Noted Venetian marketplace / WED 4-26-23 / Nickname for Francisco often / Dizzying camera technique invented for 58-Across / Acronym in genetic sequencing / It may punctuate a sarcastic remark / Chicago exchange informally / Vessel for a nursery rhyme / Many-eyed giant of myth / Product in snail-shaped dispenser

Word of the Day: DOLLY ZOOM (21A: Dizzying camera technique invented for 58-Across) —

A dolly zoom (also known as a Hitchcock shot, Vertigo shot, Jaws effect, or Zolly shot) is an  in-camera effect that appears to undermine normal visual perception.

The effect is achieved by zooming a zoom lens to adjust the angle of view (often referred to as field of view, or FOV) while the camera dollies (moves) toward or away from the subject in such a way as to keep the subject the same size in the frame throughout. The zoom shifts from a wide-angle view into a more tighter-packed angle. In its classic form, the camera angle is pulled away from a subject while the lens zooms in, or vice versa. The dolly zoom's switch in lenses can help audiences identify the visual difference between wide-angle lenses and telephoto lenses. Thus, during the zoom, there is a continuous perspective distortion, the most directly noticeable feature being that the background appears to change size relative to the subject. Hence, the dolly zoom effect can be broken down into three main components: the moving direction of the camera, the dolly speed, and the camera lens' focal length.

The visual appearance for the viewer is that either the background suddenly grows in size and detail and overwhelms the foreground, or the foreground becomes immense and dominates its previous setting, depending on which way the dolly zoom is executed. As the human visual system uses both size and perspective cues to judge the relative sizes of objects, seeing a perspective change without a size change is a highly unsettling effect, often with strong emotional impact. (wikipedia)

If you've never seen the movie, well, you should, it's great, but also, this must've been, uh, slightly disorienting for you?  I don't think I've ever seen a theme this specific before, based entirely around a single, fairly short shot in a movie. In fact, when I'd finished the puzzle, I thought the spiral of words was simply a representation of the whirling dizziness brought on by VERTIGO—a kind of square version of the circular swirl on the movie's poster:

But no, it's definitely a representation of the staircase in the DOLLY ZOOM shot itself (which you can see here, around the 1:20 mark):

I teach courses in crime fiction and noir and I have grown to love this movie over the years. At first, I was really repulsed by STEWART's character when he turns stalker / abuser toward the end of the film, so the movie just wasn't *fun* for me to watch, the way Rear Window was fun and North by Northwest was fun and even Psycho was fun. Abusive treatment of NOVAK was too realistically creepy for me to enjoy. I still think it's creepy, but I've grown to appreciate the film's considerable beauty. Plus, its DNA is in sooooo many later films (including, surprisingly, THE CONVERSATION (1974), which I just taught). But back to the puzzle—it's definitely ambitious and original in design. You might lose a lot of people with that spiral (I think some will take it, as I initially did, to be a generalized swirl and not a specific staircase), but it's all there—the clues *do* refer to that specific scene, the actors, the TOWER. It works, and the grid manages to hold symmetry (axial symmetry this time). It's a very narrow topic and the theme answers are entirely trivia, but if the movie is your jam, then it's hard to be mad at this very creative theme.

The fill ... well, with a theme like this, where the themers run all over hell and gone, filling the grid cleanly is a huge chore, so with that higher level of difficulty in mind, I think this one comes out OK. You get two showy 15s and an APOPLEXY in the bargain, which is more flashy long stuff than you have any right to expect in a theme this dense. At first I thought MONKEYING AROUND (60A: Goofing off) was trying to pass itself off as a themer, coming as it does in a final, climactic-seeming position. But then I realized the symmetry was on a tilt and that answer was just a non-thematic counterpart to the other 15, "I DEMAND A RECOUNT" (11D: Cry after being narrowly defeated). I balked at ONAVISA (46D: Way to travel, for many tourists), as I balk at many longer prepositional phrases that don't seem air tight (e.g. INACAR and ONAPLANE feel bad, whereas OVERTHEHILL and INABIND feel good, complete, standalone strong). FIGMENT felt incomplete as clued. "FIGMENT of your imagination" is the full phrase. You would never say "oh, that's just a FIGMENT ..." I still we're still doing POPO, which I wish would go (go). But mostly the fill holds up, does its job, stays out of the way. It's fine.

I had trouble in various places, most notably with PANCHO, which ???? I had no idea had anything to do with "Francisco" (40A: Nickname for Francisco, often). That "PAN-" section thus ended up being slow for me, as I couldn't readily get PUMA (40D: Deer stalker), and I had zero idea about NORMANDY (as clued) (42D: Operation Overlord locale). So many nicer, non-war ways to think about Normandy, but OK. I always confuse ARGOS and ARGUS and did so again today, but had enough good sense to leave that second vowel blank until I got the cross. Botched *both* vowels in HIRAM (47A: Ulysses S. Grant's given name at birth), though now I can't remember how. It's possible I wrote in ABRAM, confusing Grant's given name with Garfield's middle name (the way I'm always confusing Grant and Garfield, tbh ... damned late 19th-century bearded "G" presidents ... I'm looking at your non-consecutive ass too, Grover Cleveland ... though it looks like Cleveland just had the mustache, not the full beard). Mostly, though, the puzzle was the normal Wednesday level of difficulty, and the theme was pretty easy if you know the movie (and maybe even if you don't). 
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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