This is the set text for the "Reading the Subject" seminar in a couple of weeks' time; given the extra effort involved in getting hold of a copy of the film (as opposed to just reading something), I might well not have bothered in the ordinary course of events, but probably my favourite person in the class is giving the class paper that week and so, thus motivated, I sat down to watch the film last night.
My initial impressions are a bit of a mess (I'm deliberately writing this before reading the film-crit articles in the course reader). To my eyes, the film is very stylised and very chilly, and some of the effects are a bit hokey (though still effectively disconcerting). That all serves to keep the viewer at a distance (perhaps especially the contemporary viewer, as opposed to one who watched the film when it was first released), which is not entirely a bad thing, since it also kept me guessing and unsure of what to make of the characters' interactions and motives; it also meant that the central love plot took me by surprise (though in retrospect it really oughtn't to have).
The film is artfully constructed - the various bits and pieces of the plot slot neatly into place, one by one, and it all looks great...camera angles shift dizzyingly and almost always seem just right, but it's destabilising, because no sooner does one become oriented than the next shift occurs. It also seems a very symbolically charged film - the role of the feminine in particular. (And I wondered what the particular significance of the colour green was.) The leads - James Stewart and Kim Novak - seemed right, acting somehow as if from a great distance, almost to the point of stiltedness (though again I don't know if that just reflects my modern perspective on then-contemporary modes of interacting).
