Flickers

Lee Marvin walking, low angle, through LAX in Point Blank; footsteps like gunshots.

The sound of wind in the trees in Blow-Up.

Driving shots through the windscreen in Vertigo.

Kim Novak asking Kirk Douglas about shaving the dimple in his chin in Strangers When We Meet.

The woman’s blink in La Jetée, a film composed otherwise only of photographs.

Robert Mitchum’s walk across the rodeo ground in The Lusty Men.

The number of fucks in the history of cinema (on and off screen).

Fritz Lang’s statement: that in the end it is necessary to finish what one has started.

Ray Milland’s vision in The Man with the X-Ray Eyes.

Orson Welles’s hair in The Third Man, his overcoat and his shoes.

Manny Farber’s observation on a great moment of cinematic space: Bogart crossing the street to the bookstore in The Big Sleep and looking up at the sky.

The plughole in Psycho.

Warren Oates’s bemused grin; his wretched singing of ‘Guantanamera’ in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.

Magwitch in the graveyard of Great Expectations.

Clu Gulager flipping aside his jacket to show his gun in The Killers; the gesture repeated in Thief as James Caan sees off a man in a bar cutting in on Tuesday Weld.

The gaucheness of Anna Karina in Le Petit Soldat.

How Lee Marvin holds a gun.

Christopher Walken in the credits for King of New York – the face of a revenant – later confirmed by the line, “Back from the dead”.

The loneliness of Diane Keaton in The Godfather.

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” in The Shining.

Doorways (thresholds) in the films of Fritz Lang.

The way Harvey Keitel’s head hits the pillow as the Ronettes start ‘Be My Baby’ in Mean Streets.

Dean Martin’s hat in Some Come Running.

Clint Eastwood’s chipped tooth.

Geneviève Bujold’s eyes.

The treehouse in Swiss Family Robinson.

The eaves of the attic room where Mitchum kills Shelley Winters in The Night of the Hunter.

Bad early Jack Nicholson performances.

Bresson’s note on the ejaculatory force of the eye.

Jeanne Moreau’s shoes in The Diary of a Chambermaid.

The last walk in The Wild Bunch.

(The sound of a pump-action gun being worked.)

Anna Karina cycling in Bande à part.

Peter Lorre’s oyster eyes in M.

A shot of a plane passing over Powis Square in Performance.

Three young girls walking down a road in Iceland in Marker’s Sans soleil.

Ralph Meeker on being asked who he is in Kiss Me Deadly: “Who am I? Who are you?”

The deathly quiet suburban streets at the beginning of Badlands.

The slyness of the actress’s look in Un chien andalou.

Windows in Kieślowski’s A Short Film About Love.

The terror of the mountains in Wellman’s Track of the Cat.

A country gas station in Two-Lane Blacktop.

The eroticism of Woman in the Dunes.

The tenderness of the pickpocketing sequences in Pickpocket.

A Jancsó travelling shot.

James Stewart having to act with Fabian.

A brief close-up of an unknown actress in Leach’s TV version of Up the Junction, looking fed-up, walking down the street.

Nuns in films.

Noise of a chain-saw.

Claudia Cardinale’s voice.

Alain Delon’s isolation.

Any face in a crowd.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

The assassination on the steps in the rain in Foreign Correspondent (umbrellas in films).

Anton Walbrook’s alien speech in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.

Timothy Evans’s hanging place in 10 Rillington Place.

Morricone’s music in Once upon a Time in the West.

All the drinks and drugs ever taken by all the people who worked in movies (cinema as narcotic).

Charles Bronson’s fear of tunnelling in The Great Escape (Donald Pleasence’s blindness in the same).

The train arriving in the station by the brothers Lumière.

Jane Birkin looking through the keyhole in Rivette’s L’amour par terre.

The fevered eroticism of Clara Calamai’s hands in Ossessione.

Robert Vaughn catching flies in The Magnificent Seven.

The emptiness of Handke’s The Left-Handed Woman.

Burton’s drunken driving in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?

Steve McQueen’s haircut in The Cincinnati Kid.

The insecurity of Rita Hayworth.

Lino Ventura crossing a railway track in Le Deuxième souffle.

Straub and Huillet’s framing.

Sue Lloyd’s line to Michael Caine in The Ipcress File: “Do you always wear glasses?” (A. “Yes, except when I’m in bed.”)

The gaunt officer in The Battle of Algiers.

Graham Greene’s cameo in Day for Night.

Edith Scob’s bandages in Eyes Without a Face.

The vulnerability of Kurt Raab’s serial killer in Tenderness of the Wolves.

The quizzical narcissism of Warren Beatty.

The boisterous laughter of Ava Gardner in The Night of the Iguana.

Dreyer’s Vampyr.

The blonde Russian actress in Ballad of a Soldier.

A still of Lee J. Cobb’s cliff-top death in Man of the West, hand thrown high, back arched.

You Only Live Once, “the story of the last romantic couple” (J-L Godard).

The predatoriness of Connery’s James Bond.

The restlessness of Cassavetes’ camera in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie.

The way Woody Allen ripped off Éric Rohmer (the shirt Zouzou buys the man in Love in the Afternoon).

Busted careers.

Delon’s line in Nouvelle Vague, “I inspire derision.”

The increasingly desolate look of James Mason (“The saddest eyes in cinema,” according to Greene.)

The failure of British cinema.

The directness of the gaze of women in the films of Ingmar Bergman.

Orson Welles’s remark that most directors are not found out.

The wasted life of Louise Brooks.

Gene Hackman eating ice cream after cold turkey in French Connection II.

The foolhardiness of Werner Herzog.

The missing tiles in the floor at the beginning of Rosemary’s Baby (cracks in the wall in Repulsion).

The desire to see again films I hated at the time (Le Bonheur, Céline and Julie Go Boating).

Manhunter versus The Silence of the Lambs.

Robby Müller’s camera for Wim Wenders.

Sleeping Japanese passengers in Sans soleil.

The exemplary career of Raúl Ruiz.

The 13-year gap in Buñuel’s filmmaking.

Photographs in cinema.

Fredi Murer’s only feature, Alpine Fire (1984) – Buñuel’s Mexican Wuthering Heights relocated to Switzerland and contained within a single family – and the fact that he hasn’t made a feature since.

The magnificence of Delphine Seyrig in Daughters of Darkness.

The Wednesday in Big Wednesday.

Tracking shots in Kieślowski’s The Double Life of Véronique.

The critical writings of J-L Godard, Manny Farber and David Thomson.

Silk stockings on screen (Silk Stockings).

Jerry-built French architecture and an out-of-season coastal resort in Les Valseuses.

Bad weather (the climate of northern France) in the films of J-P Melville.

(The nostalgia of German expatriates in Hollywood for European weather: hence film noir.)

Lisa Eichhorn in Cutter’s Way (a film of lost careers – Passer, Heard, Eichhorn).

Kenneth Anger’s mapping of the other Hollywood.

David Niven’s smirk.

Zapruder’s 8mm film of the Dallas assassination.

(Costner’s line, “Back, and to the left,” in JFK.)

The greatness of Don Siegel.

The Switchboard Operator and her cat.

Richard Boone (the unsuccessful Lee Marvin) in The Night of the Following Day.

Snow in McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Leonard Cohen’s soundtrack.

Exploited Mexican actresses as sex objects.

The belief by dull practitioners that cinema cannot be transcended.

Michael Klier’s The Giant, a feature-length film of back-to-back video surveillance images.

The frequently unadventurous use of music in film (the dominance of picture over sound).

Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma, the ultimate desert island/cul-de-sac film: the director as Prospero.

Video.

The fact that films don’t say ‘The End’ any more.