Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

almost as if it wants to induce a trance in him, which is what happens to him later. The
progressive displacement of cinematic meaning expressed in the symbol stakes out the
broader claim of Lang’s increasing pessimism. In this particular case, metonymy is used
and elaborated in a logical pattern to create the filmed narrative, to show that the watch, the
pacemaker of modern life, was indeed given to a (haunted) man, a traveller between two
worlds, oscillating between the existential possibilities of recluse with a boring personal
and professional life and a (spiritual) sensual life of unattainable pleasure.
Cross enters a hypnosis-like state, showing a change in his feelings and attitudes, in
short, a whole set of personality alterations, ultimately leading to hallucinatory and
delusional behaviour. Moreover, this strapless (and now personal) timepiece will be carried
in his pocket “for the rest of my life”, as he smilingly tells his working colleagues, as a
premonition that not even time can heal. The clock that hangs in his cashier’s cubicle also
signifies the conventional, time-bound and scheduled life that his boss demands, and it
situates him in a network of narrative developments that determine how much certain
forces are out of his control.
The flowery apron and the knife referred to above, the many closed / locked doors
depicted throughout the film, the watches and clocks (and their sinister control over
Cross’s life), the concentric movements Cross makes throughout the film all underline an
image of incarceration. If one analyses Lang’s films, one can easily understand how his
mise-en-scène uses watches and clocks as machines with a metaphorical purpose, that of
rationalising time and as systems of subjection. In Metropolis, for example, the workers of
the city, all dressed identically, are small figures that “work” in rhythmic movements, just
like machines, that need to operate in a very disciplined way to make sure the whole
structure does not collapse. A giant clock face overlays one of these machines in which one
of the figures, holding its hands, tries to stop it as a way of stopping “capitalist modernity”
and the immoral punitive regulation of society (fig. 70). At the beginning of M, again, the
children’s game shows clock-like images and which in turn reveal the danger that is
present for them throughout the film.
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