spiraling rings? Or the equally dark shadow it casts on the cross section of the tree? Is it

the mere fact that she uses her left hand instead of right? Or that slight tremor I notice as

the hand moves, echoed by the quiver in Kim Novak's voice? I cannot quite put my

finger on the emotional intensity this moment evokes, but there is a there there.

 Writing about a similar highly charged moment from another Hitchcock classic,

North by Northwest (1959), David Ehrenstein suggests that such intensities can be crucial

for film criticism. In a critical round-robin exchange with Raymond Durgnat and

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Ehrenstein responds to Gilbert Adair's comment that during the

crop-duster sequence, he (Adair) is always distracted by the color of Cary Grant's socks.

Ehrenstein argues that Adair's response, of "not paying attention during one of the most

famous set pieces in movie history," cannot be easily dismissed, for such a response goes

"against the grain of the film's affectivity" (61). What Adair's response suggests-

interestingly, James Naremore has pointed out that many film critics have remarked on

Cary Grant's socks being an exciting, if intrusive, detail in that scene-is that films are

more than their continuity narratives. That a film's non-narrative elements are worthy of

analysis is a truism. But Ehrenstein's point here is that what is particularly fascinating

about Adair's experience is that the detail about Grant's socks distracts him precisely

"when the economy of narrative articulation is functioning at its most ruthless pace" (61).

What can it mean that Adair, the viewer, is distracted by a seemingly marginal detail just

when he is expected to be absorbed in the plot? For Ehrenstein, it suggests a kind of

spectatorial autonomy that is very much at the heart of cinephilia itself (although he does

not actually name it as such). "What it proves," he claims, "isn't that Adair is nodding at

the switch but rather that he's really on the ball" (61). What Adair's experience also