CHAPTER 3
 LOOSE ENDS: THE STUFF THAT MOVIES ARE MADE OF

[O]ne might write: "The whirring blades of the electric fan caused the window curtains to
flutter. The man seated at the massive desk finished his momentous letter, sealed it, and
hastened out to post it." The whirring fan and the fluttering curtain give motion only-the
man's writing the letter and taking it out to post provides action. It is of action that
photoplays are wrought.
 -Frederick Palmer, Technique of the Photoplay

Guided by film, then, we approach, if at all, ideas no longer on highways leading through
the void but on paths that wind through the thicket of things.
 -Siegfried Kracauer, Theory ofFilm

Our taverns and our metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad
stations and our factories appeared to have us locked up hopelessly. Then came the film
and burst this prison-world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that now,
in the midst of its far-flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously go traveling.
 -Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

 A Telephone-Bell Rings in Darkness ...

 Out of the fading dust emerge the ghostly paraphernalia of classic noir. The dirt

trail kicked up by a dead body tumbling down the hillside is still discernible when the

exterior night shot of Miles Archer's murder dissolves to an interior shot of a cluttered

bedside table. With only partial lighting from the back and left of the frame, the objects

slowly materialize in silhouette: an old stand-up telephone, a pouch of tobacco, a dusty

ashtray, an alarm clock balanced on the edge of a book, a newspaper turned to the racing

section. Curtains sway from the night breeze in the background, while in the foreground a

fumbling hand reaches into the frame to grab the ringing telephone. Even after the

telephone is removed, for almost thirty seconds, the camera does not move. Although a

slight pan could capture the conversation that will propel narrative action-because