Introduction To Screen Studies Audio-Visual Test. The General, Buster Keaton,1926 How do you interpret the subtext of this 3 minute sequence from The General? In your analysis, you might like to consider any of the following: character positioning, framing, shot scale, perspective, movement, spatio-temporal relationship and/or editing. As the camera cross cuts from scene to scene, it becomes clear that Buster Keaton's 1926 film “The General” propagates a comical and metaphorical example of insubordination to failure. From this cross cutting, Keaton’s character “Johnnie Gray” has been separated both physically and figuratively from the “Union Officers” therefore creating a theme of division as well a sense of hierarchy being inferred towards …show more content…
What seemingly appears as an impasse, “Johnny’s” transcendent power prevails as the film’s classical narration unveils his ability and determination to overcome the obstacles and film’s confrontation through him somehow moving the planks and continue chasing his endangered beloved in the carriage ahead in order for the eventual resolution to transpire. The binary opposition between Johnny and the Union men once more expresses the engrossed power dynamic, revealed through the differentiation of cinema of attractions utilised, more specifically the vaudeville performances. The union men are stylised through rough and abrasive movements such as swinging their arms excessively to get each other's attention or savagely dropping Annabelles body on the train top on a …show more content…
Yet as the family's symphony of procedures progress, hidden cracks within their veneer begin to elucidate, more specifically through the character and only daughter Suzy, in which her longing for escapism becomes evident. The prop utilisation of the embroidered depiction on the family wall of their red house initially establishes a certain childlike wonder as the artwork is something typically seen in something reminiscent of a fairytale book. Yet, through it simultaneously being the first and establishing shot within the movie, it quietly demands a standard being created for their family, in which cohesion and order, much like the house's caricature, are to be followed and
ago, however as a form of media, an art, and an industry, it is still quite new and continues to change both in itself and in its impact. In film theory, cinema has been analyzed through the two contrasting traditions of realist and formative. While the former stresses recreating reality through film and the latter stresses the changing of reality through film, it may also be said that cinema can accomplish both. Cinema, in the most basic terms, it is a series of images. Therefore, through the manipulation