Maltese FalconSydney Greenstreet steals the scenes as the most evil, self assured villain ever in this classic. How? In the movie the camera never, ever looks at Sydney Greenstreet in eyes. The angle is always bottom up to add bulk and menace to the man. Fair enough conisdering he is called Fat Man in the movie. A classic film noir technique..
low key (high contrast) lighting; imbalanced lighting; night-for-night; deep focus; wide angle focal length; dissymetrical mise-en-scène; extreme low and high angles; foreground obstructions." 6 The Maltese Falcon prefers balanced, low-contrast lighting to the high-contrast lighting and deep shadows of film noir. Camera angles tend to be at or below eye level
By accident both of these shots ended up with me looking down at the camera, giving me an arrogant (hopefully) attitude. Whenever I see this kind of shots, I am reminded of Sydney Greenstreet in his debut film, Maltese Falcon.
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