Week 25.20 - Socials Roundup
Posts from 12 May - 18 May 2025
Come on baby, light my fire!
Week 25.20 posts are all about people smoking on screen, whether lighting cigarettes or puffing cigars: shots from A Single Man (2009); P-Valley (2020-current); 99 River Street (1953); Double Indemnity (1944); and The Crimson Kimono (1959).
99 River Street
The Hays code did allow you to show people having sex in 1953 . . . but you could sure insinuate it, as this scene from 99 River Street does.
This sex scene is all about power — note how their positions and blocking change, Linda (Evelyn Keyes) literally coming down to Rawlins (Brad Dexter), using her body to convince him the power dynamic is shifting.
She starts far above him, the shot angled down as her shoulder infringes on the frame . . . but they’re eye to eye and almost even as she gets her cigarette lit off his, then sits at his level and presumably in his lap.
Beat it, indeed.
P-Valley
A first episode must tell and show a lot about its characters, especially with an ensemble cast as big as P-Valley. A simple, well-thought-out transition shot can exposit on character and tell a tiny story on its own.
As Big L (Morocco Omari) strikes a match to light his blunt, the scene cuts to Hailey / Autumn (Elarica Johnson) stress-smoking — our eyes have been drawn to Big L’s lighter flame, thus on the cut look towards Hailey’s cigarette.
From their postures to their choice of smoke to their interior / exterior locations to the colours (though both these shots are mostly blue, the scene around Big L’s shot was full of reds, and the focal point before the cut is the glowing orange light), these shots of two characters doing similar things in completely different ways show us the contrast in their lives and situations.
And now for a movie from sixty years earlier which pulls the exact same trick!
The Crimson Kimono
Though it can’t play with colour, The Crimson Kimono draws our eye in a similar way to P-Valley. After the camera ‘settles’, Joe brings his hand up to his cigarette; between the motion and the flame our eyes are sure to be looking right where we should be when the scene cuts.
The cut occurs across the exact same action in both scenes: Joe and Mac taking their cigar/ette out and enjoying the taste of smoke.
Again like P-Valley, it changes location and posture and look (higher contrast with Joe than with Mac; a transition which is quite pleasing in stark black-and-white) and also tells us something about the characters with the juxtaposition.
Going from Joe smoking a cigarette to Mac puffing on a cigar plays with ‘expected’ gender dynamics of who smokes what, which is a running throughline in the film — particularly with the queer-coded Mac.
A Single Man
On his way to the shops, George (Colin Firth) parks against a wall-sized movie poster of Psycho, starkly watching him, all painted in yellows and blues.
When George finishes shopping and shares a cigarette with Carlos (Jon Kortajarena), the eyes are still watching, but she seems to be fading and rose-coloured in the background, as George lets himself enjoy the moment even under scrutiny.
Double Indemnity
Walter Neff lights Keyes's cigarette in one of their first hot-and-heavy-repartee scenes, then Keyes lights Neff's before he dies, with their positions literally and figuratively reversed.
It’s definitely intended to mean more than ‘have a smoke’ — which Mel’s written a whole essay about.
If you can’t get enough, we’ve also looked at how a smoking shot in The Brutalist looks like a painting, and smoking to show passage of time in The Last Seduction.