Stilted Movements and Improbable Stares

Abstract

This chapter discusses how cinema is able to produce the sense of body immanence, allowing audiences to identify with the characters they see on the screen. The subheadings are “Someone moved, but who?”, in which famous scenes from Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious, Robert Montgomery’s Lady in the Lake, and Delmer Daves’ Dark Passage are analyzed, with a discussion of how cinema creates a subjective perspective; “Resonating with movement” discusses the pertinence of neuroscience to the issues introduced in the preceding pages; “Positions” addresses the mind–movie problem; lastly, “Sherlock Jr.” analyzes the problem of spatial segregation between screen and audience, discussing scenes from Buster Keaton’s film Sherlock Jr.