I need relief

While in England recently we spent the day tramping around Hampstead Heath.  We didn't intend to spend that much time there but it turns out that there aren't any signs so it's reasonably easy to get lost.  On the plus side, it meant that we stumbled onto (and into) the stately Kenwood House.  I mention this because while we were there we saw a small exhibition of jewellery where I learned that there is difference between a cameo and an intaglio.

A cameo (as you folks who subscribe to the theory of depth-first browsing would know by now, but I will nevertheless explain since the likelihood that you will ever come back to this page before the end of your lifespan is vanishingly small and hence I am almost certainly now addressing only the breadth-first browsers) is typically a small image formed by carving away the background of a portrait.  An intaglio, on the other hand (which once again, will not surprise the infinitesimal fraction of compulsive link-clickers who ever read this) is formed by carving the image away from the background.

The reason I found this interesting is that it made me immediately think of Alfred Hitchcock, who like to appear in cameos in his own film.  And I don't mean that he liked to appear in small pieces of carved ornamental jewellery, although if I was ever able to direct a film I'm pretty sure that's what I'd do.  No, he liked to appear in his films in the role of a casual bystander or passer-by, depending on his relative velocity with respect to the camera.

And I thought it was interesting that the role is referred to as a cameo, implying that the famous personality involved stands out from the (presumably) bland background provided by the actual professional actors who are involved in telling the story, thus marring the film by the cameo appearance.   Rather than allowing their face to leap forth from the screen in a cameo and bludgeon the innocent audience into insensibility with the raw power of their celebrity, I think that directors and other egotistical movie-types should make intaglio appearances in their films.

When making an intaglio appearance in a film, the celebrity would be distinguished by their absence.  Perhaps one of the actors might gesture off-screen and remark, "Why, isn't that Quentin Tarantino?", and someone else would say, "No, I don't think so", and QT himself would never actually appear.  The overall effect would be the same but to my mind it has been achieved in a thoroughly more elegant way.  Once audiences are accustomed to intaglio appearances in film, the effect could be heightened by dispensing with the references to the celebrity altogether, which has the added advantage of allowing all celebrities in the universe to make simultaneous intaglio appearances in the same film.

If anyone reading this is in the process of making a film, I am available for intaglio appearances immediately.