First Person / Subjective Camera

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are there examples of this working well for prolonged periods of time? the two examples i can think of (Lady in the Lake and Dark Passage) are both pretty much duds, i think, at least as far as this aspect is concerned (there are things i like about Dark Passage, but it's a very flawed film). and is my memory fooling me or does the camera actually smoke a cigaretta at one point in Lady? i'm sure this has been used to better effect for shorter durations in narrative film, but how "long" can it work for?

― a spectator bird (a spectator bird), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 20:35 (twenty years ago)

Good question. It doesn't seem like it can be used for the full spectrum of storytelling. I think of the dream/conception sequence in Rosemary's Baby, or the Copa scene in Goodfellas (are these even legitimate examples?) as successful but obviously limited uses- in both cases somebody is being transported from one realm to another.

I kind of like Dark Passage- Delmer Daves is one of the few directors I discovered for myself -but it is flawed. However, I have never figured out exactly what in it works and what doesn't.

― Ken L (Ken L), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 20:57 (twenty years ago)

that's a good point about it working outside the realm of the narrative as a whole. i can't remember the Rosemary's Baby sequence terrifically well, but i seem to remember that farrow does appear in it, floating on the matress, so it might be a mix of first-person and third.

i think Dark Passage is mostly pretty ridiculous for the first third (although i love the scene where lauren bacall first picks bogart up, and then can't believe he's giving her a hard time about it. she has this great expression on her face like "you just broke out of jail, the cops are chasing you, and you're not sure whether you want to get in the car with me? look at me, i'm lauren bacall!").

but if you can disregard all of the gaping holes and ridiculous improbables in the story, there are a lot of things to like about the second half, i think. bogart walking around san francisco in the bright morning light with that bandage on his face is just eerie. a lot of the film is really gothic rather than noir, and dawes pushes that visually. i remember the end being really terrible, though. they reunite in south america or something, and both appear visibly displeased with such a dumb ending.

― a spectator bird (a spectator bird), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 21:42 (twenty years ago)

There's a short film on the special features disk of Criterion's "Ali: Fear Eat Soul) that is completely done in subjective camera view.

― jay blanchard (jay blanchard), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 21:59 (twenty years ago)

it never seems to work--at least not when used in the literalistic sense. i think this is at least in part because it just seems plain awkward, it doesn't feel like i am seeing through someone's eyes at all, but more like a person holding a camera. maybe home video has caused this since we all know what it is like to be behind a camera.

even a movie told in the first person works better when the protagonist addresses the camera directly or through voice over. im not sure there is a direct correlation in cinema for the "I" of literature.

― ryan (ryan), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 22:13 (twenty years ago)

what the hell am i saying? i mean there no equivalent in cinema to the "I" of literature.

― ryan (ryan), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 22:15 (twenty years ago)

it never seems to work
What about the M*A*S*H episode that was seen through the eyes of a patient?

― Ken L (Ken L), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 22:19 (twenty years ago)

i stand corrected! (i have never seen mash) now that you say that, though, i admit that it actually does work for comedy. esp with animals.

― ryan (ryan), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 22:21 (twenty years ago)

Unfortunately it wasn't comedy. It was one of the serious episodes, like the dream sequence episode or the realtime episode. Maybe two of these are the same episode. Probably directed by Alan Alda, as a warm-up for The Seduction of Joe Tynan or whatever the first film he directed actually was.

― Ken L (Ken L), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 22:43 (twenty years ago)

In keeping with Ryan's idea of the difficulty in whether the subjectivity is "through one's eyes" or "through one's eyes through a camera", the film "David Holtzman's Diary" uses a subjective camera to fight this point exactly, that it's David's camera that sees and records, not his eyes and brain. There's always that element of distance between viewer and subject.

I like the point about there "not being an equivalent of the "I" of literature"--is this really true? I'm not sure. (I'm not even sure if there's a real "I" in literature--Nabokov probably came the closest by designating his main character as the "author". Or maybe Robbe-Grillet's "subjectivity-through-extreme objectivity" characters?) Experimental films' subjectivity usually succumbs this problem by simply making direct reference to the camera as the subjective being (certainly Jem Cohen's "Lost Book Found", Leighton Pierce's works, Brakhage's works, etc. utilize this method)

Maybe I'm mistaken, but wasn't "Mysterious Objects at Noon" done this way as well? I just seem to remember direct camera addresses & walking around, like the camera was a person being told a story.

― jay blanchard (jay blanchard), Thursday, 24 February 2005 14:51 (twenty years ago)

Now that I've thought about it some more, doesn't it seem like the subjective camera is more like Second Person Narration? "You go up the steps. You see a pair of oversized doors. You grab hold of one of the brass lions head knockers and bang it against the door..."

― Ken L (Ken L), Thursday, 24 February 2005 20:26 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, it kinda does seem to fit better in the 2nd person than the first, but really doesn't fit easily into either.

― jay blanchard (jay blanchard), Thursday, 24 February 2005 22:08 (twenty years ago)

yeah even then it's "the guy holding the camera is going up the stairs."

maybe virtual reality is as close as film could get to first person.

― ryan (ryan), Thursday, 24 February 2005 23:40 (twenty years ago)

two months pass...

There was a good deal of this in Being John Malkovich. I think it worked well enough there because it was sort of a special case. Sure, it feels awkward and maybe a little unnatural, but that's exactly how each character is supposed to feel while they're "in" Malkovich's head.

― sleep (sleep), Friday, 13 May 2005 18:36 (twenty years ago)

seven months pass...

I haven't seen it, but isn't this the whole point of The Blair Witch Project? Or am I totally misinformed?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 7 January 2006 12:29 (nineteen years ago)

that's a good question! but no, i would say the point of the BWP is a "documentary" like feeling that we get from the conceit that we are looking at "found" footage. it's not that WE'RE there, but that someone real was there i think. kind of a clever way to manipulate the view from behind a camera as opposed to first person perspective.

― ryan (ryan), Saturday, 7 January 2006 20:54 (nineteen years ago)

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