drama, since, by being framed or highlighted, absence and
the void are able to draw attention to themselves without the embarrassment
of over statement. 82
The gestures and movements of mime similarly stand out when
they are not accompanied by words. Pantomime usually replaced the spoken
word in the films of Chaplin and Keaton that Beckett so much admired.
Arnheim spoke of ‘the incredible visual concreteness of every one of his
scenes’ that was an important part of Chaplin’s art. 83 And, again, Beckett
had seen many times in films that he admired how powerfully expressive
such mimes could be. When recounting the scene in D. W. Griffiths’ 1916
film Intolerance, in which a woman hears the death sentence that has been
passed on her husband, Pudovkin wrote in his book, Film Technique: ‘The
director shows the face of the woman: an anxious, trembling smile through
124 IMAGES OF BECKETT