“ for there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.
Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)
νέα αρχή
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow…
TS Elliot
“We all need someone to look at us. we can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. the first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public. the second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. they are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. they are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. this happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. people in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need. then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. one day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. and finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. they are the dreamers.”
— Milan Kundera
Robert Walker & Laura Elliot in Strangers on a Train (1951, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
In one of Hitchcock’s most famous shots, Strangers on a Train’s pivotal murder is seen as reflected in a pair of glasses. Hitchcock & his director of photography, Robert Burks, achieved this effect by placing a concave mirror on the floor and having the actress, Laura Elliott, stand next to it as she simulated slowly falling dead to the floor. Elliot’s reflection in the concave mirror as she fell was filmed and the shot was then printed onto the lenses of the glasses (scene on youtube here).
Hedy Lamarr in Ekstase (1933, dir. Gustav Machaty)
In Ekstase, a 19-year-old Hedy Lamarr plays a young woman who finds out on her honeymoon that her husband is both impotent and cold. She decides to rectify the situation by finding herself a lover.
Ekstase was highly controversial in its time due to two scenes - the first was a swimming scene, in which Lamarr displayed full nudity. The other scene, pictured above, featured Lamarr & her lover kissing on a bed before his head is seen to drop out of the bottom of the frame. Much writhing ensues, making Ekstase the first non-pornographic film to depict sexual intercourse & the female orgasm onscreen (as captured through Lamarr’s facial expressions).
The scene can be seen here, courtesy of hedy-lamarr.org.
“ I’ve cried, and you’d think I’d be better for it, but the sadness just sleeps, and it stays in my spine the rest of my life.
Conor Oberst
“
I cannot go to the ocean
I cannot drive the streets at night
I cannot wake up in the morning
Without you on my mind
So you’re gone and I’m haunted
And I bet you are just fine
Did I make it that
Easy to walk right in and out
Of my life?
“The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.”
-Jean Cocteau (via getty)
