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This week for your DVD Review pleasure we are taking a new approach to the criticism of DVDs. We are providing more in-depth analysis of films and less of a feature on extras because, in my theory, extras are exactly that, something supplemental and DVDs should be bought just as VHS tapes were, for the films themselves, not the bonuses. For the next few weeks we will be looking at three of Stanley Kubrick’s earliest films: Killer’s Kiss, The Killing, and Paths of Glory (all of which are available on MGM DVD).
Images, Voyeurism, and Enunciation in Kubrick’s Killer’s Kiss
by Drew Morton
Early in Stanley Kubrick’s 1955 film Killer’s Kiss, we, the audience, are subjected to one of the themes that would become more apparent in Kubrick’s later works, ranging from Lolita to his final film, Eyes Wide Shut. This theme is that of voyeurism on an almost animalistic level and the objectification of women (which is also evident in Kubrick’s first film, Fear and Desire). This theme is apparent in two of the beginning scenes, the first being Rapallo and Gloria watching Davey’s fight on television. In this scene, Kubrick gives us a higher camera angle to make it seem as if the couple is watching the eye-line match of the fight instead of the lower television. Rapallo is watching the fight, almost taking on Davey’s opponent’s instinctual qualities as he fondles and forces himself onto Gloria. Even while performing this act, Rapallo does not look at Gloria and it isn’t until later that night that he apologizes for his actions. Kubrick makes it clear to the audience that Rapallo sees Gloria as an object and not as a person.
The second scene aforementioned features Davey watching through his window, across the courtyard, into Gloria’s window as she undresses. His gaze is erotic and not even interrupted by a telephone conversation with his Uncle. He continually gazes at the scantily clad Gloria until the light disappears from her window. This is just a mear foreshadowing to the upcoming climax. Following an assault by Rapallo, Davey flees to Gloria’s aid. He then puts her to bed, informs her that he will watch over her as she sleeps and will leave shortly. However, instead of just sitting in a chair reading a novel or perhaps dozing off himself, Davey begins to roam her apartment looking at her trinkets and smelling her perfume. He cares not for her well being, if this were true he would do as he promised as watch over her. Instead, his fetishizing of Gloria takes place, putting his sexual desire into her objects because he is too cowardly to react to her personally. He doesn’t contain the same animalistic qualities as Rapallo, but he still commits the act of voyeurism.
The end climax in the mannequin factory seems to bring out Davey’s main internal conflict which, from watching the film, is inferred to be that of his overcoming animalistic instincts. Kubrick shows this by placing the audience’s attention on the spectators of the fight, the mannequins. However, it is the details of the mannequins Kubrick uses to bring forth this theme of overcoming one’s instincts and Freudian concept of the "id". Instead of showing the mannequin’s faces or their completed form, Kubrick focuses on the hands, legs, and torsos. Most of the mannequins are also anatomically figured as women which elevates the struggle and the utilization of the mannequins as weapons to a more symbolic level.
This focusing on details and the use of mannequins for weapons are just a few of Kubrick’s auteuristic enunciations. In her article, "Woman, desire, and the look: feminism and the enunciative apparatus in cinema" (Cine-Tracts, Vol 2, no. 1, Fall 1978), Sandy Flitterman states that Hitchcock provided a complex example of enunciation in Marnie by focusing the plot on "fetishistic schopophilia and voyeuristic sadism" and alternating the position of the audience from point-of-view shots from the man watching the woman to the audience watching the man. By doing this, Hitchcock turns the audience into the voyeur. However, the audience member does not feel the guilt that the perverted man does because we are aware that it is the man that is, in fact, the true audience, not us. Kubrick utilizes the same technique but also creates one of his own. During the shot/reverse shots of Killer’s Kiss he breaks the 180 degree line and commits an act of discontinuity by placing the camera at about the seventy-five degree line, giving the audience a strange feeling by providing an off-kilter angle and breaking one of the ground rules of classical Hollywood cinema. By providing this third camera angle and alternation between the role of the audience, Kubrick designates the look the look in a specific way, which is what Flitterman calls "what characterizes a particular director’s system of enunciation".
While Killer’s Kiss isn’t exactly a great film, or even a good one, it is the important beginning of a Kubrick’s enunciation and unique auteurism.
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