I must say I found the death scene rather silly, even funny. The way Joe was shot in the back and kept walking almost normally towards the pool, until the second shot. Clearly a dramatic and convenient way to get get his dead body into the pool, but really they could have handled it better, as with a few other elements in the film I had problems with. Despite this I did enjoy it.
sharePeople have been shot and stabbed and still walk. It helped that inertia directed him towards the pool.
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People are not flawed and imperfect --- flawed and imperfect you can work with...
Yes they have but I bet it doesn't look as unnatural as it did in this. In this Joe gets shot, stiffens up a little then begins walking as normal again, until he gets shot a second time. If that was the inertia talking then it's a very unrealistic way of portraying it. Similarly, if that was Joe getting shot and persevering, then it's bizarre how he'd shrug off an injury so easily and carry on like it's water off a duck's back, even though he's being shot at.
Why didn't they just have him walk closer to the pool and then have him get shot, so there doesn't have to be this quite daft-looking reaction to it?
I kind of think that having seen Norma with a gun in her possession, Joe might make a bigger deal out of it than he did, perhaps being afraid she'd try to take her own life like before and confiscate it. I guess that's another matter.
That scene never struck me as being particularly incongruous. The other more usual scenario where someone shot goes down immediately is what is not actually congruent. As long as his spine was intact, Joe could have gone on walking, even as mortally wounded. It is a cinematic fallacy that has people die as easily and as quickly as they have long done in films.
And the other issue re the same, in that he didn't turn back, is indicative of just how much anger and pain was propelling him to leave. It was shown as effectively surmounting the instinct to survive, that is if (in his last seconds) he didn't realise that he was already mortally wounded and that there was nothing left but to at least die leaving with the integrity he had rediscovered.
So Jimothy, have you shot anyone in the back lately and studied their movements?
"May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?"
I never thought there was anything weird about that scene either. Like you, I read it as an indication of just how badly Joe wanted to leave. Even when he was doomed, his last act was to just keep going, away from Norma. And maybe he didn't react normally to that first shot because he couldn't quite believe it was happening. As if he was thinking, "If I just keep going, I'll be OK. I can't really be going to die!"
Flat, drab passion meanders across the screen!
That scene never struck me as being particularly incongruous. The other more usual scenario where someone shot goes down immediately is what is not actually congruent. As long as his spine was intact, Joe could have gone on walking, even as mortally wounded. It is a cinematic fallacy that has people die as easily and as quickly as they have long done in films.
I just saw the movie again tonight and I had the same reaction to that scene as you did. Another thing that is also hard to believe is that Norma shoots him three times from about 45 to 60 feet away and all three bullets from the handgun hit him. Damn good shooting for someone who probably did not practice target shooting. It's a lot easier to miss a moving target than to hit it.
production code probably got in the way.
Today,she'd have a m16 and blood an guts sprayedacross the screen
He was young and strong, obviously the first shot wasn't fatal!!
shareI don't think the lack of blood is due to the Code.
I mean, in Gone with the Wind someone gets shot in the face and there is more than a little blood as a result - displayed in glorious Technicolor.
Maybe Wilder just didn't think it's important. There is some blood in his other films.
I think this is a silly discussion, frankly. If Wilder did think it important -- well, I don't. I do think Holden's character is dead when he hits the water. Dead men don't bleed but a very little, and he falls into an umpteen gallon pool with the filter (I suppose) running -- over night . . . and it's a black and white picture. Despite the glorious, in HD color, blood and guts in today's films (the kids for whom these films are made like that), there's no mystery to me in what we see in the pool in Sunset Boulevard.
shareI must say I found the death scene rather silly, even funny. The way Joe was shot in the back and kept walking almost normally towards the pool, until the second shot. Clearly a dramatic and convenient way to get get his dead body into the pool, but really they could have handled it better, as with a few other elements in the film I had problems with. Despite this I did enjoy it.
This pistol was actually commissioned by the US military in 1909 becuase the standard police/military .38 caliber could be shot up to 6 times with the enemy still not incapacitated.
http://www.davismilitaria.com/images/US/Colt%201911%20Repark%201.jpg
Some of you act like you've NEVER seen any pre-1960's films. You should know that graphic violence and bloodletting didn't occur on screen (usually). In a modern remake, the back of Joe's head would explode and all kinds of brain matter and shattered skull would fly across the screen.
May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?
Indeed. We had more class then -- and more respect for our audience's imagination. There were more seniors in the audience then, too, and kiddos, who were raised in an entirely different way.
shareBradford & Cwente: gosh-darn it, guys! I wish they would install "like buttons" here like they have at practically all of the other message boards websites!
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Very nonsensical indeed
shareI've got to agree. Having just watched the movie, I thought the same thing.
It wouldn't have been *that* much out of character for him to have paused for even a second, standing close to or near the pool as he left, for one last look at the pool he made so much of, and then got shot. He wouldn't have had to do that zombie dance to wind up in it.
>>> Getting shot in the back and still walking?
I've seen videos in the liveleak website i.e. real, not fiction) of people getting shot point blank in the chest and still standing and doing whatever they were doing for up to 30 seconds.
If a private venture fails it's closed down. If a government venture fails it's expanded. M Friedman
It's possible to be shot more than once and to keep walking. If one of the bullets didn't hit his heart, Joe most likely died from drowning, rather than directly from the gunshots.
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