Didn't I Blow Your Mind This Time, Didn't I

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We're taking a quick break from the Trousers to join in with The Film Experience's series "Hit Me With Your Best Shot," in which everybody who wants to participate chooses a particular shot from a movie specified by TFE that means a special lot to them - this week's film is Jackie Brown, Quentin Tarantino's masterpiece and a film as a whole that means an awful lot to me. I am proud to say that I've been screaming it's QT's best movie since the day it came out in 1997; the consensus has had a lot of lag but people have finally caught up, it seems. 

Funny enough we just saw it on a big screen two weeks ago with the legend that is Pam Grier in attendance, you can read about that here. I didn't have this series in mind when I watched the movie the other week otherwise I would have been working on picking out a shot while watching it. But as I ran my mind over that last viewing this morning attempting to think up a shot, it hit me like a brick. The most important relationship in Jackie Brown, the one that sets the movie apart from all of QT's other films and gives it its slower cooler (and it should be said - older) vibe that just infects you while you're watching, is of course the budding... understanding... between Jackie and bail bondsman Max Cherry (a brilliant Robert Forster). Watching the movie this last time one shot really struck me as the "WHAM, Jackie just got his heart," moment. It's the morning after Max has met Jackie; he picked her up from jail, they went out and had a drink, he took her home - very respectable. She took his gun without him knowing - slightly less respectable. So he comes to her house in the morning, she invites him in, and they begin to talk. And then she puts on the Delfonics - oh those Delfonics! - and she stands to light her cigarette, and we see this:

 I can't say for sure that Tarantino meant that to be an homage to Vertigo (although has Quentin met an homage he didn't love?) but that comparison really struck me this past time. You see things different when you see a movie on a big screen, you know? Specifically it seems an echo of the shot of Kim Novak in the hotel room where Jimmy Stewart finally sees he can turn Judy into the Madeliene he's been dreaming of:

The female profile in perfect silhouette, and then much as Hitchcock cuts to Jimmy Stewart's comprehension of the perfection that he's seeing, so does Tarantino with Max:

And his face just about says it all. Wow - what a woman. There's no going back after that - for Max or for the audience. We will do anything for her. My favorite thing about this is the contrast between Jackie and Judy - Judy's all made up with no place to go, while Jackie couldn't be more down to earth at this moment - her hair loose, in a bathrobe, talking about how the milk went bad in her refrigerator while she was in jail. And since Max is awesome, he sees her as this perfect ideal through all of it. And oh boy, so do we.

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