For all its excitement, action, fantasy, this film would for me live in the history of the cinema just for one short scene
It deals with a killing at traffic lights as a driver is shot from a car that has pulled alongside his, the sound of the shot obliterated by the sound of the horns of the other impatient drivers But Lang never takes us right 'into' the incident
At the payoff we look down from an overhead angle on the cars packed together at the signals: then they all pull away all but one, which remains motionless and alone in the middle of the road after the lights have changed No violence, no blood, is needed for us to be eerily aware that a man who was alive when the lights were at red is dead now they are at green
It deals with a killing at traffic lights as a driver is shot from a car that has pulled alongside his, the sound of the shot obliterated by the sound of the horns of the other impatient drivers But Lang never takes us right 'into' the incident
At the payoff we look down from an overhead angle on the cars packed together at the signals: then they all pull away all but one, which remains motionless and alone in the middle of the road after the lights have changed No violence, no blood, is needed for us to be eerily aware that a man who was alive when the lights were at red is dead now they are at green