The Private Eye Blues: A New Spectator-Screen Relationship

Abstract

This chapter explores a specific strategy of the recent Hong Kong cinema, which reestablishes the spectator-screen relation so as to introduce a new way of seeing the film. In my discussion, the use of cinematic space in The Private Eye Blue will be given critical attention. By turning around, yet very subtly, the classical Hollywood way of continuity editing, the film imposes a peculiar interplay of gazes among the film characters. The interplay takes place within the same diegetic space; however, it instigates extra-diegetic re-interpretation of the story and plot. Drawing on Derrida’s concept of différance, this chapter aims to, firstly, specify how a mainstream film could interrupt the cinema’s regular pleasure-giving procedure; and secondly, how a film may encourage self-conscious rereading of an idea, story and plot.