Post by Capo on Jan 28, 2007 14:51:16 GMT
As Seen Through a Telescope
G. A. Smith 1900 UK
A nosy man looks through a telescope at a woman's bare ankle as someone else ties her shoelace.
Smith was not only one of the earliest pioneers of early Cinema in the UK, but shows in all of his films a connection with what has formed the basis of cinematic language since. Surely, voyeurism, or the notion of watching, is central to film appeciation: here, what we see is focalised through the point-of-view of somebody else, and we implied in that nosiness, that curiosity, that inquisitiveness. And then the voyeur is caught out and slapped... and we laugh not because its funny, but because we have got away with it. We've shared in the same voyeuristic tendencies without physically interacting with the image.
G. A. Smith 1900 UK
A nosy man looks through a telescope at a woman's bare ankle as someone else ties her shoelace.
Smith was not only one of the earliest pioneers of early Cinema in the UK, but shows in all of his films a connection with what has formed the basis of cinematic language since. Surely, voyeurism, or the notion of watching, is central to film appeciation: here, what we see is focalised through the point-of-view of somebody else, and we implied in that nosiness, that curiosity, that inquisitiveness. And then the voyeur is caught out and slapped... and we laugh not because its funny, but because we have got away with it. We've shared in the same voyeuristic tendencies without physically interacting with the image.