MichaelPW, I think that you're right about the woman watching. She , for whatever reason, can not intervene. ( Fear, would be my guess as to what that reason is: we seem to be dealing with criminals here.)
Again, I don't see them as zombies, or perhaps hypnotized by
The Phantom ( though that would work), just stoned.
My wife and myself had a discussion about the 'out-of-sequence' scenes, yesterday.
Right, I take your point,
applesnoranges: the material she is looking at is ( also) often not in chrono order.
For instance, and maybe you've got a thought on this, the scene where the rather dumpy woman is staring at a doorway and , entering and commenting,another woman says 'Who is she?', then from the other side, another woman says 'Who is she?'
Now, I guess she's the mustached man's wife, that he's playing around on. Isn't she the murky figure in the 40s style power skirt-suit who climbs the stairs, screwdriver in hand?Then we hear screams, running footsteps ( again, with the runnig footsteps) and see the figure stabbed in a pool of blood, something protruding from her side.
Now, when the irate Polish husband, the older guy, stops her in the street, has she killed the wronged wife, already? The one who came to kill her (almost as in
OHIBT)? Or is
this scene, in the street, out of sequence? Or is the dead figure actually the actress, herself?( Doesn't seem so, but it's too murky to really tell. I prefer to think it's not so trite a device as to simply, intentionally blur the victim and the murderer. Simiarly, I can't decide, though my wife has made up her mind to it, if the woman he talks to in the street,
LG and the woman who wants to buy a watch are all played by the same actress. They must be, though.) Does she dissimulate , pretending not to know the identity of the murder victim of whom he tells her ( he says 'a person', not 'he' or 'she'), apprehensive that she might be caught out?
Then , of course, we see the person of whom he is actually speaking, the mustachioed man, the lead in
47, presumably, laying dead in a pool of blood.
**Another 'out-of-sequence' deal: Are we to figure that the seance occurs prior to the two searching for the man who, he is told, has decamped to the Inland Empire? So, he already has the gun? Already seeks to kill
The Phantom, his boss? They're like 'white slavers', thugs shipping the women to the Inland Empire for, like, immoral purposes? This is that for which they have to atone, to 'pay an unpaid debt'? Gee, that almost makes sense.
'...to be understood is to be found out...'