Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Sisters
1973 · Brian De Palma · Sisters 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 screen split into two panels at once. (cutting)
For long stretches the frame divides down the middle, one side showing what a character does, the other showing who is watching or arriving, both playing out in real time.
Payoff: You end up watching two things happen at once and feeling the gap between what each side knows. In the reading: out-of-field-relative. Deleuze calls the unseen space a frame implies the out of field: De Palma puts it on screen instead of leaving it implied.
Watch Grace watch Danielle's apartment through a lit window. (staging)
Sandor photographs the apartment across the courtyard flat and frontal, like a small stage seen from a fixed distance, before anything happens inside it worth reporting.
Payoff: The film shows you spectacle before it shows you evidence, and asks you to notice the difference. In the reading: dicisign. Deleuze calls this a dicisign: a shot that shows a character caught in the act of looking, not just what she sees.
Listen for the score arrive before a scene turns scary. (sound)
Herrmann's shrieking strings and cold Moog sustain announce horror ahead of the image, telling you how to feel before the scene has proved anything.
Payoff: The music is doing openly what most scores try to hide: deciding your reaction for you.
Notice the fake game show that opens the film. (structure)
Before any plot begins, a hidden camera prank plays a woman undressing for studio laughs, seating you at the viewfinder well before there is a story to justify it.
Payoff: The film puts you in the position of a voyeur before it ever asks you to sympathize with one.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch what Grace can see and what the police on screen cannot.