Download (12MB) - University of Salford Institutional Repository

to reduce realism in favour of an ambiguous, dreamlike atmosphere. These characteristics are
visible in the mise-en-scene of the police interrogation, for which the set is reduced to two
bare walls, only partially framed, to indicate an unadorned room. The decor is limited to a
single chair which is filmed with the suspects already seated; the back wall is behind them,
which, being at a short distance from the camera, cues a sense of constriction. The suspects
occasionally look towards the wall on the left side of the screen, inducing viewers to locate
the detective's presence within this offscreen space; his voice represents the only link
between the different stories, thus functioning as a voiceover commentary. The suspects are
illuminated by low key lighting that makes
them emerge from the room's semi-darkness,
and emphasizes their uneasy isolation (see
image).(3) These visual restrictions cast a
notably subjective quality onto the images
(Branigan, 1992: 76). At the same time the mise-en-scene''s incomplete frame composition
(concerning where and how the detective is positioned) immediately sensitizes viewers to the
visual selection process in Bertolucci's film-making. The repetitive frontal framing scheme
for each passive suspect cancels any expectation of diegetic action, and reinforces the role of
viewers as observers; the overall effect is one of stylization, of cinema articulated through a
conspicuous directorial presence, an approach which establishes a tendency in Bertolucci's
films to distance viewers emotionally from diegetic events.
Another of the devices designed to reduce the quotient of realism in Tlie Grim Reaper
and elicit a more distanced engagement with the onscreen events is the ingenious exploitation
of natural light which is visible in the depictions of the city's built-up areas. This is achieved
by filming buildings while they are frontally illuminated, with the result that shadows are
eliminated; often, the light's intensity is such that it blurs the edges of the buildings, making
61