In addition to the prolonging of suspense and the sense of helplessness, slo-mo can also be used to suggest character subjectivity, as in dream sequences, or the scene in TAXI DRIVER when Travis in voiceover "tells" his diary about the first time he saw Betsy as we see her--as he does--moving in slow motion. Scorsese often uses slow motion this way, as when Jake in RAGING BULL prepares to receive the crushing blow from Sugar Ray Robinson, or when Ellen approaches Newland at the Van Der Leyden's party in THE AGE OF INNOCENCE. As for the first freeze-frame ending, I always thought it was the famous shot of Jean-Pierre Leaud at the seashore in THE 400 BLOWS. In fact, I had recently been wondering if anyone had done it earlier. By the time Hitchcock made TOPAZ ten years later, the freeze frame ending had become a cliche. Another example from the same year (1969): BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID. Still the very idea of Hitchcock imitating Truffaut shows how the aesthetic tables had turned by the end of the sixties! Dennis Bingham ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]