What I’m trying to ask about are scenes just described in films but never shown.
Two examples
I think that’s from Blade Runner
and From Citizen Kane
Both of these scenes are just described by a character. Now, in a film they could easily show you these images but they don’t. Yet, they do make a powerful mental image.
What other ‘not seen images’ from films can you think of?
I really loved how the Eye of Sauron was kept at its horrific best by only being described in the films, never, ever shown, for certainly actually showing it would be really really cheesy?
I’m glad they didn’t actually show Sauron’s semi-corporeal form in the films.
In the movie, Rebecca, the title character is never seen, not even in flashback, but the audience gets a sense of who she is from how other characters describe her. (Granted, I haven’t seen this movie, but I am very familiar with the book–it is amazing how a character can be present without actually…well, being present.)
There are tons of off-screen action in films.
What I’m wondering about are things that are specifically described, but not shown. Like the girl on the ferry boat.
I thought that eye of fire was the Eye of Sauron. That thing on top of the dark tower that scan around like a search light looking for Frodo and Sam, well the ring in RotK.
In Once Upon A Time In America the cock insurance/Life is funnier than shit scene is amazing. It is so well acted as to seem like a documentary segment.
Edit: Double Post Sorry
That’s exactly what I thought.
Several Sherlock Holmes movies (drawing on Conan Doyle’s writings) refer in passing to other, unrecorded adventures of Holmes. Some of them are interesting, and ambiguous, enough that quite a few pastiches were later written. My favorite: “the singular adventure of the Grice Patersons in the island of Uffa.” WTF was that? Sounds cool, whatever it was.
Alma’s sex-on-the-beach encounter she remembers in Persona.
Earl Williams remembers his production-for-use breaking point in His Girl Friday.
The Tap crew and “dusting for vomit” death of a former drummer.
Michael recalls how his father helped Johnny Fontaine’s career (“an offer he couldn’t refuse”) in The Godfather.
Unless I miss my guess, that sound is “whooooooooooosh.”
No it made more of burning sound as it looked around.
:smack:
Quint’s description of the USS Indianapolis disaster in Jaws.
That’s a good one.
Then there is the complimentary scene in Chasing Amy where they discuss sex injuries.
George Lucas never actually showed Luke Skywalker targeting womp rats.
Or, more significantly, he never showed Anakin kill every last sand person, but rather let him describe it.
Seriously, depending on how small you want to get, almost every single movie has something described off screen.
I’m interested in the ones that really put an image in your mind.
I know a guy who insisted that Citizen Kane showed the woman on the ferry and that the sun was behind her, illuminating her body beneath the dress. That isn’t in the movie. But the actor does a great job describing the scene, that it makes an image in your mind.
Quint talks about the USS Indianapolis is like that. They talk about a bunch of other incidents but none so indeliable at the image that Quint stirs in the audience with that speech.
For it is when he talks about how the men would scream and pound on the water to try and get the shark to leave.
Sometimes he’d go away. Sometimes he didn’t go away.
The image of a group of sailors in a little knot on the ocean, frantically pounding at the water and screaming as a shark is approaching is burned into my mind’s eye.
That sort of thing.
Robert Duvall describing the aftermath of a napalm strike is pretty well done. It always paints a rather strong image for me.
Not quite what the OP is asking about, but related.
There’s a sequence I remember from Reservoir Dogs. Tim Roth is describing how he first went under cover and infiltrated a gang. He’s talking about the preparation and the guy who was teaching him. And the scene shifts to a flashback of them, and they’re inventing a whole backstory for Roth as a criminal; stories about being in jail and such. And then we see him with the gang, and he’s telling one of those stories. The scene shifts again, so we see what he was just describing. It’s really nicely done, and it wasn’t until I thought about it later that I realized that we saw on screen something that never really happened; that even inside the movie was made up.
I’m putting in the whole scene in Silence of the Lambs where Lecter and Starling discuss the scene on the morning she ran away from the Montana ranch. Too long to quote. Linky
In the Company of Men has one particularly stomach-turning scene in which each man describes the best sex he’s ever had. A sociopathic character fondly describes anally raping a schoolmate in the locker-room shower.
It certainly stuck with me, though I wish it hadn’t.
Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood discuss their affair some years earlier in Raiders of the Lost Ark. She felt taken advantage of; he believed she went into it with her eyes wide open. Obviously it still had a big impact on both of them.
(And now, I see, Karen Allen will appear in the next Indy movie! Probably just a cameo).