In Joseph McElhaney's essay, “Vincente Minnelli: Images of Magic and Transformation,” he argues that character transformation is central to Minnelli’s films and that this transformation takes place in two ways: through the process of education in a world dominated by teachers of various types; and through a process of enchantment and seduction at the hands of artists. In Emmanuel Burdeau’s essay, “Minnelli’s Message,” he argues that throughout Minnelli a “dance of hesitation” occurs in which characters change their minds about something. Vincente Minnelli’s 1958 film, Some Came Running, addresses both of these arguments in the sequence when the main character, Dave Hirsh, deals with the hesitation of a woman he wishes to marry.
In Some Came Running, Dave is a former Army corporal who accidentally returns to his hometown after a drunken night. He makes use of his
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situation by visiting old places and familiar faces such as his older brother, Frank. The two catch up, and Frank suggests to Dave that it is time to settle down. He does his best to ensure it happens by introducing Dave to an English teacher named Gwen French who is fond of his work as a writer. Dave immediately falls for Gwen and attempts to change his ways, but fails to keep her. More than halfway through the film, Dave and Gwen address their relationship when he comes to visit her after being ignored by her. The scene begins with Gwen sitting alone and listening to music in her kitchen. As soon as the doorbell rings, she turns off the music and walks towards her front door only to see Dave standing there. Without hesitation, she opens the door and greets him normally, but avoids any direct eye contact. Dave, who is unsure why she has been ignoring him, enters her home and tells her how he has missed her while touching her shoulder. Gwen dismisses what he says and instead compliments his jacket. They walk back to her kitchen as she tries to make small talk on how soon they should be hearing back from a book company that she has been assisting him to get published in. This time, Dave disregards what she is saying and address how she is acting as a teacher would. He questions her what is wrong and then makes a note on how distant she is acting. Gwen quickly replies “I haven’t forgotten” which confirms she has missed Dave and been thinking about their past romantic encounters. However, she quickly regrets saying that which is seen when she asks Dave not to talk about their situation. When Gwen asks Dave to stop further talking about their situation, Burdeau’s “dance of hesitation” is present. Right before she tries to retract her statement, she stops avoiding eye contact and looks directly at Dave. Non-diegetic music begins playing which may cause one to think that their situation is finally going upwards, but it does not. Gwen instead turns away from Dave and sits on a chair. As she does that action, the viewer notices a change of mind through her body language. She goes back to being unease and begins to avoid eye contact with him again as he bends on his knees and confesses how he is in love with her. She negatively reacts by moving out of the chair and telling Dave he cannot be in love with her. For a brief moment, she takes back what she said again and stares at Dave as he places his hand on her shoulder. After snapping herself out of the moment, she brushes his hand off her shoulder. The viewer gets a glimpse of how confused Gwen as the camera is placed in front of her and framed with Dave right behind her. Throughout the beginning of the sequence, one may view Dave as a teacher and Gwen as a student. A teacher is someone who teaches about a certain subject in which one could say Dave is teaching Gwen about love through his actions and words. His first lesson of love begins when he shows up at her front door. If he did not love or care for her, he would not have gone out of his way to see her. He could have easily given up and forgotten about her after being ignored for a long period of time, but he chose not to. He further demonstrates what love is by he continuing to talk and walk towards her as she gives him the cold shoulder to let her know he is not bothered by her actions and will be right by her side. He even admits before asking her to marry him how he has changed for her by quitting his drinking habits.These actions demonstrate to the viewer not only how Gwen is a student learning how much Dave loves her, but what it means to love someone. The roles briefly shift towards the middle of the sequence when Gwen teaches Dave about reality. She explains to him how she is not a schoolgirl, but a schoolteacher, and how it is impossible for someone to be in love and marry someone they just met. As the sequence reaches its’ end, a character transformation is noticeable for Dave. Dave transforms from being persistent and head over heels into an angry and heartbroken man. This shift occurs after Dave spills his feelings for Gwen and asks to marry her. For a second, it seems as if a happy ending may occur based on the cherry non-diegetic music played as the two kiss. However, the viewer is signaled it will not be one when tone of the music immediately changes, Gwen keeps her arms against her waist, pulls herself out of the moment, and tells Dave “no more of that. I’m not one of your barroom tarts,” a reference to his past lifestyle. Heartbroken, Dave tells Gwen she will never be able to flunk him again and exits her house as she remains in her kitchen. The sequence highlights many recurring Minnelli tendencies.
The main tendency to be noted is the fact that Gwen is wearing a blouse with a yellow design, Minnelli’s favorite color. A majority of the sequences makes use long takes which Minnelli has done in a lot of his other works. For instance, the first long take we encounter is when the camera follows Gwen from when she first seen alone in the kitchen, gets up to answer the doorbell then back to the kitchen with Dave. He also uses long takes in other sections of the sequence while the two are discussing their relationship. In those shots, Minnelli has the camera moved closer and further away as their conversation intensifies to best display their reactions. The sequence also brings attention to social tension which has done in other films. It is most noted at the end of the sequence when Dave says “I don’t even belong in your class” after being rejected by Gwen and she responds “quite possibility you don’t.” One could argue that statement related to her occupation as a teacher, but it could also reflect their opposite class status and
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The premise of the plot is held in tact but the setting is shifted several hundred years, to the 1970s. The characters’ names remain familiar. The dialogue is contemporary English, yet you can still recognize the similarities in conversation. Major themes from the original work – revenge, guilt, self doubt, fate, and prophecy – still exist in this manipulated adaptation. “He (Morrissette) is able to make an interesting point about how the difference between tragedy and comedy is often how the material is viewed by the audience”.
Transformations inherently contain traces of the author’s social and cultural context. Much of the same can be applied to “Much ado about nothing”. It incorporates comical features, yet retains the sense of tragedy which is attached to almost all of Shakespeare’s plays. Brain Percival’s role as a director, was determining, understanding and distinguishing the social norms and the social structure of the society, and how the themes represented in the play can be transformed into a modern text. The Elizabethan society was typically a patriarchal society. Percival has used as well as transformed certain themes and textual features to ensure, that the film is more appealing and assessable to the critical modern audience.
An obvious difference in these films is that the 1931 version played to a Depression audience and that the Coppola version played to a modern audience. (I am being extremely careful because, obviously, the 1931 audience was modern in 1931; however, we like to think of ourselves as being more modern than past generations. There are differences in the audiences which viewed the respective versions in their time, and I hope to prove this point as the paper unfolds.)
The astounding perils of young love has been eloquently captured in the story of Romeo and Juliet. Franco Zefferelli and Baz Luhrmann are the creators of the two most renowned film adaptations of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Zefferelli, the more traditional director, created his Oscar winning version in 1968. Baz Luhrmann put an abstract, modern twist on Shakespeare's classic and created the 1996 version that raised millions of dollars in box office sales. Being that these two films are so different, I have chosen to compare them to one another, using the famed balcony scene as my focus.
Dynamic characters are built by dynamic movement in film. Whether the character is sitting down giving a lecture, or is a ballerina dancing on stage, character are born through movement. Movement in emotion, or physical, a characters action and re-actions are what draw audiences into their story. The characters in the movie Take the Lead gain power through their character transformations through dance, their movement on the dance floor directly impacts the way they carry themselves through life. In this paper I will explore three scenes, each scene will show different levels of progression in each character’s life, and I will show how the characters gain more power in their own lives the more successful they become with the movement of dance.
“Marie Antoinette” (2006) directed by Sofia Coppola is a drama/comedy, that is centered on the life of the notorious Queen of France, in the years leading up to the French Revolution. Coppola’s film style was very modern avant garde. The film focuses on Antoinette point of view throughout all her adventures and difficulties. She was the character with whom the viewer identified with the most, her observation were the most important (aside from the audience). Therefore there were many close ups and high lighting on her. The film also invokes the lesson that luxuries is not everything that it will not make you completely happy, which makes the audience feel somewhat sympathetic towards the queen. Coppola successfully achieves to use beautiful and extravagant cinematography to tell the story of the late Marie Antoinette. The mise-en-scene of the film that will be discussed is setting, costume, lighting and figure behavior.
The first impression of the title, Some Like It Hot, directed by Billy Wilder, led me to think of it as an erotic pornography. However, this classic film turns out to be more than 50 years old and the era’s sexy symbol Marilyn Monroe star in the film as one of the main characters. The film, Some Like It Hot, was made in 1959, way before I was born; therefore I expected it to be rather old-fashioned, watching it in the 21st century. However, it aroused my appetite through its black-and-white effect and the tight and unpredictable story line. As for me, rooting from a different culture, recognized and heard about Marilyn Monroe, but did not have a concrete chance to watch a film that she starred in. I was incredibly fascinated to hear and watch the prominent movie star, Marilyn Monroe’s voice and appearance through the film. In the film, Some Like It Hot, I realized why Marilyn Monroe was the era’s leading heartthrob; she had a naïve and pure voice with chastity on top. Moreover, I could not believe how at the age of 37, Marilyn Monroe could boast the immense allure to the audience. Although this film was made over 50 years ago, the trump card of this film’s long run success roots from the black-and-white effect, the unusual approach of sex disguise, and the unleash of tradition or rules of a comedy film in the 1950s.
In literature the protagonists who are usually the most interesting characters in texts are the flawed ones. They help us understand ourselves as humans, but also the ideas of the text. The protagonists in both A streetcar Named Desire and The Metamorphosis are flawed in some way. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennesse Williams gives the main characters of the story tragic flaws, which ultimately bring them down. Blanche DuBois own tragic flaws joined with Stanley Kowalski’s, which eventually lead Blanche to her downfall. In The Metamorphosis, Gregor both as a man and an insect he accepts the hardships he has to face without complaint. When he has first transformed into an insect, he does complain about his condition, he rather quickly accepts that he has become a bug and tries to continue his life normally in his new condition.
Don't expect anything linear when it comes out of the insubordinate, tortuous mind of the Canadian cult filmmaker Guy Maddin, who in his last sumptuously demented tale, “The Forbidden Room”, had the contribution of the newcomer Evan Johnson as co-writer and co-director. As in the majority of his past works, the film masterfully evokes the black-and-white silent classics and Technicolor fantasies in order to create a layered story that despite the numerous sinister characters and baffling interactions among them, can be summarized as a man desperately looking for a woman. A jocose spirit is present since its very beginning when a man wearing a robe discourses about how to take a bath. This hilarious little dissertation leads us to the central
Bonandella, P. (2010), Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present (3rd edn), London: The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
Two prominent modern film directors have brought Emma Bovary's story to the screen--Vincente Minnelli in 1949 and, more recently, Claude Chabrol in 1992. This paper will study these two versions of Flaubert's novel and how each director employs and manipulates the medium of film to bring a work of fiction to the screen.
Classical film narratives can present the constructed images of a woman as natural, realistic and attractive. This is the illusionism of classic cinema. Mulvey solves the ways in which narrative and visual techniques in cinema make scopophilia into an exclusively male privilege. Within the narrative of the film, male characters direct their gaze towards female characters. The audience is made to identify with the male actor in the film. The targeting audience for this type of film are heterosexual males.
Vincent van Gogh, one of the most inspiring artists to both the world and on a personal level. Being a fan of his artwork, it was an easy choice to decide to watch the film Lust for Life, which portrayed Mr. Gogh’s life through the good, and through the not so good. While watching the film, I learned more about Vincent than I could have imagined a movie could represent. The movie was a marvel and it really showed how Vincent was an amazing artist, even though he might not have been the best human in terms of health. For the entirety of the paper, the following content, unless otherwise stated, will come directly from the movie Lust for Life by Vincent Minnelli (1965).
At the moment of contact—specifically handholding— Moreau engages, has a moment of realization, resists, and then—to some degree, acquiesces. However the scenes, while both so vividly physical, are radically different in tone and narrative significance. This difference is initiated by the decisions Moreau makes prior to the scene —the germinal “thought (that) go(es) on beforehand”—and is carried out by actions enabled by commitment to functioning in the present moment, the moment of performance. The emotions expressed by here intense physical presence, are delivered subtly, but in such consistent abundance, that her acting appears profoundly fluid. It is perhaps for this reason, in part, that Moreau’s portrayals of feminine love are so consistently associated, in these films and others, with floods, fluids, at fluidity
Life is a never-ending metamorphosis. It is always changing, always transforming. Sometimes a change is followed by positive results, but on the darker side, a metamorphosis can lead to damage or suffering. But of course, the concept of metamorphosis can also be related into the wonderful yet unrealistic world of magic and sorcery. Metamorphosis can mean a rapid transformation from one object to another or a distinct or even degenerative change in appearance, personality, condition, or function. The concept of metamorphosis is commonly used in pieces of literature to describe an extreme change in character or form.