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the camerawoman, Diane Tammes. It is extremely difficult to take ten minutes to walk a few feet around a tripod at an ultra-slow speed, keeping your eye pressed to a viewfinder and turning a gear handle at a constant tempo. It is even more difficult to do this over and over, varying the timing for each pan and still getting it right. It also demands very precise timing from the actors. Actors and camera had to arrive at the same time at the same place.]
Mulvey:
And
also,
I was still very involved with the question of the look and the relationship of the camera to the woman protagonist.
I
felt that the circular camera movement would inscribe the presence of the camera as apparatus into the film. I thought people would be conscious of the
place
of the camera and what it was doing. But I don't think that happened at all. Now, I'm really glad that that didn't work. The only time in our films that I feel we developed the consciousness of the presence of the camera I wanted in
Riddles,
the only place it worked really well, is in
Amy!
[1979]. When Amy is just back from her flight to Australia, the camera pursues her down a little alley. But in
Riddles
you're not particularly aware of the camera.
MacDonald:
Amazingly not, given the unusual nature of the pans. In fact, later, when you do see the camera in the mirror sequence, it's shocking.
Mulvey:
Yes.
MacDonald:
I've always assumed that part of the motivation of the pans was to avoid a "phallic" entry into the image . . .
Mulvey:
Yes, yes, I think that's true. The pans have that effect. Certainly, feminist filmmakers' resistance to the zoom lens has been an attempt to get away from a phallic experience of the image. The circular pans took on a resonance of the feminine. But that was subsidiary to the formal decisions.
We were also trying to give a sense of flatness to the image, the feeling of a frieze, rather than a space with depth that is then penetrated. That emphasis on flatness and horizontality was important.
MacDonald:
I enjoy the fact that those pans also defy the traditional cinematic focus on males as the center of activity, of image and movement. Generally, what
they
do is decontextualized from the necessities of domestic life and labor. The camera movements are perfect for reuniting action with context. I'm surprised the 360-degree pans have not been copied much.
Mulvey:
No. Of course, there are 360-degree pans that predate
Riddles
. There's one in
Weekend
[1968]. There's one in
Vivre sa Vie
[1962]. There might be one in one of [Max] Ophuls's films.
[
Wollen:
There are also 360-degree pans in Jean Renoir's
La Crime du Monsieur Lange
(1935) and Raoul Walsh's
High Sierra
(1941).]