IdleRich

IdleRich
Oh yeah that's a really obvious one. There's loads of Hitchcock stuff as well isn't there?

Trying to think of scenes in Hitchcock with a mirror and I'm getting telescopes and suchlike.... but mirrors I'm drawing a blank as yet.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
You know sometimes when there is a mirror there and at first you don't realise it's a mirror? Can be quite confusing, maybe even disconcerting for a second or two depending on how well it is disguised. And that experience is well known and almost too obvious to mention... however, in this thread I've not seen anyone mention the opposite experience which can be equally odd.

I'm thinking of that pub just south of Dalston Junction, is it called The Haggerston? The toilets are at the back of the pub with a door into the boys and that for the girls next to each other, with the result that the two rooms run next to each other and share a common wall, which is where the sinks are and so on. Above the sinks is a mirror, except after a double-take you realise it's not a mirror, and you haven't got prettier, but instead you are looking across into the face of someone in the girls washing their hands. I've been there a few times and it always catches me out cos it's exactly where you expect there to be a mirror, and there is someone where you expect your reflection to be, and chances are they are doing the same thing as you so it works rather well.

There also used to be a pub in Camden with a similar thing going on, but I think it was above and behind the bar. One expected there to be a mirror there, but instead there was a hole in the wall with a view into the other bar.

I find something quite neat in this cos mirrors can be used to trick the eye, bamboozle the mind and create all kinds of optical illusions - and yet in this case someone has used the absence of a mirror and the fact that you see nothing at all out of the ordinary to trick your mind just as much.
 

Mr. Tea

Shub-Niggurath, Please
I did mention that one right at the start, along with The Lady From Shanghai, the climax of which I believe was an acknowledged influence on the mirror scene in Enter The Dragon, and also The Man With The Golden Gun which, by accident or design, also seems to be pretty similar.
This is what happens when you jump into a thread without reading the preceding ten pages, I suppose.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Magic mirror pathway in pizza restaurant toilets...

View attachment 14519

When promoting the next film night I needed a suitably psychedelic pic but I didn't have much time to search around for anything specific so I looked through my recent pics and this one jumped straight out at me. Think it's accidentally perfect for the idea of the night I want to get across.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
You know sometimes when there is a mirror there and at first you don't realise it's a mirror? Can be quite confusing, maybe even disconcerting for a second or two depending on how well it is disguised. And that experience is well known and almost too obvious to mention... however, in this thread I've not seen anyone mention the opposite experience which can be equally odd.

I'm thinking of that pub just south of Dalston Junction, is it called The Haggerston? The toilets are at the back of the pub with a door into the boys and that for the girls next to each other, with the result that the two rooms run next to each other and share a common wall, which is where the sinks are and so on. Above the sinks is a mirror, except after a double-take you realise it's not a mirror, and you haven't got prettier, but instead you are looking across into the face of someone in the girls washing their hands. I've been there a few times and it always catches me out cos it's exactly where you expect there to be a mirror, and there is someone where you expect your reflection to be, and chances are they are doing the same thing as you so it works rather well.

There also used to be a pub in Camden with a similar thing going on, but I think it was above and behind the bar. One expected there to be a mirror there, but instead there was a hole in the wall with a view into the other bar.

I find something quite neat in this cos mirrors can be used to trick the eye, bamboozle the mind and create all kinds of optical illusions - and yet in this case someone has used the absence of a mirror and the fact that you see nothing at all out of the ordinary to trick your mind just as much.

Good example of what I'm talking about in our friend's house right now. I was genuinely confused cos in this room there is also a table with a bottle of wine on it, but the positions don't match up

IMG_20230310_184738055~2.jpg
 

version

Well-known member
The mirror being a prison is an interesting set up. It's in the Borges story I mentioned earlier and in Snow White. The queen addresses the "slave in the magic mirror, come from the farthest space,". I think there's an episode of Doctor Who where The Doctor traps someone in a mirror too.

You get a similar thing with paintings.

 

sufi

lala
Good example of what I'm talking about in our friend's house right now. I was genuinely confused cos in this room there is also a table with a bottle of wine on it, but the positions don't match up

View attachment 14576
A-Bar-At-The-Folies-Bergere.jpg


 

mvuent

Void Dweller

Today such a scene would be effected by computer, but in the austere postwar days of black and white such illusions had to be fabricated in real life. Orpheus looks at himself in a mirror. In the next shot the mirror has become a tank full of mercury, very expensive and highly dangerous. Orpheus's extended hands, protected by surgical gloves, are seen to approach and pass through the reflecting surface. This single shot is over in seconds but took an entire day to accomplish. Among many difficulties, the mercury tended to cloud over and had to be periodically polished to restore what Cocteau describes as its 'soft, heavy' reflective surface. Working with mercury, there is also a danger of breathing in vapour or of stray mercury coming into contact with the skin. 'Why go to these risks?", Cocteau was asked.

"Because mercury shows only the reflection and not the part that has penetrated into the mirror,
as water would have done. In mercury the hands disappear, and the gesture is accompanied by a
kind of shiver, whereas water would have produced ripples and circles of waves. On top of that,
mercury has resistance." (113)

Cocteau also said something about how he chose mirrors as the portals to the Underworld or Purgatory (or whatever you want to call it) in the film because in looking at yourself in a mirror across long periods of time you'll notice yourself aging. So death in a sense already "appears" through them.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich

Cocteau also said something about how he chose mirrors as the portals to the Underworld or Purgatory (or whatever you want to call it) in the film because in looking at yourself in a mirror across long periods of time you'll notice yourself aging. So death in a sense already "appears" through them.
I remember wondering how they did that. But now I know it's a shame the gloves are so visible... although I don't think I noticed when I watched it. Or maybe it's explained, I forget.
 

mvuent

Void Dweller
I remember wondering how they did that. But now I know it's a shame the gloves are so visible... although I don't think I noticed when I watched it. Or maybe it's explained, I forget.
iirc the gloves are explained, at least to the extent that anything in that movie is explained. the shots of characters putting them on are reversed shots of the actors taking them off, which makes it look like the gloves are moving on their own.
 
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