A week of fighting proves how deadly is the game
Alfred Hitchcock mastered this effect: a fool acts huffy in a dangerous situation (a battle, an ambush). He protests the noise and inconvenience while the bullets pop around him, and the audience chuckles at his posturing. Then suddenly this character is shot; in The Lady Vanishes (1938) he examines the blood from his own wound. All at once the audience is not laughing any more. It realizes that what seemed hilarious a moment ago was never really funny in the first place because the context was not funny, because nothing can...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In