The Cinephiliac Moment

[Agrippina]

In today’s post on the blog scanners he talks about “Cinephiliac Moments”.

…these are small, marginal moments that detonate an unforgettable little frisson in the viewer. The important thing to remember is that these are not moments carefully designed to exert great dramatic effect—not that there’s anything wrong with those—but instead they are fleeting “privileged” moments writ small that we find ourselves strongly attracted to, perhaps even disproportionately so given their scale and possible (lack of) intention.

So, what are your little moments in movies? One that comes to mind for me is the part in Monsters, Inc. where Scully attempts to ride to the village on the sled. The sled hits a rock and Scully lands in the snow. My moment is how the wind is blowing over Scully. The way his fur moves gives me frisson.

[Trunk]

When Donny goes down in *The Big Lebowski[ib], the camera pans up to the front of the bowling alley, then everything fades to black except the retro-looking neon stars.

Then, those stars fade to black.

I don’t know if I’d call it frisson, exactly. In another Coen brothers movie, the overhead shot of William H. Macy walking back to his car through the parking lot after his father in law turns him down for the money is chilling.

Of course it makes no sense that he’d park that far away in an empty lot, but I like the fact that the Coen brothers do things for the pure aesthetics of it.