I love the growing dread and almost sick look Frodo gets throughout that conversation with Gandalf. There's a particular camera shot where he won't even look directly at the ring, the most he can do is look at it out of the corner of his eyes. I always felt that was a key moment in Frodo realizing the gravity of the situation surrounding the ring--he didn't see its inherent evil yet, though. I like your interpretation, that when Gandalf refuses to take the ring...and Frodo sees his fear...that really puts it into focus for him.
There is a wonderful symmetry between that scene between Frodo and Gandalf and the later one between Frodo and Galadriel. In the former, Frodo realizes a measure of the evil contained in the ring when Gandalf refuses to take it, and his response is to ask Gandalf "what must I do?" In the scene with Galadriel, she shows him why Gandalf refused to take it, and Frodo's response is..."I know what I must do." The parallel between those two scenes is just to strong to have been a coincidence...
-penny
Dan
Fascinating! Of course, now that it has been more than 24 hours, I am going through withdrawals again.
It's so cool to have fellow Tolkien fans to disssect these books and the movie/s. I have learned far more by reading the FotR / LotR threads than I would have gleaned on my own. Sort of like being in an English lit. class full of total lit-heads. hehe