Ellen Brody, dressed in a kind of half-mourning of a black polo neck sweater and white bell-bottoms, comes through the doorway. As she walks to the table her gaze is directed off camera to the left and just before she bends down to clear away some plates she purses her lips into something that is not quite a smile - an expression that acknowledges the fact that her husband has left his meal uneaten. She gives one more meaningful look off screen and as she returns to the kitchen the camera pulls back to show Brody in profile, his bowed head resting on his supporting fist. Also in the expanded frame on the right is young Sean Brody, who has adopted the same pose as his dad. As Brody reaches out for a tall glass of what looks like scotch on the rocks, Sean takes a drink of his milk. When the father folds his hands together, the son does the same. In the background, slightly out of focus, Ellen returns with a cup of tea and leans against the door frame.
Brody covers his face with his hands in a gesture of shame and as he pulls his palms downwards, the camera cuts to a low angled shot to give us a view of his face as seen from behind the little boy's head. Out of the corner of his eye, the father notices his son's shadow play and playfully moves the fingers of his clasped hands, and then makes a face by baring his teeth - like a shark about to attack. Sean, who has lost his front milk teeth, responds with a gummy smile and makes his hands into claws. Brody leans foward and asks his son for a kiss, which he receives on his right cheek as a counter balance to the slap Mrs Kintner delivered to his left.
The sequence is underscored with a delicate nursery-rhyme-like melody played on harp, piano and vibraphone, and in the manner in which it brings a lump to the throat the scene can be rightly called Spielbergian. The use of shared body language to establish connections between characters is something that the director will return to in later films (Short Round and Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, or Elliott and E.T in, er, E.T), and the use of carefully choreographed business within a single shot is one of his signature techniques. Scenes around the family dinner table will also recur in later Spielberg movies, although they are more often than not moments of discord rather than harmony.
