Today’s movie is the best example of one thing – Dramatic irony!
There are several kinds of irony in literature. Dramatic irony is when the reader/viewer knows something that the characters in the story do not know. Having this kind of inside information can create humor, but more often it’s used to create suspense and tension. Imagine a horror movie where you know the killer is in the closet with a big knife, but the leading lady has no clue and she’s in the bedroom undressing. Tension, right?
There are several kinds of irony in literature. Dramatic irony is when the reader/viewer knows something that the characters in the story do not know. Having this kind of inside information can create humor, but more often it’s used to create suspense and tension. Imagine a horror movie where you know the killer is in the closet with a big knife, but the leading lady has no clue and she’s in the bedroom undressing. Tension, right?
In Alfred Hitchcock’s first Technicolor film Rope, after the opening credits the camera pans to a curtained window and we hear a man scream. Then we see who is screaming…it’s a man being strangled by two other men, Brandon and Phillip. Our minds immediately begin imaging the motive for killing this man. Is this a crime of passion? One look at both men wearing gloves indoors signals our brains something about fingerprints. SO what’s the deal?
Well, the deal is this film is based on the story of the Leopold and Loeb 1924 murder of a 14 year old boy as an intellectual exercise in committing the perfect crime. You can Google all that, though. Back to dramatic irony.
After killing this guy, these two men put his body in a huge chest in the living room a of an apartment and they have a group of people over to party with the body right there literally under their noses in the chest the whole time. Brandon and Philip know it’s there and we know it’s there. All the party gusts have no idea – that’s dramatic irony. Every time someone mentions the chest…we get nervous. Every time someone asks about David (the guy they killed) we get antsy. The tension becomes palpable.
Add to that Hitchcock’s experimental technique of using long, unedited shots to film the whole movie and it ups the ante even more. The film camera is our substitute eye and when a director uses a long shot…it’s like forcing us to watch without blinking. This has a psychological effect of stressing us out a little. It’s been put to good use by many directors. For example the awesome 5 minute shot in the film Atonement. There’s the long opening shot in the Robert Altman film The Player. There’s also the amazing William H. Macy shot in Boogie Nights. The Korean film Oldboy has an amazing fight sequence that’s an extended take. There’s one from Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil that’s very impressive for its day. But I think my favorite on has to be the opening of A Clockwork Orange…that creepy close up of Alex’s unblinking eye and the pulling back to revel the milk bar. Just awesome.
So dramatic irony plus extended long shots = a slow build of tension. It’s one of the things that makes Hitchcock a master of suspense.
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