Greek Student Protests Silenced

Please Return the Tour Director
or...Waiter, There's a Fly in My Souvlaki

When forty-three half-awake Americans touched down in a sub-tropical Athens last March, most of them had no idea what the country had been experiencing for months. No one had read a Greek newspaper, or called a distant cousin or watched a clip of international news. The only thing any of them had prepared for was the weather: balmy but windy, with the risk of chills at higher altitudes. The tour guide who picked up the mish-mosh crew of Penn State alumni, students and faculty members pointed out landmarks and bits of travel information as the bus wended its way from the airport to a hotel tucked into a corridor of Athens' crowded Center.

Tips on where to exchange currency and purchase rudimentary tourist items gave way to the overall presentation of what the tour would entail, with only a hint of warning about guarding against garden variety pick-pockets. As the bus turned the corner onto Akadamias, a statement about the student uprisings introduced the Athenian University's Administrative Building covered in graffiti and protest banners largely in Greek, in addition to tables arranged mysteriously at the building's mouth.

No mention of the riotous demonstrations that have been an ongoing part of Greek life was made, even though only two days before the plane's arrival the streets that the weary but smiling tourists now travelled had been swarmed with tens of thousands. Some had been armed with petrol bombs, some with signs, but many had just been there to make their presence known to those on the opposite end of the streets: the Greek police, dressed in full body armor to protect them from the occasional petrol bomb as they used rubber bullets and tear gas on the protesters.

Home Base: University Administrative Building

That's the essential protection that the tables provide, hindering the ability of any tradition-clinging soul to simply launch tear gas or any other foreign matter into the building from the sidewalk or from across the street. Although the building is under truce, such precautions appear to have been perceived as necessary by the remainders of the protesters camped out inside the building. The identities of the sixty-one had also become a concern, as the following Wednesday the Greek courts would be trying forty-nine arrested on minor charges, many of whom had yet to meet with a lawyer and prepare a defense according to a Greek independent news source.

What was all the fuss about? The privatization of the socialized university system was identified as the instigation for the takeover. From the tour director's perspective, though, the protestors were little more than rebels without causes. "Whatever you are for," Dimitrius dismissed their position without question, "we are against." An interesting summary, considering that enough students had protested to shut down the entire public university system in Greece -- approximately 300 locales -- for over four months. The only institutions of higher learning operating in all of Greece during that time were private universities, most of which aren't Greek. All of this becomes clear slowly, over nine full days of foreign educational enlightenment.

An Education Wrapped Inside a Riddle

Anna Zora takes great pride in her work as a tour guide, bearing herself as a representative of everything that Greece once was and everything that it currently strives to be. Her demeanor speaks of a country where rest and relaxation define an industry and a work ethic slowly, stodgily prevails. Her job is simple: visit ancient ruins and lecture on their significance in history and to posterity, smile with poise and grace and winning confidence and treat each guest to a gem from her acumen. Not just anybody can be a tour guide in Greece. Licensing requires a baccalaureate degree with courses zig-zagging all over the humanities and social sciences. Each site claims a complicated history which comes to life better when its archaeology is considered from botanical and zoological perspectives, economic, political and so on.

Anna Zora: Former History Major

Zora's main route lies in Athens, where she guides her ever-changing flocks of bus-propelled tourists through the remaining ruins that can be witnessed best as a whole from the Acropolis. Aloft that windy summit it is easy to see the ancient path to Hadrian's arch, beyond which what's left of the Temple of Zeus still makes an impression. On the opposite bank of the citadel, the Temple of Haphaestus still stands with most of its roof or "cap" intact -- the only ancient Greek ruin that can boast that particular feat. These sites make up the tour guide's daily routine, and she cuts a memorable figure as she talks avidly and knowledgeably about the theatres and the stadiums that time has not completely forgotten, nor it seems will ever.

Fixing a hole where the rain gets in...

Despite her daily soak in such history, though, the events of modern Greece have not escaped Zora's notice. She hunkers in front of the Parthenon and talks eagerly in English of where the country has been in recent years and where the country is headed. The progress in terms of its environmental responsibilities is tangible. "Pollution is not as bad as it used to be because now we have the Metro, since the time of the Olympic games. We have the tram for public transportation, the trolley buses...so, there is a way in the last few years to, let's say, eliminate the pollution." In addition to the subway and tram systems that Athens implemented in order to host the Olympics in 2004, car owners have been placed under an ordinance that allows only cars with license plates matching a specific day of the week by odd and even numbers on the streets. After all, Athens' infrastructure hasn't changed much since 1834 when it was made the country's capital and inhabited by only thirty-four thousand. Today the number is five million, with much of that population bulging in Athens' Center.

"In the beginning, I think this system worked very well, the odd and even numbers," Zora smiles, "...but now, it doesn't help so much because all the families have at least two cars, so they can enter the Center every day." In a country so far willing to achieve and maintain Kyoto Accord compliance, it is strange to witness one of its citizens admit to an environmental failing, especially with a random method that has been implemented all over the world with mixed results. Rome allows traffic in the city based on the same system, and London requires fees of drivers that keep poorer people using public transport. [1] In Butte, Montana, where drinkable water is increasing in value, residents may only water their lawns or wash their cars on days corresponding to the same system but based on house numbers. What Greece might be lagging behind in on car pollution is swiftly made up for with its implementation of solar cells on nearly every rooftop and windmills that can power up to 75% of a region with strategic mountain-top placement.

Every little bit helps...a lot.

The restlessness of Greece's youth remains a distraction, though. Zora sees the dispute the students have as a narrower issue than the generic rebellion that the tour director described. "The University students are against the new law," she says, "...they're going to make renovations and changes in the University system regarding the private universities -- public and private universities -- because so far in Greece we have only public universities and private foreign universities. [We have] public and private colleges, but only public universities...and also, they want to change the system of the exams. They are going to put a time limit, for certain periods of time that one can complete their studies." What she describes entails a great deal of nuance that requires context beyond the commercialization of the educational system and a square look at the military service that's compulsory for young men born into a country neighboring so closely with uncertain nations like Iraq and Iran and in eternal border dispute with Turkey, a country with the world's third largest military outfit.

Traditional guards scurry past re-taken building.

Dimitrius points to the flaws in the educational system as a social institution, noting that it comes before higher education, and even then, "Only the best students that have written a good deal on their exams will be able to participate in Greek universities." Those who do have so far been allowed to study and complete their degrees at thir own pace. But no more, once the reform law passes. "I must say that this reform that everybody's protesting against has a couple of good things," he continues, "but I must say that it's not complete, so maybe that's why the kids are against it because it's not a really good, complete decision reform, it's just patches, like sometimes we patch the roads or highways." Zora appears to agree, albeit from a more passionate point of view that sees the students and professors aligned together on a losing front. "In a country where democracy was born, really sometimes we do not work in a democratic way, and this is something that is disappointing...the future of this country, and all the hope, the hopes of this country, are based on that. So we must do our best."

Life Is What Happens to You
...When You Are Busy Making Other Plans

"I don't really understand anarchy myself," declares Ashley Meli, flopped on a bed at the Aryon Hotel in Athens' Center the night before the group leaves the crowded city to tour the countryside. "[Anarchy] doesn't make sense to me; like, there has to be some order to things." George Propovik, idling near her with a flower given to him by a Gypsy woman, agrees with her implicitly. "...because people are naturally evil," he asserts quietly, "...anarchy implies, like, no government and no laws and no police and all that, right? So you'd probably just have a lot of corruption." The pair of twenty year-old students didn't go to the Administrative Building, but their thoughts on the students' activities are pretty clear. Neither of them understands why privatization might be a bad thing and both agree that there are probably a lot of students who just want to go back to class, and would if they had the chance.

Yet the peaceful, almost vacation-like setting on Akadamias told a different tale earlier that afternoon. The busy banners and graffiti and poster-stapled barricade tables aside, the atmosphere at the Administrative Building was friendly and relaxed. A PA system had been set up and was blaring odd music that was neither punk nor really 80s ballads, but somewhere in between, and the 61 protestors left inside the building could be seen behind that wall of sound, milling around as though they were at a family reunion. In fact, the general mood was so pleasant that even the approach of a journalist didn't mire it too much, even though eyes narrowed. Only a short time ago, a French journalist had passed through and conducted interviews and had, according to one thin, long-haired student named Caephalus, misrepresented them entirely.

But even that was only part of the reason why the group flatly refused to be filmed; mostly, they didn't want to misrepresent any of the other participants for whom they did not feel they could speak. "A lot of us are anarchists," Caephalus said, "but not all. We all have our own political views." Shrugging through his snug green sweater, the young student relayed that not even all of the people camped inside the building for several months were students. The building, which is the face of the university and not its actual locale, was undergoing renovation when the takeover began, and one of their number was a construction worker. Anna Zora's understanding that the faculty had generally dissented with the administration was in evidence too, as one professor was demonstrating his support by sacking in with the students also every night.

Almost immediately it becomes clear that the protest and the takeover are not about privatization, despite the Club Med vibe that the square gives off. Beyond the music and new decor to boost morale and promote their cause, the students are tired. But they're more tired of obstinate channels in their society. They're tired of social issues going untreated and unnoticed, swept under a carpet to keep the hotel lobbies shiny and full. They're tired of a slow-moving government and a press that acts as lip service to that government no matter how ineffective their policies are. And they're tired of living in a country that "pretends like everything is okay when it is not." Caephalus pointed to the job situation, the government situation and the media situation, stating that they are all clearly in need of reform. "So many people are living on 600 euros a month."

Homeless Athenian sleeps in shade of heroic statue. [2]

Being anarchists mostly, no one person spoke for the group. Each day they assembled publicly, no cameras allowed. That was the only plan. Three hundred campuses were involved in the strike which shut down the entire university system in Greece. How they got organized, said Caephalus, was not through any one system but through several ways which he didn't divulge. He also seemed to think that there was considerably less backlash in Greece than in America where he believed that the government was much more hostile in its dealings. "If we had done this in New York," he said, "we would have gotten shot."

Only days later the law for privatization passed, changing the truce status of the square. All of the remaining protesters were escorted off the campus and quick dabs of paint were applied to the building's walls. The only souvenirs the group left behind were bits of graffiti still visible on the building's harder to deal with marble base and a few statues. Classes would resume the following week, as though nothing had ever happened. On the same day that a conference was being held inside the upstairs ballroom and lecture hall, young student tourists are snapping pictures of each other on the steps outside in the full sunshine of a fine, March day in Athens, the touched-up background setting the mood. No police oficers guard the building, nor do any university officials either. Only one man stands just inside the Doric columns and greets people as they come in. Whether the lack of concern for any more protesting is for show or not is hard to tell but it appears that for now, at least, education is back to being business as usual.


[1] Great thanks to Harry Tuttle of Screenville for making me aware of these very checkable facts about which I otherwise may have never learned.

[2] To narrow this blog's content to the trackable evolution of Unclear Pictures' upcoming documentary on modern Greek social conditions, gods in disguise, just click here and stay tuned.

Sound & Sympathy in Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973)

Terrence Malick's haunting, lyrical re-envisionment of the 1950s Starkweather-Fugate killing spree provides an interpretative and non-judgmental perspective of what it might have been like for a fifteen-year-old girl to have absconded with her father's murderer and passively participate with the subsequent domino-like murders that followed. Through a combination of sound techniques, the subtler, more nuanced aspects of the story help to shed light on how a situation like that might have played out in real life. Told in a sparse voice-over with a reflective journal writing-like quality and a series of non-traditional sound choices, Badlands manages to convey the empty, nowhere feel of a small town where boredom might prevail over reason.

Malick shows that ennui like a hairline fracture, separating its two main characters -- Kit and Holly -- from everything but their most natural surroundings. That implicit, diegetic context imbues the film with a great sense of symbolism concerning the loss of innocence, coming of age, and self-realization; and, as the story progresses and Holly simultaneously comes out of shock and withdraws from Kit, the voice-over takes on new strength and self-awareness -- just like any journal would when the writer, secure in solitude, abandons everything but her own voice.

Holly chooses a different path...

Similarly, sounds that are and aren't used in Badlands denote certain moods and reinforce the disconnect between these characters and their environment. Kit cuts out early from collecting trash in the opening scene and stops to crush a can under his boot in the alley, and then kick it away. Meanwhile, Holly practices baton twirling quietly during her voice-over. Later, when the father discovers his daughter has become intimate with Kit, her mouth moves soundlessly and instead we hear her voice over telling us about her father punishing her for it by shooting her dog. We also hear the gunshot. Kit sits up awake in bed during another voice over which tells us, without letting us listen along, that he hears what sounds like the sea in a conch shell when he's away from her. In both of these instances, the film allows its audience to infer by imagination how these scenes may sound and feel; they are contemplative and open to interpretation, inviting and engaging the senses to open up to these two characters and their unusual and normally unsympathetic dilemma.

Certain other omissions in the soundtrack stand out as well. One interesting consideration is that many unpleasant or simply more mundane sounds don't reach the audience's ears, such as the cattle feeding when Kit gets hired on a ranch after losing his position as a trash collector. Instead, we hear Holly's sweet, lilting voice-over and are left to infer that Kit's mind is, as she he claims, elsewhere and more with us as we watch them. That binding effect between audience and characterization works well, and Malick is very careful not to throw in any distractions, rendering the "noise" level of Badlands practically non-existent. Like a good poem, there is no extra line, word, or letter that does not serve some muscular purpose to the film's bare bones. Diegetically, we hear only the sounds that hold importance or significance to its characters, and the absence of diegetic music speaks volumes. Holly tells the audience about her piano lessons, but we do not hear them; likewise, when we are told that her father has switched her lessons to concentrate on the clarinet as a way of making a lady of his wayward daughter, we do not hear the clarinet either, not even when we see her with the reed in her mouth. This not only serves to evoke the truer world of the characters' inner lives but to create a great sense of quiet, lucid emptiness within the frames.

Only a moment after Holly, still and silent clarinet in hand, runs to greet her father coming home, the scene in which Kit shoots him begins. Thus far, the sequence of events has been natural: the couple has met and fallen in love, and Kit has approached his girlfriend's father to attempt have a man-to-man conversation with him. Yet the underlying events upset the balance of things: Kit is twenty-five to Holly's fifteen, and she lied to her father right after meeting the significantly older man. We hear the lie in direct dialogue in an otherwise affectionate scene and then the next time we see Kit and her together, birds are chirping lazily in sunshine and their relationship is obvious and progressing quickly. So when he shows up after failing to get any satisfaction from his girlfriend's father about being left alone to enjoy his time with Holly, and enters the house to start packing her clothes without speaking to her about it, the unnatural act of entering seems more natural than it otherwise might. Had it not been for the gun in his hand, both the real life story and the film would've gone much differently. [1]

But Malick makes as much use of the small-town sounds as possible to house the first and most important shooting scene in a sturdy, almost amicable fashion. Directly after the shot, a neighborhood dog barks. Kneeling by her father, we hear the words, "This is Holly," delivered by a Spacek completely in touch with the fact that her character has little identity to lose. The use of music is minimal and accompanied by rocking, handheld camera movement that conveys almost a slight Dutch angle sense that helps to keep the audience in suspense as to what kind of character Kit might turn out to be after all, now that he has evolved from reticently charming to wieldy. A cut to the basement where Kit drags the dead man gives way to a cut of him emerging from the basement into cricket-laden evening with a toaster in hand, which he then declares that he has found even though no former dialogue supports that it was lost. We are left, again, to our imaginations to decide how much of the relationship we see unfold is real and how much of it falls into a strained, gray area where two people simply co-exist.

An aural and visual treat, Badlands takes care to ensure that the non-diegetic music does not distract from the story, but enhance it instead. Often the score serves to convey emotions too complex to be translatable through any other means, and these are placed most often in transitions. After Kit leaves the house with the father in the basement, the bereft daughter wanders the upstairs with a cigarette that would have been foreign to her only weeks prior, trying to make some sense of everything that has happened but unable to. This is cued not just by the music but by the lack of voice over when we see her move to a window and watch two boys sitting on a curb across the street. Her separation from her youth before her time is obvious and apparent, and the music grows louder and more frenetic later when Kit sets fire to her house in an attempt to make the entire affair look like a murder-suicide that ended in arson.

This includes a brilliant scene in which the newly minted murderer records a suicide note that claims that the reasons for the tragedy "are obvious" onto a record that he then places in a turntable on repeat only yards away from the blazing inferno they leave behind. By this point in the film, everything from Holly's childhood has disappeared: her father, her mother's memory, her dog, and her home. As the setting changes from restless town to daunting wilderness in the titular surroundings, the ease with which these two got so far and the understandability of her absolution of him becomes ever more apparent.

[1] It should be noted that Malick took great creative license with the Starkweather-Fugate story. In reality, Charlie (Kit) Starkweather was nineteen and had already killed a gas station attendent when he showed up at the fourteen year-old Caril's house. He murdered both her parents and then proceeded to choke the babysitter to death while his young girlfriend made him a sandwich. It's difficult to get a read on the real-life events and perceptions fifty year later, but somehow Malick recreates a family structure that allows Spacek's character to mature onscreen and be pitted against the popular views of her involvement with Starkweather, which is an interesting commentary in and of itself. In the film, even the Texas Rangers who hunt him down find the mass-murdering Kit charming and respectable while Holly feels the glaring judgment of their captors.

It seems that in reality, Caril Fugate would've received a kinder reception after having both parents murdered and being kidnapped from her babysitter, but it's hard to say where Malick pulled that aspect from. It does, however, make for excellent, character-driven storytelling. If you haven't already seen Badlands, I can't recommend it highly enough.

Dory on Kelly Green

Ok, so I've just done something rather unusual for me: I entered an online photography contest. This post is in part an enticement (of you, the reader) to vote on two upcoming contests (for me, preferably, the writer, filmmaker and photographer). Of course, you don't have to. I'll still continue to write about many a lovely topic. Coming up soon, in fact, will be a look at Terrence Malick's use of sound to support story and characterization in Badlands (1973) and a seriously in-depth look at editing in Fellini's Amarcord (1974).

I may also write something about John Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence (1974) but no promises on that one. If you have a thought about whether I should tackle Cassavetes and from what angle, feel free to leave a comment. I'm feeling rather open to suggestion (it's the weather) and would love to take your thoughts.

Cheers.

(...and check out JPG Magazine, all you web-surfing faerie folk!)

directions (2007)

Here's the third entry in a series of shorts inspired by the notion of colliding consciousness. The final cut and score are still in the works...(and it's YouTube, so it's the low-fi version.)

For those of you not quite in the know, the film stars Penn State-New Kensington's own reclusive, hard to find Danielle Donahue whose career is already being fertilized over at Rotten Tomatoes. Give it up, folks. This was Dani's first film that didn't involve oodles of blood and first work with a director who said more than, "...okay, go!"

Enjoy.

Coming Soon... gods in disguise (2007)

Moving forward in the world of independent filmmaking, Unclear Pictures will unveil its look at social and environmental conditions in modern Greece on June 1 of this year. The short documentary will deal with the last days of the anarchists' siege of the University system.

Stay tuned...

Things Happen: Reversals of Fortune in John Ford's Stagecoach (1939) & Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows (1956)

Since classic Hollywood cinema by Bordwellian definition deals in reversals of fortune ad nauseum, this treatise will examine the specific vehicles of catharsis employed in these next two films. Ford's titular object and Sirk's small 1950s town provide, respectively, compression and the ultimate denouement necessary to off-set its characters' accomplishments, each doing so in a unique way. Where the literal stagecoach brings together a rag-tag ensemble through proximity, the more conceptual town actually eats at the sense of space between two people until it seems like there's simply no room for a relationship. The difference between the uses of mise-en-scene in these films, beyond the obvious adjustment for makeup and costume in black and white, speaks to a meaning deeper than the surface stories. The lighting and setting especially contribute to the psychological parameters of the characters' relationship to each other and to their setting, the cohesive and centrifugal forces of these plots.

Ford was making a Western. A train could have been the natural option of vehicles, but it would have ousted the potential threat of attacking Apaches and allowed its passengers too much leg room. The stagecoach instead redirects the eye to its passengers rather than the setting. The long shot of it moving through the desert establishes and re-establishes the wild surrounding it, both letting the audience know that the gang is on the move and reminding it of what a small capsule careens through this unknown country. Inside, though, space is constructed in such a way to study each character. Since the relationships between certain characters change substantially by the end of Ford's film, special notice should be given to the placement of those characters within the narrative, lighting and the costuming that offers more than standard, Western denotative functions.

Social position feeds the main conflict and resolution of Stagecoach. Although the natives present the variable of a potentially hostile threat, they remain as such; it is the people whose lives intersect on the journey who threaten the peace more intimately. While inside of the vehicle, the shots are largely formal, medium compositions that dance between straight shots and more angled ones. Part of the justification for this lies in keeping the conversation participants and their respective seats in the coach straight, to witness who is looking and speaking to whom and who is avoiding eye contact and discussion. John Wayne, as the black sheep of the pack, sits in the odd seat on the coach's floor, allowing for nearly 360 degrees of camera movement which the cinematographer uses to compress the air between the stuffier inhabitants when appropriate. It also allows for a variety of exterior events to be visible through the coach windows. Partly in keeping with the development of the characters, but also to aid the impact of the eventual surprise of the Indian attack, the camera only leaves the coach interior when the action justifies it wholesale.

The director makes good use of the film's mise-en-scene at the intermittent stops outside of the coach, too. If the coach is his characters' catalyst, the breathers between act as air sacs for expansion upon the theme of social justice. The scene which exposes the society woman to be pregnant provides ample goodies that demonstrate the changes occurring in the group in subtle ways. After she faints at the news of her husband's wounding, the rest of the gang rushes in to see her, and for that brief moment, they are all the closest together that they will ever be. The lighting of that scene has the advantage of existing in one of the larger interior sets used, and it interplays with the suspense not only in terms of shadows against a wall but also in terms of significant costuming highlights.

While much of the costuming in Stagecoach is denotative of societal rank (as with the banker, who wears decidedly authoritative black dress) or ancestral background (like the doctor who wears an Irish-style derby to set off his accent) Ford also personalizes each actor's garb. By doing so, he opens up the floodgates of symbolism through clothing. The gambler, for instance, wears a spotlessly white hat that glows in a spike of light during the suspenseful delivery scene; yet, doubts had been raised during his introduction regarding his status as a gentleman. Whether the glow is meant to be sinister or not, it is intriguing because his character has so many shades of nuance -- and in a way, that is reflected in the hat. An even greater development exists between the society woman and the more coquettish one that we can assume to be either a dancer or a woman of looser morals.

The society woman rejects every offer of help from the woman, often in the form of an item of clothing that would wam her. By the film's end, the new mother not only uses the clothing but accepts it as a gift. In this way, Ford allows the personalization of costuming to permeate the cathartic bonds that the stagecoach helps to create.

Sirk's town in All That Heaven Allows sets the pace of the film from the opening scene of a church's bell house, upon which the clock hands read as noon. The town, like the time, is already in full swing; at least, as much as any sleepy, little American town can be. Yet the town will also share another characterisitic with time: both are products of human invention and, as such, are transient. To support the themes of self-reliance and independence introduced in the film, time is used as a suggestion, perhaps, that its illusory power has as little true consequence as the town that is the psychological obstacle to Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman's romance. Many of the motifs in the film likewise support the natural world of American transcendentalism, but Sirk does not limit the mise-en-scene to the typical perception of all things New England.

The spacing of the characters, like the objects in the setting, is airy and uncluttered. Very little physically separates the actors in Sirk's melodrama besides light and dark. Characters are alternately alone and close together, as they need to be, as if to suggest that all is well and to reinforce the naturalness of independent thought through independent action. In her own home, the film never once shows the mother in her kitchen surrounded by gadgets; it is the children who bring some small sense of clutter to the film, when the son mixes drinks or when the daughter plays with her mother's makeup. Sirk even goes so far as to create a sense of cacaphony visually speaking during the party, by placing people chaotically throughout the frames on the evening that ends in social disaster. Meanwhile, on the hipper side of town, Rock Hudson's friends present a more ordered universe as they sit to eat at a long table that, although arranged at a 45 degree angle to the room's walls (denoting, perhaps, their differences with society), has seats in a uniform pattern for people to dine together charitably.

After the more chaotic party, Sirk reveals the clock again, in the full darkness of midnight. The temporal reality foreshadowed at the film's opening now takes on a deeper meaning and the interior lighting follows suit. When there are misunderstandings between Jane Wyman and her children, for example, they exist more in the shadows of the frame than in the lighted parts. It is interesting to note that that particular phenomenon of people conversing in shadows takes place only in the house that once belonged to her and her now-dead husband. By such extension, his ghost reaches into her life as effectively as the town reaches into the main relationship. Vibrant colors and patterns of light -- especially upstairs in the more familiar, personal rooms -- further emphasizes the haunted feeling without resorting to pointing to it through dialogue or special effects.

The absolute vibrancy of such shots acts as a relief from the story's progress, even if the diversion is one from romantic conflict to mother-daughter tension. Opening up the characters' relationships, these lighting choices add a whole, new dimension to the film that may have been more flat had it not begged the audience's attention to the strangeness of these people's lives. A woman in emotional solitary confinement, a daughter who feels like she knows better than her mother and an overprotective, fickle son would have played much differently -- as if these were people we had already met and there was no real story here -- without the lighting and color choices.

Character development especially benefits in certain areas. Consider the scene in which the busybody best friend attempts a heart-to-heart with Jane Wyman. The friend realizes that the housekeeper can hear them despite the vacuum cleaner and the action moves from this:

to this:

Although Sirk never spells it out, such actions clearly delineate the understood separation between society people and the working class in small-town America and underscores the social conflict resulting from Wyman seeing her gardener. By contrast, Rock Hudson's friends make no such separation and the audience can realize this by comparing the difference between a catered party that is already in full swing at the busybody's house and the more rustic do-it-yourself shindig that happens across town:

where Wyman discovers Walden:

Perhaps one of the more interesting aspects of All That Heaven Allows is the museum-like quality of much of the setting. Exteriors reveal a very New England-looking autumn, but interiors often appear very serene, with a sense of almost sterile grace. The cold, damp grey of the old mill -- which Wyman prefers to the dowdier yet cozier house Hudson sleeps in -- would be uninviting were it not for the fireplace and the view. Sirk even uses framing to depict a sense of artistic stasis, exampled by this shot in which Wyman looks more like a bust on display than a woman about to go somewhere:

Such images are beautiful and haunting, with an organic quality between them, including a reference to the dead father's trophy on the mantelpiece that appears in a later visual reference on the patio at the party when a neighbor attempts to kiss Jane Wyman. [1] The reference is book-ended by the son's later protests against Rock Hudson marrying into the family, during which he brings up the trophy again, none the wiser that were Wyman to marry a man more acceptable to him and their society friends that she would be reduced to little more than the trophy that she sees reflected in the TV set the children buy her as a consolation to her widowhood. In that moment, the denouement is complete as Wyman realizes the falsity and emptiness of the life that stretches before her if she continues to care what other people think of her.

Although Sirk's approach is more subtle and perhaps craftier than Ford's, each film still exists within the framework afforded it. The distractions that occur within each film serve purposes in conjunction with -- and not contrary to -- the films' best interests. The singing Apache woman may seem at first like a considerable and even jumpy digression from the film's internal movement toward peaceable relations and certainly from its explicit movement toward the end of the coach ride, but it acts as cover for horse thieves to get away, distracting both the audience and the on-screen characters at once through unexpected entertainment. The early, somewhat shocking medium shot/jump cut of the banker warns the audience that something is not right without giving away an important plot point that would have detracted more from the film than the shot does had it been gleaned early.

These considerations promote the pleasure of viewing, the addition of information occurring only when necessary. Perhaps more important, though, to the filmic world is the sense that each film acknowedges that duration is short and fleeting, that the stagecoach ride can only last as long as a town or a memory's hold upon a person. In that sense, each film takes a greater place within the cinematic world, each aware of its own transience and mortality as surely as anyone who ever lived in the Old West; or anyone who has walked the streets of a small town with her thoughts miles away in Walden's Pond; or anyone who has ever noticed how silly and filmic real life can be.

[1] It is impossible for me to determine whether I would have picked this out on my own, so I must give credit where credit is due: former film blogger Andy Horbal first pointed it out in a post complete with screen grabs. Check it out.