Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch High Anxiety
1977 · Mel Brooks · High Anxiety on Sightlines
4 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 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 the stairwell floor appear to pull away beneath him. (camera)
The shot is a beat for beat copy of Vertigo's bell tower effect, the frame stretching and warping around Thorndyke exactly the way it warped around Scottie.
Payoff: The shot only works if you already remember the exact film it is quoting. In the reading: the relation-image (mental-image). Deleuze calls this a relation-image: the screen stays blank until your memory of Vertigo fills in the fear.
Watch the shower attack copy Psycho's cuts almost exactly. (cutting)
The slashing inserts, the shrieking strings, and the build toward the drain all match the famous original beat for beat, right up until the punchline lands.
Payoff: Your body braces for a knife because the rhythm trained you to, before the joke arrives instead. In the reading: demark. Deleuze's demark is the anomaly that snaps a familiar pattern and forces you to reinterpret what you just saw.
Listen for a sinister music cue with a source you can see. (sound)
A swelling, ominous string sting sounds like film scoring. Listen for where it is actually coming from.
Payoff: The joke breaks the illusion that suspense music has to come from nowhere. In the reading: consciousness of clichés. Deleuze calls this consciousness of clichés: the film catches its own musical convention in the act and points at it.
Watch Cloris Leachman play Nurse Diesel completely without a wink. (performance)
Leachman plays the head nurse dead serious, severe posture, clipped voice, painted features, never signaling that the character is a joke.
Payoff: Her total commitment is what makes the parody land instead of just gesturing at one.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Notice the half second between recognizing a Hitchcock reference and laughing at what Brooks does with it.