dream journal

I was watching a classic black-and-white film starring Jimmy Stewart. I'd seen it before, of course, and every scene carried resonances of discussing that scene with shalmestere on previous viewings, or what critics had said about that scene. But something else was going on, as though I were watching it on a crowded airplane, and I was frustrated that I couldn't pay the film the attention it deserved.

Remember the famous opening scene in the restaurant, where Jimmy's character, having finished his meal alone, signs something for the waitress [while watching, I remembered pointing out to shalmestere that he didn't have a credit card, as they hadn't been invented yet, but just ran a tab]. You see, through Jimmy's character's eyes, the lines of figures he's working on. Cut to a close-up of the front of a man's shirt, then back to the figures, then the shirt, then the figures, then the shirt, then pull back to reveal the manager looming angrily over Jimmy. The figures, then nothing where the manager was, then the figures, then a different shirt, then pull back to reveal the gorilla of a security guard who's about to pound Jimmy to a pulp.

Anyway, there's another famous scene in which the lady of the house comes home and starts puttering around, her black maid all but invisible in the background... but suddenly the maid becomes visible and comes into focus, a warning that something is very wrong.

A later scene where Jimmy's on the run from the bad guys... I've lost that one, the way dreams evaporate when you wake up.