The Opening Sequence of Moulin Rouge
The opening sequence of Moulin Rouge is both informative and dramatic.
It tells the story of Christian as he tells the story of the Moulin
Rouge. The bright colours and music give the impression of joy
throughout the film; this is enhanced through the use of erratic
camera movements within the Moulin Rouge. In contrast the woeful voice
of Toulouse can be heard singing the story over the top, informing the
audience that the film will also include great tragedy and sorrow.
It's lavish use of colour and mise-en-scéne work well with the
intricate use of cinematography. Every shot is carefully planned to
give the audience a preferred reading. The high angle shots of
Christian make him seem weak and vulnerable. The slow paced editing
also allows the audience to take in the surroundings, to gather
thoughts and ask questions such as; why is he crying? From the camera
angles used we feel sympathy for Christian when we learn of Satine's
death.
Consider the 'stage-setting' techniques used: the curtains of the
stage are deep red suggesting to the audience themes of love, passion,
desire and danger, stage setting for the story that is about to
unfold. The curtains are gold trimmed creating a sense of grandeur and
decadence.
Intertextuality is employed in the use of the theme music from 'The
Sound of Music'. This music is bright and celebratory and it indicates
the idealism of love. The screen is showing, in silent movie style, 'A
Bazmark Production' and this is contrasted as the music changes to
'Roxanne', and the credits change to say 'Moulin Rouge!'. The
atmosphere becomes dark; 'Roxanne' conno...
... middle of paper ...
... the typewriter. "The woman that I loved is…" there is a pause in which
Christian looks out of the window as if he is lost in thought, church
bells can be heard in the distance, and the sound of Christian crying
as he says the word "…dead". The camera cuts to a symbolic shot of the
Moulin Rouge in ruins. The audience now knows that not only is Satine
dead, everything to do with her past is dead, and Christian's life is
also in ruins.
This film is colourful, noisy and exotic. It reveals joy, tragedy,
seediness, grandeur, poverty, wealth and ambition throughout.
Decadence in the extreme. An entire gamut of human emotion and
experience. The opening sequence successfully employs music and
dramatic camera techniques to suggest to the audience the nature of
this film, which is an assault on the senses from the outset.
Jeunet’s Amelie and Ham’s Tilly enter as outcasts; who long for acceptance and normalcy from the members of their societies. The use of settings in the novel and film are used as a visual representation of Tilly and Amelie’s isolation. Tilly is “detached” at the top of the hill but able to “[see] everything”, just as Amelie is in her high positioned apartment that overlooks the unfairness in Raymond Dufayel and Lucien’s lives. They experience detachment in different ways, with Amelie growing up “deprived of playmates”, never learning the social skills necessary to enter society, and Tilly being isolated, for being “the dangerous one” and sent away from the society at a young age. They are after the approval of everyone around them as the women
In Flannery O’Connor’s fascinating essay “On Her Own Work,” she claims that what makes a story work is “probably some action, some gesture of a character that is unlike any other in the story, one which indicates where the real heart of the story lies. That would be the gesture which was both totally right and unexpected... a gesture that somehow made contact with mystery.”
Is Wally Lamb, author of She's Come Undone, "qualified" to write a first-person narrator in a female voice? After all, as a man, what does he know about women's issues? In this essay I will discuss the issue of "gender-bending" writers and discuss Mr. Lamb's use of such tool.
out of the two. 'Bend it like Beckham' was a good opening but to an
Although many movies try to recount the most important events and biggest accomplishments in history, many of them end up taking the focus away from the real impact of the historical event. Due to the need to create a movie that has drama and an attractive or complex story line. The 1995 version of the movie Pocahontas directed by Daniele Suissa focuses on Powhatan princess Matoaka, known as Pocahontas, and the events that resulted from English colonists settling in Powhatan lands. Although the movie incorporated a few important details of the actual historical event, overall, it poorly represented the lasting effects Pocahontas’s encounter with the settlers had on the history of colonial America.
Cuaron because he had to bring the film up to date by making the film
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.
...was a desperate act of a lonely, insane woman who could not bear to loose him. The structure of this story, however, is such that the important details are delivered in almost random order, without a clear road map that connects events. The ending comes as a morbid shock, until a second reading of the story reveals the carefully hidden details that foreshadow the logical conclusion.
The 1991 movie My Girl tells the story of 11-year-old Vada Sultenfuss who, having lost her mother at birth , lives with her dementia-ridden grandmother and her job-oriented father in the funeral parlour that he owns and operates. The story follows Vada, an extreme hypochondriac who has many strange misconceptions about death, through a variety of life-changing experiences, including the engagement of her father and the devastating loss of her best friend, Thomas Jay. Through these experiences, the audience witnesses Vada’s social, emotional, and intellectual growth, as well as her changing views of death.
...l awareness of these “invisible girls”. An example of her powerful writing can be seen in her encounter with the truck driver where she writes, “I said he didn’t want to do it. I said it was his choice. I said he could do it in a few minutes. I said it was his choice, ” (Veselka, 2012, p. 39.) She uses repetition and also varies her sentence lengths to grip the reader to make them feel exactly as she did in that moment 27 years ago.
Despite her exhaustion, Charlotte gathered up a pile of stationery and began to write in a refined version of her usual scrawl. "Dear Martha", she wrote, "You knew and loved me once. You do not know me now, and I am not sure that you would love me if you did… I have grown and changed wildly, darkly, strangely, beyond a mother's recognition, beyond my own."
In today’s world, men and women are perceived equally by the society. In the past, authority and control define men while women are given the characteristic of helplessness. Men are able to get hold of high positions while women usually are subservient to them. In movies, we would usually see women portray roles that are degrading due to the stereotypical notions they associate with this gender group. Moulin Rouge, a movie set during the 1900s narrates the story of a courtesan woman, Satine, as she undergoes hardships to earn money, experiences love but unfortunately, due to her irrational choices, faces tragic consequences at the end. Satine is a symbol of how women are being treated by the society during the era before post-feminism, where men have superiority over women. As the plot develops, Satine transforms from a worthless prostitute to someone who is courageous and willing to face her fears in order to attain her aspirations. Psychoanalyst theory and feminist analysis are apparent throughout the film. The male gaze, fantasy and feminism are three topics that will be covered in depth in this essay through relating it to the movie.
Mrs. Woolf begins her memoir in an easygoing, conversational manner by deliberately reaching out to her audience. She states in her first paragraph that she knows many different ways to write a memoir but for lack of time cannot begin to sift through them all and so she simply begins by relating her first memory. Stating that she is not deciding upon a set method and formalizing that she will be informal demonstrates a frame of mind directed outward; it is her attempt to involve the reader in her work. The sympathetic reader feels as if he and Woolf are chatting about her life over a cup of tea. After narrating her first memory she returns to the structure of her memoir, explaining that she could never really succeed in conveying the feelings represented by her first memory without first describing herself. She notes: "Here I come to one of the memoir writer's difficulties – one of the reason...
Brady-Syfers, Judy. "I Want a Wife." Barnet, Sylvan, et al. Literature for Composition, (Third Edition). HarperCollins Customs Books, 1993. 775-776.