Sightlines · a concept

attraction image

*1st reflection* — composition signs `plastic-figure` + `theatrical-figure`, genetic sign `mise-en-abyme`.

On screen: the "montage of attractions"; staging that figures rather than acts

Battleship Potemkin (1925) — Eisenstein's own 'montage of attractions' — staging engineered as a series of calculated shocks administered to the viewer's body, supported by Meisel's accelerating industrial score under the Steps.
Strike (1925) — The factory spies introduced as comic types, each nicknamed and intercut with the animal (Fox, Owl, Bulldog, Monkey) whose nature they embody — staging that figures rather than acts, the literal…
Häxan (1922) — The Sabbath teems as staged spectacle — flying witches, cavorting demons, trick-shot apparitions — figuring its argument as a montage of attractions rather than acting a plot
Metropolis (1927) — The unveiling of the Maschinenmensch — lit from below, ringed by men in formal dress, staged as a demonic epiphany purely to be beheld rather than to advance action
King Kong (1933) — Denham chaining Kong on a Broadway stage and selling him as the eighth wonder of the world — the film staging its own exhibition, mirroring Cooper's test-reel pitch to RKO.
A Night at the Opera (1935) — Action staged as spectacle in the opera house: Harpo swinging across the proscenium on ropes, backdrops flown in mid-performance to drop a fruit cart and a battleship behind the singers; likewise the…
Alexander Nevsky (1938) — The field organ, masked helmets, bishop and fascist-evoking insignia are staged to figure a discourse (crusader = German militarism) rather than to act directly.
Hail the Conquering Hero (1944) — No heroic act is ever performed; heroism is only staged. The escalating public tableaux — competing marching bands at the station, the porch-front speeches, the mayoral draft — present valor as…
Ace in the Hole (1951) — Wilder choreographs a literal carnival — vendors, special train, midway, a song sold to tourists who came to watch a man die — spectacle staged to be gawked at
Victims of Sin (1951) — Pérez Prado's orchestra and Rita Montaner performing onscreen as themselves, cut on the orchestra's attack so narrative time dissolves into performance time; the number states the film's thesis…
Limelight (1952) — Chaplin repeatedly interrupts the narrative for self-contained performance set pieces — the dream turns, the benefit performance, the ballet — formalizing the discrete music-hall number (the model…
Moulin Rouge (1952) — The celebrated opening overture sweeping through crowd, can-can, and gaslit haze is mounted as immersive spectacle that figures and displays the milieu rather than advancing any character's situation.
Singin' in the Rain (1952) — The 'Broadway Melody' ballet departs the plot into stylized fantasy (Charisse, the scarf, abstract color) — staging that figures and displays rather than acts.
Lola Montès (1955) — The circus stages Lola's life as a montage of attractions — acrobatic tableaux and the barker's auction figuring her affairs rather than dramatizing them directly
A Woman Is a Woman (1961) — The 'book quarrel': having sworn not to speak, the lovers pull titles off the shelf and thrust them at each other, so the fight is staged as a figure to be read rather than acted.
Viridiana (1962) — the beggars staged as a blasphemous Last Supper citation — an image that figures Christian iconography rather than narrating action; the beggar woman 'photographing' by lifting her skirts
The Secret Formula (1965) — Tableau staging with props as ideograms (bottle, IV line, hanging meat, cross), figures staring frontally down the lens; nobody acts to change a situation, the shot is posed to figure an argument.
Daisies (1966) — The banquet staged as a lavish tableau built explicitly to be desecrated — cake trodden, chandeliers ridden — spectacle that figures rather than advances any action
Tokyo Drifter (1966) — The diegetic title ballad interpolated into the crime action halts narrative and suspends tension rather than heightening it — spectacle that figures rather than acts, descended from Rio Bravo and…
Cool Hand Luke (1967) — The car wash sequence's slow-motion, frankly staged male-gaze duration offered to the watching gang — staging that figures rather than acts.
The Producers (1968) — The 'Springtime for Hitler' staging halts the film's flat coverage for a full-scale musical set-piece executed straight — Alan Johnson's choreography and the crane setup played without irony…
Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (1969) — The ghost ballet is 'the visual set-piece', a staged spectacle that presents a figure and advances no action — the film's largest sequence and its least narrative one.
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) — Meyer's percussive, near-subliminal smash-cut montage intercutting sex, performance and action as graphic shocks that figure rather than narrate
El Topo (1970) — Each duel functions as a montage of attractions — a figure for a spiritual trial rather than a contest; staging from mime and the Panic Movement composes the screen as a stage where gestures figure…
A Clockwork Orange (1971) — The assault on Mr. Alexander and his wife staged and cut to 'Singin' in the Rain,' the droogs moving as a dance troupe — violence figured as spectacle rather than acted
The Devils (1971) — The exorcisms staged as public choreographed spectacle on the Marat/Sade model — Artaudian theatre of cruelty performed as crowd spectacle rather than acted as plot
Cabaret (1972) — "Money" and "Mein Herr" are inserted staged shocks that advance no plot but carry the film's argument — Eisenstein's montage of attractions imported into a musical.
Pink Flamingos (1972) — Episodic assembly in which 'scenes are laid end to end as discrete exhibits, connected by narration rather than by cause,' with the birthday-party sequence stringing performances together for an…
O Lucky Man! (1973) — the Alan Price song-cycle interludes ('Sell Sell,' 'Poor People') filmed in the studio, arresting the narrative to figure a moral rather than acting it out — the montage of attractions as chorus
The Holy Mountain (1973) — Each planetary initiate's diorama — the weapons maker who tools guns as devotional objects, the war-toy industrialist — figures an idea rather than acting it out
Blazing Saddles (1974) — Lili Von Shtupp's saloon number, pastiching Dietrich in *Destry Rides Again* down to the accent, the chair-draped posture and the chorus-of-cowboys staging; and the Basie orchestra and the Busby…
The Parallax View (1974) — The five-minute Parallax test montage — LOVE/MOTHER/HOME/COUNTRY/GOD cut against violence and atrocity — figures meaning through associative collision rather than depicting action.
Dog Day Afternoon (1975) — The 'Attica! Attica!' scene stages the people-vs-state relation as show rather than plot; the sound mix opens into a carnivalesque competing broadcast.
Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven (1975) — Ingrid Caven as the daughter who converts the family tragedy into a nightclub act: the murder-suicide restaged as a stage turn rather than acted upon.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) — Nothing is acted out causally; everything is staged as a number. Frank unveils Rocky as a cabaret reveal, and the film's culmination is an actual floor show — staging that figures rather than acts…
Insiang (1976) — The graphic slaughterhouse prologue, taken from Franju's Le Sang des bêtes, figures social violence rather than advancing any action — a staged argument the rest of the film refuses to let you forget.
Network (1976) — 'The Howard Beale Show' is staged as a montage of attractions — a prophet's set, applause sign, soothsayers and gossip-mongers — figuring rather than reporting the world.
Desperate Living (1977) — Staging is theatrical and frontal, 'closer to a lewd pageant than to naturalist blocking,' with Roggero's cutting letting each transgression play out fully — provocation addressed to the audience…
House (1977) — Obayashi throws every trick in his kit at the screen — painted flats, crude animation, matte collage — so that spectacle and figuration carry the film where action normally would
Hitler: A Film from Germany (1978) — Fairground barkers, an auction of relics, marionettes, model architecture and a stuffed dog for Blondi — objects handled, sold and mourned rather than dramatized, the Méliès tableau rebuilt as the…
Altered States (1980) — The hallucination sequences assemble religious iconography, sacrifice, and desert/primal forms associatively against conventional dramatic coverage — staging that figures the metaphysics rather than…
The Kingdom of Diamonds (1980) — The throne room as theatre of obedience — king high and central, courtiers arranged below, his rhyming pronouncements answered by sycophantic couplets; the coronation-anniversary festivities staged…
Tron (1982) — The gladiatorial games run by the Master Control Program, above all the light-cycle duel, edited 'for spatial legibility' as staged spectacle that figures the conflict rather than dramatizing it…
The Right Stuff (1983) — NASA's press conferences and publicity apparatus staged as a montage of attractions that figures rather than acts
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) — The 'Anything Goes' prologue as shot-for-shot Berkeley pastiche (overhead crane resolving chorines into a rotating kaleidoscope, a stage deepening past its own proscenium), and the Kali ritual staged…
Tampopo (1985) — The free-standing vignettes staged as figures of a theme (montage of attractions on appetite), descending from Buñuel and Monty Python rather than advancing plot
Top Gun (1986) — The volleyball sequence and poster-image staging — bodies posed against the sun, advancing nothing, displaying rather than acting.
Evil Dead II (1987) — The film's 'one-man vaudeville of self-inflicted violence' — set pieces staged as numbers aimed at the audience's nervous system rather than as causal beats in a plot.
The Untouchables (1987) — The Union Station sequence is "formal scholarship in genre clothes" and the baseball-bat scene is staged as "pure spectacle of violence" — Eisensteinian staging that figures/shows rather than acts
Beetlejuice (1988) — The 'Day-O' dinner-party set piece — a staged spectacle that figures rather than advances plot, the montage-of-attractions logic the whole episodic film runs on
Hairspray (1988) — The Corny Collins numbers staged as self-contained frontal proscenium units, the structural model taken from The Girl Can't Help It's direct-to-camera performance blocks; the film's racial argument…
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) — Vulcan's forge staged as mechanical spectacle and the Sultan's court as a series of tableaux; Rotunno's palette organized as a sequence of picture-book plates rather than a continuous naturalistic…
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) — The Bugs–Mickey parachute gag and the Donald–Daffy dueling-pianos scene, spectacle units inserted for their own force — and shaped by contractual stipulations about parity of screen time between…
Do the Right Thing (1989) — the direct-address montage of racial slurs, a Brechtian montage of attractions that suspends the fiction to confront the audience
The Killer (1989) — The operatic standoff — held closeups, ritual delay, music swelling before a draw that never needs to land — stages confrontation as figure rather than act (the Once Upon a Time in the West debt)
Beauty and the Beast (1991) — "Be Our Guest" stages the enchanted objects as a Busby Berkeley–style floor show, a vaudevillian production number: the household's service and affection transposed into spectacle rather than…
Aladdin (1992) — *Friend Like Me*, H. Lee Peterson's rapid-fire montage of impersonations and visual gags cut to an accelerating rhythm, advances no action — it figures the Genie as pure spectacle.
Hard Boiled (1992) — Geometrical duel-blocking, pirouetting bodies and gunfights staged as dance numbers (the Gene Kelly debt) — staging that figures rather than merely acts.
Hyenas (1992) — The carnivalesque staging inherited from Amarcord: processions and public spectacle that render greed as communal pageant, figuring the act rather than performing it.
Drunken Master III (1994) — The fights function as demonstrations rather than mere acts — pedagogical instruction in static full-figure masters (Challenge of the Masters) and modular training set-pieces, each with its own prop…