This is my entry in The House Next Door’s mighty, fortnight long, Close-Up Blogathon which wraps this Sunday (10/21/07).

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I’m sure I’m plagiarizing someone when I write that the camera is a weapon; the closer it is to its subject, the deadlier it is. Close-ups can be things of beauty, they can be dramatic punctuation, they can be an attempt to force the audience to feel something (a tactic that never works), or they can undermine a character entirely.

I’m not sure if this is a coherent point, but it does seem that close-ups can be especially powerful in the two genres where, in theory at least, they would be the least used: musicals and action films. Dancing and fighting are not done with only part of the body, and it’s more or less traditional and logical to show them in full body or nearly so.

Of course, some of history’s most memorable close-ups are very specifically from action films, not the least being this one from Stagecoach, already discussed in this blogathon by the Shamus.

This shot is frequently referenced as being the mythic introduction of a mythic American hero. And, of course, that’s just what it is, especially when you watch the entire fast-moving dolly shot. But how does John Wayne look in the captured image above, once the camera movement has been completed?

We can’t see his twirling Winchester any more and Wayne was young enough that he still looked a little like a big kid. I’d say he’s looking somewhat scared and clueless above, which is appropriate considering his character has just broke jail to challenge the southwest’s most notorious gunman to a duel. Though it passes by too quickly for us to really take conscious note of it, at least in a screen capture we can get a sense of both John Wayne’s and the Ringo Kid’s vulnerability, mythic hero in the making or not.

More sustained close-ups can be stronger still, and can completely undermine a character if used with the proper level of directorial malice. They can also express pain so vividly that it makes us feel wrong, as if by merely looking we’re somehow participating in the cruelty we’re seeing depicted — again, not a new idea, but a good director can make it feel new.

The opening moments of Kill Bill: Vol. I are by far the most upsetting moments in a film that joyfully straddles the lines between latter day Jacobean drama and high kung-fu camp. Regardless, we need to care about the blood-spattered bride’s plight, or we’ll never really be in sympathy with her. Without that sympathy for the Bride, Kill Bill really would have been the shallow exercise in stylized comic violence that it’s more horrified critics described.

And the moment above is precisely where it starts. The camera here is very much an intruder on the kind of event that should never happen to anyone and watching it should be difficult. Though the intimacy between the victim and her would-be killer seems all to real, Bill’s speech about sadism and masochism is also theatrical, almost to the point of absurdity. Nevertheless, the moment does represent a loss of dignity for the character, which will continue in a horrific manner. Eventually, via the shedding of massive amounts of enemy blood, the Bride has her on-screen dignity restored somewhat.

Although I’m sure some film theorists might disagree with me, it’s not that the camera automatically robs a subject of her dignity just through its gaze (male, female, or transgender), but forcing intimacy does. What does Uma Thurman’s gaze tell us about what she’s feeling above? She’s feeling like she’s in the middle of a satisfying job.

On the other hand, dignity and happiness aren’t necessarily synonymous. Powerful emotions, good or bad are probably always undignified. And, as many acting teachers will tell you, drama is a place for private emotions to be plaid out in public. Seemliness doesn’t enter into it.

Changing genres a little, there’s never been a question of Quentin Tarentino’s debt to Robert Altman. Even if it would be weird to call Kill Bill Altmanesque, Altman could be at least as brutal, though more often with emotions than with blood.

I’ve always thought of this sublime moment from Nashville as being tragically sympathetic to Lily Tomlin’s character. Maybe it is, but if Altman had let his camera get one inch closer, his treatment of Tomlin might have been as ruthless, if not as controversial, as his treatment of Sally Kellerman’s Hot Lips in MASH. I’m not sure if this shot even qualifies as a close-up, but it’s close enough.

And, compared to Keith Carradine’s folk-rocker, David Carradine’s mass killer for hire is a knight errant. “I’m Easy” is an unforgettable song, but that’s partly because the lyrics are as ironically incorrect as Elvis Costello’s wrathful “I’m Not Angry (Anymore),” written probably less than a year after Nashville’s release. Look at this guy. He sure is not easy, and he’s definitely not easy like Sunday morning.

And, returning to Kill Bill for just a moment, what of those of us who are most concerned with our dignity? Boss Tanaka had to learn the hard way that being obsessed with racial pride can lead to fatal humiliation.

Though there’s no danger of Lucy Liu lopping off his head, holding onto the illusion of dignity doesn’t help Singin’ in the Rain’s Don Lockwood all that much, either. We know from the first utterance of his putative motto, “Dignity. Always dignity” that very little about Don’s life has been dignified. Why? Because he’s in show business, dummy. Can you see one speck of truth or real dignity in the visage below? We really don’t need to see him running into exploding outhouses to see that.

Noel Murray wrote this about Gene Kelly the actor (and maybe also Kelly, the co-director) earlier this week on The Onion’s A.V. blog:

Maybe what makes Singin’ In The Rain so terrific is that it represents a rare moment of penetrating self-analysis for Kelly. Really, he is Don Lockwood, that movie star out of time, incapable of stepping in front of a camera without putting on “a lot of dumb show.”

Though I can’t really agree with Murray’s blanket dismissal of Kelly’s acting ability elsewhere in the post — he was a-okay with me as long as he played some kind of cynic — Murray is right about the knowing self-mockery that makes Singin’s opening sequence such fun. There is nothing less dignified than Don’s mask of absolute dignity.

But then the irony disappears and is replaced by something far less intelligent much later in the film, at the end of the “Broadway Melody” number — a remarkable piece that also contains the few moments of excessive seriousness and borderline dullness in an otherwise irresistible movie. And, while the climactic crane shot is, for lack of a better word, cool, the way it endings reeks of self-importance.

Check that, it actually just looks like Kelly’s head shot has been super-imposed over the crane shot. As everyone in show business knows, there is nothing dignified about a head shot.

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Special thanks to Zayne Reeves for sending me a link to Noel Murray’s post. From small e-mails such giant posts may be built.

And also thanks to the great acting/directing teacher Judith Weston for the insight that the one phrase that is alway a lie is “I’m not angry.”