It’s outrageous to me that this film is forgotten and in fact shit on because it is by far the pinnacle of 1940’s Hollywood filmmaking in my opinion in regards to translating the emotional reality of a story through the medium of film. Nothing hits closer to home than this movie. It covers such a wide breadth of possible empathy that there’s no way you’re sitting as an audience member without any rope to cling onto. You will relate to this film even if you deny it to yourself, you will relate to something about the characters, one of the many relationships being explored here. This movie covers the gamut of human experience from love and loss to distance and loneliness to war and peace. It's an extremely tender and moving exploration of the human soul.
This film is highly important in how much it shows the development of beats and acting over time. Cinema at this point is making a transition into slower longer beats. The actors will sit with a beat for three to five times as long as they used to in the 1930s. And the emotions are downplayed not energized or acted so blatantly. This is acting of reality, more real than theater, it's an art in and of itself that's blossoming onscreen as film actor’s choices are informed by developing acting methods, Lee Strasberg notably. Actors will play the reality of their sensation and space, rather than the emotion. The emotion is elicited from the audience by the choice of the actor to restrain himself to the present conditions and sensations and not project emotion onto the audience. We will feel how deeply the character wants to cry if the actor does not break out in tears but rather fights them back. We will feel how happy they are if the laughter comes out reluctantly almost escaping uncontrollably from them rather than just breaking out in joy. If they are in the true space of the conflict of emotions, i.e. sadness vs. happiness, selfishness vs. love, then we will see the reality of which emotion is winning out. Usually people don’t show their emotions, they fight them back, and in so doing, those emotions that we want to see and enjoy as the audience bubble up inside us as the casual observer more authentically and sincere in manner than if the actor just showed those emotions to us and conveyed that their character is feeling that emotion. This difference in trying to hide emotion versus reveling in it causes the audience to want to experience that emotion more so and thus they do rather than just observe the actor experiencing the emotion.
The acting in this film is far more nuanced than anything that came before it. The photography is incredible as most of the scenes are one shot thus the direction is incredible for constructing the blocking as it is so that we only need the one shot to get all the story information and all the pertinent beats. I would argue that in fact the scenes are more incredible in this film because we don’t realize it’s one shot meaning all we needed to see from the setting, actors, lighting, etc… was covered. It’s like a precision drone strike to the audience’s heart, the camera works on our mind and emotions rather than “setting/plot/universe etc… details of the physical and literary world.”
The notable thing about this film really is the change in beats and acting to one of a realistic experience and sensation within the actor that we as the audience have to work a bit more to see but one that we experience with them.
The notable long shot in this film where the blocking is altered so we get everything we need is in the bar when the characters gather around a piano and then break off into their own separate conversations. We see a phone call in the background that gives us important story information, as well as characters enter the bar and go and sit down at a table with the camera moving over to it and still looking down the length of the bar so we can see the aftermath of the phone call. There are multiple narratives continually occurring in the shot even if they are not in the foreground.
