Analysis : A Fist Full Of Dollars, By Sergio Leone

Where do you fall in the American economic class system? Is it determined by the education you attain, how much you make, or/and the occupation you have? In the article ‘Show Me The Money' by Walter Mosley, he discusses many points about where all this money is being attained and mainly around the middle class that is ambiguous out of the other economic classes. Walter Mosley focuses his attention on how "most Americans are working-class wage-slaves…" (5), and yes, we can see the description of "working- class wage-slaves…" (5) can be applied to most of everybody I know and "wage slave" is the working-class of people, according to Walter Mosley.

The classical Hollywood narrative is one of simplicity, linear continuity, and comprehensive storytelling, something typical American audiences were used to for most of films history. Quentin Tarantino, however, is not one to abide by the rules of cinema. The arguably auteur director reconfigures this narrative style with his 1994 classic Pulp Fiction. This film not only presented itself as a completely new and innovative take on what a film could be, but also created a foundation for which many films since have built their narratives from.

For more than fifty years, Clint Eastwood has been actively defining and redefining cinema as an art form. His experiences as an actor on television and in film have greatly influenced his directing style. Across his films, Eastwood incorporates several issues and techniques that help the audience to identify said films with Eastwood's directorial style. Eastwood's aim in his films is to tell stories of the human experience. Francois Truffaut and Andrew Sarris have aimed to define the qualities that make a director an auteur whose works stand out above the rest. The qualities defined by Truffaut and Sarris can be seen in Eastwood films including Unforgiven (1992), Million Dollar Baby (2004), and Changeling (2008) and help to establish Eastwood as an auteur.

In the film Green Mile, different sociological theories and concepts can be useful in considering how societies rule our behaviors in life within different cultural places and times. A theory developed by sociologist Emile Durkheim known as the functionalist perspective profoundly applies through out the film. Concepts that are also seen in the film includes: human agency, norms, folkways, mores, and master status with a few theories and concepts of deviance.

For my at home movie I watched Hang em’ High directed by Ted Post. It is considered a spaghetti western that was made in America. In comparison to the film we watched in class, High Noon directed by Fred Zinnemann. These two westerns had many similarities and differences. From differences in how the movie was actually shot, to the similarity of how both of the main characters are loners, these two movies connect all over on many different levels.

The film set in the deep South in 1858, about a slave who gains his freedom with the help of Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a German bounty hunter, and sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner is an intriguing story with very graphic action scenes. The plot of the story begins as Dr. Shultz buys Django (Jamie Foxx), a black slave, from some traveling slave owners. He buys Django because he is chasing a pair of outlaws known as the Brittle Brothers and Django is the only person who knows what they look like. As the plot develops, Dr. Schultz and Django become allies and work together to achieve each other’s personal goals; Dr. Schultz wants to track down and

duplicate of his mother's hat. His mother shocks and her face shows a sudden rise in blood pressure. She recovers soon and starts to make up to the little boy, a kind of pity for him and plays with him. The boy's mother doesn’t feel good and pulls her son away. The Julian's mother continues to search for a nickel to give the little boy. All she finds is a penny and even though Julian warns her not to do it, she offers it to the little boy. The boy's mother upsets and hits badly Julian's mother with her packing books, and says ''He doesn't take nobody's money''.

The critically acclaimed film, Goodfellas, is a gangster crime drama that features an incredible amount of talent. Household names such as: Robert De Niro (Jimmy Conway), Joe Pesci (Tommy DeVito), Paul Sorvino (Paul Cicero), and promising stars like Ray Liotta (Henry Hill) and Lorraine Bracco (Karen Hill), attracted numerous Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. That type of cast power, linked with the signature talent of Martin Scorsese as a director, made for cinematic gold. Unquestionably, the actors and actresses did an excellent job augmenting the verisimilitude of this film and compelling audiences to empathize with their characters. But the cinematography in this film plays just as large a role in having audiences feel what the characters are feeling at a specific moment. Through the use of freeze frames, we learn of significant moments that shape Henry into the man that he is. By means of first-person narration we are able to know exactly what is going through a particular character’s mind. Finally, wonderful editing made great use of point of view and multiple jump cuts, which added to the sensation that we are undergoing the same experiences as the characters on screen. I will go into further detail and specify scenes that convey these elements as the essay progresses. Altogether, Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas effectively depicts paramount scenes and allows the audience to empathize with the characters by virtue of stylistic editing and cinematography.

I think that what Deborah Owens meant by "Cash is King" is that if you pay with cash it is easier to track how much money you have to spend and how much money you have left. I personally feel that only paying with cash is a smart way to save money. This is because you can physically see how much money you have left, if you were to pay with a debit card you would have to check the balance in order to see how much you have left. An all cash society would help benefit the people, but not necessarily the economy. This is because people would be willing to spend less money on things. According to Money Mozart, " If people started paying for things with cash they would only buy things they can physically afford, they would rent or buy smaller house

This essay is based on films of the same story, told in different ways, with emphasis, themes, meaning and interpretation shaped or shaded by the situation of the storyteller; the cinematic mise-en-scene. Based on the same story, the films reveal and reflect the film-maker’s social norms and views, emerging from their different national contexts. While exploring the two films, this essay will examine elements of film language or semiotics: color saturation (or black and white), sound, setting, type of camera angles used; repetition of visual motifs (Metz, 1985). The two films explored were made in the 1960s. Neither film is American, yet both reveal influences and reflections on American cinema and American power; the Western film, adherence or detracting from Hollywood Classical cinema tropes, i.e. close-ups, shot-reverse-shot, POV, depth of field (Bazin, 1985: 128-9). The two films are Kurasawa’s Yojimbo (1961) and Leone’s Fistful of Dollars (1964), from Japan and Italy, respectively. How are they different; how similar? Why do they use the same plot,

Martin Charles Scorsese was born November 17, 1942. Suffering from asthma, he spent most of his time watching movies and by the time he was eight, he was already drawing his own storyboards that were directed/produced by himself. Although he considered going into priesthood, making movies was Scorsese’s true calling and he went on to make some of Hollywood’s most memorable films. Incorporating themes from his Italian American roots into his visceral, cinematic storytelling that has influenced generations of filmmakers. He is an American director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and film historian, whose career spans more than 53 years. Scorsese 's body of work addresses such themes as Sicilian-American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption, machismo, modern crime, and gang conflict. Many of his films are also notable for their depiction of violence and liberal use of profanity. Part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant and influential filmmakers in cinema history. For three decades Scorsese has been at the forefront of American cinema. Its most avid champion and often its most electrifying practioner. The most cinematic of directors, he has also been among the most formally restless and exploratory, evolving an obsessive-compulsive mise-en-scene based on dynamic, agile camerawork and radical editing rhythms.

The Grand Budapest Hotel revolves around Europe of the 1930s and 1960s while it was in time of the war, through the adventures of The Grand Budapest Hotel's doorman Zero and the Hotel manager Gustave. The saga is linked to a burglar and a Renaissance painting, a great family's wealth war, and the sudden change of war in Europe. It reflects the vicissitudes of political history in Europe for half a century. This article will analyze The Grand Budapest Hotel from two aspects: artistic style and film theme.

What could be more quintessentially American than having a national touchstone be reinvented by a foreigner? By the time Sergio Leone began work on A Fistfull of Dollars in 1964, the Western and all of its trappings had been around for nearly a century. Whether it be through literature, film, television, or radio, stories of pitched gun battles and hard-fought backwater living in that peculiar period of the untamed American frontier became one of the United States’ chief cultural exports. Over the course of the “Dollars Trilogy” of A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More (1965) The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966) in addition to Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) Leone took the trappings of the Western and completely turned the genre on its head in both style and substance. Unlike the saintly heroes of old, Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name was a remorseless killer, only concerned with the gold in his pocket and the poncho on his back. Violence was not as quick and easy as John Ford would lead you to believe: Leone was unafraid to depict violence in full while making it clear that taking the life of another was an ugly and pointless endeavor. Higher notions of heroism and civilization had no place in Leone’s world, his characters interested only in enriching themselves or settling the score with their adversaries. Out on a frontier bereft of social structure or authority, Leone’s characters shape their own reality with a few well-placed dollars and a loaded gun.

Since the beginning of the Industrial Age, Americans have idealized the journey towards economic success. One thing people do not realize, however, is that that journey is not the same for every individual. For Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles), the main character of Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles, the path towards riches and a fulfilled life is being well liked. He serves to please others. He strives for that attention. This view cost him his happiness in the end. In this man’s rise and fall through prosperity, Welles shows the futility of striving solely for likeability.

Beauty, money, and guns. These things at first glance seem incomparable, however, all three do have something in common. In Chuck Palahniuk's eyes, they all represent empowerment identically. "It's all mirror, mirror on the wall because beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power." quoted by Chuck Palahniuk, when discussing his own perception of power.