A great experiment in filmmaking. This movie shows the ability to choreograph dramatic action in one long take where the camera moves with the actors to narratively justified and appropriate arrangements and also creates tension by doing such movements. Generally speaking, films throughout the 1930’s and 40’s used edits as the stylistic or thematic pivoting points throughout a scene. Hitchcock, however, has always had an eye for using long takes and camera movement to convey beat changes, thematic points, or massive story beats rather than relying on an edit.
This use of long takes, deliberate camera movement and compressing scenes into one shot is definitely a launching pad for Spielberg’s long takes. The film is a foundation for Film Craft. The blocking of the actors along with the camera is very technically advanced and shows the beginnings of film form really coming into fruition.
Yes, film had adapted technically and stylistically over the decades but it was sporadic and genre based generally in intent and purpose. Orson Welles touched off a new generation of filmmakers to experiment with filmmaking form itself going forward. However, Hitchcock is a true engineer and storyteller combined, experimenting with the camera and his actors in ways that can be repeated and demonstrate technique for creating tension and drama rather than “feeling it out” through gut instinct onset like Welles. The camera will now start to expand in movement and form that you didn’t see before. There will be longer and longer takes with cameras doing wilder movements as we move into the 1950’s.
This film continues the theme of the monster moving into the house, then the monster moving into the brain, and finally into the character, which is this film entirely. The protagonists of this movie are murderers that you would never normally be asked to root for yet you are kind of asked to root for them during the entire film as it is presented absolutely from their perspective and their justification. The movie opens with them and thus you are forced to sympathize with their dilemma. They are the only characters who know what’s truly going while Jimmy Stewart has to piece things together. Because we share this information with them and because the camera holds on them in long takes we are forced to walk each step in their shoes even while watching Jimmy Stewart walk his steps.
This film really pushes that moral line between good and evil that WW2 absolutely bent and nearly broke.