The lady vanishes
258 mots
2 pages
First half of the film, Gilbert enters in Iris’s room in a comical way, he’s very confident and he doesn’t need to explain the reason of his ‘visit’, in order to ‘introduce’ himself he plays the tune of the ancient wedding music that the young lady complained so much about few minutes before. Gilbert goes into the bathroom and Iris comes along to ask him once again to leave. Here we can notice the use of depth field: Gilbert’s in the back in sharp focus, Iris, instead, is in the foreground and the shallow depth of field is used to focus the attention of the audience to Gilbert and the reflection of Iris in the mirror behind him (22:13 min). Shallow focus and shadows are used several times throughout the movie to accentuate the sense of claustrophobia and introspection that the setting already gives to the viewer (an example of this techniques can be found the strangling scene). Later in the movie (26:34) we can notice the use of dissolve to represent Iris’s fainting followed by a kaleidoscopic vision at 26:44. Later on, Iris looks at the passengers of her cabin and she seems to see Mrs. Froy’s face everywhere (48:05), to suggest the ‘hallucination’ Hitchcock blends the two images in superimposition.
Ultimately, the director uses a shot/reverse shot in the scene of Gilbert and Iris in the cabin restaurant (51:02), when the girl sees the name of the old lady written on the