On page 51, Metz articulates what happens during the screening of a film. The dolly zoom has great implications for film as a medium, and connects to one of Metz’s points on spectatorship and identification with the camera. Brody here is terrified of the monster in the water, but also drawn to it: this is the moment he knows he must go out and kill the great fish himself (with the help of Quint and Hooper, of course) When beachgoers watch as a boy gets attacked by the shark, the camera dolly zooms in on Police Chief Brody. This effect is also used in one of my all time favorite movies, Jaws. We are pulled in towards the terrifying opponent, while at the same time not seeming to get any closer, as Sugar Ray shrinks in the frame and the background opens up. The effect is one of dizzying contradiction. The camera then switches to Jake’s POV, and uses an effect called the dolly zoom made famous by Alfred Hitchcock in Vertigo: the camera physically moves towards Sugar Ray, while the lens zooms out. To apply some of Metz’s more conceptual musings on spectatorship and identification, I will look at powerful shot from a powerful sequence towards the end of the film: Jake LaMotta’s final fight with Sugar Ray Robinson.īefore the quick editing and blood spurting, and after Jake takes his first round of pummeling from Sugar Ray, there is a respite in the action as Jake leans up against the rope and beckons Sugar Ray to come fight him. Such was the case this week in our viewing of Martin Scorcese’s Raging Bull. By breaking down film to its bare essentials, namely a moving picture that was recorded by a camera and shown to spectators via projector, Metz makes it possible for readers to apply his ideas to any filmic text they might come across. Christian Metz’s assertions in The Imaginary Signifier have truly profound implications for the way we interpret film as a medium.
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