Week 25.48 - Socials Roundup - NOIRVEMBER Pt 4
24 Nov - 30 Nov 2025 - lots of light and shadows in this one!
Week 25.48 posts include shots from L’Innocent (2022); Guilty Bystander (1950) times two; Sherlock Holmes Dressed to Kill (1946); and White Heat (1950).
Sherlock Holmes Dressed to Kill
Sherlock and Watson are a bit at odds in this scene, and the framing shows us as much as their conversation tells us
Their singles are ‘clean’ looking far offscreen at each other, but even when they share a screen, they’re distinctly separated, first by a pillar, than an oddly posed lamp, which only serves to draw attention to their being ‘cut off’ from each other.
L’INNOCENT
When Abel (Louis Garrel) finds a gun in his mom’s boyfriend’s jacket, he leans over to try to get a look at his mom and her boyfriend . . .
We haven’t seen yet the door through which Abel is going to look, but the scene sets us up to understand that he’s peeping through a crack in the door without us needing to.
How?
It puts a stripe of light over Abel’s eye, insinuating there’s a strong light source coming through a crack, then when it cuts to the door we’re looking at approximately the same place on the screen.
Boom. Abel is looking through a crack in a door, we’re seeing what he’s seeing, easy peasy.
The orange for Abel / blue for the other room is a nice touch, too. ]
White Heat
Last week we took a deep dive into how an earlier part of this prison scene used mirrors, but check out the transition and the way it also ‘mirrors’ shots!
The way it crossfades between Cody (James Cagney) and his Ma (Margaret Wycherly) clearly shows them to be cut from the same cloth / kind of psychopathy.
But the shots immediately before Cody’s single and after Ma’s single also draw parallels, as their ‘gang’ is arraigned around them in similar fashion.
Guilty Bystander
Both of these dialogue-less scenes rely entirely on the camera and actors moving with each other through light and shadows to create both drama and (dark) comedy.
Some of the tension on the stairs comes from just waiting to see if Max Thursday (Zachary Scott) exactly hits the beam of light with his eyes . . . and he always does!
I absolutely love the irreverent moment at 0:14 where falling into the pool of light coincides with the cigar drop.