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\nThis scene from China Syndrome<\/i> lasts 20 seconds – if that – and is the only scene that takes place in her house. She moves through the space, turns on her answering machine, and then flops down in bed. That’s it. But look at the DETAIL in the bit of her house that we see! We don’t know anything about this woman outside of her job and her ambitions for herself. This isn’t meant to be a full-blown three-dimensional character study, that’s not how the role is designed. We get glimpses of other things, but what’s important is her putting together this story as a journalist. <\/p>\n
But here … in the 15 seconds we get a glimpse of this room … we get so much information and yet … what information do we exactly get? Production designer George Jenkins has done superb and subtle work putting that room together, with maybe some input from Fonda herself. It’s so personal, it’s no NON-generic.<\/p>\n
Here’s what I see: <\/p>\n
1. Jane Fonda
\n2. A turtle
\n3. A white goose
\n4. Three Marilyns<\/p>\n
It’s such a great shot! How do we put these things together to have meaning? But maybe the meaning is: these are things she loves. She loves her goose lamp. She loves her Marilyn on the wall (reflected in the grandfather clock). And so she has them in her house. Just like if you walked into my kitchen you’d see, as you panned along the walls – a Dogfight<\/i> poster, a framed Irish declaration of independence, my Elvis doll on a shelf, and a framed photograph of Diocletian’s palace in Split, Croatia, taken by yours truly. How would you even make sense of all these completely-unrelated objects occupying the same space? Well, you couldn’t, except to say: “Sheila clearly loves these things.”<\/p>\n
And that’s what production designer George Jenkins pulls off in this brief scene.<\/p>\n
We started discussing this on Facebook and we went and looked him up on IMDB and what a career! He started in Art Direction on The Best Years of Our Lives<\/i> – !! – and then became a production designer: he designed some of the great Paranoid movies of the 70s, including China Syndrome<\/i>. <\/p>\n
God, I love competence. It’s such a huge turn-on. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This scene from China Syndrome lasts 20 seconds – if that – and is the only scene that takes place in her house. She moves through the space, turns on her answering machine, and then flops down in bed. That’s … Continue reading