Can television get better than this?

An impressive figure stands in the corner of an artful early 1960s office. We only see his back, a featureless silhouette interrupted by just a hint of a humanising white shirt collar. He surveys the room. Pondering. Is it his office? Will he stay? Almost immediately the commanding figure is reduced as the camera pulls back. We are the second person in the room, a silent witness, observing the man, now smaller, exposed and more vulnerable in the middle of the office.

Opposite us a Scandinavian desk archly provides a note of solidity in an otherwise intangible room. Vague decor merges, through windows barred by blinds, with the monotonous grey sky to envelope a glimpse of pastel skyscrapers. What sort of cell is this? How can it hold him? Nothing but the desk and the man has substance.  

The self-assurance has gone. He's uneasy and we're uneasy for him. The music is a pulse. A potential threat like a discordant heart-monitor. Pressure. This is a man's world. No room for weakness or sentiment. Image is everything. The only personal touches in the room are the barely perceptible outlines of hard liquor bottles stacked on the table - like the ghosts of the men who have vacated the shadowy chairs. The bottles are an elegant testimony by the prosecution. Only the spinning fan shows signs of life.

Yet the cocktail chic has a seductive quality - the aspirational magazine style draws the man further into the room. He steps forward and places his briefcase on the floor. His silhouette is like an exclamation mark on a blank page. An assertion of individuality that breaks the tension. Sudden and catastrophic. Everything in the office is shattered and sucked into a sterile abyss while the man stands transfixed and helpless. The screen dissolves briefly into black only to reveal that the darkness is the man and he is falling.   

 

A man falling from a Manhattan skyscraper. 50 years of American history. A logical conclusion. His descent is witnessed by a wet dream of giant advertising hoardings promising every pleasure - but for him the price has been too high. He is not the only casualty. Fatherless children accuse the man with their smiles as he falls past the scarlet lips and fishnetted thigh that for once are untouchable and unmolested. The only thing he wants no one can sell. 

Dissolve to black again as we anticipate the impact, but no, there is one more twist. The camera pans out to reveal the man sitting nonchalantly in a chair, a cigarette in one hand and no doubt a whiskey in the other. Composed? Yes, but he stares into a grey void. What can he see? 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcRr-Fb5xQo