By

Patrick Keating

Published on/by

[in]Transition

Accompanying text

This audiovisual essay is the fourth that I have produced on the subject of camera movement in studio-era Hollywood.[1] All four serve as companion pieces to my book The Dynamic Frame: Camera Movement in Classical Hollywood. This fourth video focuses on a technique that I call the “recognition” shot, wherein the camera dollies toward a character who is experiencing a moment of realization. I start by asking why a single shot from Phantom Lady (Siodmak, 1944) seems so lively. This question leads to a consideration of the film’s status as a “working-girl investigator” film (to borrow a term from Helen Hanson)[2] and then to an extended comparison with Sorry, Wrong Number (Litvak, 1948), where a similar technique is deployed to very different effect.