![]() Then, there is a gurgling sound, perhaps that of a pigeon a door slams, followed quickly by the metallic sound of another (grille) door shutting, as a woman emerges and turns right, walking out of sight. There are muffled noises as the credits fade. As the title Caché comes up, the uneasy tone persists, along with the occasional cheerful chirp of a bird. Then, as the credits begin to roll, certain sounds are foregrounded: what seems to be bird wings flapping a car passing, but not in view and we see and hear a schoolboy walking past the house and out of sight. It is daytime and there is an initial impression of silence, although, in fact, there is distant, echoey birdsong and the low continuous drone of distant traffic that functions as a strange, almost subliminal, unidentifiable undertone. The title sequence opens with a view across a street to a house. (2) So it is interesting to consider whether its mode of storytelling – one that solicits a different form of audience interaction from most contemporary films – has played a part in the intense “love” or “hate” response. Hidden is a film that has generated heated debate and polarised audiences as no other film has done for some time. ![]() It is a lovely example of playful “schlock” versus the deadly seriousness of “real” shock (the moment that is to come later in the film), and of the way in which the act of storytelling produces a particular relationship between narrator and listener. ![]() A guest tells a shaggy-dog story based on the principle of coincidence, a device that, despite its obvious absurdity, builds a sense of the uncanny before the punch-line is delivered. (1) Earlier in the film, a dinner-party scene has served as an opportunity for Haneke to demonstrate the mechanics of the shock moment. Towards the end of Michael Haneke’s Caché ( Hidden, 2005), there is a calamitous event, a moment so terrible and unexpected that it elicits a collective gasp from the audience.
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