Narrative technique · used in 5 films
Making the main character someone who secretly watches others, then showing you what they see. You become aware that you are watching too, and that it makes you complicit.
Examples
Alfred Hitchcock · 1954
Hitchcock sets up Jeff's window-watching as an actual movie theater. Jeff looks at a screen of lit windows, and each one holds a different story. You watch Jeff watch. Hitchcock keeps cutting back to Jeff's face, so you are watching a man who is watching. The suggestion is that going to the movies is a form of spying.
Where to see it: Jeff watching Miss Lonelyhearts. The camera catches him watching, then catches us watching him.
Akira Kurosawa · 1961
The samurai climbs the town watchtower and sits back to watch the gangs line up for battle like he's at a show. The camera gives you his view of them. You enjoy the bloodshed you're waiting for, the same way he does.
Where to see it: The standoff in the street. The 2 gangs edge toward each other while the samurai watches from the tower, until a government official arrives and the fight falls apart.
Krzysztof Kieślowski · 1988
Tomek watches Magda through a telescope, and the camera shows you exactly what he sees. You get pulled into the same act and start to feel how invasive it is. The film makes you ask why you were happy to look.
Where to see it: The telescope nights: Tomek watches Magda come home, work on her art and cry over another failed relationship. He saw it all from his godmother's apartment, and she did not know.
Dan Gilroy · 2014
Gilroy makes you watch Lou's crime footage being broadcast on the local news. Then, you watch the news director celebrate its ratings. Lou has correctly worked out that an appetite for violent spectacle drives the whole system, and by watching, you end up sharing in that appetite.
Where to see it: The news director watching Lou's footage and working out how big an audience it will pull. You are making the same calculation as a viewer, and I feel like it's the most uncomfortable moment in the film because you recognize yourself in it.
Alex Garland · 2024
Garland builds the film around Lee's cameras. You are always watching the war through the lens of a photographer who is watching it through her own lens. The layers of watching never end, and they make you question why we consume images of suffering.
Where to see it: Jessie stepping into the gunfire at the White House to get a photo while Lee pushes her to safety. Lee is shot, and Jessie photographs her mentor as she dies. That moment is the film's central moral question.
Questions
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