Sightlines · a concept

symbol

an object bearing an abstract relation / the law of the whole.

On screen: an object condensing the film's organizing relation

Notorious (1946) — The cellar key, on which the crane shot lands after descending the whole ballroom, condenses trust/betrayal/marriage/mission into one object
The 39 Steps (1935) — The handcuffs chaining Hannay to Pamela at the inn condense the film's organizing relation, an imposed bond curdling into a chosen one (Deleuze's own cited example from this film)
North by Northwest (1959) — The microfilm hidden in the pre-Columbian statuette: the MacGuffin, an object meaningless in itself that condenses and drives the entire network
Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916) — The rocking cradle recurs as a fixed punctuating shot that condenses the film's organizing relation — the continuity of humanity and the repetition of intolerance across time.
A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate (1923) — The pearl necklace Marie flings from the window and then races downstairs to recover from the tramp who picked it up — one object condensing the film's argument that love and money do not occupy…
La Roue (1923) — The wheel pursued with programmatic insistence — driving wheel, funicular sheave, roulette of fate, and the closing farandole that resolves the mechanical circle into a human one.
Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924) — The Tarnkappe: Siegfried, invisible via multiple-exposure work, subdues Brunhild so that Gunther — 'a weak, image-conscious kingship' — may be seen to claim her
The Last Laugh (1924) — 'The uniform is the man, and the narrative turns on its removal'; the revolving door as 'a turning threshold between status and shame'
City Girl (1930) — Shot under the working title 'Our Daily Bread': bread, the setting of the table and the doorway carry moral and emotional weight, the communal disorder of the harvest crew set against the rigid…
M (1931) — The chalk 'M' stamped on Beckert's coat and found in a shop mirror condenses the film's organizing relation: the hunted man made into a legible sign.
Scarface (1932) — The neon "The World Is Yours" travel-agency sign condensing the film's organizing relation — promised limitless appetite, delivered death.
Trouble in Paradise (1932) — 'Monsieur Laval' and the alias-driven triangle condense the film's organizing relation between suavity and larceny into single double-edged signs.
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) — The testament itself: written notes found to match a rash of crimes committed outside the asylum, a document that condenses the film's organizing relation — writing that executes itself.
It Happened One Night (1934) — The "Walls of Jericho" blanket condenses sexual tension, class barrier, and propriety into a single object whose final fall resolves the film's organizing relation.
My Man Godfrey (1936) — Charles D. Hall's grand staircase in a vast, vertical, badly inhabited house functions as the film's class diagram; Godfrey's mobility on that axis, pantry to bedroom to drawing room, is the plot.
Swing Time (1936) — The gambler's lucky quarter running through the picture as the object condensing its organizing relation — luck against merit, the wager against the wage, in a Depression fantasy where the hero gets…
Grand Illusion (1937) — The geranium, white gloves, and Rosenthal's food parcels — objects condensing the film's organizing relation of a class order in eclipse
Sabotage (1937) — Celluloid itself — the Verlocs live in rooms adjoining their own auditorium, the bomb travels disguised as movie reels, and the physical stock of cinema is what detonates.
The Awful Truth (1937) — The connecting door and the cuckoo-clock figures retiring through the same little opening condense the film's organizing relation; the marriage resolves as spatial metaphor with no word of…
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) — Robin's entrance into Prince John's hall with a deer across his shoulders — the greenwood physically carried into the castle, described in the dossier as 'the film's thesis in one image'
The Lady Vanishes (1938) — The magician's cabinet with the false back in the luggage van, which Gilbert climbs into — a device for making people disappear, exposed as a trick and used as one; the dossier calls it the film's…
Daybreak (1939) — The alarm clock ringing over the ending, 'a mechanical summons to a working day the hero will not live to see,' colliding with the tear gas and the dawn — one object condensing labor time against…
Only Angels Have Wings (1939) — The two-headed coin ending condenses the film's whole organizing relation — trust, unspoken love, chosen fatalism — into a single displaced object.
Foreign Correspondent (1940) — The secret clause locked in Van Meer's head — empty in itself, existing only as the relation that knots spies, reporter, and audience together.
Rebecca (1940) — The embroidered "R" monogram condenses the film's organizing relation: the dead woman's possession outlasting her body
The Philadelphia Story (1940) — The model boat 'True Love,' recalling Tracy and Dexter's marriage, condenses the film's organizing relation into a single graspable object
The Shop Around the Corner (1940) — The anonymous letters themselves, which condense the film's organizing relation: the same two people loving in writing and clashing in the flesh, and the only space in their lives their employer does…
The Thief of Bagdad (1940) — The eye painted on Jaffar's ship, Ahmad's blinding, the All-Seeing Eye stolen from the temple, and the recovery of vision as the recovery of justice — a single object condensing the film's organizing…
49th Parallel (1941) — The aesthete's tepee-study in the Rockies, hung with modern paintings and stacked with books, a private circle of one, destroyed by fire.
High Sierra (1941) — Pard, the bad-luck dog whose reputation is established as a running motif, is the object whose barking on the mountainside gives Roy's position away — the affection that made him human is what kills…
The Little Foxes (1941) — The staircase Regina ascends alone at the end condenses the film's organizing relation of ascent and fall into a single recurring object.
The Maltese Falcon (1941) — The falcon condenses the film's organizing relation — desire with nothing inside it; 'the stuff that dreams are made of' over a worthless fake
Now, Voyager (1942) — the two lit cigarettes and the closing 'we have the stars' — an object condensing the film's organizing relation of love renounced as possession but kept as nurture
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) — The automobile condenses the film's organizing relation: modernity that does not kill the old world but simply moves on and leaves it behind.
Shadow of a Doubt (1943) — The Merry Widow Waltz condensing the film's organizing relation — courtship music bound to the murdered widows, lilting and obscene at once, surfacing whenever Charlie is present or his violence…
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) — The window seat, the one piece of furniture that condenses the film's organizing relation between the domestic surface and what is hidden inside it.
Double Indemnity (1944) — The anklet recurs as the object condensing the film's organizing relation — Neff's unbreakable subjection — set against Keyes as the relation it takes him the whole film to decode
Gaslight (1944) — The gaslight itself condenses the film's organizing relation — perception, corroboration, and control of reality fused in one diegetic object.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945) — The ailanthus "tree of heaven" pushing up through pavement, "the film's governing metaphor for growth against odds," "placed and returned to with deliberate weight" — then removed.
I Know Where I'm Going! (1945) — the recurring thresholds Joan cannot cross — doorways, the water, Moy Castle's curse — condense the film's organizing relation of planned life vs. claimed life
Beauty and the Beast (1946) — The key the Beast gives Belle, with the condition that if it is not returned by a set hour he will die of grief — one object condensing fidelity, distance and time into something you can be late with.
Great Expectations (1946) — The stopped clocks at twenty minutes to nine, the film's one condensing object — though the reading argues the room exceeds what a symbol can carry.
Shoeshine (1946) — The white horse Bersagliere — gleaming against the gray city — condenses the film's organizing relation: an innocence and aspiration the post-war world cannot sustain.
The Stranger (1946) — The restored clock-tower automaton, with its avenging angel and sword-wielding devil, condenses the film's organizing relation of mechanism-and-concealment and becomes the instrument of Kindler's…
Brute Force (1947) — Munsey's phonograph and the ordered surfaces of his private office, the pocket of bourgeois refinement whose music plays over the beating, condensing the film's organizing relation of cultivation and…
Out of the Past (1947) — The deaf-mute Kid's final nod — a protective lie about Jeff and Kathie that condenses the film's whole relation of love, loyalty, and buried truth
Brighton Rock (1948) — The arcade-cut acetate disc: Pinkie's recorded message for Rose, whose damaged groove loops a single phrase indefinitely as the film's last shot.
Rope (1948) — The rope as title, weapon, and noose — the single object condensing the film's organizing relation of transgression and exposure.
The Fallen Idol (1948) — MacGregor, the boy's pet snake and his one possession and one secret, burned by Mrs. Baines in the boiler.
Adam's Rib (1949) — The attempted-murder case becomes the single object condensing the film's organizing relation between courtroom and marriage (the 'Euclidean proof' structure)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) — The family mausoleum his mother is refused: one object condensing blood, inheritance, exclusion and death, and the trigger for the entire scheme.
La Ronde (1950) — The carousel as the recurring emblem condensing the film's organizing relation of cyclical return — life as a dance one cannot step out of
Orpheus (1950) — Banal modern props treated as ritual objects condensing the film's organizing relation: the car radio, the rubber gloves, and above all the mirror, each charged with mythic function as instruments of…
Wagon Master (1950) — Sister Ledeyard's hunting horn, a running comic gag that 'becomes, by the end, a kind of civic instrument' — one object condensing the film's organizing relation, the making of a community out of the…
Winchester '73 (1950) — The rifle as connective graphic motif — handed off, laid down, picked up — carrying one continuous moral argument across scene breaks, re-engineered by Chase and Curtiss from the traveling tailcoat…
Ace in the Hole (1951) — The fixed 'Tell the Truth' sampler on the office wall, condensing the film's organizing moral relation against which Tatum's every act is measured
Strangers on a Train (1951) — The criss-cross — Bruno's own word — condenses the film's organizing relation and is rhymed throughout: crossing train tracks, the tennis net's grid, the fence's prison-bar shadows
The Prowler (1951) — The radio condenses the film's organizing relation — property, the absent husband who presides over a household he can no longer protect, and the blacklisted Trumbo supplying the uncredited voice of…
High Noon (1952) — The tin star, condensing law, office and communal bond, dropped in the dust as Kane rides off — the object that performs the film's final judgment.
Limelight (1952) — The footlights of the title, the harsh line of light that both exposes and sustains the performer, to which the film keeps returning as the object condensing its doubling of theatre and cinema.