The Invisible Cut Page 18
FRAME GRAB #9
CUT BACK TO:
Medium long shot of Matty through slats of blinds with Ned in foreground, watching her.
FRAME GRAB #10
Ned turns away and walks back to the right toward door, camera shooting close behind him.
CUT TO:
Close shot of Ned through glass panes of door, looking inside at her.
FRAME GRAB #11
He moves to the left past door.
CUT BACK TO:
Close shot of Ned, shot from behind. He’s still moving to the right.
FRAME GRAB #12
CUT TO:
Close-up of Ned looking past curtain of glass door.
FRAME GRAB #13
He moves to the left, to the center of glass.
CUT TO:
Close shot of Matty inside house.
FRAME GRAB #14
CUT TO:
Close shot of Ned through glass door.
FRAME GRAB #15
Camera moves in for a close-up.
CUT TO:
Medium long shot of Ned in foreground, Matty in background.
Camera moves with him as he grabs stool and smashes glass in door.
FRAME GRAB #16
CUT BACK TO:
Close shot of Matty, inside house, mouth parted.
FRAME GRAB #17
CUT BACK TO:
Medium long shot of Ned as he continues to move through doorway toward Matty.
FRAME GRAB #18
Camera follows him inside and moves in for a close shot as he grabs her and kisses her.
FRAME GRAB #19
CUT TO:
Close shot of his back as her hands grasp him.
FRAME GRAB #20
Her hands continue to run down his back.
CUT TO:
Close shot of Ned and Matty kissing. She pulls away and flings her body around so her back is up against him.
FRAME GRAB #21
CUT TO:
Medium full shot of Ned and Matty with her back still up against him, shooting from below.
FRAME GRAB #22
His hand grabs her breast, the other hand slides down her skirt between her legs.
FRAME GRAB #23
She whispers, “yes, yes,” and turns around to face him. He starts to pull up bottom of skirt.
CUT TO:
Close shot of Ned and Matty kissing. She starts to unbutton his shirt.
CUT TO:
Close shot of Ned and Matty, lower angle to include her face and only his torso as she opens his shirt and kisses his chest.
CUT TO:
Close shot of back of Matty’s skirt. He pulls skirt up.
CUT BACK TO:
Close shot of Ned and Matty as she continues to kiss his chest.
CUT BACK TO:
Close shot of the back of Matty’s skirt. Ned’s hand hikes the skirt up and he slides his hand under her panties.
CUT BACK TO:
Close shot of Ned and Matty, her face inside his shirt. She pulls away and the moment her face leaves the frame.…
CUT TO:
Medium shot of floor. Matty falls into shot onto her back, in profile from the waist up. She hikes up her skirt.
CUT TO:
Close-up of Matty’s face, her eyes closed.
CUT TO:
Medium long shot of Matty through reflection of glass door. She’s facing away from camera, lying down, and Ned is kneeling behind her as he slides her panties off her knees.
FRAME GRAB #24
CUT TO:
Medium shot of Ned and Matty, reverse angle from inside house. Camera shoots past his back to show her knees up in the air as Ned continues to pull panties off her legs.
FRAME GRAB #25
CUT TO:
Close shot of Ned’s hand dropping panties on the floor.
FRAME GRAB #26
CUT BACK TO:
Close-up of Matty’s face, eyes still closed.
FRAME GRAB #27
CUT TO:
Close shot of Ned looking down at her, smiling.
FRAME GRAB #28
NED
(whispers)
Yes… right.
CUT TO:
Medium shot of Matty from waist up, camera shooting down at her.
FRAME GRAB #29
MATTY
Please do it.
Ned’s head and his body come into frame and he moves on top of her.
DISSOLVE TO:
Shot of headboard. Pan down to medium close shot of Ned with Matty in his arms. The camera moves in on Ned for a close-up, looking satiated.
CUT TO:
High shot of Matty and Ned in bed in same position. He still looks spent — until Matty slides her hand between his legs and starts rubbing him and turning him on.
FRAME GRAB #30
He grabs her and kisses her.
CUT TO:
EXT. MIAMI STREET — DAY
Ned is walking down the street, a smile of satisfaction on his face.
FRAME GRAB #31
DECONSTRUCTION
Scene edited by Carol Littleton
Lawrence Kasdan, who directed this scene from Body Heat, and Carol Littleton, who edited it, will be quoted throughout the following deconstruction. (The symbol † indicates quotes from both that were taken from supplemental interviews for the movie’s DVD; all of Kasdan’s quotes come from this source. The rest of Littleton’s comments are from my interview with her for this book.)
BO: You and the director are of the same generation and share the same appreciation of film noir.
CL: Both Larry and I were aware of the homage to film noir and we really wanted it to speak to our generation at that time, and I think the very fact that we were so aware of certain noir moments and that we let them play all the way, we were taking a chance, because they could be just ridiculous, but we loved it. And we really had faith that the audience would enjoy this too.… And the dialogue in Body Heat is highly stylized. It’s the dialogue of tough dames and tough guys and it is not language as we speak it. It’s writerly… it’s Raymond Chandler.… 32
†CL [Speaking with Lawrence Kasdan about the script when they first met]: I told Larry that what I loved above everything else was the fact that it had an extraordinary sense of humor, and he said, “Oh really?” [I asked myself] “Did I say the wrong thing?” He said, “You’re the only person that I’ve talked to who understood that there was a sense of humor.”33
†LK: When I was looking for an editor, I was absolutely set on getting a woman, because I wanted this very sexual movie to not just be some male fantasy. I wanted a woman’s voice in there in the moment when we were making all the judgments about the sexual aspects of the movie and luckily I met Carol Littleton, who then wound up cutting most of my movies and who I’ve known now for twenty-five years.34
CL: I guess what I was looking for more than anything else, and I know this is a thing that Larry was concerned about as well, is that we did not want the film in any way to seem pornographic or in any way to seem sexually explicit; we wanted it to be suggestive, because we really felt that what is suggested on the screen, [in] one’s imagination is far more powerful.… Once the act of making love actually starts, what’s there to show? Not much. It’s everything that precedes that is really evocative.
BO: You also had to set up, from the start, that Matty’s seduction was all manipulation, without giving it away. Was that tricky?
CL: It was very tricky. The audience had to be with him [Ned] or just before him but not miles ahead of him, so we had to very careful how much we showed when certain things happened, because we really didn’t want it to seem as though he was manipulated at all until it falls apart. That was a big challenge.
Matty asks Ned to leave — because she’s supposedly afraid she’ll be too “weak” to resist him — and after she leaves him to go inside, the editor holds on Ned to show his frustration. She cuts to a distant high angle showing him walk toward his car and just
stand there helplessly, finally banging on the hood of the car with his fist. The editor cuts to his POV of the chimes, then back to the same high shot of Ned as the camera starts to boom down (the “in” frame is Frame grab # 1). The editor cuts out of this shot just when the camera stops moving and when he looks up at the chimes (the “out” frame of that same shot is Frame grab #2).
frame grab 1
frame grab 2
BO: That high angle with the camera booming down and in on him, certainly underlines his character’s powerlessness, his lack of control over the effect Matty has on him.
CL: …Oh, absolutely. It’s like, “It’s over, buddy. You don’t know it yet, but.…” There are several moments that are real noir moments, and that was one of them. This extraordinary crane shot: it’s up on the height of the crane, then the crane comes all the way down.
The editor cuts to Ned’s POV of the chimes (Frame grab #3), then another that is closer than Ned’s actual perspective (Frame grab #4), and then cuts to a third angle on the chimes that is even closer, to emphasize his mounting frustration (Frame grab #5).
frame grab 3
frame grab 4
frame grab 5
The sound of the chimes is presented literally in the beginning of the scene, when Matty shows them to Ned and he brushes them with his hand. But once she’s left him alone, and he continues to look at them, they also represent an interior, emotional state: his pent-up sexual frustration and longing. It’s characteristic of film noir to use sound to show introspective emotion, and because this movie is both homage and parody, it’s intentionally obvious here.
CL: In the script it was described that Ned Racine is obviously being seduced by Matty, but he looks up and he sees these wind chimes. The sound of the wind chimes seduces him, and he makes up his mind once he has been more or less seduced by their sound. Larry shot different sizes [of the chimes], not knowing exactly how we were going to do this. We discussed that a lot. From the beginning we’ve heard them faintly and as we go up the stairs [to Matty’s veranda] they kind of build, a little tingle, tingle. We were specific about not really hearing them until they were out there on the veranda, on the upstairs veranda. Then once he brushes them, it just builds. Outside [the house], of course, the breeze does kick up, so it’s like the heat of the night, the same way the fever overcomes him. And of course it climaxes here with the cuts to the different sizes of the chimes (Frame grabs #3, #4, and #5).
The sound gets louder as the editor chooses closer and closer cuts of the chimes. However, that noise continues to peak over Ned’s first close-up (the “in” frame is Frame grab #6), which doesn’t make sense geographically, but it certainly works dramatically. This is where Ned is driven the craziest by the sounds inside his head, which cause him to make his move back to the house. Music, too, underlines the importance of this moment, for when he starts to move out of that shot and take action, the first notes of the score creep in. In this first close-up of Ned the camera again shoots down at him, underlining both his powerlessness and his fever, as his face glistens with sweat.
frame grab 6
The moment Ned exits the frame, which he does in the “out” frame of this shot, the audience knows he’s going back to the house. This is the first arc of the scene and the editor holds on this close-up for over six seconds before he starts to move, trusting the importance of this decision-making moment.
BO: When he makes a decision to go back to the house, you hold on that shot of him for a long time.
CL: A long time.
BO: You also give the moment energy by cutting out on his move off screen.
CL: It’s liberating. Seductive, too.35
After Ned’s close-up, the editor cuts to an exterior shot of Matty posing in the center of the room — dramatically, almost magically, framed by the doors’ beveled glass. The editor holds on this shot until Ned moves into the foreground and stares in at this vision of her (Frame grab #7). Then, within that same shot, the camera follows closely behind Ned as he moves in darkness along the house until he ends up standing just beyond the blinds. The next shot is to Matty’s POV: a close-up of Ned looking in at her from behind the blinds (the “out” frame is Frame grab #8).
frame grab 7
frame grab 8
The editor then cuts to a shot of Matty inside the house (Frame grab #9). In the next shot she is still posing provocatively (the “in” frame is Frame grab #10), but she’s again seen from Ned’s POV. He’s in the foreground looking in on her, and the editor continues to stay close to him as he moves in darkness along the house.
frame grab 9
frame grab 10
The next angle switches back again to Matty’s POV of Ned’s face; now he’s positioned within the glass pane (the “in” frame is Frame grab #11). The editor cuts back to Ned’s POV as he moves once again in darkness along the outside of the house (Frame grab #12). In the next shot (Frame grab #13), the editor cuts back to Matty’s POV, and this time Ned is once again peeking at her, this time from behind the curtain.
frame grab 11
frame grab 12
frame grab 13
The following shot, the closest yet of Matty, is again an interior shot as she stares at Ned and straight into the camera (Frame grab #14). The editor then cuts back to Matty’s POV, and Ned holds the same intense eye contact through the glass door (Frame grab #15). This shot of Ned is especially powerful, because he’s in the center of the screen. Up until now, in all the shots that have shown Matty’s POV, Ned has been obscured or framed by something that makes him look caged and a bit scary: for example, by the Venetian blinds (Frame grab #8), the glass panes (Frame grab #11), and the edge of a curtain (Frame grab #13).
frame grab 14
frame grab 15
Also, Frame grab #15 is arresting, because now Ned is perfectly still. Previously, he was always in motion, even if minimally, within the shots and in the transitions. The shots of Matty inside the house, on the other hand, show her as always still. By interweaving their contrasting motion, the editor created the effect of Ned as a pacing animal and Matty as a poised bird. What’s also interesting is that the audience never questions whether Matty would, in real life, stand there motionless while Ned keeps moving back and forth, looking at her from all the doors and windows. The audience buys into this contrived situation and milked movie time, because the editor continuously sustains the tension.
The editor chose to never let Ned leave the frame completely in any of the shots of him (the sole exception is the “out” frame after Frame grab #11), which also helps maintain the edge and the visual momentum. The psychological pressure is also sustained by eye contact. There’s always dead-on eye contact in the interior shots of Matty (Frame grabs #9, #14, and #17), which has a sexual power all its own, and with the POV shots there’s always either eye contact and/or camera or character motion in the “in” or “out” frames.
The editor also creates a visually dynamic effect when switching between Ned’s and Matty’s POVs, because the left-right direction is repeatedly reversed. Examples are when Ned moves first to the right, then to the left, then to the right again in Frame grabs #10, #11, and #12, respectively. This effect also makes directional sense by following the exit/entrance rules of editing.
frame grab 10
frame grab 11
frame grab 12
The close shot of Ned, which starts with Frame grab #15 and cuts out during a camera move in on him, visually sets up the momentum for him to take action. Just before the editor cuts out of this shot and again in the next shot, Ned’s looking down at the doorknob, which shows his intent to get inside the house. Then he grabs the stool and smashes the glass door (the “out” frame of that shot is Frame grab #16).