Atmospheric Offence

Synopsis

Atmospheric Offense is an interpretation of Ida Lupino’s 1953 Noir Thriller The Hitch-Hiker that explores how narrative both remains and disappears when exposed to avant-garde techniques, which include removing dialogue, jarring and destructive ellipses, the creation of loops to focus on certain elements, reimagining of time, exaggeration of a certain sinister aesthetic, and a push toward a certain dream like quality. Narrative remains, but with a bastardized and disoriented aftereffect, which transforms it into another way of experiencing it. The spree killings of Billy Cook (portrayed in Lupina’s film by the actor William Talman, and renamed Emmett Myers) are looked at more as a moment in time that begins and ends with vague qualities much like a dream, or an experience of weather in Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities.