Agnes Varda, ‘the grandmother of the French New Wave’ is known for her quirky, documentary-styled cinematography. The title sequence of her second major film, Cloe 5 à 7, let’s the viewer glimpse upon this highly-stylized cinematography she would go on to perfect. Quoting Varda, she ‘wanted to make a very violent sequence that confronts the film within its contrast’. The film opens with Cléo (the main character the viewer follows for the rest of the film) getting her tarot card’s read. The scene is cluttered with small adornments (like a decorated table cloth and small clocks) and is punctuated with animated typography. Varda choses to open the film in highly saturated colors but cuts sharply to black and white when we first see Cléo. This uniquely constructed title sequence forebodes the common motifs seen throughout Cléo de 5 à 7 like the use of pseudoscience’s, themes of death, and Cloe’s highly emotional character. Firstly, the opening scene with highly saturated colored tarot cards and the switch from color to black and white sets up an air of confusion within the film. A bit of a fantasy world where perception and perspective are obscured. The scene instigates a sort of ‘science of confusion’. These confusions and blurred boundaries set up an easy introduction for pseudoscience. When Cléo meets Antoine (a solider leaving for Algeria), he begins to speak of zodiacs and astrology. Cléo quickly shuts him down but eventually comes to terms with it. This also adds
Film exists in layers of physical existence and reality. You have the layer the audience views of the film’s world - setting, characters, and plot - and then you have the layer the film production workers view of the film’s world - actors, the set, and the story. Like photography, film is able to establish a physical existence. However, unlike photography, film uses two very unique and different techniques in order to establish its physical existence. According to Siegfried Kracauer, film establishes its physical existence through representation of reality as it evolves through time and with the help of techniques and devices exclusive to cinema cameras (Kracauer 187). All the world is a stage for film, however Kracauer lists specific techniques of film he refers to as cinematic due to how these techniques are read on the cinematic medium. Although Kracauer wrote his theory on Establishment of Physical Existence in 1960, the 2015 movie Tangerine contains a fair amount of content that can be serviced as examples in order to support Kracauer’s theory. Using the 2010’s movie Tangerine directed by Sean S. Baker, modern cinema examples from various scenes of the film can be provided for examples on Siegfried Kracauer’s theory of Establishment of Physical Existence through cinema’s recording functions of nascent motion, cinema’s revealing function of transients, and cinema’s revealing function of blind spots of the
The 1998 fantasy and drama movie, What Dreams May Come incorporates many specialized film features throughout the entire film. The mise-en-scene was one notable element that caught the audience’s eye the most with its significance to the film’s story. In connection with the mise-en-scene, the element of lighting was used frequently during the movie and the various types of lighting used played an important role in the story and has expressed a lot about the overall environment and feeling of the story in the movie. Additionally, props were another element of mise-en-scene which had magical powers, and were used as metaphorical props to indicate the power behind them.
The long take begins with an alarm clock waking up a couple, sleeping out on their balcony. As the camera moves from window to window around the courtyard, we see a few brief snippets of characters’ lives. And finally, the audience sees inside the apartment that has been its point of view all along. Mise-en-scene, framing, and cinematography
This technique momentarily suspends the omniscient gaze of the camera, and evokes the spectator’s—as well as Hitchcock’s—desire to “capture” the female protagonist as she escapes off-screen. In this context, the seemingly objective tracking shot may in fact reveal itself as a violent, subjective
Vision and the act of looking is an important and recurring theme in many horror films. In early gothic literature, such as in Guy de Maupassant 's Le Horla, the author presents vision as definitive and universal proof and stresses the importance of seeing as well as the act of showing gore. As a society, we are routinely told ‘seeing is believing ' in the wake of any paranormal or supernatural phenomena, placing weight on the tangible. However, as science and technology have progressed the faithfulness of visual representation is increasingly throw into question, which in turn has led to societal anxiety. A few years earlier, video footage of an event rarely had its validity questions, whereas now it is easy
This film is a black and white film and the lighting is more towards dim effect which terrified the audience. Music plays the biggest effect in the film. Bernard Hermann’s theme is used for this film because it uses mostly high-pitched string instrument notes so the suspense and horror mood can be formed to the audience.
Agnes Varda is not only one of the few female directors of new wave cinema; she is also credited as having helped create the genre. Her short film La Point–Courte is considered by some as the first new wave film. Her first full length movie, Cleo 5 to 7 falls within this genre as well. It is the story of a young woman dying of cancer and how she sees the world in the context of time. We follow the singer Cleo as she changes into the woman Flora and as she does so she begins to look at time in a different manner. It is the way time is represented through the camera shots which really make this film part of its new wave genre.
Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller ‘Rear Window’ (Hitchcock, 1954) begins with the immediate use of mise-en-scène in order to establish a sense of atmosphere, equilibrium and the mundane, soon to be disrupted as the events of the film unfold and are observed through the eyes of the voyeuristic protagonist, Jeff. Setting, cinematography and various other expressive mise-en-scène techniques work together to influence the overall appearance of the film. Though, by taking a closer look, these techniques reveal the significance of the narrative and characters. In the opening sequence, Hitchcock’s original visual style provides signposts for the audience to recognize what will be significant in the future: instead of establishing what is only happening in the moment in time; mise-en-scène is used to suggest what is to come. This arrangement of the “Classical Hollywood” narrative - starting with the setting and characters in a state equilibrium - acts as a seemingly all-purpose, archetypal opening by establishing location and introducing character. Simultaneously we can see that this sequence is vastly different from the rest of the film: it is leading the viewer into a false sense of security – the calm before the storm – as Jeff soon happens to piece together information leading to the possibility that one of his neighbors murdered their wife. This sequence is one of the only moments in the film we see things the protagonist does not, thus this carefully constructed opening is preparing
Cinematographers and art directors play a very important and creative role in film production. They work closely with the director and give a film its unique visual look and identity. The art director, David Lazan and cinematographer, Mauro Fiore, shot the film almost entirely in sequence, following the clock from the crack of dawn to a very dark night of reckoning. Compressing intense action and emotion into a brief time frame became one of their key challenges. They had to make sure the film felt like it was one single day unfolding which became the single biggest challenge during the production.
‘There are…two kinds of film makers: one invents an imaginary reality; the other confronts an existing reality and attempts to understand it, criticise it…and finally, translate it into film’
By exploring the theory of the “abject”, horror and the role of gender instability within film with regards to The Silence of the Lambs, this essay will attempt to explain the characteristics of the aestheticisation of abjection.
Analysis of an aspect of visual form in the film ‘Repulsion’ In the 1964/65 film ‘Repulsion’ by Roman Polanski, the story is about the conflict between reality and fantasy or sanity and insanity inside the main character’s mind – Carol played by Catherine Deneuve. Therefore the narrative technique of symbolism is used to display visually to the film’s audience what happens to Carol’s mind. In this particular instance, the degeneration of Carol’s state of mind is symbolised.
Plantigna deliberates on various differences between the fiction and non-fiction filmmaker, particularly the role of imagination to the two differing styles of film. He discusses that the fiction filmmaker “freely creates imaginative events”, where the non-fiction filmmaker “portrays or makes explicit claims about actual historical events” (104). He then puts forth the idea that imagination is also important for the non-fiction filmmaker as he as the creator “decides how to represent historical events” (104). This is demonstrated in shot 237 where Resnais’ camera pans over the ceiling of a gas chamber that has been carved in and scored by human fingernails and the voice-over narrates, “the only sign—but you have to know—is this ceiling, dug into by fingernails”. Here, Resnais using his imaginative ability, has seamlessly
Julie Taymore, the maker of the film, has a very strange and sensational style. I have watched a film of hers before and her
In the opening scene of the film ‘Gattaca’, camera work and the power of setting engrosses the audience and institutes conflicts. Close ups and wide shots are most frequent for camera work while colours and organisation represent setting.