The Cinematic Moment: Exploring Film Images as Moments of Action

Purposeful images enrich many scenes of Elia Kazan’s films, especially his masterpiece On the Waterfront. When Karl Malden and Eva Marie Saint comfort Marlon Brando after waterfront thugs have beaten him almost to death, Kazan arranges the actors in a memorable tableaux. It’s a cinematic moment that stimulates a viewer to feel Brando’s spinning mind and physical pain. That memorable image illustrates Kazan’s frequent practice of echoing classical paintings in his shot compositions. The after-a-beating image with Brando being comforted emulates classical paintings of Christ’s descent from the Cross.

When you recall an incident in your life, you likely envision a visual image or a quick series of them. It’s a moment visually stamped into your memory. The same is true when you recall a movie. You don’t remember the whole but only a few scattered images, likely cinematic moments. For better or worse, every film you watch implants images in your psyche where they become part of your life’s mental treasures.

Marlon Brando, December 27, 1948
(A Streetcar Named Desire)
BY Carl Van Vechten
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division
Van Vechten Collection
(LOT 12735, no. 145)

I retain many visual images of my life. I remember when I was a little boy crossing my grandfather’s barnyard and fearfully watching a huge yellow rooster attack me. I can see my wife kneeling at her dying mother’s bedside and holding her hand. I easily re-envision playing the Bailiff in the courtroom scene of The Untouchables and exchanging a look with Robert De Niro as Al Capone. I can see my first son’s tiny face when a nurse passed him into my arms. Such real moments are so visually embedded in my mind that I’ll never forget them.

The most highly charged images I’ve seen in movies are stamped just as vividly in my brain as memories from my own experience. I see Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, yelling “Stella!” Judy Garland appears to me as she leads the Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, and Scarecrow up the Yellow Brick Road to find the Wizard of Oz. Richard Widmark still gives me a chill as I see him as Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death, grinning as he pushes an old lady in a wheelchair down steep stairs.

Think of your favorite movies. Every title is likely to arouse one or more images in your mind. Now think of a favorite movie and recall a scene. Your brain instantly produces a picture or two that stand for the whole film. A cinematic moment no doubt stimulated your brain to record it. A writer conceived such a moment, and a director photographed it. The more often you remember the visual image, the more easily you recall the experience of seeing the film.

An image that often bursts into my mind is a cinematic moment when a sudden light reveals Orson Welles hiding in a shadowy doorway in The Third Man. Supposedly in his grave, Harry Lime (Orson Welles) smiles ruefully at his friend, Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton). The surprising revelation compels me to identify with Martins. The moment is one of the most iconic character entrances in film history.

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