Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Videodrome
1983 · David Cronenberg · Videodrome on Sightlines
5 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
Notice the TV screen as the brightest thing in frame. (camera)
Cronenberg and cinematographer Mark Irwin keep returning to a television glowing in a dim room, organizing entire compositions around the act of looking at a screen.
Payoff: Your own eye is being trained to watch exactly the way Max watches. In the reading: the lectosign (readable image). The reading calls this a lectosign: an image that has stopped offering an obvious action and instead asks to be read.
Notice the cold grays and greens against bright red flesh. (light)
Irwin shoots in muted institutional tones, gray, sickly green, screen blue, so that any red, blood or skin, registers with unusual force against the flat palette.
Payoff: The clinical color scheme makes the film's grotesque moments look calm rather than sensational.
Notice how ordinary scenes and visions cut together the same way. (cutting)
Editor Ronald Sanders refuses the usual dissolve or wobble that would flag a hallucination, cutting each strange moment exactly like an ordinary one.
Payoff: You lose the cue that would tell you what to trust, right along with the main character. In the reading: falsifying narration. The reading calls this falsifying narration: real and hallucinated events presented as equally true, with no way to tell them apart.
Watch Max's fast talk and nervy confidence. (performance)
James Woods plays Max as a nervy opportunist, always pitching, always hunting for an angle.
Payoff: Keep his rhythm in your ear. It gives you a baseline for noticing any change in him.
Notice how long Cronenberg lingers on the TV and the tapes. (setting)
Cronenberg gives the television and the videocassettes the weight and presence usually given to a person.
Payoff: Technology here gets the same attention as the characters.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the TV screen in every dim room. It's usually the brightest thing there.