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     identity and surveillance in film

This page highlights film dealing with surveillance and identity.

As with the preceding page it is eclectic and not all-inclusive; a search of major movie guides and specialist studies will uncover several themes.

    all that is solid melts into air

The history of film is an essay on the theme 'you can't believe your eyes'.

In The Net (1995) plucky Sandra Bullock becomes an unperson when the villain erases her existence from all databases. Claude Rains in the 1934 Invisible Man merely goes mad once deprived of his identity. Zorro demonstrates the advantages of anonymity; North by NorthWest suggests problems with mistaken identity. Blade Runner (1982) features the 'replicant', indistinguishable from humans apart from superior attitude and capacity to kick ass.

In Gattaca (1997) Ethan Hawke engages in identity theft in a future where DNA is destiny. There is a less willing appropriation by a charming sociopath in The Talented Mr Ripley (1999). The problem for Gerard Depardieu in Colonel Chabert (1994) is recognition after he inconveniently returns from the dead, an echo of the events discussed by Natalie Zemon Davis in The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1983). 'Madeleine' in Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) instead assumes the identity of some who really is dead. In Some Like it Hot Jack Lemmon invents a new identity to avoid lead poisoning; Tony Curtis in The Great Impostor (1961) - based on Ferdinand Waldo Demara - and Leo diCaprio in Catch Me If You Can (2002) do it for the money.

    someone is watching

Enemy of the State (1998) reveals that "It's Not Paranoia If They're Really After You". They're after Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory (here) and after the bad guys (ie those who aren't members of the NRA or the Tom Clancy fanclub) in Tom Clancy's Netforce (1998). The good geeks are after the bad geeks in Hackers and Sneakers. The Truman Show suggests that all of life's a stage but why worry when the rain, like the trains, comes on time ... or is it merely on cable?

For the oneiric eye see of course Peeping Tom (1960), 2001 (1968), Blow-Up (1966), The Anderson Tapes (1971) or most works from the strange Mr Hitchcock. There have been several screen versions of 1984; arguably a more successful rendition is Terry Gilliam's 1985 Brazil.

For denunciation the classic is Clouzot's 1943 Le Corbeau; Peter Lorre's performance in M (1931) is worth rescuing from the darker recesses of your DVD outlet.

    men in black

The 1997 Men in Black reveals that your neighbour is a bug-eyed illegal immigrant from outer space, with way-hip dudes (love the shades!) to keep the critters in order.

It's a comic twist on Hollywood's possession genre, from the various Invasion of the Body Snatchers and vampire remakes to horrors such as the 1952 My Son John (fluoridation turns your kids gay, red or bugaboo du jour). It also resonates with anxieties that the sub-class du jour ('wetbacks', koreans, yankees, somalis) are gatecrashing the neighbourhood.

    and machines in blue

Per Schelde's Androids, Humanoids & Other Science Fiction Monsters: Science & Soul in Science Fiction Films (New York: NY Uni Press 1994) suggests that computers have become "the lab full of hissing liquids was to Dr. Jekyll: core signifiers that serious, potentially dangerous science is in progress". You can't have a spooky movie without a big machine at the other end of the fisheye lens.

In Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) the omniscient computer goes birko through frustrated love for the astronauts (or is it Dr Chandra). In Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) the "paragon of reason" - equipped with a nuke or two rather than the controls of the pod-bay door - also throws a tantrum. In War Games (1983) the clever box decides to leave megadeaths to Herman Kahn and the boys at RAND after playing tic-tac-toe with a feisty hacker.

    paranoia and conspiracy

We've examined conspiracy theory on the next page of this profile.

Film Lacanians will enjoy Jerry Aline Flieger's 1997 Postmodern Perspective: The Paranoid Eye essay; most readers are likely to find Cyndy Hendershot's Paranoia and the Delusion of the Total System essay more accessible. For different jargon see Ray Pratt's Projecting Paranoia: Conspiratorial Visions in American Film (Lawrence: Uni Press of Kansas 2001).

For political paranoia, decorated with the odd wiretap and database, see The Parallax View (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975), The Falcon & the Snowman, Hidden Agenda (1990), Hardware (1990) and Netforce (1999).





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