The Pervert's Guide To Cinema Page #10

by the hand of another person.

The first example, Saboteur.

Rear Window.

Then we have in To Catch a Thief.

You've got a full house down there.

Begin the performance.

Then in North by Northwest.

Then, of course, in Vertigo.

So we see here

the same visual motif repeating itself.

I think it's wrong to look

for a common, deeper meaning.

Some French theorists claimed that

what we are dealing here with

is the motif of fall and redemption.

I think this is already saying too much.

I think that what we are dealing with

is with a kind of a cinematic materialism,

that beneath the level of meaning,

spiritual meaning

but also simple narrative meaning,

we get a more elementary level

of forms themselves,

communicating with each other,

interacting, reverberating, echoing,

morphing, transforming one into the other.

And it is this background,

this background of proto-reality,

a real which is more dense,

more fundamental than the narrative reality,

the story that we observe.

It is this that provides the proper density

of the cinematic experience.

It's the gigantic tree where, in Vertigo,

Madeleine and Scottie get together,

almost embrace, where their erotic tension

becomes unbearable.

What is this tree?

I think it's another

in the series of "Hitchcockian Big Things,"

like the Mount Rushmore statues,

or take another example, like Moby-Dick.

This tree is not simply a natural object.

It is, within our mental space,

what in psychoanalysis is called "the Thing".

It's effectively as if this tree,

in its very extra-large distortion,

embodies something

that comes out of our inner space,

libido, the excessive energy of our mind.

So here I think

we can see how films and philosophy

are coming together.

How great cinematographers really

enable us to think in visual terms.

After the birds attack the city,

there is a fire which breaks out

at a gasoline station,

where a guy throws a match on the gasoline.

Hey, you! Look out! Don't drop that match!

Look out! Get out of there!

- Mister, run!

- Watch out!

The first part of this short scene

is the standard one.

We get the standard exchange of shots of the fire

and shots of the person,

Melanie in this case, who looks at it.

Then something strange happens.

We cut to way above the city.

We see the entire town.

We automatically take this shot

as a standard establishing shot.

Like after details which perplex you,

which prevent you

from getting a clear orientation,

you need a shot which enables you

some kind of a cognitive mapping,

that you know what's going on.

But then, precisely following that logic

of the Thing from inner space

which emerges from within you,

first we hear these ominous sounds,

which are sounds of the birds,

then one bird enters, another bird enters...

The shot which was taken as a neutral,

God's view shot,

all of a sudden changes into an evil gaze.

The gaze of the very birds attacking.

And we are thrown into that position.

And again, we can use here

The Birds as the final instalment

and read backwards other classical

Hitchcock scenes in the same way.

Isn't exactly the same thing happening

in what I consider the ultimate scene in Psycho,

the second murder,

the murder of the detective Arbogast?

Hitchcock manipulates here in a very refined way

the logic of so-called fetishist disavowal.

The logic of, "I know very well, but..."

We know very well some things,

but we don't really believe in them,

so although we know they will happen,

we are no less surprised when they happen.

In this case,

everything points towards the murder

and, nonetheless, when it happens,

the surprise is, if anything, stronger.

It begins in a standard Hitchcockian way.

He looks up the stairs.

This exchange creates the Hitchcockian tension

between the subject's look

and the stairs themselves,

or rather the void on the top of the stairs

returning the gaze,

emanating some kind of

a weird unfathomable threat.

The camera then provides

a kind of a geometrically clear

God's point of view shot image

of the entire scene.

It is as if here we pass

from God as neutral creator,

to God in his unbearable divine rage.

This murderer is for us an unfathomable monster.

We don't know who he is,

but because we are forced

to assume the murderer's position,

in a way we don't know who we are.

As if we discover

a terrifying dimension in ourselves.

As if we are forced to act as a doll,

as a tool of another evil divinity's will.

It's not as classical metaphysics thinks,

"We are too terrified to accept

the fact that we are mortal beings,

"we would like to be immortal." No.

The truly horrible thing is to be immortal.

Immortality is the true nightmare, not death.

Lord Vader,

can you hear me?

We should remember the exact moment

when the normal, everyday person,

okay not quite everyday,

but ordinary person of Anakin Skywalker

changes into Darth Vader.

This scene when the Emperor's doctors

are reconstituting him after heavy wounds

into Darth Vader,

that these scenes are inter-cut

with the scenes of Princess Padm,

Anakin's wife, giving birth.

Luke.

So it is as if we are witnessing

the transformation of Anakin into father.

But what kind of father?

A monster of a father

who doesn't want to be dead.

His deep breathing is the sound of the father,

the Freudian, primordial father,

this obscene over-potent father,

the father who doesn't want to die.

This, I think, is for all of us the most

obscene threat that we witness.

We don't want our fathers alive.

We want them dead.

The ultimate object of anxiety is a living father.

This brings us to what we should really

be attentive about in David Lynch's film.

Namely, what is to be taken seriously

and not seriously in his films.

- We love Ben.

- We love Ben.

- Here's to Ben.

- Here's to Ben.

Here's to Ben.

- Here's to Ben.

- Be polite!

Here's to Ben.

Frank is one of these terrifying,

ridiculously obscene paternal figures.

Apart from Frank in Blue Velvet,

we have Baron Harkonnen in Dune,

we have Willem Dafoe in Wild at Heart,

we have Mr Eddy in Lost Highway.

Don't you ever f***ing tailgate! Ever!

- Tell him you won't tailgate.

- Ever!

I won't ever tailgate...

Do you know how many f***ing car lengths

it takes to stop a car at 35 miles an hour?

Six f***ing car lengths!

That's 106 f***ing feet, mister!

If I had to stop suddenly, you would have hit me!

I want you to get a f***ing driver's manual

and I want you to study that motherf***er!

I want to spit once on your head.

Just some spittle in your face.

What a luxury.

But I think that this very appearance

of ridiculously violent comedy is deceiving.

I think that these ridiculous paternal figures

are the ethical focus,

the topic of practically all David Lynch's films.

Let's f***!

I'll f*** anything that moves!

A normal, paternal authority is an ordinary man

who, as it were, wears phallus as an insignia.

He has something

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