Watched it again today for the many-th time, and noticed a good prop I
hadn't caught previously. In the early scene when Jim is making
inquiries in the store that sells art objects, he talks to a staff
member in front of a table which has a mirror mounted on it. In that
mirror is the reflection of another person in the shop, a woman, who
overhears Jim's inquiries and clearly, based on seeing her facial
expression reflected in the mirror, is eavesdropping and interested.
But the prop in question is a sculpture of a head that is resting on
the table exactly in front of that mirror. That sculpture-prop shows a
classically artistic head of a person, modelled after the general
appearance of the centuries-old comedy and tragedy masks which often
flanked the stages of old theaters, but who here appears to be
overcome by a mental problem too complex to be solved: a pair of hands
clasp the head and the expression is not tragic or comic but one of a
maddening consternation: the problem is too large for the person to
get his head around. It looks a little like Meunch's famous painting
about anxiety--the almost cartoonish image of the anxious face in
front of the bridge under an ominous sky, a painting we've all seen
many times. In fact, the sculpture on the table shows exactly the
expression and hand-clasping Jim later does in several places in this ...