Analyse the Cinematography and Camera Movements in the Film The Pianist

In the final three shots in the sequence Max is shoved through the doors in to a long corridor. He stands on a moving conveyer belt, hemmed in on either side by a line of plastic faced soldiers. Each face is a replica of the last and their hands grab him with an almost machine-like precision as they strip him of his clothes before he is shoved off the belt into a holding room. This shot is just dripping with implied meaning. The soldiers are without defining characteristics. They speak of the uniformity of the army, the lack of personality the army allows its members. They almost seem inhuman. In fact, they most look like GI Joe dolls, a plastic product of the time designed to make children fantasize about a life in the army. This resemblance is closely linked to the action they are taking- shoving a man down a conveyer belt. The allusions to consumer society and the

This paper explores the 2004 Lions Gate film Crash and the microaggressions that occur to and between the characters in the movie. The film follows the interweaving lives of several characters living in Los Angeles as they deal with racism, discrimination, relationships, and loss. Throughout the film, the characters also begin to come to terms with their own biases and prejudices. The author of this paper includes the three major types of microaggressions displayed in the film: microassault, microinsult, and microinvalidation, describes how they occurred, and the effect these microaggressions had on the victims. Possible counseling implications for each microaggression for both the perpetrator and the victim are discussed. Throughout this paper, the author’s personal feelings and thoughts related to the microaggressions, and possible implications (oppression and discrimination) of the microaggressions both intentional and unintentional are explored.

Chinatown is based on Roman Polanski’s lifeworks. Polanski’s goal is to emphasizes the meaning of how cinematography is made, and how it inspires by understanding the concept of setting, lighting, and how the image is captured. This film was released in 1974 by director of Roman Polanski to focus on private investigator J.J. Gittes, played by Jack Nicholson to investigate the elements behind the truth. Polanski’s goal is to emphasize the audience to give an ominous feeling of the main character, J.J. Gittes and his point of view by showing in color instead of black and white pictures. Due to these reasons, Polanski wanted to use Panavision to give a flawed vision about the past, which the story is set in the years of 1937. Polanski states, “a traditional detective story with a new, modern shape” for Paramount picture. (1) This paper focuses on the film Chinatown which is neo-noir, not only because of the setting, but the concept of cinematography that connects duplicates occurrences together that describe three categories: background of the cinematographer, point of view of the main character, and the interpretation of the ending scenes.

While much of the neighborhood appears on-screen in the beginning of the shot, one important thing is notably off-screen the whole time: The view from which the camera pivots. Behind the camera was the apartment of L.B. Jeffries, and the camera pans to the left, inside his window, to finish with a brief tour around his living room that teaches us his most important character traits. We see first, in an extreme close-up of a cast, that Jeffries has a broken leg. And then the camera pans left and we see why: A broken camera appears on screen, and a rack focus shift to the background shows a photograph of an automobile accident with a tire flying straight at the camera. Then several other framed photographs of exciting events appear on the screen, telling us Jeffries is a photographer who craves adventure and excitement.

Everything in the frame is in focus, which in a cinema viewing is a lot to take in, especially considering the films aspect ratio of 1.85:1. However, the audiences’ eyes are cleverly guided around the frame by almost unnaturally loud sounds, some of which are accentuated in post-production by Tati. The sounds against the floors create a reverbing echo, highlighting the absurd impracticality of the building. A man and a woman sit in the bottom left hand corner of the frame in what appears to be a waiting area. They are dressed identically in their monotonous grey colours, as if they are enslaved to the colours surrounding them. During the shot’s beginning, the audience is drawn to the nuns and their rhythmic footsteps as they enter the frame. Then, through a combination of actor gestures and dialogue, this gaze shifts to the two characters anchored in the foreground of the image. The rattling of a table being wheeled out by a man in white into the frame moves our eyes, as well as the couples own attention, to

The camera movement from one side of the street to the unknown neighbor's house illustrated how unwilling they were to listen to Will’s reasoning yet determined to inflict violence upon a presumed “terrorist family”. The previous examples revealed that with the correct camera movement you can enhance feelings, and foretell them too. In specificity to these scenes, the reoccurring slanted motion appealed to the feeling of disarray and foreshadowed the mayhem to come. While the camera movement from one house to another depicted the wrath of the mob; proves that the cam movement allowed the viewer to receive a better sense of what unreasonable fear the characters are feeling.

In the film ‘Crash’ directed by Paul Haggis in 2004, several lives cross paths because of an adage, ‘it’s a small world’. The characters come from different backgrounds and social class, consequence, the underlying tone of race is presented in a facet which is a cause for concern. In today’s current tension infested race topic, stereotypes tend to push the notion that one’s perception of race, gender and class must be reality. The question becomes, where does an individual develop these notion and perception and does the blame belong to media and film. Looking at the movie ‘Crash’, it was nominated for over 100 awards and won 3 Oscars; impeccably depicted the intertwining of gender, race and social class that one would assume that the movie’s a depiction of reality. One may conclude that movies are responsible for the perpetual class and virtue given to the middle and upper classes only. Although Parenti’s belief that Hollywood films always attach virtue to the well-off middle and upper classes this is not always the class. Hollywood media and films are guilty of assigning privilege to some and strife to others, however the characters in the movie Crash, Brenden Fraser, Chris Bridges and Thandie Newton all form different economical classes display different types of class and virtue.

The elements of cinematography in the film include a low angle shot looking up at the farmer as he chops wood at the beginning of the scene. The shot is preceded by the infamous extreme long shot of the military convoy. The director uses close ups to capture emotions throughout the entire opening scene. Fear in the faces of the farmer’s daughters as they come face to face with the Jew Hunter. Fear in the face of the farmer when he prepares himself as the military convoy approaches. Close ups are used at the table when the confrontation looms; the camera zooms in when the farmer begins to crack under the

“The Pianist” by Wladyslaw Spilman is a extraordianry story about a man’s survival in the holocaust in Warsaw, Poland. The book explains how Szpilman survives the holocaust in Poland by hiding, escaping, and with luck. Szpilman is important to society because he explains the following topics in his perspective for them not to happen again, religious discrimination, human rights, and punishment in crimes involving genocide. Many of the issues raised by the holocaust continue to have an impact on the world today.

Discrimination, racism, classism, prejudice and more plague today’s society. These horrible issues do not affect one race, sexes, class, ethnicity, or age group; these issues affect all races, both genders, all ethnicities, and all age groups. For this film analysis, I have chosen to discuss the racism portrayed throughout a three-time Oscar award winning movie called Crash.

The Pianist is a movie that shows the life of one man, Wladyslaw Szpilman who was a popular Jewish Pole radio station pianist. In the World War II which is a background of the movie, How Szpilman suffered and how he survived are presented in the movie. While the movie portrays Szpilman’s life, it also shows how the Jewish people are dehumanized by Nazi during the war. The director, Roman Polanski, successfully uses camera angle, lighting and plot structure, and characterization to present the theme of dehumanization.

‘The Pianist’ is a cinematic masterpiece by the Polish director Roman Polanski. One of the key ideas that appear throughout much of the film is that of ‘hope being instrumental in our survival’. This idea is portrayed through Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish pianist, as he struggles for survival in Warsaw as everybody that he once knew and everything that he once had is lost. The idea of ‘hope being instrumental in our survival’ is worth learning about as it allows the audience to realise the importance of hope in todays society – and to understand how Polanski uses music to symbolise ‘hope’ for Szpilman in the film. Polanski effectively utilises an array of visual and oral text features such as music, dialogue, and lighting to build further

The use of various camera techniques such as canted frames, low-angled, high-angled and close up shots, as well as camera distance, enhances the struggle between the characters. The use of such techniques not only allows the audience to get an extensive insight into the many different characters, but also helps us understand the relationships between them and how all of these factors contribute to the overarching theme of racism in the film. The use of these camera rapid movements

Racism, prejudice and stereotyping, as the main themes of the movie, control all the sub-stories that are somehow linked to each other. Moreover, as the stories go on and events develop, it becomes possible to see how characters start to have changes in their perspective and attitude towards each other, either in a good or a bad way. An incident which can demonstrate our thesis on racism and stereotyping and how it might change in just one moment which brings people closer could be shown as the conflict between the racist police officer and the African American woman who gets harassed by him, and whose life is saved by him on the next day. The first encounter of the woman and the officer resulted with the woman

Mario Puzo’s "The Godfather" was the first and most influential gangster movie that paved the way for gangster movies of the future. The movie was directed by Frances Ford Copolla, who made many different ingenious ways to portray this gangster classic. The movie was a very subversive movie, and one of the first of all time.The Godfather has a many different uses of light settings through the whole movie, in which the movie can be interpreted on.