Up a Backlit Staircase, Casting a Long Shadow
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shape of the architecture as well as the presence—via absence and suggestion—
of other rooms, other spaces, and other participants. The viewer fills in these
gaps with his or her own information. In doing so, anyone watching becomes an
active participant in the creation of the cinematic landscape.
This approach was actually common to many movies of the period, though
it is closely associated with Tourneur himself, who at Lewton’s insistence
famously used many of the same techniques in Cat People to suggest (without
having to depict) a monster, and who would use it to even greater effect in his
1947 film noir Out o f The Past. But Tourneur was not alone. Orson Welles’s
1941 Citizen Kane serves as a normative template for this approach. And Welles
stars as Rochester in the 1944 version of Jane Eyre, though it’s widely
suspected—if never definitely proven—that he also had a hand in the directorial
vision of the film. All the same, the stamp of Kane can be felt in Jane. Enough
critics have noted the similarity between the treatment of space in both films
(Campbell), and at least one has noted that Stevenson never again used the same
uniquely Wellesian combination of techniques: “forced perspectives,
exaggerated camera angles and meticulous attention to sound” (Kehr). Welles
himself never took credit for the movie’s style, and he need not have. In fact, it’s
possible to see the tone and vision of this film as being far more guided by the
film grammar of the time as well as by the exigencies of the story. Jane Eyre,
regardless of who adapts it, may indeed d [X[