The Spiral Staircase (1946)
Feb. 6th, 2011 08:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
randy_byersThis is an utterly gorgeous and atmospheric Gothic woman-in-peril thriller with unexpected depths. The heroine is mute, and director Robert Siodmak draws connections between her muteness and silent film. Like many woman-in-peril Gothics (e.g., Gaslight and Experiment Perilous, both 1944), the film is set in the 1890s or 1900s, which is also the era of the first films. In the opening sequence, we see an audience watching an early silent film called "The Kiss". Even more meta than that, we see people sneaking a peek at people watching a movie in the dark.
Cut to a peeping Tom in a hotel closet watching a woman get dressed. He is pretty obviously associated with the crowd watching the movie downstairs. His eyeball becomes a movie screen displaying her image.
He kills the woman, and all we see is a stylized shot of her clawed hands -- a silent film technique straight out of Weimar. (Siodmak was a German emigre.)
Cut back to the silent film showing below, with an image of a dead woman pulled from the waves, and an audience of voyeurs watching the spectacle.
The point is made. The film does not dwell on it, but it continues to use silent film techniques to explore the muteness of the heroine, who stands in for the audience who can't warn her of the killer lurking in the flickering shadows.
Cut to a peeping Tom in a hotel closet watching a woman get dressed. He is pretty obviously associated with the crowd watching the movie downstairs. His eyeball becomes a movie screen displaying her image.
He kills the woman, and all we see is a stylized shot of her clawed hands -- a silent film technique straight out of Weimar. (Siodmak was a German emigre.)
Cut back to the silent film showing below, with an image of a dead woman pulled from the waves, and an audience of voyeurs watching the spectacle.
The point is made. The film does not dwell on it, but it continues to use silent film techniques to explore the muteness of the heroine, who stands in for the audience who can't warn her of the killer lurking in the flickering shadows.
