Orpheus & Mirrors

Technically, thematically and metaphysically, the mirror is the most important aspect of Orpheus. Through this reflective prop, the film creates impressive special effects, makes a self-reflective commentary about society and creates a complex world that’s part-illusion, part-reality.

The first time a mirror comes into play occurs when Orpheus is in the bedroom of The Princess, who we later learn to be Death. After thoroughly confusing Orpheus as to whether his reality is real—“sleeping or dreaming, the dreamer must accept his dreams”—Death sits down in her chair, the mirror in front of her reflecting both her expression and that of Orpheus. The second of the many cryptic radio emissions syncs with the visual: “the mirrors would do well to reflect further.” On its second repetition, the mirror suddenly cracks.

The mirror cracking is one of the film’s early signs that something otherworldly is happening, but the action also reveals the technical mastery director Jean Cocteau displays when it comes to filming mirrors. In the later scene when Death and Cegeste take Eurydice to hell, the camera and editing tricks are on full display. When Death smashes the mirror and exits into the world of the beyond, the pieces magically reassemble, a clever trick of running the film backwards (and, maybe, a far-off reference to the radio call: “silence goes faster backwards”). More technical wizardry is at work when the camera’s positioning—directly in front of the mirror—should result in its visible reflection, but, as Death walks out, it’s nowhere to be seen. As the film was made in 1950, this required some impressive editing, most likely some placement of filmstrips upon each other. This act, layering one reality upon another, reflects what occurs in the story as well: Death passing from one world to the next.


Generally, the film’s use of mirrors intertwines well with the larger social and human commentary that the film makes. The centerpiece of this commentary arrives when Orpheus arrives, only to find his wife dead. Heurtebise tries to calm him down and instruct him how to save Eurydice. While both stare into the mirror, Heurtebise relates to Orpheus: “Mirrors are the doors through which Death comes and goes. Look at yourself in a mirror all your life and you’ll see death at work.” An important distinction between the two “deaths” lies here. In the first line, where “Death” is capitalized, Heurtebise is clearly talking about the character Death, the Princess, whom the audience has already seen travel through the very mirror the two characters are standing in front of. In the second sentence, however, the word is lowercase, showing that he is generally speaking of death. And what he says is absolutely true. Mirrors, over life’s span, show the physical decline of a person: skin sags, hair recedes, eyesight worsens. One watches death approaching with each glance into the mirror.


Finally, mirrors are the gateway between the illusionary world of the afterlife and our present day reality. When Death first transports using the mirrors, to Orpheus’ great surprise, Cocteau teases the audience with what lies beyond. The camera briefly jumps into the world behind the mirror, showing Orpheus struggle on the other side, trying to physically force his way in. When the camera cuts to a close up, it suddenly feels like Orpheus (or, rather, actor Jean Marais) might be pounding into the screen itself, trying to escape the fictional world of the film into the audience’s. This strange interplay between illusion and reality continues, as Orpheus falls asleep at the mirror in the house and wakes up in a mirror lodged in a desert. Mirrors have the inexplicable effect of transporting characters to other times and place. They literally are tools of metaphysics.

And Cocteau’s own twist on the classic Greek tale also involves mirrors. In the tale, Orpheus sends his wife back to hell by looking at her. Here? He sees her reflection in the mirror.

Wild Strawberries & Addressing the Self

“In our relations with other people, we mainly discuss and evaluate their behavior and character. That is why I have withdrawn myself from nearly all so-called relations,” our protagonist, Isak Borg relates via voiceover to the audience in the opening scene of Wild Strawberries. He proceeds then to evaluate his own behavior and character, saying he is “rather lonely” and a “pedant”, but his life has been full of “hard work”. The camera wanders around the room, an academic fortress complete with grand guardian dog perched by his side, and the voiceover provides the background behind each photograph. This opening montage is a neatly wrapped package of identity: it begins and ends with a low-angle shot that gives a sense of royalty to Isak, but also jumps around the room, mimicking the movements of a visitor’s eyes.

But, as Isak relates, inter-personal relations are made up merely of discussions and evaluations of behavior and character. This introduction, which features Isak addressing himself for the audience, finds its pair in another instance of addressing the self. This quaint, warm and grandfatherly introduction comes in great contrast to the stark and terrifying nightmare sequence where Isak confronts a balloon faced version of himself—which promptly pops/dies—as well as a version of himself in a casket. Bergman skillfully employs non-diegetic music, including an ominous heartbeat when Isak roams the streets alone and some classic horror music when the presumably dead casket-Isak grabs the dream Isak and brings him closer. The final shot of the nightmare sequence is an intense, close up from Isak’s POV as casket Isak pulls him closer to him. This is not only a literal wake up call (the horror awakens Isak) but also a thematic one. This version of himself challenges the introductory one he provided the audience—Isak realizes that, if he continues to live his life in a state of withdrawal, he might end up like the Isak in the casket: knocked off the carriage and left only with his unconscious self.


So the film’s catalyst is evident: Isak needs to change. He is not fully sure how to effect change, but he starts by deciding to drive seven hours rather than fly on, career-wise, the most important day of his life. Isak senses that he needs to re-involve himself with the rest of humanity; maybe his interactions will prove his theory of people incorrectly. When his estranged daughter-on-law joins him on the road trip, it’s the first step in a journey that involves Isak revisiting his past and taking on the history behind his unhappiness. With each new piece of background knowledge—and each new passenger picked up along the way—Isak and the audience learn what has led to Isak’s dissatisfaction with human interaction, mainly that his brother stole the love of his life and his mother was unflinchingly control-driven.

These dips into the past, mainly occurring when Isak drives up to the home where his family used to spend his summers, are both pleasant and painful for Isak. He lights up when seeing his cousin Sara, the love of his life, but then suffers from serious loneliness and emptiness when he watches his brother snatch her away and Isak, ghost-like, hovering in the corner, watches the lunch table filled with his vibrant family members. Ultimately it seems, the pleasure of others outweighs the pain, as he relates to the local gas-station owner that “I wish I stayed here.” The film addresses the pain that is felt when addressing the past: Isak has another dream involving, presumably, a factual past event where he watches his wife, whom he doesn’t truly love or fight for, cheat with another man. But Isak’s past and his work bring him great pleasure, as evidenced at the ceremony. The road trip forces Isak to understand and get to know his daughter-in-law and the pressing issues she has with her husband, Isak's son Evald. Isak ultimately gets involved with the situation, speaking to Evald at the film’s close and relating his desire to move on and let go of grudges.


Though the film does end on too upbeat a note—as if all the negative past events are negated—the audience has witnessed a significant change in Isak. For pain and pleasure, Isak has successfully addressed himself, his hypocrisies, his faults, his wrongdoings, and has made a decided effort to change. Withdrawal, it seems, does more harm than good.

Breathless & Aimless Unhappiness

“After all, I’m an asshole,” our protagonist tells us in the opening scene of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, letting us know that though we might not want to root for him, we will have to deal with him the whole movie. “After all, it’s gotta be done,” he reminds us, underneath the girly newspaper he holds up.

Michel is a pleasure-seeker; he follows his id and schedules nothing. His first action, stealing a car, exhibits his recklessness and impulsive nature. He justifies it later on while speeding away, telling the camera in almost documentary fashion, that it’s just “as old Bugatti said, cars are for driving, not stopping.” Michel drives the way he lives his life; there’s no thinking about consequences, there’s simply the one speed he maintains and neither the women he sleeps with nor the police chasing after him can derail him. His actions dictate his disregard: he orders breakfast and then leaves, he declines money his female acquaintance offers but then steals it when she’s not looking, he walks into a hotel room and takes a key, he knocks a man out in the bathroom and steals his wallet. Even when he sees the death of a man on the street, an omen when considering Michel’s eventual fate, Michel takes a look and then continues reading the paper. The death gives him no pause, much like his murder of the cop early on. Life's largest consequence has no effect whatsoever.


All these actions reveal Michel’s lack of a moral center. He’s aimless and unsatisfied. But, nonetheless, he does little of actual value to change his situation. He expresses to Patricia that he can’t live without her, but, as soon as she leaves him, he curses her off. The only thing that might salvage Michel is Patricia. Like the girl in the story Michel relates about the bus driver who stole five million francs, Patricia could be his confident, his partner in crime. But Patricia is under a similar trance of aimlessness. Her confusion and what she wants is understood when she tells Michel: “I want you to love me, but at the same time I don’t want you to. I love my freedom also.” This greatly contrasts with what she says later about freedom, mainly, that she doesn’t have any. “I don’t know if I’m unhappy because I’m not free, or if I’m not free because I’m unhappy,” she says to Michel in her room. Though she fights a battle against an unknown something—herself? the country? her job?—her cognizance of her state of mind makes her more capable of handling reality than it does Michel. She is a visitor in France, and can always retreat home, whereas Michel has no grounding or homebase.


Ultimately, however, she turns him in, disbelieving in his self and only believing in his unhappiness. “When we talked, I talked about me, you about you, whereas we should’ve talked about each other,” he relates. This vague reasoning, that they could’ve changed something to be happier, is as aimless as the rest of their actions in the film. Michel, despite this reality, continues to run even after the police mortally wound him. He sprints away, because life is for running, not stopping, and in the film’s final moment, he brings the theme full circle. He insults himself, but the policeman mishears him, relating to Patricia that his last words were the insult directed towards her. But, this misinterpretation, along with the “mask”—the series of three facial gestures—that Michel passes along to Patricia, perhaps signifies the passing of his own aimlessness as well.

The Modernity of M

Fritz Lang had incredible foresight. The editing, cuts, and usage of sound he displays in M is beyond modern. First and foremost, this is evident in the non-static nature of the camera. The camera constantly follows its characters (evidenced when the child-killer, Hans Beckert, is on the prowl) and often acts as the eyes of different characters (when the detective searches around the room). Especially impressive is the way Lang moves the camera through narrative structures: when the police chief receives a file and begins to read through it, the camera jumps back to the scene of the crime to provide visual reminders for the viewer. When the two larger groups—the police and the underworld—both discuss the hunting of Beckert, Lang jumps between the scenes, thematically connecting the two groups and creating an ironic dialogue and comradery between the two sides of the law.


Lang also takes advantage of sound. Most chilling is Beckert’s whistling of “In the Hall of the Mountain King”, which is the ultimate reason for Beckert’s capture (made by, ironically, enough, a blind man: one of the many aspects of Lang’s larger commentary about the efficiency of the police.) Lang uses sound—or, rather, lack thereof—to heighten the child killer’s violent libido when he stares at sets of knives (his weapons) and the reflection of a young girl in the mirror of a store window. The sound of the hustle and bustle in the streets fades off, and the silence is almost louder than noise. Presented in front of the killer are the two things he lusts most for: weapons and a fresh, young victim. When Beckert screams to the underworld at the film’s close that “I want to escape, to escape from myself! But it’s impossible. I can’t escape. I have to obey it,” the audience understands, as they have already witnessed Beckert unable to control his horrifying desires.

Lang also interconnects the murders and Beckert’s insanity with strong and recurring visual cues; when he tracks down the victim he sees in the store reflection, he briefly passes a window with a bouncing arrow. This reminds the viewer of the ball Elsie bounced at the beginning of the film. To the right of the arrow is a hypnotic, black and white swirl, denoting Beckert’s lack of self-control and forward the idea that he is under a sort of id-driven spell. The placement of the two items—the arrow in the left half and the swirl in the right—is the exact placement of Elsie’s ball and Beckert’s shadow when the two characters meet. The swirl also visually connects with the empty and barren staircase that leads up to the Beckmann’s apartment: both give off an optical illusion that jars the viewer.


“It’s me, pursuing myself,” Beckert screams to the underworld. What an incredibly apt way to describe his insanity as well as Lang’s process. Not only does this line link with Beckert’s shadow—how he was first presented to the audience—but also sums up the film’s central purpose: the character’s and the audiences’ pursuit of Beckert. The camera jumps and cuts to different physical locations, mirroring the thoughts of the characters during the investigation. M is a remarkably early example of how the camera interprets the power of the mind.

Rashômon & Subjective Truth

“I don’t understand it, I don’t understand it at all,” the woodcutter states gravely, bleakly looking out into the rain. The priest, with an equally stony expression, offers no spiritual explanation, following the woodcutter’s gaze and futilely turns to the outside rain for an answer.

Thus opens Rashômon. This stark, wandering and vague philosophizing prepares the audience for a similarly answerless narrative. It begins with the woodcutter telling his tale about finding the body. Akira Kurosawa thematically ties the visuals with the narrative by deploying a tracking shot aimed straight into the sun. It’s as if trying to find truth is as blinding and difficult as staring into the sun. This shot is equally powerful to the one where the woodcutter finds the body: the camera, at a low-angle, is where the face of the unknown (at the time) victim should be, his hands raised in the final moments of self-defense. This creates a menacing frame for the camera, and the woodcutter’s expression mirrors that.


This ominous pose suits the story well, and when each character begins to spin his or her version of how the samurai died, the lurking feeling remains that we will never find out or discover the meaning. The four different takes of the same event add an interesting dimension to the discourse about subjectivity and truth. Ultimately, nothing is really concluded about what actually happened, but what is concluded is a commentary about human nature. The existence of these different, subjective truths, in an existential sense, makes the search for meaning all the more difficult. When the woodcutter relates that he “doesn’t understand his own soul”, it couldn’t be more clear that the events that conspired shook him to his core.

Kurosawa often places the camera in such a way that it visually links the audience with different characters; in a way, Kurosawa personifies the audience. When the woodcutter originally finds the body of the husband, for example, he stares down directly at the camera, in front of which is the husband’s hand. Later on, during the bandit’s retelling, he relates how he overtook the wife and began raping her. During these initial frantic moments, the camera, aimed up at the sky, spins around in circles, making us the wife and her world spins out of her own control. In both these moments, we are victimized, an interesting contrast to what we visually become during the trial scenes. There, the defendants sit on the ground before us in extremely vulnerable positions, and answer questions that we don’t hear but they can. The characters are relating their stories, confessing their “truths” to a voiceless character. The film strips away the middlemen: we, the members of the audience, are truly the ones who will judge the characters.


At the same time, however, Kurosawa makes sure, through his camera personification and our exposure to all these different stories, to make us experience each subjective truth of the characters as fully as possible. And, since no one truth results from all the recountings of the murder and rape, this disturbs the characters and us. The profound effect that is made on the woodcutter and the priest has more to do with the differing claims of each character than the actual crimes committed. The fact that each character’s tale cannot be true, but they nonetheless stand by it and subsequently paint each other with such inhumane strokes really shakes the third parties, and, ultimately, the audience.

Blow-Up & The Creation of Meaning

The primary existential quest is the search for life’s meaning. Some trust that a holy, divine being, God or otherwise, has a plan for them, and simply pray and continue on until life’s conclusion. Others find similarly ingrained practices, whether it be a profession, sport, or routine, to worship and follow, which help to qualm life’s unnerving dilemma. For the jaded rest, it’s an aimless journey, and for every moment meaning is created, the next turn could mean a pitfall into nothingness. The jaded walk a fine line between disappearance and existence.


There are some who have the profession but who also suffer from these dreaded feelings of nothingness, much like the never-named-but-known-as-Thomas protagonist of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up. Thomas is a fashion photographer, a well-known one, judging by the parade of doll-like 20 something female models that stalk him, whose job it is to create meaning in his photo shoots. We assume Thomas shoots for some high-end clothing companies, but it seems that his real desire is to create an art book, filled with images from homeless shelters and the pictures he takes of the couple in the park. The posed, superficial, even exploitative high fashion photos contrast greatly to the organically obtained homeless shelter images and especially to the park photos. Thomas associates different meanings to these two separate forms of photography, as noted by his lifeless attitude post-fashion photos and his comically over joyous heel kick after snapping the park pictures.

But a creation is always a creation. When Thomas develops the photos from the park and soon discovers a gunman in the bushes, he frantically and obsessively begins to blow-up the resolution of the images, distorting the quality and thus losing the truth in the distorted, grainy, now abstract images he’s left with. When he puts his P.I cap on and returns to the scene, the body looks fake and no further evidence is found. His search has led him again to nothingness.


Thomas’ experience with the park murder and his photo “evidence” exemplifies the existential elusiveness of meaning. Thomas, fed up with the vapid models and photo shoots that make up his daily existence, jumps (literally) at the chance to propel his profession to a higher overall reason for being. But it turns out his work does nothing but waste time and materials. Creations only have the meaning individuals give them, Blow-Up reminds us. The piece of the guitar from the Yardbirds concert is left as trash on the ground because it doesn’t mean anything to the passersby. The fake tennis match between the mimes only has meaning because everyone is believes in it. Thomas leaves the guitar piece on the ground. Thomas realizes he must buy into the mime tennis match for it to have meaning.

Between these experiences, Thomas learns that his creations, despite the subject matter, are inexorably linked to a sense of falsity, and that finding meaning in them is as elusive as finding life’s meaning.

Benjamin and Tajiri

Walter Benjamin, in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, states the following:

“Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence of the place where it happens to be. The unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence.”

This statement reminded me of the basic goals of Rea Tajiri’s documentary History and Memory. What Tajiri attempts to do is recreate what her parents’ experiences were like in a Japanese internment camp. However, all Tajiri has to work with is one sole memory, one image image, one detail her mother gave to her about the experience—the cupping of water and subsequent splashing on her face. It is up to Tajiri to flesh out the rest of the background story and create a truth with her narrative.

Though Tajiri is not “reproducing” a work of art—she is creating one—she has the same struggles that Benjamin lists here. Her work, no matter her efforts, cannot reclaim the “presence in time and space” her mother’s memory did. Nor can she herself return to that time, and have that “unique experience” her mother did. Tajiri’s work is as much about her desire to expose truth of what happened at the camps (and, thus, alert the public about the psychologically damaging effects of what took place) as it is a reflection about the painful truth of experience and the futility of fully recreating the past. Tajiri’s work reminds us why cameras exist in the first place: to try to capture those fleeting moments, to have some indication that they happened.

When Benjamin states that the “unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject”, his claims again match up with Tajiri’s work. Tajiri, in order to create a background to her parents’ pasts, researches the internment camps and provides clips of the films of the time that dealt with the issue. Tajiri shows the viewer how her parents and their existence were represented by the media of the time. Tajiri herself does this work for the viewer; she puts together all the layers that have been added to her parents’ story since then.

History and Memory features Tajiri taking a memory and creating a piece of art around it. Tajiri, in her work, then adds the history behind the art and shows how the story has evolved and changed, and, in her case, been misrepresented. Tajiri’s work also is a meditation on the act of filming and creating art and how these sort of creations affect memory and place individuals in history.