The analytical system of spouses Kristin Thompson (film theorist) and David Bordwell (film historian) considers the common types of films, principles and styles of the narrative and the non-narrative form of basic film techniques, and strategies of writing about films. It also puts film art in the context of changes across history. Their book Film Art: An Introduction is a survey of film as an art form. Bordwell and Thomas try to show how the whole film is the most relevant and forthcoming context for understanding how and why the techniques work. It is not enough to just establish low angles or a match-on-action; we have to fathom what they’re performing in the scene, and the roles they play throughout the entire movie. The book also introduces …show more content…
Taking this into consideration, I turn to the film Edward Scissorhands. This film is a 1990 American romantic dark fantasy film. Edward Scissorhands was directed by Tim Burton and starred Johnny Depp. The film displays the story of an unreal man named Edward, an unfinished invention who has scissors for hands. Edward is adopted into a suburban household and falls in love with their teenage daughter, Kim. The character Edward Scissorhands was physically made by a very old creator. The inventor gave him everything but one thing: hands. Unfortunately, the inventor died before Edward could be wholly completed. Seventeen years later, an lady named Peg Boggs finds Edward and brings him to a colourful homeland called …show more content…
Edward is ironically the most ordinary person in the movie and it is the unhinged town’s people who are the evil, which only results in his loss of naivety. Kim and Edward share a final kiss and then she goes, telling the town’s people that he passed away as well as Jim. While the question plays for a preferred happily ever after ending, Burton finishes the film the only way it could have gone, with Edward unaccompanied yet again but still sharing his artistic ability with the snow as he constructs from his ice sculptures. Viewers may question why Kim did not leave with him earlier, but that could have taken away from the bittersweet fairytale ending of the story. “ Artwork cues us to perform a specific activity. Without the artwork's prompting, we couldn 't start the process or keep it going. Without our playing along and picking up the cues, the
Edward would make topiary for every neighbor, give them haircuts, and groom their pets. Before this, Peg’s daughter, Kim, finds Edward in her bed. Edward had seen pictures of Kim and she had instantly become of Edward’s interest.
He is quite committed to the goal of rebuilding Spectre at this point, but having to gather the money and supervise the rebuilding did not allow him to contact his family, drawing him ever closer to an affair, and just distracting the problems he faced, allowing them to accumulate, as shown in the lake. Strangely the family of Edward seems to understand that water is his life. In many of the scenes where Edward is dying, they are quite observant of his water levels. When Edward submerges himself in water in his bathtub, Sandra cries, ‘I don’t think I’ll ever dry out.’. By immersing himself in water, Edward shows he is trying to hang on to the fragments of life he has left, and Sandra shows her reluctant understanding. In the last scene Ed is alive, we see him refuse a cup of water offered by his son, and ultimately make up with Will through a story they both create. His refusal of the glass of water is his acceptance of death, and seeing as how he prioritised a story he shared with his son, he most likely only lived those past years to try to reconcile with him - something only understood after realising the importance of water as a symbol in this
Edward stares at the images of Kim before turning to look at Peggy talk and then gazes back at them again. The way he can’t stop looking at her indicates how Edward admires the young girl. When Peggy starts chatting about how Kim went to the high school prom with her boyfriend, Edward is in a world of his own. He concentrates on her face in the picture of the couple at their prom. Edward gazes at her pictures like she is the most fascinating person ever. Since Edward lived in the mansion with the inventor and unaccompanied for so long it is interesting to see his reaction to Kim. Furthermore, his infatuation with Kim just after seeing her pictures goes to confirm how isolated he is from
Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein is about a creature born in an unaccepting world. Shelley's idea of Gothicism changed the subgenre of horror, due to its dark look into nature. It became an influence on Tim Burton's movie Edward Scissorhands, moved by the sadness of the creature trying to fit into society, he creates a monster of his own. Mary Shelley and Tim Burton use literary and cinematic elements to show that isolation from society can destroy your relationship with others.
When auteurs craft their work, they provide themes to the audience. These may be about love, death, or the importance for family, among other things. They use these themes to provoke an emotional response within an audience, or send home a message to the viewer. Edward Scissorhands is certainly a prime example of showing how themes influence a film. The themes that Tim Burton addresses in Edward Scissorhands are those of the connections that we have with other people, and the relationships and the bonds that we form with them. Non-conformity is used in the film as a highly prioritised theme, as well as the importance of friendship and the portrayed innocence that Johnny Depp's character reveals to us. Through this film, the themes of relationships
Individuality is rejection, whether it be a rejection of society or a rejection by society. Burton explores the consequences that can derive from rejection and how appearances may differ from reality. The work of Tim Burton consists of a unique style unlike any other. Not only do his films convey his ideas of individuality to the audience, it is done in a distinctive Burton way. Burton’s style of the formal elements of German Expressionism, gothic horror, and unique characters allow him to convey his ideas. His views of individuality are evident through the work of his film 'Edward Scissorhands' and short film 'Vincent'.
Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
From the very beginning, Edward is cast as the monster – but is he really? We first see Edward when Peg searches for the owner of a dark, ominous, gothic mansion. She climbs up a set of gigantic spiral stairs that lead to “Edward’s room”. The setting is quite dark and the only lighting is coming through a gaping hole in the roof. Her curiosity gets the better of her, and as she examines this foreign place, we can hear in the bac...
BIBLIOGRAPHY An Introduction to Film Studies Jill Nelmes (ed.) Routledge 1996 Anatomy of Film Bernard H. Dick St. Martins Press 1998 Key Concepts in Cinema Studies Susan Hayward Routledge 1996 Teach Yourself Film Studies Warren Buckland Hodder & Stoughton 1998 Interpreting the Moving Image Noel Carroll Cambridge University Press 1998 The Cinema Book Pam Cook (ed.) BFI 1985 FILMOGRAPHY All That Heaven Allows Dir. Douglas Sirk Universal 1955 Being There Dir. Hal Ashby 1979
Edward Scissorhands, written by Tim Burton, tells the tale of a young man who is lovable, childlike and sensitive, bewildered by the humanity around him, yet is terrifying- someone who has scissors, the deadly weaponry, for hands. Many viewers may read this film as a “Tim Burton” type of fairytale which includes both an alternative aspect and romance. However, through the presentation of mise-en-scene in this film, Burton drives in a much more serious subject of social criticism by establishing two different understandings of life in the movie.
Gilmour, Heather. “Journal of Film and Video.” Different, except in a Different way: Marriage, Divorce, and Gender in the Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998. 26 – 39. Print.
have an unhappy ending where we see the story end with a result of the
Although these may paint the image of eventual romantic desire, the barriers created by conflicting values, communication and idealism serve as a caution to those who idealize said films. Although visual motifs are not necessarily a pairing of iconography’s definition of “particular objects, archetypal characters and even specific actors” (Grant 12), they still hold symbolic meaning that can vary widely. Visual metaphors are utilized in both films as subtle reminders of
The film Edward Scissorhands shows how society rejects people who are different. This film directed by Tim Burton is about a boy named Edward who lives in an empty mansion. The film shows a community that is quick to judge but slow to distinguish the qualities of Edward. The people in the community are selfish and expect to receive from Edward without giving but regardless of this there are still some who love and care for him. By viewing this film the audience recognises how important it is to give someone a chance to prove themselves before judging them.
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...