Examples of Point of View

These stills are taken from a montage sequence early in the film, establishing that Linda (Joan Fontane) has fallen in love with the socialite playboy Johnnie (Cary Grant). This segment starts with a fade in to a closeup entirely from her point of view. We see her hand on the left as she is looking through magazines, with the opened pages suggesting that she is looking for photographs of Johnnie. As she runs across another picture of him, we see her right hand with the (highly symbolic) glasses entering the frame. The montage sequence then continues with a dissolve to a medium shot of Linda on the phone, inquiring about Johnnie.

These stills are taken from the first part of the last scene of the film. Here Linda's suspicion reaches a climax, as she thinks that Johnnie is in fact attempting to push her out of the car and over the edge of the cliff. Up to the end of this sequence, when the two confront each other, the scene is narrated almost exclusively from her point of view. The audience is very deliberately and skillfully drawn into her perspective by means of carefully orchestrated point of view shots that can be said to organize this entire sequence.

1. An establishing shot opens the scene. 2. A medium shot draws the audience to the estranged couple.
	1	2
3. A point of view shot clearly places us in Linda's threatened position. We cannot help but see the scene from her perspective and are invited to identify with her.
	3a	3b
4. A closer medium shot draws us into the psychological dynamics, with him stern and distant and her increasingly nervous. In 4b she is shown to look down at the dashboard.
	4a	4b
And 5. logically cuts to the point of view shot that matches the look of 4b. 6a. first cuts to a shot in which shows her looking, at the dashboard and then turning to look at him in
	5	6a
6b. , which leads to 7. a countershot point of view shot from her perspective of his stern demeener. This again pl,aces us (visually and emotionally) into her perspective.
	6b	7
8. cuts to a point of view shot from her perspective of his tightening grip.
	8a	8b
9. and 10a. reverses the shot/countershot pattern of 6b and 7.
	9	10a
10b and 11 reverses the look and point of view shot pattern of 5 and 6a.
	10b	11
12a. cuts from the point of view shot of 11 to a closeup of her looking at the speedometer and then turning 12b. towards him.
	12a	12b
12c and d prepare the
	12c	12d
frightening point of view shot of 13, which is very dramatic and potentially scary, if the film's rhetoric has succeeded in drawing the spectator into her perspective and into her apparently rather precarious situation.
	13a	13b
14. cuts back to the closeup of her looking. 14b. is an interesting shot, because it repeats her look at the speedometer (as in 12a., but also in 4b. and 10b.), but is not followed by the matching point of view shot.
	14a	14b
Instead, 14c prepares the point of view shot of 15, which again is quite dramatic and frightening—if the film has succeeded in what it is obviously trying to do, namely draw the audience into an identification with her.
	14c	15a
	As an exercise that will help build up (through confirmation and condensation) your film-critical vocabulary, I invite you to continue your own commentary along the lines suggested.

	15b	16a

	16b	16c

	16d	17

	18	19a

	19b	20a

	20b	21a

	21b	22a

	22b	23a

	23b	23d

	24a	24b

	24c	25a

	25b	26a

	26b	27

	28	29a

	29b	30a

	30b	30c

	31a	31b

	32	33

	34a	34b

	34c	35a

	35b	35c

	36a	36b

	37a	37b

	37d	37e

	37f	37g

	37h	38a

	38b	39a

	39b	40