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Film cultural analysis
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Films are usually developed for several reasons. Most film writers and directors come up with films that present or represent certain thematic and topical issues that they have in mind. These issues may be meant for entertainment purpose as well as educative purposes. It is essential to note that films usually carry societal connotations (Guynn 127). They depict the desires and pains of people within the society. They capture lifestyles, cultures, and political issues, social and economic issues among others. Cinematic and narrative elements of movies together with other stylistic devices help to bring out the intended meaning or outcome. Modern filmmakers have creatively used various aspects that show events that depict historical growth of particular nations. These films show the reasons why certain historical aspects have faded away or have remained and why they hold particular importance to those nations. Au Revoir les Enfantes also known as Goodbye Children is about a French boarding school that is under the administration of priests (Everett 49). The school seems to be a place of protection where people enjoyed peace and harmony until a new student gets into the school. The new student was allocated a room, which he could share with a student who was top in his class. Despite the fact that they became rivals at their first contact, they later form an inseparable bond linked by a shared secret. They became friends one night when they got lost in the woods and are rescued by German soldiers. The soldiers wrapped them in blankets and drove them back to school. The film was written and directed by Louis Malle. It was produced in the year 1987 (Everett 49). The movie is based on an event that happened in January 1944. Louis... ... middle of paper ... ...pened in particular countries. They achieve this through cinematic and narrative conventions. They depict class struggles in these historical periods. The films are used as representative of national cinematic history, such as Rossellini and Vittorio being used as representative of Italian neo-realists. Autobiographical elements have also been used to authenticate the thematic development of the films. Louis Malle used his autobiographical elements to influence the themes of Au Revoir les Enfantes. They represent a realistic version of the fiction film. Therefore, the above films clearly show that films can be important aspects when studying the historical information of particular nations. This is because the films can be used to pass information from one generation to another. Therefore, they are essential tools in the representation of historical information.
Furthermore, the weather illustrated within the scene, is of a lifeless and malicious coldness. Resulting in a tense, hopeless, and somber mood, that creates and eery silence, that consumes the very little light and hope within each man, women, and child's soul. Meanwhile, Jean and 3 other boys walk sullenly and imprisoned , as if each step brings them closer to valley of death, and Jean and Julien pear unemotionally into each other's eyes, knowing it would be the last shared moment between them. However they did not share a single word, because no word could tangibly express, calm, or change the situation, all they could do was look at each other with the deepest of friendship in their eyes, and dream that someday light would liberate their spirits. Lastly, as the viewer of this memorable film, I must say it profoundly impacted and provoked emotional responses within me. It left me with a saturated feeling of hopelessness, and gloominess; that I struggled to ponder and empathize with, which in my humble opinion is the rarest and most sought after imprint, a writer could want a viewer to feel. Because unlike most tragic films, Au Revoir les Enfants successfully transferred the feeling of the characters and of the writer, to the
Film is an important source. There are hundreds of movies made during the course of a year. A lot of themes are explored and conclusions are drawn. History is a major subject in film,
Every film can be related back to socially significant issues that occurred during the time it was released. It’s a snapshot of the issues during that time period. Film is not created in a vacuum. As described in our textbook, film “Conveys “the temper of an age of a nation” as well as that of the artists who produces it” (Belton 22). Films tend to reflect current society, country ideals or beliefs in order for the audience to relate. Some of those techniques used include, the American dream, family, corruption, divorce, and crime. If a director decides not include current social issues than it becomes harder for an audience to relate to the film because they will not be able to connect to the characters and get into their shoes. One film that encompasses all of these current social issues is American Hustle (David O. Russell, 2013). This film is a melodrama because of the context and social issues this film deals with. American Hustle has a social significance to today’s current culture, society, beliefs and social issues through the use of the American dream, corruption, divorce, crime and family.
Films are necessary in our time period because the human eye can articulate the message intended through sight allowing visual imagination to occur. In the book, world 2 by Max Brooks, he creates a character by the name Roy Elliot who was a former movie director. Roy Elliot manages to make a movie titled “Victory at Avalon: The Battle of the Five Colleges” and some how it goes viral. Similarly, Frank Capra’s film, “Why we Fight” expresses a sense of understanding the meaning of wars. Films do not inevitably portray truth because they display what the film director views as important and beneficial for people to know.
Many devices such as theme, subject and meaning reflect different aspects of a film. The time and place that the movie is made are usually affected but this.
In 1922, Benito Mussolini became the official head of the Fascist regime in Italy. Mussolini is quoted as saying, “the cinema is the most powerful weapon”, although his government did not immediately interfere with the commercial industry (Bondanella, pg. 22). It was not until 1934, under the director Luigi Freddi, that fascism became greatly involved in Italian cinema. However, after the end of World War II and the fall of fascism, Italians wanted to forget about the Fascist years so many of the films made during this period ignored or lost. Of the more than seven hundred films made during this period, only a tiny amount had any real fascist propaganda. Directors as well wanted to move forward and depict a more realist view of Italian life after World War II. Here starts the beginning of the neorealist movement of Italian cinema based on the everyday conditions of many Italian citizens after the decline of Fascism.
Nevertheless Italian NeoRealism was essential to Italy’s film industry at the time the war ended and while Europe was recovering from the war. Its impact on modern film has been monumental, not only in Italian film but also on French New Wave cinema, and ultimately on films all over the world.
According to historians like Neil Burch, the primitive period of the film industry, at the turn of the 20th century was making films that appealed to their audiences due to the simple story. A non-fiction narrative, single shots a burgeoning sense
Since the creation of films, their main goal was to appeal to mass audiences. However, once, the viewer looks past the appearance of films, the viewer realizes that the all-important purpose of films is to serve as a bridge connecting countries, cultures, and languages. This is because if you compare any two films that are from a foreign country or spoken in another language, there is the possibility of a connection between the two because of the fact that they have a universal understanding or interpretation. This is true for the French New Wave films Contempt and Breathless directed by Jean-Luc Godard, and contemporary Indian films Earth and Water directed by Deepa Mehta. All four films portray an individual’s role in society, using sound and editing.
In Italy, post-World War II, a new film movement emerged amidst the collapse of the Mussolini regime, the desecration of a city and its historical landmarks, changes to social order and significant loss of life. Italian Neorealism embraced the harsh, impoverished and oppressive conditions being experienced by ordinary people trying to return to some normality (Film Reference 2015). Seizing an opportunity to discard popular Hollywood formula movies directors such as Roberto Rossellini, Vittoria de Sica and Luchinio Visconti shifted focus to ‘lower-class characters and their concerns, using nonprofessional actors, outdoor shooting, (necessarily) very small budgets, and a realist aesthetic’ (Criterion, 2015). While the Italian Neorealism movement
The aim of this report is to discuss Italian Neorealism (Neorealismo); looking at how the movement played a significant element in European cinema during and after the times of Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime. The report not only looks at how but why Neorealism became a growing phenomenon for filmmakers during its debatable 10 year period, and what implication of messages these Neorealist directors were trying to send out through their films. Backed up by several reliable book sources, the evidence for this report will also highlight the influences Neo-realism has created in modern filmmaking today.
The postmodern cinema emerged in the 80s and 90s as a powerfully creative force in Hollywood film-making, helping to form the historic convergence of technology, media culture and consumerism. Departing from the modernist cultural tradition grounded in the faith in historical progress, the norms of industrial society and the Enlightenment, the postmodern film is defined by its disjointed narratives, images of chaos, random violence, a dark view of the human state, death of the hero and the emphasis on technique over content. The postmodernist film accomplishes that by acquiring forms and styles from the traditional methods and mixing them together or decorating them. Thus, the postmodern film challenges the “modern” and the modernist cinema along with its inclinations. It also attempts to transform the mainstream conventions of characterization, narrative and suppresses the audience suspension of disbelief. The postmodern cinema often rejects modernist conventions by manipulating and maneuvering with conventions such as space, time and story-telling. Furthermore, it rejects the traditional “grand-narratives” and totalizing forms such as war, history, love and utopian visions of reality. Instead, it is heavily aimed to create constructed fictions and subjective idealisms.
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...
From now on I will look out for any film language used in a film as
‘Then came the films’; writes the German cultural theorist Walter Benjamin, evoking the arrival of a powerful new art form at the end of 19th century. By this statement, he tried to explain that films were not just another visual medium, but it has a clear differentiation from all previous mediums of visual culture.