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Laura [Kosavitch], but I still remember feeling not at all aroused when we were doing
this ‘dance’ before the camera. As you can see, it was more of a spiritual lovemaking
than tactile … It was more of a joining of partners, a meeting of soul mates. That’s
how I felt about it. That’s probably what we were trying to indicate as well, more of a
fraternal, spiritual connection, and the body connection came in as part of that, but
without focusing below the belt.” 16 After kisses in close-up the camera discreetly
pans away to a series of tracking shots featuring treetops framed by clouds. In an
earlier lovemaking sequence (with Laura), the camera had panned away to sand
dunes. The sky imagery suggested a more elevated type of love. It also provided a
visual sequence with the poetic quality of recent films such as Resnais’s Hiroshima
Mon Amour. In a clever transition, a brief series of low angle tree shots cut to an eye
– level tracking shot (taken from a boat which moved alongside the actors) of the
trees at the lake edge. Diana and David are seen moving quickly past the trees which
fringed the shore and emerging into a clearing by the lake edge. In a portent of events
to come, the sound of an echoing gunshot is juxtaposed with the slow pan shot of a
beautiful, serene lake surface. The couple moves on and, in a brief sequence which
reflected the values of its time, David picks Diana up and carries her to save her
getting her feet wet.
Built by the film crew, the hut’s unlikely location close to the river bank was
governed by the director’s dramatic requirements. As O’Shea recalled, “Anyone with
any brains could see that it was a stupid place to have a hut because the river would
continually flood and they would be swept away.” This showed O’Shea’s insight into
the nature of film for, as he pointed out, “no-one ever raised the problem, no-one ever
questioned it, actually. Films have got the ability to force belief of what you see, and
people … don’t even think it’s a funny place to have a hut because it’s there.” 17
Although it worked visually and dramatically, the siting of the hut caused some
production problems. O’Shea told a journalist, “The work on the Lake Mapourika set
has caused the unit a good many headaches. Quite apart from their adventures in the
recent wet weather, when the lake rose, their site was awash, and hasty evacuation
was the order of the day.” 18
The hut and the events surrounding it were pivotal to the film. The hut shown in the
film would have been far too small to accommodate a camera crew and technical