Jacques Tourneur's 1942 moody, atmospheric horror Cat People may not, in most popular discourse, be associated with Edmund Burke's notion of the sublime, which for him, is the strongest emotion a human mind can feel, however, the film in various ways captures to celluloid many of his key precepts. Historically, the word sublime evokes images of terrible storms erupting in the distance or the frightening possibilities and chaotic power of a tornado tearing through the countryside. Words such as awe, terror, and danger coincide with the sublime in the minds of many since Burke's A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful was penned in 1757. Burke's key concept is that of "aesthetic distance," through which his idea of the sublime fully takes form. For Burke, the physical (in the case of nature) or aesthetic (knowing that the perception is fiction) distancing from whatever terrible event is occurring, is where the feeling of the sublime arises in the spectator, that is knowing that one is at a safe distance from the event …show more content…
In an instant, Alice stops, hugging a street pole and we hear the low growl of something inhuman off-screen, and at that moment, the prospect of danger becomes inherently unified with the threat of bodily harm, and a painful death. Suddenly a screeching bus charges into frame between Alice and the camera, and the animalistic growl is subsumed into the screeching breaks of the bus providing an instant cathartic relief from the tension. For the film viewer, our aesthetic distance from the film, that is knowing the perception is fiction, has provided albeit, short-lived but undeniably palpable feeling of the sublime. While safety arriving in the form of the bus brings us relief from the building tension, the sublime, arising only for a few moments, is felt as the danger and threat of death through bodily harm was all but too
...e[s]. Then, because the picture-making mechanism [is] crush[ing], the disturbing visions flash[ing] into black, and Paul drop[s] back into the immense design of things.? When Paul jumps in front of the train, he thinks it will take away his problems and help him escape the horrendous world forever.
The film Wendy and Lucy, directed by Kelly Reichardt, presents a sparse narrative. The film has been criticised for its lack of background story, and as a short film, much of the story is left to the viewer to infer from what is presented in the plot. However, Wendy and Lucy is able to depict the intimate relationship between Wendy and her dog as well as reflecting more broadly on the everyday, and commenting on the current economic state of the film’s setting in America. This essay will examine how film form contributes to the viewer’s awareness of the story in Wendy and Lucy and allows a deeper understanding of the themes presented. The aspects of mise-en-scene, shot and editing and sound in the film will be explored.
The motion picture I selected to analyze is Relatos Salvajes (Wild Tales) an Argentinian movie, directed and edited by Damián Szifrón and Pablo Barbieri. Wild Tales is dark, comedy with a series of realistic events that turn unpredictable. This film displays six different segments and six different story lines with a variety of actors. I believe that the best edited segment is the “Road to Hell” segment. The “Road to Hell” story line is about two male drivers, where their road rage becomes deadly. This analysis will go over how Szifron and Barbieri used certain shot angles, sound, and music to intensify and bring the story together. In the “Road to Hell” segment the director does not include the character’s name, for analysis purposes I will refer to the first character as Carlos and the second character as Pete.
...ley’s admiration towards ‘Drover’ with their desirable love developing over time. Luhrmann contrasts the audience with the emotional expressions and differing body language, which is significantly visually depicted The non-diegetic music tempo speeds up, creating a dramatic tension and signifying the importance of the couple’s connection and emphasises on their emotional intensity.
I have discussed how Francis F. Coppola exploits a wide array of audio and editing techniques to create suspense, tense, and anxiety in the sequence to affect the audience’s feelings. Despite the simple fabula, this multifaceted film requires certain intellectual involvement and efforts of the audience to grasp fully its underlying meanings and subtle nuances.
During the opening six minutes of Nicholas Roeg’s film Don’t Look Now, the viewer experiences a dynamic mixture of film techniques that form the first part of the narrative. Using metaphor and imagery, Roeg constructs a vivid and unique portrayal of his parallel storyline. The opening six minutes help set up a distinct stylistic premise. In contrast to a novel or play, the sequence in Don’t Look Now is only accessible through cinema because it allows the viewer to interact with the medium and follow along with the different camera angles. The cinematography and music also guide the viewer along, and help project the characters’ emotions onto the audience because they change frequently. The film techniques and choppy editing style used in Don’t Look Now convey a sense of control of the director over the audience and put us entirely at his mercy, because we have to experience time and space as he wants us to as opposed to in an entirely serial manner.
Meshes of the Afternoon by Maya Deren is one of the most intriguing and significant experimental films of the 1940’s. Maya Deren is a surrealist experimental filmmaker who explores themes like yearning, obsession, loss and mortality in her films. In Meshes of the Afternoon, Maya Deren is highly influenced by Sigmund Freud’s theory of expressing the realms of the subconscious mind through a dream. Meshes of the Afternoon, is a narration of her own experience with the subconscious mind that draws the viewers to experience the events being played out rather than just merely showing the film. I chose Maya Deren for my research because her intriguing sense gives viewers an enthralling experience by taking them to a different, semi-real world of the subconscious mind. Meshes of the Afternoon not only reveals Deren’s success in a male dominant arena, but also provides a sensational and escalating experience for the spectators.
The Spleen by Anne Finch, the Countess of Winchelsea, presents an interesting poetic illustration of depression in the spleen. The spleen for Finch is an enigma, it is mysterious, shape-shifting, and melancholic. Melancholy leads the subject to flashes of a grander, terrifying emotion: the sublime. The subject of Finch’s Pindaric ode experiences the sublime, and yet has the uncanny ability to reflect and reason on the feeling with acuity--even though the subject suffers from depression, which in effect dulls sensory information. The fact that she intensely perceives the sublime suggests a paradox where dulled senses can produce a penetrative emotional episode. To understand the paradox, the theory of the sublime and Finch’s engagement with the sublime in The Spleen must be traced to conceive the state of the dulled mind in the thrall of an infinite, and transcendent wave of emotion. The focus of this essay is that Finch understands that Dullness, as a by-product of depression, enables rational thought during a sublime experience. Furthermore, she thus illustrates her experience through images where she emphasizes her sensory information and her feelings, which were supposedly numbed by depression. Her feelings, indicated in The Spleen, are the crux to how Finch is able to simultaneously feel numb, and process the sublime.
As an audience we are manipulated from the moment a film begins. In this essay I wish to explore how The Conversation’s use of sound design has directly controlled our perceptions and emotional responses as well as how it can change the meaning of the image. I would also like to discover how the soundtrack guides the audience’s attention with the use of diegetic and nondiegetic sounds.
In conclusion, I have demonstrated how Coppola exploits a wide array of sound and editing to create suspense, intensity, and anxiety in the sequence to affect the audience’s emotions, using diegetic ambient sound effects, non-diegetic music, voice over and four editing types. With this sequence, Coppola has shown the savagery of war and our complicity in this violence as an audience.
Gallagher, T. 2002. Senses of Cinema – Max Ophuls: A New Art – But Who Notices?. [online] Available at: http://sensesofcinema.com/2002/feature-articles/ophuls/ [Accessed: 8 Apr 2014].
The movie The Purge is built on many elements from Burke’s theory about the sublime. The main ones that are seen more than once in the movie is terror, obscurity, power, and the violence. The sublime theory is used in many of the horror movies, because it makes the people feel an emotion that they can’t express. When people watch The Purge it has them on the edge of their seats to see what is going to happen next in the movie. The use of the sublime theory in the horror movies is to give the public what they want. People can feel better about themselves after watching these types of movies. Using these elements together, it makes the movie better, but not only that, but each element helps each other out in the scene to make it a very good movie and show the appeal of the sublime theory.
... Nature, including human beings, is `red in tooth and claw'; we are all `killers' in one way or another. Also, the fear which inhabits both human and snake (allowing us, generally, to avoid each other), and which acts as the catalyst for this poem, also precipitates retaliation. Instinct, it seems, won't be gainsaid by morality; as in war, our confrontation with Nature has its origins in some irrational `logic' of the soul. The intangibility of fear, as expressed in the imagery of the poem, is seen by the poet to spring from the same source as the snake, namely the earth - or, rather, what the earth symbolizes, our primitive past embedded in our subconsciouness. By revealing the kinship of feelings that permeates all Nature, Judith Wright universalises the experience of this poem.
No matter which critical interpretation is used, it is evident that Poe's "The Black Cat" is a unique story that relies on key aspects, such as graphic violence and sensational imagery, to heighten the reader's perception toward the limits and depths of the human mind.
Although admittedly some scenes have a comical side to them, Besson's fast paced action and gruesome images hold the tension and suspense brilliantly. His use of close-ups and camera movements, especially the subjective stance used by the victim, convey the feelings felt by the characters and the way in which they behave. Sound plays a crucial role in the opening sequence because, in my view, it is used to control the level of suspense and intrigue.