Tension in David Lean's Great Expectations

Tension in David Lean's Great Expectations

In this essay I will be analysing the opening scene of David Lean's

version of 'Great Expectations' to see how tension is brought to the

screen. Great Expectations is a novel wrote by Charles Dickens in 1861

but set in 1812. The film version I will be analysing was produced in

1945.

In the scene I will be analysing, it shows a young boy, Pip visiting

the grave of his parents. While Pip is in the graveyard an escaped

convict grabs him and questions Pip and when he finds out that he is

living with a blacksmith he demands Pip to get him a file so he can

free himself and some "whittles" which are scraps of food. The scene

ends with Pip running off home. I will also be analysing the opening

credits and the short section where Pip as an elder reads the first

paragraph from the novel out to explain who he is. The techniques I

will be analysing in this scene are mise en scene, camera angles,

sound and lighting.

The first of these I will be analysing is mise en scene. Mise en scene

is everything that is put into the scene. This can make a big

difference to the signals we receive and can make us interpret the

scene in a set way. The first scene is set in a graveyard on a

deserted marsh land area; both of these settings are very spooky and

often associated with bad things. This immediately gets you on edge.

On one of the trees in the grave yard there appears to be a face this

gives you a felling that this place is strange and something is likely

to happen. The way Pip enters the graveyard shows that the place is

somewhere he doesn't want to be in. this is as he runs into the

graveyard and wh...

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...ll the effects he uses work very well to

give the viewer that effect that something is going to happen. I feel

all the techniques are needed in order to get the effect it does,

without the use of one of them they wouldn't be as effective. All the

techniques used create a spooky and frightening atmosphere and when

this is the atmosphere tension gets built up automatically. If I were

directing this movie I would build it up slower so the audience will

be more interested in what is going to happen and the tension will be

even greater. Apart from that I think everything is very good maybe I

would have the sight of Magwitch in the bushes to get people more

involved with it or have the sound of his chains rustling and Pip

looking around to see what it is. Then when Pip tries to run a way

Magwitch would jump out and stop him.