IN HIS PIECE, "VIEW OF DOWNTOWN FROM SOUTH STREET SEAPORT (AFTER DRESSED TO KILL (1980))"
On Instagram a few days ago, artist Ernesto Renda shared images of his new piece, "View of Downtown from South Street Seaport (after Dressed to Kill (1980))". The piece -- wax pastel on canvas, glue relief on board, 12 x 18 x 2 inches -- focuses on a cut from Brian De Palma's Dressed To Kill, from Kate screaming orgasmically in the back of a taxi, to the "view of downtown" mentioned in the title. In De Palma's film, shot by Ralph Bode, the camera tilts down from the skyward glimpse of the World Trade Center towers (where, incidentally, Liz and Peter will meet up for lunch near the end of the film), and then pans right to show the taxi arriving at the man's apartment building. In his Instagram post, Renda also shared the two stills he focused on from Dressed To Kill:
In a scetion on his website, Renda describes his interest in "inserts and cutaways" --
Inserts and cutaways are shots used to avert the viewer's gaze from some intense or visceral sight onto something else. They are a sort of dissociation from the visible. I'm interested in the way that film images, as dialectical medium, form meanings together. In these types of sequences, the director imbues the second shot with the ecstasy, pain, intensity of the first shot.What interests me as well is when these shots are used to convey the ambivalence of the non-human world or the surroundings of the characters. An example would be a scene "behind closed doors" cutting to the literal closed-door to express the intimacy, privacy, and secrecy of the action.
Posted by Geoff
at 12:01 AM CST
Updated: Friday, January 14, 2022 12:29 AM CST
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Updated: Friday, January 14, 2022 12:29 AM CST
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