In The Frame

In the film The Shop Around The Corner there is a lovely, though sorrowful little scene where Margaret Sullivan is shown placing her hand in a residential letterbox, feeling around for a letter that isn't there. Her character has been in correspondence with James Stewart's character, exchanging love letters and slowly falling in love with a man she has never met (although unbeknownst to her, she has met him, as he is her business rival). This is a remarkably creative scene in a relatively unremarkable film, in that it is less than a few seconds long, but by the use of just a gloved hand in a pokey post box, so much is conveyed. An entire story is told through the framing of this hand within this post box, as Margaret Sullivan, who we know holds a false hope in her heart, reaches in, moves her hand right and left, then when the realization has hit that no new letter has been received, she centers her hand and drops it in confirmed disappointment. We don't need to see her face (though we do a little while later when she pokes her head in the box, just to be sure!), we don't need to hear words, or crying, the hand has done all it needed to do: it told a story. The hand, it seems, becomes a character.

What is it about the moving picture that draws us in? When the first moving picture came along I'm sure it was a fascinating new discovery, as would any first viewing be. I know I spent a lot of time focussing on the TV when I was younger, but eventually the spectacle of it all is going to wane. Yet therein lies the beauty of film. It allows for innovation between art, storytelling and technology. From silents to talkies, from black and white to colour, from celluloid to digital, and crafty camerawork to computer animation and special effects.

For a film like The Shop Around The Corner to be a) in the early years of filmmaking, and b) indeed an unremarkable film overall, it is little nuggets like that post box scene that can leave a lasting impression.

I remember watching an early avant garde film at university once, where a grown man in a leotard and large bouncy tutu was shown jumping up and down on a trampoline, his tutu flowing serenely with his movement. The whole set of moving images was reminiscent of the motions of a jellyfish. Whether that was the intention, or not didn't matter, it might have been a happy accident, but it was interpretable and familiar to the viewer.

The face as an object of focus is itself a magnificent tool for conveying thoughts, reactions and a story. We know from the design of camerawork and framing that certain elements of a film scene are being manipulated to convey these attributes of narrative flow, as does scripting and the actor's spoken words, but think of the possibilities of just using the face. It is a canvas with familial features, we use it everyday, inadvertently or not, to add to expressing emotions. Those silent films were reliant on the actor's movements and facial expressions entirely and who can forget the spectacularly expressive (though mostly forlorn) face that was Buster Keaton's?

In a scene where two characters might have an attraction to one another, rather than outright express this vocally (which let's face it, people in real life generally can't bring themselves to do without visual cues that assuredly confirm the other is interested), the camera may hint at this piece of the storyline, or sub story, by framing and focussing on a character's subtle expressions: a tiny smile emerging; a movement of the eyebrow; a curious eyeing at the other person.

Luckily for the viewer, we can recognise these, since we all have a face and we know what certain feelings produce certain expressions. Furthermore, we might take the standard features of a face (eyes, nose, mouth) and recognise it in objects. For instance, the house in The Amityville Horror that holds windows and a door in a familiar structure to that of the facial features of a skull, suggesting the house is haunted, or possessed. In addition, the house is painted white.

There are countless films where camerawork and framing of objects and the focus on the face are used to convey messages and secrets of the storyline without words. It is that which fuels and perpetuates the creativity within human beings, which we are always exercising and luckily it is dually useful in making both art and entertainment.