All language subtitles for hand_gestures

Hand Gestures

Two strangers come together:
a man and a woman.

There is an interaction,
an exchange of glances.

Two plainclothes policemen observe
the action played out before them,

without understanding it.

It is not easy to grasp
this sequence of images.

The pickpocket effects a distancing,
forbidding expression,

while his hand tries to make contact.

The hand does something entirely
different from what the face shows.

The thief opens the woman's purse,

the woman opens her lips.

It seems as though the thief
has opened her lips.

She seems seduced rather than robbed.

The hand that commits a crime
seems to engender desire.

This is a silent film from 1908.

A woman�s hands hide stolen jewels
inside a bar of soap.

The woman in pajamas is the thief.

She has crept across the ledge
into the room next door

and stolen the jewels from
the sleeping owners.

Back in her room she hides
the jewels inside the soap.

Her hands are set against
a black background,

so that nothing will distract us
from her criminal act.

It is remarkable that this film
has no other close-ups.

The camera always shows
the entire play-space.

Only the hands hiding the loot
deserve a close-up.

The close-up is used to
emphasize the criminal act.

Thus it is an �action film,�
as they say in English.

This woman, who will later become
the thief in pajamas,

has here an expression and
a posture that signifies anger

or even evil intentions.

Today we are used to seeing �
to receiving a film -

in fragmented images.

The fragments direct our vision.

Without this image-guidance
and dialog

it is difficult for us to understand
what is going on.

The gestures and facial expressions
of actors in silent films

seem to us a foreign language;
something one must learn.

This is a book about the construction

of the different sign languages
for the deaf.

One might ask, if cinema too had
evolved a standard sign language,

would the silent era had lasted longer.

A man tries to warm his numb hands.

These hands cannot hold
the matches

and cannot light the fire
that is supposed to warm them.

The numb hands should remind us

what a useful tool
hands generally are.

What the human hand means
is revealed in its failure.

These images are supposed to prove
the value of the human hand.

However, they offer little more
than a notion of the activity

they are supposed to represent.

The mountain film emphasizes the value
of the hand in another manner.

On the mountain man is back �
or is still � on all fours.

On the mountain man�s life hangs
on the hand�s basic function.

These images appeared between
1934 and 1937 in the US,

in a film promoting
job placement services.

The work shown here
is interchangeable,

i.e. dissolved in money,

going around from hand
to hand � circulating.

Images circulate too.

In 1944 some of those images
are recycled in a film

calling for the final war effort against
the Germans and the Japanese.

Only the hands of the American
workers are shown,

implying that they are all hands
of a great allegorical body.

This is a handbook for film
actors from 1927.

In the third chapter
the author points out

that it makes a big difference
whether a gesture is executed

with the back of the hand
or with the palm.

He writes:

"The back of the hand is associated
with the emotions of the mind,

while the palm - with the
emotions of the heart.�

He writes:

"Kissing the back of the hand
indicates a formal greeting.

If one were to kiss the palm,
we would know at once

that this was not a mere greeting,
but a sign of passionate adoration.

Also, a slap with the palm of the hand
is a sign of intimacy.

With the back of the hand � it is chastisement.

This is a threatening fist,

and this is a fist that turns its weak
side to the one being greeted,

the inverse of a threat.

We can turn our hands and
observe it from all angles.

This is impossible with every
other part of the body.

A hand can pose before
its owner's eyes,

like a man turning in front of a mirror.

And it can also be thought of as
a mirror, a tablet, or a stage.

Paper Stage Screen

This is not an action movie.

The man contemplates his palm
and produces something with his gaze.

It is not the hand that is acting,
it is the eye.

In 1927 this book announced
the foundation of an acting school.

Today it still does not exist.

All human labor comprises
just a few basic actions:

reaching, grasping, carrying."

This book envisions a language
of gestures

and tries to formulate a grammar
of film-acting gestures.

It proposes a curriculum
for an acting school.

In the third semester
they were to study Taylorism.

The economy of movement.

Taylorism: Frederick Taylor wanted to
turn human labor into a science.

He introduced the stopwatch
in factories

and looked for the most
efficient work movements.

Even today we don�t have a clear
understanding of the relationship

between the gestures of labor
and those of film narration.

The movement economy of labor
and of film narration.

The pianist is cinema�s favorite
manual laborer.

Film loves to show a pianist's hand
as much as a hand holding a gun.

This film called Play of Hands wants
to tell its story through hands alone,

that is to say:
no faces are shown.

This is a misguided undertaking,

like trying to cross the ocean in a bathtub
or the continent on one's hands.

The images work like
a guessing game:

as soon as you've guessed
what an image represents

it has fulfilled its purpose.

This image stands out.

The hands of the woman giving birth
search for a support

in order to endure the pain.

One can say that this image
would hold its own

even in a film not obsessed
with hands.

Two children are born, one of them
will be a concert pianist.

When dealing with piano playing,
most cameras tend to cut here,

to cut the hands from
the rest of the person.

In war the concert pianist
loses one hand;

war has cut off his hand.

Once more the power of hands is
addressed through its loss.

There is a whole genre of films

in which the pianist's hands
play a special part:

they are cut off, torn off, or they
get away of their own accord.

This film is about a pianist who loses
both hands in an accident

and has a murderer's hands
sewn onto his wrists.

These hands have power of him.

The many hands that are cut off
by war or by the camera.

Piano playing is manual labor
performed before an audience.

It is show labor meant to represent
all other manual labor.

This US war effort film of 1944
also begins with piano playing

and ends with factory labor.

This is a Nazi war effort film.

The worker at the machine watches
over the production of a gun.

He is no manual laborer.

He has set the machine in motion
and stands watching over it.

But he likes to touch the tool
and to pass his hand over it.

He likes to dirty his hand
with the grease.

Amira von Schwerin: Archeology
of the Right, Berlin 1943:

"Touching as pure touch-gesture
was originally a magical act.

This is evident from the ancient
form of taking an oath:

the pagan magical oath-object
is never seized or grasped,

but is merely touched.�

This film was released after
Stalingrad, in 1943,

and the worker could use
a magical gesture or two.

The film threatens him too �

what if he makes a mistake
and spoils his work?

A violin will be made from this wood.

We are in an old violin-
maker�s workshop.

This is from a Nazi newsreel
of March 1945.

This film has no destroyed
houses, no soldiers,

no camps, no dead,
not even a car.

Again we see the manual
laborer�s hands,

we are presented with
the dexterity of hands.

"The body of the violin has to be built
with much feeling and care."

The pleasure with which this hand glides
along a the gun barrel

makes us realize that cinema is not
a medium of touch, but of vision.

Cinema translates most sensations
of touch into glances.

Also, the human hand can
resemble an animal.

Every child imagines the hand running
away and doing forbidden things.

This cannot remain unpunished.

This is a hand that brings death.

And this is a hand announcing death.

The will leaves the body,
the hand cannot grasp anymore.

The essence of life is set free.