This analysis observes the opening scene of the Coen brother’s film No Country for Old Men (2007), a neo-noir crime thriller set in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The film does conform to classic Hollywood style in that the story is character-centered and plot and narrative change to serve character exposition. As well as the character’s actions changing plot and narrative and that style is subservient to the story as the ultimate goal is to develop a fictional world that is perceived as real, as Bordwell put it the classic Hollywood style should be “seamless” and “style-less” (Bordwell, 1988). But does have Post-classical influences such as lack of musical score and modern editing techniques and special effects. The film opens with a very short simple …show more content…
credit sequence showing the production company (Paramount a major Hollywood studio in the past and today) and the title of the film (10s). The credits are in white writing on a black background accompanied with silence. Then the distinctive voice of Tommy Lee Jones (Ed Tom Bell) starts a narration over establishing shots of a desert, reminiscent of a western but with a modern, slightly darker tone opposed to a classic western’s dramatic attention grabbing nature. The narration talks about his father and grandfather both sheriffs before him and how they’d deal with the situations he deals with now this links to the title “No Country for Old Men” expressing how the times have changed and the world is too violent now. He states “some of the old time sheriffs never even wore a gun” this contrasts with the brutal violence displayed by Bardem later which highlights the need for guns and proves the point the title makes. The two driving forces of this film are Javier Bardem (Anton Chigurh) and Tommy Lee Jones (Ed Tom Bell). Although in this scene there is an interesting juxtaposition between these characters. Jones’ Bell is heard and not seen, suggesting his power comes from his intellectual side, his words are his weapon and physicality is not important to his character. Whereas Bardem’s Chigurh has no lines in this sequence but is strikingly visible, he has a quiet, uneasy, authoritative power even while being arrested. The audience is immediately wary of him and their suspicions are confirmed when he murders the police officer. This is also the first time we get a clear look at his face as it was previously out of focus or he was shot with light from behind as just a silhouette which added even more to the mystery of his character. The performance of Bardem is masterful in this role as he convincingly plays a psychopath serial killer using the lack of emotion in his face and eyes. Costume design is interesting as Chigurh wears all black in a world dominated by light browns and greys this could suggest his darker nature as his role of antagonist in the film although there isn’t necessarily a ‘good’ counterpart to match him.
Lighting contributes to this idea as he is repeatedly shown as out of focus or silhouetted or from behind so his features are blacked out, this conveys an unnatural tone about his person as Belton puts it “Lighting becomes an extension of the character’s psychological makeup into the surrounding space” (Belton, 2013). This use of Low-key lighting is stereotypical of the thriller genre and the Coen’s use it to their advantage to attribute an air of mystery to Chigurh. The key light in the outdoor scenes is obviously the sun but the Coen’s do not adhere to the convention of reflecting panels to allow light to come from underneath as it does in many old westerns, they adopt a more realistic approach allowing shadows to fall where they may but utilizing positioning to keep Bardem in the dark. Once the characters are in the car they manipulate the lighting again having the “sun” fall on the officer and not Bardem. Once inside the Police station the dimly lit electric lighting replaces the sun as the key light. Which portrays a dimly lit, unpleasant environment perfect for the grappling fight that is about to …show more content…
happen. The use of diegetic sound helps create a tense atmosphere throughout the sequence, the wind throughout the opening montage paired with Tommy Lee Jones’ narration sets the scene of a New Mexico desert and provides the audience with exposition. The lack of a musical score or soundtrack allows the audience to focus more on the action of the scene without being manipulated to feel a certain way. Also each sound that comes from a movement seems deliberate and punchy Chigurh’s footsteps sound menacing, the grunts of the officer are the only noises in a silent world as they die out making the pair feel isolated and alone. Sound is used repeatedly to bridge shots, connecting them together without having to convey a visual connection. There’s a distinct lack of dialogue due to Chigurh which re-enforces his character. The establishing shots set the scene and style for the rest of the film, the progression between each shot show’s more and more light invading the world depicting a dawning. The use of iconography such as mountains, deserts, fence posts, and overgrown grass conveys a style evocative of a classic western but modernized through characters and plot. Close ups are used several times to show the importance of an item such as the pressurized air canister in the car or to highlight emotion or distress seen on both Chigurh and the officer during their struggle, or to show pain through the birds eye view shot of the handcuffs and washing his wrists in the sink. A close-up is used as an indicator to the audience to pay attention or to show that something’s important. During the struggle the camera changes to a low angled shot which shows how Chigurh has all the power which juxtaposes amusingly with the officers last words “I got it under control” immediately preceding his brutal death. There are several fast paced straight cuts during the struggle to show the intensity and quickness of the murder. Michael Curtiz’s seminal film Casablanca (1942) is a classic romance drama.
The film adheres to the ‘classic Hollywood style’ in which it was conceived. The story is very character centered in the two central characters of Rick Blaine (Humphry Bogart) and Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman). The film explores themes of neutrality, the past, travel, and gender specifically that of lady luck. The Film opens with a dramatic credit sequence (1m05s) showing all actors involved as well as crew members which is usually a process reserved until the end in modern Post-classical Hollywood films. The film was produced by warner Bros. who focused heavily on realism which is very important to this story. The credits are written in a Florentine cursive font evocative of the romantic
style. The film opens with a slow zoom onto a spinning globe as a narrator delivers exposition of a war torn world. The slow zoom towards Paris, France builds tension as the montage begins the narrator’s news broadcaster-esque voice gives the audience the feeling they’re watching a news bulletin off the real world and not a work of fiction. Which may have been intended as the film was made during the 2nd World War, as Dyer puts it “The aesthetic dimension of a film never exists apart from how it is conceptualized, how it is socially practiced, how it is received; it never exists floating free of historical and cultural particularity” (Dyer, 1998). The first establishing shot of Casablanca sets the scene of the Moroccan city and the slow pan down reveals the lives of locals and those fleeing from war in the bustling bazaar, the narrator’s repetition of “But the others wait in Casablanca... and wait... and wait... and wait.” Hyperbolizes the length of time spent there for would be refugee’s and tourists. The film definitely depicts an institutional mode of representation, Noel Burch suggests the key to this is a “spectatorial identification with a ubiquitous camera” (Burch, 1986) suggesting that the spectator identifies best through a single point of view in a film. In the opening sequence sound is very important. The diegetic sounds of the street and dialogue help present a verisimilitude especially during the questioning and chase sequences, the yells of the police, bystanders, and perpetrator all create a tense dramatic scene, rounded off by the Foley stage gunshot which brings the escape to an abrupt Holt. Non–diegetic sound such as the score can manipulate the audience with fast paced music to speed events up or louder or quieter to elicit sad or frightened emotions. The music swells towards the gun shot and then dies off into deep mourning melodies. The juxtaposition between the killing and the next shot of France’s motto “Liberté Égalité Fraternité” (liberty, equality, brotherhood) is unique as it shows how the world can and has become during the madness of war, as man shoots man dead in the street. The next scene with a well off couple commenting on the events also serves as exposition to the audience as the couple represents the spectator’s ignorance. The Englishman’s line “we hear very little and understand even less” displays the first comedic instance in the film used to lighten the mood after the chaotic events that preceded it, the whole exchange between the Englishman and the stranger is very comedic and that after being warned about the “vultures” in Casablanca the Englishman finds his wallet has been stolen by the “amusing little man”. A lot of exposition is delivered in so few lines here such as the police capture “refugees, liberals, and beautiful young girls for Mr. Reynold” a simple line such as this conveys the corruptness of Casablanca exquisitely. Interestingly in this opening sequence neither the protagonist Rick nor love interest Isla is seen or mentioned and the opening is entirely devoted to the establishing the setting. Casablanca is seen as a character itself in this film. The city is living and breathing with its influx of occupants and the story is about what happens there and not the people themselves but the magic of a small neutral Moroccan city in the midst of a world war.
The entire movie is littered with anxiety. The movie makes you anxious as to what may happen next. This primary example is the scene where Skeeter ask Aibileen to tell her personal stories for the book Skeeter is writing. This rose a very serious anxiety in both women. Skeeter also found other maids to also share their personal stories. This scenario caused extreme anxiety because in that day and time if you were to publish or talk about what the maids have to endure, you could be prosecuted or maybe even killed.
The movie “Cotton Road” is about the way American grown cotton that is sold to China and then made into products that are sold back to America for the publics use. The movie also shares the perspectives of multiple people involve in the “Cotton Road” from the growing of the cotton to the transportation to China, and the transformation from raw cotton to clothing products. The cotton is grown on a farm in South Carolina, and there are perspectives given of that farm owner and the main farm worker. When in China there are perspectives given from dock employees, transporters and cotton factory works such as the cook, fabric imperfection checker, and main clothing maker. I was shocked to see what happens and the hardships that occur in this
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...
The movie Older Than America is an informational narrative of the treatment of indigenous people in the United States. The fourth cinema is a movement in which people of indigenous backgrounds tell the stories of their people, in a realistic and less Hollywood style. The Movie, Older Than America, is set both in the present and in the recent past, and explores the conflict of identity which plagues many native people. It poses the question; does it wipe the war paint off the lens? My answer to that is yes, it more than scratches the surface of the mistreatment of “Human Beings” by Euro-Americans. The demonization of the Catholic Church, and its duplicity in the abuse of its power over helpless children was the overriding story in this film. In this film the Catholic Church is representative of the United States
In the classical Western and Noir films, narrative is driven by the action of a male protagonist towards a clearly defined, relatable goal. Any lack of motivation or action on the part of the protagonist problematizes the classical association between masculinity and action. Due to inherent genre expectations, this crisis of action is equivalent to a crisis of masculinity. Because these genres are structured around male action, the crises of action and masculinity impose a crisis of genre. In the absence of traditional narrative elements and character tropes, these films can only identify as members of their genres through saturation with otherwise empty genre symbols. The equivalency between the crises of genre and masculinity frames this symbol saturation as a sort of compensatory masculine posturing.
Silas Lynch, who is presented as the antithesis of Ben Cameron and the main villain of the film, represents the dangers of letting a black person have freedom and power. Lynch, who has been told by Austin Stoneman that he can be the equal of any white man, uses his new political influence to terrorize the white population of Piedmont, and to supplant his black biased agenda over the traditions of the south. In one of the more outrageous scenes of the film, Lynch’s black supporters actually block white voters from reaching the ballot box during an election, effectively denying the historical struggle of African American voters to gain proper suffrage rights by reversing the roles in the film. This scene is also used to make the viewer feel sympathetic toward the Ku Klux Klan when they deny African Americans the ability to vote at the end of the film. At the beginning of the reconstruction period, Ben Cameron feels powerless and frustrated.
The American film industry’s early attempts at the narrative Western were limited and in the early years were produced mainly in the east. During this early time in the film industry the...
"The Breakfast Club" begins with an old dramatic standby. You isolate a group of people in a room, you have them talk, and eventually they exchange truths about themselves and come to new understandings. William Saroyan and Eugene O'Neill have been here before, but they used saloons and drunks. "The Breakfast Club" uses a high school library and five teenage kids.
Gender and the portrayal of gender roles in a film is an intriguing topic. It is interesting to uncover the way women have been idealized in our films, which mirrors the sentiments of the society of that period in time. Consequently, the thesis of this essay is a feminist approach that seeks to compare and contrast the gender roles of two films. The selected films are A few Good Men and Some Like it Hot.
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 movie I decided to analyze for this course was American History X (1998), which stars Edward Norton. Though this movie isn’t widely known, it is one of the more interesting movies I have seen. It’s probably one of the best films that depict the Neo Nazi plague on American culture. The film takes place from the mid to late 1990’s during the Internet boom, and touches on subjects from affirmative action to Rodney King. One of the highlights of this movie that really relates to one of the key aspects of this course is the deterrence of capital punishment. Edward Norton’s portrayal as the grief stricken older brother who turns to racist ideologies and violence to cope with his fathers death, completely disregards the consequences of his actions as he brutally murders someone in front of his family for trying to steal his car. The unstable mentality that he developed after his father’s death really goes hand-to-hand specifically with Isaac Ehrlich’s study of capital punishment and deterrence. Although this movie is entirely fictional, a lot of the central themes (racism, crime punishment, gang pervasiveness, and one’s own vulnerability) are accurate representations of the very problems that essentially afflict us as a society.
Barsam, Richard. Looking at Movies An Introduction to Film, Second Edition (Set with DVD). New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Print.
In this essay the following will be discussed; the change from the age of classical Hollywood film making to the new Hollywood era, the influence of European film making in American films from Martin Scorsese and how the film Taxi Driver shows the innovative and fresh techniques of this ‘New Hollywood Cinema’.
12 ANGRY MEN, is basically a story play written for broadcast on CBS in 1954 by an American playwright Reginald Rose. In 1957, Rose finished the screenplay for the movie version, which was co-produced by him and Henry Fonda (Juror#8). The movie was directed by Sydney Lumet. This movie was nominated for many awards like Academy awards for Best Picture, Best Director and Best writing, Screenplay based on Material from another Medium, and an Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay from Mystery Writers of America.
During the course of this essay it is my intention to discuss the differences between Classical Hollywood and post-Classical Hollywood. Although these terms refer to theoretical movements of which they are not definitive it is my goal to show that they are applicable in a broad way to a cinema tradition that dominated Hollywood production between 1916 and 1960 and which also pervaded Western Mainstream Cinema (Classical Hollywood or Classic Narrative Cinema) and to the movement and changes that came about following this time period (Post-Classical or New Hollywood). I intend to do this by first analysing and defining aspects of Classical Hollywood and having done that, examining post classical at which time the relationship between them will become evident. It is my intention to reference films from both movements and also published texts relative to the subject matter. In order to illustrate the structures involved I will be writing about the subjects of genre and genre transformation, the representation of gender, postmodernism and the relationship between style, form and content.