The Obvious Code

After watching both The Big Sleep and reading “The Obvious Code” by Bellour, I had a much deeper understanding of the codes used to instill meaning in a movie. I had no idea how much went into planning each individual scene, even ones that on the surface seem so simple. Bellour uses the scene where Vivian and Marlowe first express their love for each other to exemplify the importance of code. When I first saw this scene, it did not strike me as terribly significant, but Bellour breaks it down into 12 shots. By doing this, he is able to show how much the narrative is shaped through the use of framing, camera angle, speech, repetition, and balance. Bellour says in his text that in American Cinema, “meaning is constituted by the correspondence in the balances achieved” (Bellour 75). This quote seems particularly important when trying to analyze scenes in classic Hollywood films. Looking for balance within particular shots is not something that comes easily to me, but using Bellour as a reference will help me decode films and find meanings that I might never have stumbled across.