FILM ART AND FILMMAKING

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or35060_ch01.qxd 7/19/06 8:10 AM Page 6 6 CHAPTER 1 Film as Art: Creativity, Technology, and Business 1.1 In Shadow of a Doubt, Little Charlie is delighted when Uncle Charlie presents pictures of her grandparents. 1.3 A general shot shows the family at table, with the two Charlies most visible. 1.5 Uncle Charlie begins his monologue about useless women. 1.2 In an eerie parallel to a lovers’ engagement, Uncle Charlie presents his niece with a ring. 1.4 After a shot of Emmy, Hitchcock cuts to Little Charlie looking uneasily at her uncle. 1.6 The camera moves closer to him . . .
or35060_ch01.qxd 7/19/06 8:10 AM Page 7 1.7 . . . and is very close when he turns and replies to Little Charlie’s protests that these women are human; he asks, “Are they?” 1.9 Hitchcock then gives us an optical point-of-view shot of what makes her hesitate: Uncle Charlie holding her mother spellbound. and we learn some key information when she does. In the dinner table scene, the developing story line and Hitchcock’s style combine to tie us even more tightly to Little Charlie. The moment when Uncle Charlie turns challengingly to the camera becomes a high point of this pattern. The rest of this book will examine the ideas of form and style more closely. Here we just want to suggest that our Shadow of a Doubt scene is typical of how cinema works as art. Films have subject matter and themes that contribute to the artistic effect, but in themselves those amount to raw material. We have plenty of films about serial killers, but how many are as vivid as Shadow of a Doubt? It’s through form and style that a film draws us into a moment-by-moment engagement, just as a song or a play or a novel does. As a film unfolds in time, it offers a developing pattern that encourages us to ask why things are happening and to wonder what will happen next. We feel curiosity and suspense and surprise. The film engages our vision and hxearing, our knowledge of the world, our ideas, and our feelings. The filmmaker can create a structured experience that will involve us keenly—and sometimes change the way we think and feel about our lives. After Film Artistry in Shadow of a Doubt 7 1.8 Earlier in the film, when Little Charlie has begun to suspect her uncle, she pauses on the front doorstep. “He [Hitchcock] was fairly universal, he made people shiver everywhere. And he made thrillers that are also equivalent to works of literature.” — Jean-Luc Godard, director, Breathless
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FILM ART AND FILMMAKING

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