The Telephone in the Cinema: From Vocal Transmission to Audiovisual Inventions - Text 3
This sexist set-up, which makes the woman the object of the gaze and/or control of a man she cannot see, was put to different use in Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas (1984). In this film Wenders employs a kind of internal montage, with a false split screen appearing in the form of a one-way mirror used in a peep show, so that two characters, Jane and Travis, have a telephone conversation in the same space without the young woman being able to see her customer; only his voice enables her to identify him as her former lover. We can thus observe the two characters in the same shot, with Travis’ face (as he is filmed from behind) reflected onto the body of Jane, facing us; or we see both from the front when Travis turns around, giving the impression that now Jane is looking at him, when this is not at all the case.
