Artists used a drawing frame (shown on
this sections homepage)
though which they looked at the landscape. It enabled them to
select the section of the view they wished to draw (as in a
present-day camera viewfinder); in addition the wire grid within
it helped them to compose the view,
placing each motif in relation to the coordinates and reproducing
the layout on squared paper. |
In the film, the drawing frame has a formal value: numerous aesthetic effects are based on the frame within the frame effect of the drawing instrument within the film screen, directly and in reverse angle shot.
Suggestion: the drawing frame, which is a means of ordering
the view, is all the more powerful symbolically as
it is used for the opposite purpose of mediating the series
of fragmentary views of the plot, concealing mystery. |