Tessa Thompson & Rebecca Hall Break Down the Dance Scene from 'Passing'

Hello, I'm Rebecca Hall.

And I am Tessa Thompson.

And this is Notes,

On A Scene, for passing. On A Scene, for passing.

[Rebecca laughs]

Seems like we rehearsed that.

Tell me, can you always tell the difference?

Oh, now you really are sounding ignorant.

No, no, I mean it.

Feelings of kinship or something like that?

Hugh, stop talking to me like you're writing a piece

for the National Geographic.

I can tell same as you.

This scene is in the,

dance for the NWL.

Which is kind of analogous to the NAACP.

Irene is sat with the character Hugh Wentworth,

as played marvelously by Bill Camp.

And they have this private,

sort of covert discussion that is,

kinda wanna say, in a sort of safe arena.

They're both playing a game of alluding

to each other's secrets.

[audience applauding]

[Hugh] Bianca and Cole are always raving on

about the good looks, of some Negro,

especially an unusually dark one,

like Ralph Hazelton there.

This was in Harlem it was in a community church hall

that wasn't actively being used as a church,

or maybe the downstairs part was,

but there was this big open hole area in the top.

This scene, and also just watching how

beautiful everyone looked while dancing.

To see that many black folks in a room,

mostly black folks in a room,

looking gorgeous, dancing,

laughing, smiling, Yeah, yeah.

Was really special.

We were shot handheld for a lot of the dance stuff.

We had like kind of, some master cooks in our arsenal

that were more straightforward for more

crystal clear moments.

But a lot of the stuff that we shot

was on a Lomo.

Which, I think this shot is Lomo.

It is definitely,

because as you can see where I'm marking here,

there is a softness and an out of focus-ness

at the top and the bottom of the frame.

So not only are we being compressed by the 4.3 this way,

we're also being slightly fuzzied out,

at the top and the bottom of the frame.

And I loved this lens when I saw it

cause I thought it articulated something of Irene's,

like, we shouldn't rely that she's seeing clearly.

Literally. [Rebecca chuckles]

So it becomes fuzzy because,

and it becomes increasingly fuzzy,

in different key moments.

Also, do you think something about 4.3, is that

there's all this stuff.

Oh, yeah, let's point out 4.3.

[Tessa] That you don't get to see?

[Rebecca] Yeah, oh yeah.

[Tessa] In the frame, right?

[Rebecca] The thing I love about 4.3

is that it's very confronting I think,

on the face,

like this shot is an example of two people,

a two shot, which is slightly different.

But when it's just a single,

like imagine if this were, that.

[Tessa] There's just no. Room.

[Rebecca] There's just no room, right? It's all face.

[Tessa] Like a headshot.

[Rebecca] Which for a film about faces

and how they're seen and how they're judged,

who's seeing them as what,

who's saying what they look like,

I think it focuses the eye.

The photographer, Gordon Parks.

Yeah.

I thought about that quote of his,

You should teach the eye to listen before it sees.

[Tessa gasps]

I always thought that was very applicable to,

a lot of this movie.

[Hugh] Ralph Hazelton there, dozens of women

have declared him fantastically handsome.

What do you think?

Is he?

No, and I don't think anyone else would either.

Here we have [Tessa giggles]

the extraordinary Ruth Negga.

Now, the flash of daring pink. [Tessa giggles]

[Rebecca chuckles]

So in the book, there is a conversation

about Clare's passing,

but it's much more coded.

And I think the spirit of that, is here,

but I pushed it a little further because

I sort of felt that also Irene

was using that information to get a little power over Clare,

in the context of something that was relatively safe,

because he's got a fat secret too

that she knows about.

He's in the closet,

he's gay, and she's pointing that out.

So the reason I amped up that moment

a little bit more than in the book

and it is kind of a little shocking

because she does out Clare, on some level.

Is to highlight the latent homosexuality

and the power dynamics going on there,

in terms of their shared secret.

It's just plain exoticism.

An interest in what's different.

A kind of emotional excitement.

Something you feel in the presence of something strange,

and even perhaps a bit repugnant too.

And there you have it.

But I just want to say that,

I love how you deliver that section

because it's so clear to me,

that you're talking about your attraction for her.

[giggling]

The way in which we had to tell those stories,

subtly, without ever obviously getting to them

because Nella Larson couldn't write about

repressed homosexuality.

And in a way I think it would have been a betrayal to,

state it obviously,

when Irene, isn't even aware of it herself.

Like she can't vocalize it,

so I couldn't ask the character to.

And if you did crack open Irene's head

and asked her to give their monologue,

I think that it would be a lot of lies, honestly.

For all the things that she doesn't ever think or say,

there are many things that Nella Larsen, herself,

articulates that are inside of Irene's head.

And so I suppose the challenge is to have that

exist inside of you,

without telegraphing it, inside of performance.

But I would have, notes in the margin,

Nella Larson's words.

The only way to do it filmically,

to try and find,

let the audience slowly realize

the subtlety of what's going on,

is to drip-feed them these gestures.

Hands, longing,

how Irene perceives the world, the fuzziness of it,

the unreliability of it.

Then of course the black and white,

which is the biggest irony of all,

because nothing is ever black and white.

It's gray, including film.

The pushback I received from that was enormous.

Throughout the financing process,

so many people said to me,

We love the script.

We'll absolutely make it,

if you make it in color.

And I just kept saying to everyone,

it won't be the film that I know it can be,

if I had make it in color.

It won't have the same potency.

It won't have the same abstraction.

I'm not particularly interested in cinematic reality

being the same as our reality,

but it has to have emotional truth.

And I think the symbolism of this is stronger

than were it to be in reality.

Lots of people pass all the time.

It's easy for a Negro to pass for white.

I'm not sure, It'd be so simple for a white person

to pass for colored.

I mean that little sort of scoff that you do,

I think speaks to the question of,

are you going to give yourself?

I'm going to give you some blue earrings.

[giggling]

He says, Yes, I know what you mean.

which is, sort of.

Yeah.

a classic moment of,

yes, of course I can completely relate

to everything you're saying,

when of course you can't,

because you're a white man.

And she's polite enough to just scoff at him.

I mean, she's holding her own.

She's saying it how it is,

but there's also a certain amount of benign tolerance,

I'd say.

Yeah.

Absolutely. [Rebecca chuckles]

Benign tolerance of his idiocy,

which is partially, honestly,

why I had you standing up higher than him.

I wanted him to feel like a little child.

[Rebecca laughs] that's so interesting.

I liked that this scene was last,

because to me,

it was the most honest

she'll ever be. Yeah.

And so I had, had all the time to figure out

the emotional landscape of the character.

And I think it might've been a different scene

had we not known that. No it's true.

[indistinct]

It's absolutely true.

I mean, she's kind of completely different

with Hugh than she is with anyone.

Completely different.

It's like, it's the only place

where she's allowed to be a little,

you see something that's a little bit

caustic in her, which I love. Yeah.

You see the slightly kind of catty,

confrontational person.

Yeah. You think

if you were really free to be who you really are,

She'd be quite fun don't you think?

You'd be kind of a fire cracker

and kind of fun. Yeah.

She might not be on the dance floor.

Yeah.

But she could make you laugh.

And is a talented conversationalist.

That's so true. Yeah.

You're being unusually cryptic this evening.

And you are being an ass.

I just mean, we're all of us passing for something

or other.

Aren't we?

You have this one woman who is passing.

It's dangerous.

She's putting her life in danger by doing it.

And you have this other woman, who is

claiming to be safe, to be respectable,

to have a secure life of doing the right thing.

But she is so plagued with am I doing the right thing?

Is this the right thing?

She's not free at all.

So they're both, in trouble, in that respect.

I think that when I read, the book

and I was also thinking about how this related to

passing in my own family

and what the legacy of that was, to me.

It's hard not to be confronted

with the no small irony,

that the systems of white supremacy and racism

that forced people to make these choices to pass,

in order to have a better life,

also, high privileged from as a

someone who, looks white.