Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Wall Street
1987 · Oliver Stone · Wall Street on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 4 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch Bud's posture change as his suits get better. (performance)
Suspenders, hair gel, power ties, a new apartment. Stone keeps the camera on what the wardrobe does to Sheen's walk, his shoulders, the way he takes up a room.
Payoff: The film makes a belief system wearable. You watch it enter a man through his posture rather than through anything he says. In the reading: empreinte. The reading calls this an imprint: a situation and a person stamping themselves on each other until the body shows the deal.
Watch the camera zoom in fast during the trading scenes. (camera)
Richardson uses rapid zooms that snap distance shut and Steadicam that glides and never settles. High contrast carves faces into hard light and shadow.
Payoff: The camera behaves like a participant with a stake. Its restlessness is Bud's ambition, built into the equipment.
Listen to how hard one voice works on the trading floor. (sound)
Open outcry shouting, phones, printers, terminals. Stone mixes the floor as a single aggregate roar and lets no individual voice cut through. Offices never go quiet either.
Payoff: The crowd sounds like one animal made of money. Notice what the mix does whenever the film wants you to hear a person. In the reading: dividual. The reading calls the floor a dividual: a crowd rendered as one unit, where no single voice survives.
Look at how much room Gekko has and Bud does not. (staging)
Corner office with a panoramic window, corporate jet, Hamptons house. Every Gekko space is built to dwarf a visitor. Bud starts out at a cramped phone bank.
Payoff: Square footage is the scoreboard. You can read who holds power from the size of the room before anyone speaks.
Watch Douglas's jaw and where he aims his attention. (performance)
Gekko is played as a believer rather than a villain. Douglas commits to the argument completely, which is why the greed speech works on you while it is happening.
Payoff: The film's case has to survive its own charisma. Notice how much of Gekko you are enjoying as you watch.
The 4 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the walk, not the speech. Stone puts the whole argument into what Bud's body learns to do.