THE COLLECTIVE     

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFpn3Cv2CE4

By Jonathan Glazer (director of Zone of Interest) https://us.thefall.film

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041959/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 I rewatched this beaut yesterday - could be the best film of all time. I think you guys would LOVE this film. It was Roger Ebert's favorite movie of all time. I have this theory on the spectrum of the composition and how, kinda like a totem pole (but with the lateral element of the frame), the layers/sectors of the frame evoke different meanings/charges. For instance, in the opening shots of these two scenes (both in the first act) of Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (another GOAT film, starring the same actor as the Third Man too - Joseph Cotten (was also in Citizen Kane and a good buddy of Orson Welles)), there's a uncle and a niece (both named Charlie - Charlie and Charlotte) both framed in the LOWER 3rd of the frame, both in a bed, both looking left to right, both in bed in the middle of the day, both in echoing frames; the effect Hitchcock was after was that both characters are subliminally (unconsciously) communicating to each other telepathically (but not deliberately, not like she's 11 from stranger things or some shit). A synchronistic phenomenon, beyond them both. After these two scenes, Charlie decides to go send a letter to her Uncle Charlie to come visit from the east, once she gets to the post office she discovers a letter from her Uncle saying that he is on his way, before she even sent him her letter - little Charlie says this was "telepathy". That cinematic foundation of that telepathy was in these two shots below (I couldn't find the two shots that better illustrate this, but these two illustrate it enough - the two scenes are both quite complex and layered). To 'brainwash'/hypnotize someone, you have to get their mind to be functioning below the individual's baseline psychic frequency - for instance, soothing a subject with music increases their suggestivity and was a tool used by the CIA in MK Ultra experiments. You want the mind to be both awake and asleep, in a sort of twilight state, between consciousness and unconsciousness. I say this to just illustrate the functions of the mind. Hitchcock had DEEP insight into the workings of the human psyche - I mean, each film of his is a sort of brainwashing of sorts, not in a bad way, just he's effecting you on levels you can't identify for the first 5-10 viewings of his films; he knows exactly what you're thinking, where your eye is, what you're anticipating, what questions you're asking, what trepidations you feel at every frame of the film (to put it crudely - he's doing much more than that, he's also introducing the perfect elements at the perfect time to create the perfect alchemical brew of perception - He'll have it start to rain so you slip into a more liminal state so that he can really hit you 5 minutes from now (I hope I make sense)). Hitchcock, this I am convinced, knew that the lower part of the frame, like a bass note, has a hummmmmm to it, a hypnotic hummm, that effects us on a deep primordial level, to who's reality no one knows the full extent of its ability (visualize the base square of a pyramid and come up with a musical note to that image in your mind, then juxtapose that with the musical note you feel towards the tip of the pyramid). But this is not just true of the bass note - every point in the composition has different frequencies that when you unite them with a certain shape or form, you constellate some psychic substrata that effects us on a level most doubt even exists. It's a sort of primordial subliminal effect. Anyways, the Third Man...aside from perhaps being the perfect script, it cinematically plays with the positioning of the subjects in this psychic substrata of the composition's matrix, but never in a formulaic way, nor even in an explicitly psychological way (tho of course it is), but more so in a dramatic way within the narrative arch of the film, taking you to these soaring dramatic pitches, mainly (aside from the story) by executing these marks within this matrix of the composition moving through the dimension of time. Carol Reed also employs the use of dutch angles in almost every frame, which you hardly even notice, funny enough - that also adds to the a heightened effect of the twirling golden ratio of your viewing experience (expressed formally, experienced dramatically). This film was coming out of WW2 (shot in 1948, released in 49 (Reed's ass was on all sorts of stimulants to get through 20hr shoot days on this bad boy (doubled his days, full day shoots, full night shoots, 2hrs of sleep between the two)), and I think Reed was formally responding to that fissure in humanity, a really fucked up process of disillusionment, a sort of cracking of life (and seeing what darkness emerges from those cracks), exemplified formally by Reed's use of dutch angles (and set in bombed out Vienna). He also, very subliminally, and very literally, at the end of a scene in the first 40 min of the film, tells you (without words - just with a book, a mustache and a sidewalk) that WW2 was the great disillusionment of humanity's hubris of the late 19th and early/first half of the 20th century, I won't tell you where in the film it is, but if you find this easter egg I'll buy you a fancy cup of coffee. Anyway, these are just some of the thoughts the film left me with - there's so much more it did, I can't even begin to articulate - thought I'd share just a bit. I really think the Third Man might be the perfect film for that period of time. PS: I've also come to the conclusion that European's shoot stairwells sooooo MUCH better than the Americans - because, think about it, the Europeans are all walking up and down these beautiful 19th/20th century twirling stairwells in so most of their buildings, even the most rundown apartment complex in the projects of Rome have these incredible swirling stairwells, whereas Americans got these blocky industrial stairwells that just suck.