American Cinematographer - May 2003 - 22

a

massive

street

poster featuring

Valentines

profile to the tiny telephone
wires that bring people together
technologically.
Like the film, the disc is a class

Karmitz and editor Jacques Witta;

and a
helming various
Red scenes. Viewers also shouldn't skip
over the footage of Kieslowski and his
rare

look at Kieslowski

cast at the 1994 Cannes Film

Festival.

act, packed with supplemental material
that lends real insight. Film professor

The segment includes a funny interview
with Trintignant, clearly a non-Method

Annette Insdorf, who has written a book
on Kieslowski's work, contributes a

actor who

The Cinesaddle does

scholarly commentary plumbing the
layers of this puzzle-like film. She pays
particularly close attention to Sobocinski's cinematography and compares it to

character's

It also works

Vittorio

Tripod Killer
everything your tripod does but better.
dolly and crane besides being a car, bike,
boat and helicopter mount.
as a

Storaro's

work

in

The

Conformist, which also features expres¬
sive

no

cheerfully admits that he has

clue about the subtext in
more

curious

one

exhausted-looking Kieslowski, mean¬
while, looks as if Red's pained gestation
has taken all the starch out of him. After
a press conference that
Red will be his directorial swan song

confirming at

(and it was), he states plaintively that,
"My real dream is to be in the country¬
side, sitting on a chair, smoking."

is the motif of reflective surfaces (like

The Red DVD is available sepa¬

glass) that are used throughout the film
provide symbolic comments on the

rately or within a boxed set of the Three
Colors trilogy.

movement, a

strongly

to

characters' failed attempts at contact

-

Chris Pizzello

and their fear of

professional fdm and video cameras;

MINISADDLE for

consumer

DV

cameras

and camcorders.

intimacy. Insdorf also
posits that the many uses of doubling in
Red (through both parallel characters
and mirrored images) indicate the
theme of second chances

-

in Kies¬

lowski's films, a better way to approach
one's life always seems agonizingly
close at hand.
Another

Tracking Dolly in kit form. Add a board of any size, a broom
handle, PVC Pipe and you're ready to shoot.

Video

rewarding feature is
"Krzysztof Kieslowski's Cinema Lesson,"
in which the director explains each and
every aesthetic decision he made for a
pivotal scene in Red. Kieslowski elabo¬
rates on his cinematic theory of
"retroactive reasoning," in which
images that seem ambiguous upon first
viewing accrue greater depth when
revisited later on. In doing this, the
director

coaxes

the viewer's subcon¬

scious into

Tripod Killer/Move-it Video shows all Cinekinetic products
in action.

making the connection
between the images. A perfect example
of this theory is the stunning final shot
of Red, in which a seemingly banal
image suddenly takes on profound
meaning.

CINESADDLES ■ $290 TO $325
POCKET DOLLY-$435

VIDEO ■ $10 (Free with

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P.O. Box 73063 Las Vegas NV 89170
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Email: info@cinekinetic.com
18

www.cinekinetic.com

An

use of color and an
autumnal visual tone. Also highlighted

camera

psychological

CINESADDLE for

of his

scenes.

Elsewhere

on

the disc

are

a

"selected scenes" commentary and an
interview with lead actress Jacob, who
has her

theory that the color red
signify shame or confusion; a
short documentary about the film that
acts as a good primer on its larger
themes; interviews with producer Marin
could

own

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DVD PLAYBACK

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Cinematographers:
Karl Freund, ASC and
Gunther Rittau

*Sunrise (1927)

Cinematographers:
Charles Rosher, ASC
and Karl Struss, ASC
*The Day the Earth
Stood Still (1951)

Cinematographer:
Leo Tover, ASC
American Cinematographer - May 2003

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - May 2003
