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The importance of editing in film
Auteur theory limitations and contributions
The importance of editing in film
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Jean-Luc Godard’s film, Breathless (1960), is a conventional crime movie that is told using unconventional methods. The film tells a tale of a low-level gangster, Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who aims to become Humphrey Bogart, a character in American crime films. He steals a car, in turn, shoots and kills a policeman. Michel escapes to Paris where he begins seducing a young, American, blonde named Patricia (Jean Seberg). Patricia does not know of his criminal activities. However, when the police final catch Michel, she tries to hide Michel from the cops. She learns Michel murdered a policeman, has multiple aliases, and is married to another woman. Patricia betrays Michel and allows the police to find him. Michel is then shot and killed in …show more content…
When Michel is followed by the police car for his speeding, he tries to evade the law by pulling into the woods. The cop gets out of his car and tells Michel to “freeze”. In the scene, Godard uses a close-up of Michel and the gun. Then, all we hear is a gunshot. The viewer is lead to believe that Michel is shot. However, after the jump-cuts of the close-ups, we see the cop fall dead into a bush. The next jump-cut is one of Michel fleeing on foot. The use of the jump-cuts and close-ups confuse the viewer in who is shot. Godard again uses discontinuity to allow the viewer to be reminded that they are watching a …show more content…
Auteur theory states the director can manipulate a film into their own creative vision. Godard broke many common film-making rules in the production of Breathless. His use of jump-cuts and camera zooms create Godard’s own style of film-making. Godard strives for discontinuity instead of the common continuity all prior film-makers hoped to produce. Breathless is a confusing and disorienting film, but its beauty is in the narrative. Godard tells a conventional crime story in a means in which interests the viewer. The editing styles and camera angles bring the viewer a new feeling of film. They are not drawn into the film that portrays real-life. The audience is forced to think about the film from an outside perspective. The ambiguity left form Godard’s style of production leaves the audience left asking questions, such as is Michel really in love with Patricia? Godard’s creative vision is a prime example of auteur
The film Jindabyne, is a story about death, marriage, and race in an Australian town in New South Wales called Jindabyne. In the film, four men go fishing, and one of them discovers the dead body of a young indigenous girl. Instead of reporting what they found to the police immediately, they decide to stay and continue fishing. They decide that there is nothing they could do for her, so they tie her legs to a tree and continue with their fishing, reporting the death only when they return home. After they are done with their weekend of fishing and report the incident, conflict starts, as the men are criticized for not respecting the dead. Through the story of the town’s reaction to the four fishermen’s response to the dead girl, the movie shows Australia to be fragmented and divided over white-indigenous relations.
In the film industry, there are directors who merely take someone else’s vision and express it in their own way on film, then there are those who take their own visions and use any means necessary to express their visions on film. The latter of these two types of directors are called auteurs. Not only do auteurs write the scripts from elements that they know and love in life, but they direct, produce, and sometimes act in their films as well. Three prime examples of these auteurs are: Kevin Smith, Spike Lee and Alfred Hitchcock.
The auteur theory is a view on filmmaking that consists of three equally important premises: technical competence, interior meaning, and personal signature of the director. Auteur is a French word for author. The auteur theory was developed by Andrew Sarris, a well-known American film critic. Technical competence of the Auteur deals with how the director films the movie in their own style. Personal signature includes recurring themes that are present within the director’s line of work with characteristics of style, which serve as a signature. The third and ultimate premise of the Auteur theory is the interior meaning which is basically the main theme behind the film.
The police and car owner follow close behind him, trying to get the husband to pull over. The use of the single frame displays the husband’s dark silhouette as the camera focuses on the rearview mirror where the police can be seen gaining on him. It allows the viewer to take in both storylines simultaneously. The husband is still racing home to help his wife, but the police in the mirror also show the duality of his worries as they literally and figuratively hang over his shoulder. Meanwhile, in the mirror, the police are seen trying to grasp the husband in order to get him to stop. The two spaces for the characters gives the chance for the film to focus on the overall plot progression versus the time cut between the husband and the police separately. It decreases the amount of time that audiences spend on one character and their storyline instead it forces them to understand the dynamics of every storyline and how they interact with one
The movie Blow is about a man named George Jung who Johnny Depp plays furthermore he made the cocaine market in America in the 1950’s-1970’s. In this movie, you see the horrific effects that can take place to you and the people that closest to you, George was apart of the war on drugs and it caught up to him quick. He moves to California as a child in which he became wealthy for selling marijuana and expands his market but eventually you see him turn careless and gets caught by the police. George ends up meeting a man named Diego Delgado in jail, and was now introduced to the drug Cocaine, which was now a way for him to become wealthy again, be became a cocaine dealer.
Auteur theory holds that, ‘a director’s films reflect that director’s personal creative vision, as if he/she were the primary author. From the earliest silent films to contemporary times motion pictures have crossed over and both entertained and educated the viewing audience.
The Classical Hollywood style, according to David Bordwell remains “bound by rules that set stringent limits on individual innovation; that telling a story is the basic formal concern.” Every element of the film works in the service of the narrative, which should be ideally comprehensible and unambiguous to the audience. The typical Hollywood film revolves around a protagonist, whose struggle to achieve a specific goal or resolve a conflict becomes the foundation for the story. André Bazin, in his “On the politique des auteurs,” argues that this particular system of filmmaking, despite all its limitations and constrictions, represented a productive force creating commercial art. From the Hollywood film derived transnational and transcultural works of art that evoked spectatorial identification with its characters and emotional investment into its narrative. The Philadelphia Story, directed by George Cukor in 1940, is one of the many works of mass-produced art evolving out of the studio system. The film revolves around Tracy Lord who, on the eve of her second wedding, must confront the return of her ex-husband, two newspaper reporters entering into her home, and her own hubris. The opening sequence of The Philadelphia Story represents a microcosm of the dynamic between the two protagonists Tracy Lord and C.K. Dexter Haven, played by Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Through the use of costume and music, the opening sequence operates as a means to aesthetically reveal narrative themes and character traits, while simultaneously setting up the disturbance that must be resolved.
The film that I have chosen to analyze is “The Purge”. “The Purge” is a 2013 American horror film directed by James DeMonaco. It was released on June 7, 2013, to mixed reviews. I will be analyzing “The Purge” by looking at conflict theory, class division, the importance of the ethnicity of each individual character, and the government’s overall political and economic agenda. In brief, I believe that Purge night takes place because of Conflict theory, due to political and economic agendas.
ChinaTown, directed by Roman Polanski, is a non-traditional hard-nosed detective film made in the 70's. The typical elements of character type are there; J.J. Gittes (a private detective in LA) played by Jack Nicholson is the central character, sharing the spotlight is Fay Dunaway playing the femme fatale Evelyn Mulwray. This film breaks all types of norms when compared to the hard-nosed detective films it is modeled after. The film is filled with allusions to the Big Sleep, especially taken from scenes of Marlowe and Vivian. Chinatown has formal elements indicative that it is going to be in the style of traditional Film Noir hardboiled detective, until you examine the characters' personalities next to the story content.
Before the civil rights movement could begin, a few courageous individuals had to guide the way. Dr. Vernon Johns was one of those individuals. Dr. Vernon Johns was a pastor and civil rights activist in the 1920s. Johns became the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama in the late 1940s. During his time as a pastor, Johns preached many sermons on how African American people were being treated not only in the community but in society. Johns on multiple occasions upset his community through his ideas on social change. Through a sociologist perspective, many sociological concepts were displayed in The Vernon Johns Story. Some of those concepts included: ascribed status, conflict theory, deviant behavior, alienation, and
Think about your favorite movie. When watching that movie, was there anything about the style of the movie that makes it your favorite? Have you ever thought about why that movie is just so darn good? The answer is because of the the Auteur. An Auteur is the artists behind the movie. They have and individual style and control over all elements of production, which make their movies exclusively unique. If you could put a finger on who the director of a movie is without even seeing the whole film, then the person that made the movie is most likely an auteur director. They have a unique stamp on each of their movies. This essay will be covering Martin Scorsese, you will soon find out that he is one of the best auteur directors in the film industry. This paper will include, but is not limited to two of his movies, Good Fellas, and The Wolf of Wall Street. We will also cover the details on what makes Martin Scorsese's movies unique, such as the common themes, recurring motifs, and filming practices found in their work. Then on
The characters are a crucial element in developing the narrative of a film. The characters in Breathless do not act the way one expects those of Hollywood cinema to act. The woman who distracts the police officer in the opening scene seems as if she may be important, but is in fact never seen again. This happens again in a subsequent ...
Godard creates a unique editing style in Contempt and Breathless through the combination of long takes and jump cuts. Godard’s use of these two editing techniques expresses two separate ideas in regards to an individual’s place in society. In Contempt, Godard’s use of editing illustrates how an individual can exist separate from society. While in Breathless, editing conveys the idea of how society can isolate an individual. The use of jump cuts within Breathless and Contempt was an unconventional technique during the French New Wave and still is today because it violates one of the rules of Classic Hollywood Style.
The film that is being used for the movie analysis is “Enough”, this movie was chosen due to the fact that it is based on domestic violence towards women. The movie begins with in Los Angeles diner were a waitress named slim works with her best friend Ginny (Kazan, 2002). While working her shift slim has a customer that starts harassing her over the name she has, but the companion of the annoying customer defends slim, which in turn starts a romance, later to become a marriage between the two (Kazan, 2002). The couple is later blessed with a daughter they name Gracie, and at the beginning the marriage seems to be a fairy tale out of a story book (Kazan, 2002). The fairy tale becomes a nightmare as time moves forwards for the couple,
This movie starts off as Jordan Belfort, the main character in the movie, losing his job as a stockbroker in Wall Street. After losing his job, he goes and gets a job in a Long Island brokerage room. In the brokerage room, he sells penny stocks. Thanks to him being aggressive in his selling skills, he was able to make a profit. With the new income, he gives his wife a bracelet and she asked him why doesn’t he go after the people that can afford to lose money, not the middle-class people or lower income people. That is when he gets the idea to get a lot of young people and train them to become the best stock brokers.