You can only get the Suspense element going by giving the audience information.—Alfred Hitchcock

Suspense, Hitch always insisted, was fundamentally different from Mystery. Because the press so often mislabeled his movies as Mysteries, he took more than one occasion to get specific about the difference. The most famous of these was in [...]]]>

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You can only get the Suspense element going by giving the audience information.—Alfred Hitchcock

Suspense, Hitch always insisted, was fundamentally different from Mystery. Because the press so often mislabeled his movies as Mysteries, he took more than one occasion to get specific about the difference. The most famous of these was in an interview with Francois Truffaut

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let us suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, “Boom!” There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the audience knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware that the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions this same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: “You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There’s a bomb beneath you and it’s about to explode!”

In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed.—Hitchcock in an interview with Truffaut

David Bordwell in Film Art: An Introduction refers to this quality as the narration‘s “range-of-knowledge.” How much more or less than the characters does the audience know at any one time?

Restricted narration tends to create greater curiosity and surprise for the viewer…a degree of unrestricted narration helps build suspense.—David Bordwell, Film Art

So, restricted narration yields mystery and unrestricted narration, suspense. Early in his career Hitchcock sometimes struggled with this distinction. The film often erroneously referred to as the “first true Hitchcock picture”—The Lodger—is a good example of how mystery can actively undermine suspense, and leave you with a less effective plot. The Lodger is a scary movie, but it doesn’t plumb the depth’s of suspense like the director’s later, more accomplished work. Blackmail, from only three years later in 1929, leaves not one story point unrevealed, and the difference in effect is profound—a more disturbing, unnerving, and suspenseful experience.

The 1926 film is the simple story of a unnamed lodger who comes to stay with an innocent family while London is reeling under the knife of a psychosexual killer, the Avenger. The new Lodger acts suspiciously and fits a description that only the audience has been given, so it seems like he’s the killer, and Joe—Daisy’s policeman amour—slowly comes to the same conclusion, while jealously watching Daisy and the Lodger strike up a quick romance. In the end we learn that the Lodger was actually investigating the Avenger himself, because his sister—a blonde—was murdered by him.

Of course, there is some suspense in that story; namely in the scenes of burgeoning romance between the Lodger and Daisy.

Hitchcock takes great care in the film’s opening minutes to establish the audience’s suspicions for the Lodger, finally telling us that the lower half of the killer’s face was hidden by a scarf. This opening is bizarre because usually an introduction like this functions to establish central characters—a detective, victim, or villain in a crime picture.

However, in The Lodger these scenes serve a more important purpose than establishing character. Here the narration is at its most omniscient, and these scenes justify all of the film’s limited suspense. By showing us these random policemen and witnesses—characters that have nothing to do with the main action (the Buntings, Joe, the Lodger) Hitchcock reveals to us the visual signifiers  (tall, pale, thin, with a scarf) that make the Lodger’s arrival one of the great and terrifying character entrances in cinematic history.

The audience knows that the Avenger was seen "with a scarf covering the lower half of his face" but the Bunting family does not. This makes the Lodger's arrival on their stoop terrifying.

Then, during the next two acts, because we “know” that the Lodger is the Avenger, the scenes of Daisy and him innocently flirting take on sinister double-meanings. Hitchcock exploits this to great effect in scenes like the Lodger flicking a crumb off Daisy’s apron with a knife—very suspenseful.

Unfortunately most of the rest of the film’s complicating action is wasted on building up more and more phony evidence against our poor Lodger:

• his secretive nature
• his attraction to blondes
• his nightly travels
• his triangular map
• his locked cupboard

Notice anything here? All of these are mysteries. A lot of the viewer’s interest in the Lodger himself is generated by the question, “is the Lodger the Avenger” not “what will happen when Daisy finds out that the Lodger is the Avenger” or even “will he kill Daisy.” Starting with the opening scream, much of the film’s narrative turns on an axis of curiosity:

• Who killed the girl?
• Is the Lodger the Avenger?
• Where’s he going all the time?
• Why does he act so strange?

Joe the cop

In fact the suspense of Joe the cop’s story line is undercut by the audience’s massive gap in knowledge. His jealousy seems justified and heroic because the Lodger is a psycho until the end’s totally unexpected revelation; if Hitch had shown us the Lodger’s innocence earlier, the audience would be in agony over Joe’s convenient—and growing—misunderstanding. We would have lost the fear that the Lodger would kill Daisy, but Daisy would still be in jeopardy—Joe’s mania, the Lodger’s pursuit of the Avenger, and ultimately the clash between Joe and the Lodger. That sort of movie would really be something—a disturbing portrait of a policeman’s jealous mania. Instead we have a tepid thriller, stuck in a nowhere-land somewhere between mystery and suspense.

32 years later Hitchcock would have the lesson firmly down, although critics never really figured it out.

In Vertigo (1958), his adaptation of the French novel D’Entre les Morts, he even sacrificed the book’s final surprise twist (“Judy is Madeleine”) in order to inject a firm dose of suspense into the story (“When will Scottie find out that Judy and Madeleine are the same person and how will he react?”)…critics at the time had trouble understanding Hitchcock’s intention for us to watch Scottie unravel, rather than to figure out a “whodunit”—Building a Better Bomb, Pete Gelderblom

This last, [...]]]> 1942′s In This Our Life has become a footnote in John Huston‘s esteemed filmography. Coming after the knock-down drag-out success of his first film, The Maltese Falcon—its powerful, and historically unusual, portrayal of institutional racism is electrifying, but it is this subplot alone that garners any and all critical affection the film receives.

This last, as a matter of fact, is the one exceptional component of the film—this brief but frank allusion to racial discrimination.—Bosley Crowther in his contemporary review

However, if the evaluation of a movie rests on the analysis of its techniques and the purposes they serve, then any judgement of In This Our Life must mark it a striking victory, and among the full gamut of film techniques that Huston deploys in the service of effect, mise-en-scene is dominant. The plot unfolds a convoluted story with multiple back and sub plots, and most of this is accomplished visually through costume, make up, and principles of frontality, figure placement, and eye movement.

Forgotten out of prejudice…against Melodrama!

The film is impressive in even a most basic critical criterion like unity. The stylized performance of Bette Davis fits with her heightened costumes and makeup, the cinematography’s emphasis on in-depth composition and high-key lighting fits in with the narrative’s overall omniscience, the soundtrack’s gloomy sentimentality fits with the script’s emotionalism, and so on. In fact, the one disunifying element is the realistically portrayed black character and his realistically portrayed predicament. Laudable though it is, it stands out in the movie’s hyper-stylized context.

I don’t think the film’s critical neglect reflects poorly on the artistry of its creators. There was—and is—merely a tendency among critics to dismiss mere melodrama out-of-hand. There’s more than a little sexism in this proclivity—for years the Melodrama was the only refuge for “women’s issues”, but I also think that there’s another, more aesthetic bias at work here.

Melodrama is a highly mimetic genre. It longs for the plasticity of film. Its situations cry out for exaggeration, its stock characters cry out for caricature. It is an intensely visual genre, one that relies heavily on a character’s “look” to convey narrative, emotion, and meaning. And finally it is a profoundly effective genre, one that attempts to violate your personal boundaries and physically disturb you—in the form of sobbing. In This Our Life embodies all of these—theatrical, mimetic—tendencies, and it stands in contrast to the pseudo-literary impulses of Huston’s more revered films.

Good Sis/Bad Sis

In This Our Life is the story of the Timberlake family. Asa, the patriarch, is timid and kind. His brother-in-law William Fitzroy is aggressive and hostile, and he steals the family tobacco business away from Asa. Asa’s two daughters—curiously named Roy & Stanley—are each happily in love: Roy—the good daughter—with Peter the handsome surgeon and Stanley—the hellcat—with Craig the liberal lawyer. Stanley also appears to have a less-than-innocent relationship with Uncle William.

On the eve of Stanley and Craig’s wedding she runs off with Peter! The devastated Roy slowly turns to Craig and over time they both get better and help Perry—the Timberlake’s maid’s son—become a paralegal in Craig’s office. After Stanley’s constant cruelty drives the poor Peter to suicide she comes home and tries to steal Craig back. Frustrated by her repeated failure she accidentally runs over a mother and child, and then she blames Perry for her crime. Roy and Craig work out the truth and confront Stanley who tries to turn to the dying Uncle William for support. He ignores her pleas, and in her hasty flight she crashes and dies.

At various points the narration is purely visual.

Mise-en-First-scene

Huston wields each film technique with force to advance the story’s maximum effect, but its his use of mise-en-scene (setting, costume/make up, lighting, and staging) that most drives the narrative and reveals the film’s subtexts. By the end of Act I all of the characters, props, and settings that will be important to the climax have been both introduced and richly contextualized, and by the end of the film patterns that have been developing in the mise-en-scene since the opening moments are fully realized.

The first scene illustrates this well. In the first two minutes we get an onslaught of visual information, beginning with the sign on the warehouse wall. Dramatically zoomed in on, it reveals a huge portion of the back story in one shot. While we don’t yet know that they’re brothers, we do know that Timberlake lost to Fitzroy.

On the walk home with Perry—who himself becomes a central plot element—Asa stoops to look at the family crest that once adorned his factory’s wall.

The script doesn’t bother to tell us that the Timberlake family is not what it used to be. The mise-en-scene shows it to us. And that’s not to say that the script isn’t working overtime in these first few moments. It’s just that the script and the mise-en-scene are working different beats. The script revs up certain causal chains concerning Perry’s intelligence and Stanley’s driving, and it establishes an appointment with William as a dangling cause to link this scene with the next. Under, over, and around this verbal exposition however, the mise-en-scene slips in these huge details describing the situational context leading up to this moment.

Perry's personality, his regular duty washing Stanley's car, and his relationship with the Timberlakes are all established in the first minutes of the movie.

Little Things Mean A Lot

Ms. Stanley takes after her mom and Uncle William—the Fitzroy side. Now you, you just like your Grandma, Mrs. Timberlake.—Minerva, the Timberlake’s servant

The next two short scenes add texture and establish a few recurring motifs. Minerva—Perry’s mother—compares Roy to a portrait of her Grandmother on the Timberlake side. This is visually repeated at various points in the film, and Roy is frequently framed under the painting.

Grandma Timberlake, a visual motif that links Roy to her side of the family.

Notice the lampshade with a doily on it, just like later in Stanley's recovery room.

Then Asa goes in and talks to his wife Lavinia. Later, after Peter’s suicide, Stanley is lying in bed recovering just like her mother does in this early scene (with similar gowns and lamp covers,) and at the end of the film , when William is dying and won’t listen to Stanley’s pleas for help, he’s sickly and recovering under a patterned blanket. These three characters—grouped by Minerva in the preceding scene—compose a separate, selfish family right in the midst of the “good” Timberlakes: Grandma Timberlake, Roy, and—implicitly—Asa.

Looks & “Looks”

Costume and Make up plays a crucial role in the film’s exposition. When Uncle William visits, his clothing is distinctively contrasted with Asa. In this typically cluttered frame, you can see the contrast in costume between Asa (foreground) and William (background). Asa’s modest charcoal and bookish bow-tie are set against William’s garish white suit and phallic, straight-tie. Huston uses these kinds of contrasts and carefully controlled gazes to direct our attention and reveal unspoken story information.

Notice Mrs. Fitzroy's angry, inquisitive look at William—and Asa's annoyance in the foreground.

Then we get a preview of the more complex staging used in the next sequence. After the anger Uncle William expresses about Stanley, its almost as if Mrs. Fitzroy is hiding behind the table.

This car is there for every significant moment in Stanley's story. Even after she kills the little girl with it and blames Perry, its returned to her by the police just in time for her to drive it to her own fiery demise. Stanley's recurring position behind the wheel both foreshadows the ending and emphasizes her independence. "She's just like the rest of her generation!"—Uncle William

Then Stanley arrives, having been spoken of multiple times already, her and her black car are both anticipated and appreciated.

Bette's make up famously caused pre-screen audiences to leave nasty comments on their cards. As Jeanine Basinger notes in the DVD commentary, the make up was Bette's idea. It was by far the most extreme look she ever took, and it stands as a masterful artistic decision, making Stanley stand out not just from Roy, but from the countless other vixens that Bette Davis played.

Then Stanley has Perry take the car and wash it. This scene visually reiterates information we heard in the film’s opening conversation, and its a crucial causal seed in the tree of In This Our Life‘s drama.

Staging in the Sitting Room

All the principles involved here—frontality, spacing of figures, slight shifts of compositional focus, actors’ body language—are simple in themselves, but they gain a strong impact by cooperating with one another…Yet simplicity shouldn’t imply simplification. Anderson’s willingness to give the shot several points of interest, some more stressed than others, creates an understated tension…a quality that Anderson admires in 1940s studio films like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.—David Bordwell on There Will Be Blood [Sierra Madre was also directed by John Huston]

The next scene starts to fully explore the staging possibilities of such a large, talented ensemble. When Stanley enters the house there’s a brief sequence between her and Uncle William that’s shot with over-over-twos and continuity editing. The only extended sequence of its kind in this scene, it emphasizes their intimate relationship.

First he scolds her for driving too much and too fast and for wearing short dresses. These medium shots are countered with traditional shots of William's reactions.

Then she teases and flirts with him.

Then she tickles him.

And then she gets her check. This sort of extended stretch of continuity editing is rare in the first Act, and it stands out a little here. We then move into an extended in-depth scene, with a bevy of movements, changes of position, gazes, and groupings.

Stanley walks over and shows Asa her check who looks at it and her anxiously. Notice Grandma Timberlake on the wall between Stanley and Roy.

Then we get a disturbing attempt at a not-very-Uncle-ish kiss from William and Asa's apprehension. Notice the contrast between the brother's white and black suits. Normally white symbolizes purity, but here it seems to function as a sort of Freudian "lack" that threatens to gobble up the loud, colorful Stanley.

Then comes this truly virtuoso bit of staging. As Minerva comes in from stage left, we get a brief close-up of Stanley erotically wiping away lipstick from Uncle William's cheek (I left it out here). Notice Asa' and Roy's gaze and position—aligned.

Minerva either covers or uncovers a figure in each step of her walk. Frontality becomes the salient visual element.

Now we lose almost all of the characters's faces, except Asa's pensive glance off screen. Notice Mrs. Fitzroy's rapt attention on William.

Stanley's devilish grin stands out. Davis's garish make up makes even far away expressions pop.

Notice the total lack of frontality, except Uncle William's dopey grin—for humor.

William's demeanor changes upon meeting his wife's gaze; it stiffens, suddenly awkward, and somehow even dopier—caught!

Notice both the extreme busyness of the frame, and Asa's perfect positioning in line with Grandma Timberlake's portrait. Remember that its the Grandma, Roy, and Asa that were linked in the text by Minerva (who's standing right next to them.)

Notice Stanley in the far back, adjusting her hat. Hats are a very important visual motif in the film, and Stanley is really the only character that wears a black one.

Here Mrs. Fitzroy is warning Uncle William about his drinking, but Stanley encourages him. While Mrs. Fitzroy is prominent in the foreground, frontality favors Stanley. Her made up face, loud dress, and floppy hat all draw your eye into the corner, and prepare you for a brief close up.

Here we're given a painful glimpse of Mrs. Fitzroy's uneasiness with Stanley's forwardness with Wiliam. Note that all the other faces are conspicuously concealed.

Peter's costume matches Stanley's black hat. His is the only pure black suit, and the buttoned up coat and solid colors seem to reflect his fiercely closed-off nature.

Here, with Peter, we have the full tableau. Huston famously began as a painter, and compositions like these reflect this background. Notice that Peter is over on the "good" side. In the film Peter is not evil; if anything he's corrupted by Stanley.

Peter is horrified at the mention of Craig. Notice also the amount of distance between Peter and Roy. This helps to subtly underline Peter's upcoming betrayal.

Before Uncle William leaves, he reasserts dominance with this gesture. Note the apprehension on Stanley's face. Davis does an amazing job portraying Stanley's different emotional extremes with her wardrobe, make up, and subtle facial movements.

This selection of images is indicative of the huge amount of purely visual information that Huston packs into the frame as the first Act develops, but there are about 24 frames per second, and I’ve left most of them out. In particular I’ve removed the few close ups he does use. While in-depth composition is prevalent enough to stand out as a stylistic motif, Huston does use medium and close ups for emphasis. Famously Bette Davis felt like Olivia De Havilland got the bulk of the close ups and good angles, but for my money Davis steals the entire film with this oh so brief shot.

"Does anyone ever really know?"

When watching scenes like this its important to remember that with such busy frames you have to pay attention to eye movement, figure placement, and frontality. I’ve focused on the mise-en-scene, and specifically elements of staging and costume, as his most salient technique, but you can see that even beyond what’s placed in the scene Huston is profound in his cinematic design. The editing is particularly sophisticated, with the few close ups feeling important and distinct, and they each serve character or narrative functions. However, it is in-depth, in the mise-en-scene that most of the visual information is relayed.

Looking for Stanley

After a touching scene between Roy and Peter, Craig visits and is given the cold shoulder by Stanley. The plot often suppresses dramatic moments like the lovers’ actual escape. This is motivated transtextually by the conventions of Melodrama. Far more important than the moment of character action is the way that other characters will be reacting to that action. The next scene opens with Asa and Craig going to Uncle Williams to look for her. They’re reaction is the real action.

Look at how freaked out Uncle William is in the back. His outbursts are ways of linking him to Stanley, of course, but they're also part of the development of a plotline about his heart condition.

The staircase is a motif I haven’t mentioned yet. We first see Roy on the staircase, Peter tries to sneak up it, later Stanley straps on her sexy shoes on it, but most of all is this dramatic shot near the end of Act One.

One of the only moments that the lighting goes low-key. "You too, Father?"—poor Roy

During Asa and Roy’s heart-to-heart she vows to “not be like him” and to wear a red hat “with a black feather.” This hat comes back up multiple times as a symbol of Roy’s embrace of life. Finally, after the good daughter rebukes the good father, we move to Stanley and Peter’s new apartment.

The Victrola between them is the focus of the drama between them in this scene, but its also the final established motif in Act One. Later we see her dancing provocatively to a record on it to seduce Craig, and still later she's listening to jaunty music just hours after killing a little girl.

Peter says that they must “be happy,” and its here that we have what is undoubtedly Stanley’s primary narrative goal—and therefore the narrative’s true driving force. Happiness drives Stanley. As Roy says late in Act IV, “She just wants to be happy, and she doesn’t care who gets hurt.”

“Painterly”

Shots, directors, and entire films are often described as “painterly.” Too often this just means that the cinematographer chooses an unusual camera angle or film stock. For something to truly be “painterly” it must also convey information visually. Paintings have whole stories in their frames. Films sometimes can’t get anything across even with motion and sound!

In This Our Life is not one of them. It goes beyond just prettily filming something and finds pretty somethings to film. Its mise-en-scene, primarily through costume/make up and staging, is running a constant stream of information beneath the film’s dialogue. The first Act sets up not just the dramatic scenario, but a complex network of visual signifiers and figure-relations. Patterns that culminate in Stanley’s overturned car and burning body, and Craig and Roy’s anxious, pensive end-title hug. They are hugging—sure—but what are their eyes saying?

Setting consists of three elements: places, props, and times. Visually, it’s the where, when, and what of a story, and it’s one of the most powerful aspects of mise-en-scene.

The human being is all-important in the theatre. The drama on the screen can exist without actors. A banging door, a leaf in the wind, [...]]]>

The title card's composition—along with the title itself—direct attention to the prominence of the Bay in the film's narrative.

What is Setting?

Setting consists of three elements: places, props, and times. Visually, it’s the where, when, and what of a story, and it’s one of the most powerful aspects of mise-en-scene.

The human being is all-important in the theatre. The drama on the screen can exist without actors. A banging door, a leaf in the wind, waves beating on the shore can heighten the dramatic effect. Some film masterpieces use man only as an accessory, like an extra, or in counterpoint to nature, which is the true leading character.—Andre Bazin

In John Carpenter’s 1980 campfire classic, The Fog, setting stands out as his single most salient technique. From the titular Fog itself to the iconic lighthouse that DJ Stevie Wayne uses to “keep watching the fog,” places repeatedly trump people in terms of narrative importance. The story’s timing—the eve of Antonio Bay’s centennial—and its general location—the Pacific Northeast—help reinforce the film’s postcolonnial subtext, and the plot’s development charts a course progressively backwards to the oldest buildings in town; the place most centrally connected to the town’s historical atrocity.

Hollywood v. California

Shooting was split between studio work in Hollywood—for the interiors—and locations scattered around Marin County California—for the bay, lighthouse, babysitter’s house, and church. This had some technical ramifications. For instance, lighting in the interiors is tightly controlled chiaroscuro, whereas lighting on location is largely natural and diffuse. The only genuinely bright stretch in the film is the gorgeous location photgraphy of Stevie Wayne driving down Sir Frances Drake Highway to work, but when she gets there the extraordinary size and shape of the bluff that holds the lighthouse carries its own sun-drenched menace. In general, for the interiors Carpenter used classic Lewton-inspired, lighting/sound based scares, but on location the power of the settings themselves carried all the creepy implications required.

This location shot juxtaposes the point's physical beauty with its majestic uncanniness.

“I am the thief and God’s temple is the tomb of gold.”—Grandfather Malone

The Fog tells the story of Antonio Bay—a sleepy New England town with skeleton pirates in its closet. Back in the 19th century, the future city fathers purposely drove a shipful of lepers against the rocks and plundered its wealthy Captain Blake’s treasure to build the church and establish the town. On the eve of the town’s centennial a local priest—a descendant of one of the six orignal conspirators—finds his grandfather’s journal describing the whole sordid tale. Incensed by the coming celebration and the unearthing of the damning journal, Blake and his revolting troop of leporous zombie ghosts return to Antonio Bay in the same “unearthly fog” that gave the town’s fathers cover for their dastardly deed so many years ago. Now its up to local DJ Stevie Wayne and a ragtag band of misfits and misanthropes to save the town and set things right.

“This town should be proud of its past.”—Kathy Williams

The first aspect of setting that orients The Fog‘s narrative is the township of Antonio Bay itself. Over at dvdtown, John Puccio comments that, “[a] minor concern is that the film can never make up its mind who its lead character is,” but,  it’s Antonio Bay itself—introduced during the credits in a montage of eerily unpopulated compositions that recall the famous ending of Carpenter’s previous film Halloween—that’s actually the movie’s true protagonist, and its journey from ignominy to redemption is the film’s true story.

Characters like Father Malone, DJ Stevie, and local personality Kathy Williams are all cardboard cut-outs that have little psychological depth, but the inclusion of so many of them—at least ten memorable, quirky, and unique stereotypes—turns the town itself into a fully developed personage, with all the internal confict and contradiction of an ambiguously drawn, “realistic” human character.

La Nebbia

The credit sequence features largely peopleless frames with scares that evolve directly out of the setting.

The credit sequence’s faux-Antonioniness is another device that puts the visual weight on the setting’s back. Showing off Dean Cundey’s excellent cinematography, Carpenter takes us on a tour through Antonio Bay’s many streets and shops. Some spots will be revisited later, some will not, but with their uncanny emptiness and aesthetic prowess, the shots stand out and demand explanation. At the end of Halloween he used a similar device to show us everywhere The Shape (Michael Myers) wasn’t, but in The Fog it feels more like he’s showing us the town itself—and the evil already lurking beneath the surface. This is partly because the montage comes at the beginning of the plot and partly because it’s the places’ physicality that produces the terror. This sequence is filled with setting-scares:

• ringing pay phones,
• rattling bottles,
• a swinging sign,
• the gas nozzle/car lift,
• car alarms,
• a TV powers up,
• and a moving chair.

These first frights are not killer monsters (costume/makeup) or shadowy corners (lighting) or even loud noises offscreen (sound); they’re explicitly physical—actual everyday parts of the setting acting in strange ways. The opening credit sequence underlines the fact that the town of Antonio Bay is cursed—its residents just happen to live there.

“My grandfather hid his sins in the walls.”—Father Malone

In the beginning, two slow, dramatic, on-location tilts—one upwards, one downwards—follow the studio-bound “ghost-story” prologue, introducing the two settings at war for Antonio Bay’s soul. The first is the bay—which is represented inland by the Fog and which is returned to over and over again as an ominous visual motif that reminds us from where the danger first emerged. The second is the local church, which stands as the symbolic heart of the town—its first official building after moving on up the municipal hierarchy from settlement to township. The church is Antonio Bay both as it was (greedy, guilty—the stolen gold and shadows) and as it is (ignorant, innocent—Father Malone).

The story of The Fog is the slow train from sea to church, and the human figures that act it out are simply vehicles for the bay’s reclamation of its property. Presumably Blake won’t even be able to use the gold he takes back, but I guess the Fog just feels like the gold belongs at the bottom of the ocean with the rest of the wreck of the Elizabeth Dane!

The prop that crankstarts the plot is found in the walls of the story's central location and is itself an aspect of the setting.

The church forms the film’s beginning and end, and the setting gives the movie formal symmetry. Father Malone finds the journal in the church’s wall, so the ignition of the entire plot’s engine is a part of the setting, and since he finds the gold that appeases Blake’s ghost in that same wall, the plot’s resolution is also tucked away in its most important set. Imagine some alternative resolutions: killing Blake, publicly acknowledging the atrocity, or even the death of all the characters—none have the geometrical poetry of The Fog‘s setting-based solution.

Also, visually the church provides a Gothic counterpoint to the plastic fantastic American nightmare that is much of Antonio Bay, although its interior is as artificial as the rest of the movie’s studio work.

Our Cross to Bear

The cross that Malone gives to Blake to give his spirit rest deserves a little closer scrutiny. The cross is the story’s most important prop, and it’s a motif that runs throughout the entire film. There are crosses on the wall of the church in the beginning and the hospital in the middle. There are three shots of lone telephone poles that look like religious crosses, and there’s an enormous Celtic Cross on the road outside of town. This running visual pattern culminates in the enormous gold cross that solves the story. Once again, setting takes a formative role in the plot.

A noticeable cross motif builds throughout the movie, culminating in the golden cross that Father Malone return's to Blake.

♫♪I wanna marry a lighthouse keeper…♪♫

The lighthouse that serves as DJ Stevie Wayne’s base of operations is a famous one from Point Reyes, California. In the early 19th century the area was a hotbed of shipwrecks, and the lighthouse was built in 1852 to help cut back on the number of accidents. Fog was problematic for the lighthouse back then too, and keeping the light lit and visible was a full time job. So this setting was not only visually evocative, it was meta-narratively appropriate.

The lighthouse has an important formal function in the film as well; it isolates DJ Stevie. By giving her a job that couldn’t be shirked, the best seats in town for lookout duty, and the ability to communicate one-way with the other characters, Carpenter effectively locks her in a room. She’s forced to listen impotently to the attack that could claim her child’s life, she’s on a fishing hook hanging out over the bay as a perfect target for the Fog, and in the end she’s driven onto the lighthouse’s extremely small roof by the zombie ghosts.

The interior studio work—like this shot of DJ Stevie mournfully lamenting her lighthouse-bound impotence—feature stark chiaroscuro. Often Dean Cundey will use unusual flares and spotlights—with the occasional color filter—to spice up the comparatively bland studio settings.

Together with the church, the lighthouse stands as the oldest physical reminder of the town father’s crimes. Although the false fire that sent Blake’s ship off course was lit “on shore” his ship crashed “on the rocks off Spivey Point.” Later the lighthouse was built on Spivey Point. Ghost attacks move from: the streets of Antonio Bay to the road outside of town to ships in the bay to a house on the beach to the lighthouse to the church. So, as you can see, the plot leads the ghosts on a journey from more modern, less culpable parts of town (studio sets), to places progressively more stained with innocent leprous blood (real locations.)

The Auteur of “The Place”

Carpenter has had a career long prediliction for movies heavy on setting. To one extent or another, at least ten of his films deal with sieged locations, and its the physicality of these different places that twist and tweak his themes. Whether its the racially charged Police Station of Assault on Precinct 13 (brotherhood) or the ice cold Antarctic lab from The Thing (paranoia), his settings give him unique perspectives on his archetypal—and largely interchangeable—stories.

Next to They Live, which—for all its positive qualities—does not work as well as this film, The Fog is the most extreme example of his recurring siege-theme, and as such it’s also the film where he most fully exploits the full range of the setting’s potential effects. The whole town of Antonio Bay is besieged, and it succeeds in creating a much more palpable sense of reality than Haddonfield, IL (Halloween) or the Los Angeles of Prince of Darkness. Like the ghostly force that rattles bottles, swings signs, and turns on car alarms, The Fog‘s narrative is an invisible force that animates the settings that form its corpus, and it’s another terrifying example of  John Carpenter’s subordination of the will of man to the will of nature.