Broken Glasses

Of all the motifs and shorthand used by filmmakers, I would say that my favourite is the old cliché of broken glasses.

I like it because of the sheer simplicity of meaning that it carries and the varying, sometimes conflicting, ways in which it is used.  At it’s heart, in the broadest sense, is the conflict between mind and matter, brain versus brawn.  If glasses are smashed, cracked or crushed a can of whoopass is about to be opened – an intellectual will discover his (because it usually is) inner animal or society has hit the tipping point.

My starting point is, naturally I think, Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs (1971).  Here we have the quintessential ‘broken glasses’ movies.  David Sumner, an American intellectual (a mathematician by trade), moves to his wife’s home village in Cornwall.  Soon, David and Amy find themselves victims to a campaign of intimidation at the hands of some of the locals.  Eventually, David is forced to defend his home from a violent assault and, just before the notion of ‘reasonable force’ in thrown out, his glasses are broken.  From this point there is no doubt as to the fate of the attackers.

So what are the broken glasses?  Are they the shattering of David’s intellectualism?  Are intellectualism and pure logic being unmasked as inherently violent themselves?  Are David’s actions animal and uncontrolled or just plain logical?  Interestingly, it should be noted that it is David himself who breaks his glasses during a lull in the action.

Anyway, if you want to comment on any of the films I choose (I’ll post them when I see and/or remember them) please do so in the individual posts.

…oh, and sunglasses don’t count.

---