The Dynamic Frame: Camera Movement in Classical Hollywood

2.x25 Fury

A lynch mob is approaching a jail, and we see a full shot of innocent victim Joe Wilson looking through the bars of his cell. Showing Wilson’s glance first prepares us to identify with his point of view—the perspective of the persecuted victim. But then we are forced to look through the collective eye of the horde. In so doing, Lang challenges spectators to confront their own willingness to identify with the lynch mob—and to confront the cinema’s frightening power to fuse together a crowd’s emotions.

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