In The French Connection, two New York detectives, Popeye Doyle, played by Gene Hackman, and Cloudy Russo, played by Roy Scheider, are trying to stop a heroin shipment coming from France. (TMC) The film is well-known, not only for being a favorite crime movie among many, but also for the awards and nominations it received for cinematography and editing. (IMDB) The cinematography and editing in The French Connection gives the film almost a documentary feel and helps to establish a contrast between Popeye Doyle, the short-tempered, yet hard-working and dedicated police officer, and Alain Charnier, a smooth-talking gentleman who also happens to be a criminal and one of the largest drug suppliers to North America. (IMDB) In the opening scene of The French Connection, a man is seen following the drug lord, Alain Charnier. The camera angles change as the man follows Alain Charnier through the French city of Marseilles, and the viewer sees the man following Charnier, the surrounding environment, and Charnier realizing that he is being followed. As the man follows Charnier, some of the camera angles focus on what he sees. For example, before Charnier shoots the man, the camera focuses on the gun and the bullet being shot out of the …show more content…
As Popeye watches them, the camera shot is close and tight to his face, showing almost a look of disgust as he watches the group of mobsters frivolously spend their money that they most likely got through some type of crime. Alain Charnier has power, even in New York, while he is in France. He gets people to work for him and do what he wants, even though it is wrong. Both Charnier and Popeye have power, but Popeye looks at the ones giving into Charnier for money in disgusts and wants to be nothing like them, but rather do what is
In his book The French Revolution, William Doyle talks about the king’s power before the The French Revolution. Doyle explains that the king has an absolute monarchy over the citizens in France. An absolute monarchy is when a king or queen has full control over his citizens. The king is the judge, jury, and the executioner for his people. Whatever the king decides goes, no one has a say in what he has decided on. There are several examples that Doyle talks about in his book that shows how King Louis the 16th had an absolute monarchy over his citizens before 1787.
Film Noir, as Paul Schrader integrates in his essay ‘Notes on Film Noir,’ reflects a marked phase in the history of films denoting a peculiar style observed during that period. More specifically, Film Noir is defined by intricate qualities like tone and mood, rather than generic compositions, settings and presentation. Just as ‘genre’ categorizes films on the basis of common occurrences of iconographic elements in a certain way, ‘style’ acts as the paradox that exemplifies the generality and singularity at the same time, in Film Noir, through the notion of morality. In other words, Film Noir is a genre that exquisitely entwines theme and style, and henceforth sheds light on individual difference in perception of a common phenomenon. Pertaining
Film Noir is a genre of distinct and unique characteristics. Mostly prominent in the 40s and 50s, the genre rarely skewed from the skeletal plot to which all Film Noir pictures follow. The most famous of these films is The Big Sleep (1946) directed by Howard Hawks. This film is the go to when it comes to all the genre’s clichés. This formula for film is so well known and deeply understood that it is often a target for satire. This is what the Coen brothers did with 1998’s The Big Lebowski. This film follows to the T what Film Noir stands for.
Money rules the world. Sometimes money’s influence can be damaging. Without responsibility, the power of money can be abused, and this abuse may lead to corruption. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the character Tom Buchanan is a good example of how money corrupts, since he never has to face the consequences of his bad decisions and actions since his money lets him get away with everything.
Janey Place and Lowell Peterson article “Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir” establishes noir as a visual style and not a ...
Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby provides some excellent examples of power. Many characters in this book that are continually going through a power struggle which, in the end, shows the true nature of power and what it is. The character Jay Gatsby is a prime example found in this book. Gatsby is young and considerably wealthy resident of West Egg (West Egg is an area where people are new to wealth and East Egg is old money. The residents of East Egg have grown up in luxury and are very materialistic.). Every Saturday evening, Jay Ga...
Classic film noir originated after World War II. This is the time where post World War II pessimism, anxiety, and suspicion was taking the world by storm. Many films that were released in the U.S. Between 1939s and 1940s were considered propaganda films that were designed for entertainment during the Depression and World War II. During the 1930s many German and Europeans immigrated to the U.S. and helped the American film industry with powerf...
In Orson Welles’ classic film noir production Touch of Evil, a Mexican police officer named Mike Vargas (Charlton Heston), becomes the target of an American police officer named Hank Quinlin (Orson Welles), when Vargas attempts to expose Quinlin framing a murder suspect. Quinlin, a celebrity among police officers has become corrupt in his practices and is willing to go any lengths including committing murder to uphold his reputation. Vargas is an honest man who faces Quinlin’s corruption to protect the rights of the accused. In doing so, he puts his wife in danger, who ends up the victim of a plot against Vargas. Although Vargas appears to be the hero, the viewer experiences frustration with his character due to his negligence concerning his wife. Caught between the accuser and the accused, American deputy Pete Menzies (Joseph Calleia) is loyal to Quinlin but later helps Vargas when the truth is revealed.
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 Godfather is the “dark-side of the American dream story” (Turan, pp2). The film follows the practices of a fictional Italian mafia family, the Corleone’s. Though most Americans do not condone the practices of the Italian mafia, they cannot deny that Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather is a cinematic masterpiece. This film gave insight to a mysterious way of life that the average person does not have knowledge of. As the audience is educated about the mafia they also are introduced to many stereotypes.
The camera is more still and focused on Jules as he intimidates the men inside whereas before when it was casual, the camera is loosely following the two down the hallway. This brings a whole new level of tension to the scene and Jules draws out what the men in the apartment know and what we as the audience know to be inevitable; that the men were going to be killed. For a lack of a better term, Jules was shooting the shit, taking bites out of the man’s burger and it really makes him seem like a confident and cool gangster, that this wasn’t his first time nor will it be his last. But he mentions something in passing as he eats the burger, that his girlfriend is a vegetarian and that by extension, he is as well. This humanizes Jules by hinting that within his relationship, outside of his work as a gangster, he has a normal life with a partner. More so, he isn’t in control of his relationship like he is of the situation at hand. We feel the tension rise as Jules delivers his speech, a verse he has taken from the bible that he recites every time before he executes someone. The verse ends with, “And I will strike down with great vengeance and furious anger, those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee” and they shoot two of the men in the apartment. The scene begins to pulse with a red glow, adding to the chaos of the scene, symbolizing almost a heartbeat stopping and eyelids closing in death. However, by chance, a man that was hiding in the bathroom pops out and unloads a clip at both Jules and Vincent but misses every single shot. Jules is convinced it was divine intervention and that his existence was deemed important enough by God to have
The movie first takes place at the Académie du Vin wine shop in Paris, Steven Spurrier a sommelier and self-righteously British snob owner of the establishment. Maurice Cantavale seems to be the only customer; he is an American owner of the travel agent from next door. His business neighbor has daily conversation discusses how adding some American wine labels to his inventory would help indulge the P...
This is what makes La Haine such a monumental piece in French Cinema and politics alike. Released twenty years ago and intended to be a snapshot in time of the current state of France’s lower classes, La Haine is in many ways more relevant today than it was at the time of its release. Between the turmoil of the recent terrorist situations and the ongoing illegal policing, the suburban communes of France are in a progressively worsening state of disorder. Police are being forced into higher workloads because of the crises, and targeted populations are responding with anger and violence. In the past month alone, the police themselves has begun protesting after months of increased lawlessness in the slums of major French cities.(24, France) The ability for France to control its own people seems to be rapidly wearing away and in the pivotal last few months before France’s election, the fact that figureheads such as former president Nicolas Sarkozy have made claims to have “never seen such an erosion of authority in this country,” (Growing Police Protests) put into perspective the events detailed in La Haine. Twenty years ago, the people saw for the first time how the banlieues were suffering: today, they threaten to burst into
As a result, the best and most efficient way to analyze this film is to compare and contrast two characters that are central to the theme of the film: Comte de Reynaud and Vianne
The film is taking place in Paris. Samy Naceri is playing the lead-ing role as Daniel. Daniel is an illegal taxi driver, because he hasn’t any driver license. In the intro to the film he is overtaking Jean-Louis Schlesser (former worlds best rally driver) and drives a lot faster than him, because he had a woman should who bear, on the backseat. Daniel has a girlfriend called Lily. She had invited Daniel for dinner, so the parents could see him. Her fa-ther is an army man. Under the dinner the father tells some long stories about his experiences in a war. Suddenly the red telephone rings, and he had to go to the airport to meet the Japanese Minister of Defence. The father had a chauffeur who should pick him up, but the chauffeur were involved in a car accident on the way, and Daniel must drive him to the airport. In the airport Daniel meets Émilien (Frédéric Diefenthal) and Chief Inspector Gibert (Ber-nard Farcy) who he already knows from Taxi 1. The Japanese Minister of Defence was coming to France to see a French project to fight against the crime, because Japan had some problems with the yakuza (the Japanese ma-fia). The French police had planned a tour in Paris, with some planned crime factors. But the yakuza is also making a factor and is kidnapping the Japanese Minister of Defence. Then they together are trying to get the Japanese Minis-ter of Defence back. At last they succeed, and everything is fine.