#distancing effect

Sara and Julio Look Back

Watching Spanish musicals of the ’50s and sixties, I’ve noticed how often the protagonists look directly at the camera, and thus at the audience. It’s generally a no-no in Classical Hollywood Cinema, though there’s more of a history of it than is common acknowledged, particularly in musicals and comedy: one need only think of how wittily Lubitsch (and Cukor) deploy it in the opening scenes of One…

Director Lars Von Trier cleverly exploits the narrative implications of using this establishing shot to open Dogville (2003). The shot, like the rest of the movie, simultaneously adheres to and subverts the conventions associated with it; it establishes an actual, physical location (a stage with various pieces of furniture, characters, and chalk outlines) and an implied, metaphysical one (the small township of Dogville, near the Rocky Mountains) that is not present in the shot and needs to be imagined by the audience to follow the story. This rare filmic example of Brecht's "distancing effect" is meant to prevent audiences from getting emotionally involved with the story, making them more consciously critical of the events in the narrative instead.

~ The Filmmaker's Eye