Five Shots: YOU AND ME
Five of our favourites from 1938 comedy-melodrama-noir YOU AND ME
With the number of genres You and Me mashes up, you’d expect a wide range of shots . . . and you’ll get em!
1. Characters as Set Dressing
Though You and Me’s plot involves interesting locations — an emporium, an underground speakeasy, stage-y jail cells — director Fritz Lang never underestimates how he can make a frame interesting with characters.
Even if someone is ‘just’ sitting in the background, things such as their shape, silhouette, and a slash of light across their face give the frame a little extra something, plus they can glare and glower as the man in the foreground smokes and yammers.
2. Missed Connections
The combination of comedy and tragedy here is perfection in a dialogue-less sequence which shows us exactly how Joe (George Raft) and Helen (Sylvia Sidney) miss each other; or rather, how Helen avoids being seen.
Though the opening-and-closing doors and stairway ducking-and-weaving have a vaudeville or French farce vibe, there’s also tragedy to the missed connection because at this point we are aware of the misunderstanding which leads Helen to run away, and we want them to reconcile.
For comedy and pathos to hit hardest, the scene needs clarity: the audience need to understand where each character is in relation to the other, even when we only see one of them. Then when both characters are in frame, it needs to be believable that they can’t see each other, and the proximity is not being ‘forced’ for the sake of our vantage point.
Lang is truly a master of blocking, staging, and framing.
3. Silhouettes and Shadows
You and Me came out a year after Disney’s animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and absolutely leans into the con-men-as-archetype sort of vibe the band of Snow White’s merry men have, so I don’t think it a stretch to say this silhouetted marching-off-to-work shot references “Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It’s Off To Work We Go”
4. Chalkboard Meme
Henceforth this is my go-to ‘complex figurations at a black/white/clear board‘ meme
Look at the way the frame is ‘painted’ with characters, set dressing, and props, giving it depth and being as properly busy as an emporium store’s toy section would be.
Busy as the frame is, it clearly directs us towards Helen by using the blackboard to ‘frame’ her, making her face the focus and arranging everyone else ‘around’ and looking towards her, which guides our eyes that way.
Light Your Background!
Though multiple shots above essentially use characters as set dressing (and also lots of props and actual set dressing), none of them neglect to LIGHT THE BACKGROUND interestingly.
Shots with only one person as the focus highlight how the filmmakers constantly paint the frame with light and shadows; a Lang speciality.
Is this cheating in order to pick three extra shots? Technically!
But ya can’t argue with what works this well and looks this good.