The Lead Shoes (1949)
By Sidney Peterson
Like many other experimental film directors Sidney Peterson is interested in reevaluating our perception of the world. In our daily lives, we think of the world around us with a definite space and a definite flow of time. The Lead Shoes prove that it is not so hard to throw us off-balance both in space and in time. The most important trick Peterson uses to fool our eyes is the distorted lens through which we see almost everything in the film. This device, used also in The Cage, distorts both the three-dimensionality of the space and the light balance. We are unable to experience the depth of field, as everything is flattened, especially on the sides. Neither can we trust the light to situate the characters and ourselves as it does not get reflected in a way we would expect. Moreover, the lights reflected for different objects get mixed and sometimes the light flashes unexpectedly from a dark object. Any shot in the film would reflect the characteristics I described above but in some of them, Peterson emphasizes the effect. In one shot, the frame is divided to two by a vertical object. On the left we see the woman running towards us. On the right, we can see the stairways and all…
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