Analysis Of The Movie ' Strike '

During the course of this essay it is my intention to discuss the differences between Classical Hollywood and post-Classical Hollywood. Although these terms refer to theoretical movements of which they are not definitive it is my goal to show that they are applicable in a broad way to a cinema tradition that dominated Hollywood production between 1916 and 1960 and which also pervaded Western Mainstream Cinema (Classical Hollywood or Classic Narrative Cinema) and to the movement and changes that came about following this time period (Post-Classical or New Hollywood). I intend to do this by first analysing and defining aspects of Classical Hollywood and having done that,

In “A Century of Cinema”, Susan Sontag explains how cinema was cherished by those who enjoyed what cinema offered. Cinema was unlike anything else, it was entertainment that had the audience feeling apart of the film. However, as the years went by, the special feeling regarding cinema went away as those who admired cinema wanted to help expand the experience.

As Marx’s states in his theory, when the working class becomes aware of their exploitation, this will result in a revolt lead by the proletariats. The major theories studied by Marx can be used to analyze the characters and situations presented in the film.

Article Three – Author: David Bordwell / Title of Article: The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film

In Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni’s essay “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism,” they put forward the central argument that film is a commercial product in the capitalist system and therefore also the unconscious instrument of the dominant ideology which produces it. In opposition to the classic film theory that applauds camera as an impartial device to reproduce reality, they argue that what the camera reproduces is merely a refraction of the prevailing ideology. Therefore, the primary and political task for filmmakers is to disrupt this replication of the world as self-evident and the function of film criticism is to identify and evaluate that politics. Comolli and Narboni then suggest seven categories of films confronting ideology in different ways, among which the second category resists the prevailing ideology on two levels. Films of this group not only overtly deal with political contents in order to “attack their ideological assimilation” (Comolli and Narboni 483), but also achieve their goal through breaking down the conventional way of depicting reality.

The movie, The Hammer, tells the story of a Deaf boy, Matt Hamill, who grows up to become the first Deaf wrestler to win the NCAA Wrestling Championship and accomplishes this three years in a row. The movie is an inspiring true story of what Matt Hamill experiences throughout his childhood and adolescence as a Deaf person living in a hearing world. Furthermore, the film gives the hearing culture an idea of what it is like to be Deaf and the trials and tribulations that some Deaf people face.

“Iron Road” has successfully shown why Chinese workers came to Canada in the 1880s as well as the challenges they confronted. Most of the film’s storyline occurs in China, where it uses the point of view of a Chinese peasant called Little Tiger, to display the daily struggles of the Chinese. The setting is full of war and destruction, thus destroying many farms resulting in famine and poverty. This has resulted in peasants having insufficient funds to support themselves and making them live in unsanitary living spaces. As a result, this gave the workers more reason to move to Canada as there was also better income and resources there. However, once they arrived in Canada, they discover that the conditions there weren’t as good as they thought. Although they had a better income than they did in China, there was a lot of discrimination, dangerous working conditions and horrible living spaces. There was worse pay for the Chinese workers and they had to do the most life-threatening jobs like working with explosives as well as working on the side of a cliff with no harnesses. Throughout the film, “Iron Road” has used the setting, characters and point of view of a Chinese peasant to show that there were horrible conditions and chaos in China, as well as the racism, dangerous working conditions and poor living space the peasants faced in Canada.

In his 1916 silent-film Intolerance, D.W. Griffith pioneered editing techniques that helped establish montage as a core component of film language. Griffith set out to unite four disparate storylines under the common theme of love’s eternal battle with intolerance. While Griffith believed this film achieved its goal, some of his contemporaries argued that Intolerance was a “magnificent failure” (Eisenstein, 241). Indeed, Eisenstein proposed that the unification Griffith sought to create was impossible because the juxtaposition of these stories did not create new meaning. Instead, Eisenstein wrote that the lack of conflict between shots prevented the synthesis of a higher meaning, or montage trope. While it is true that Intolerance generally does not accomplish montage trope, especially when referencing Walt Whitman’s Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, where Griffith explicitly attempts it, there are examples of its implementation. Griffith does manage to achieve this higher meaning in the scene depicting a labor strike. Eisenstein’s claim that Griffith never incorporates montage tropes into his films is false as demonstrated by the social criticism in the juxtaposition of the striking mill workers and Mr. Jenkins.

Soviet Montage is a movement driven by “Marxist [politics]” and an “economic philosophy” developed in Soviet Russia at the time of revolution. Lenin himself considered film, as an art form as the “most influential of all arts” as it not only entertained but could be used to “[mould] and reinforce values.”( Mast, G. & Kawin, B. F.) Sergei Eisenstein, himself a Marxist, is no exception to this and not only are his films are full of political propaganda, but he is also considered “the greatest master of montage.” .”( Mast, G. & Kawin, B. F.) His film October, called Ten Days That Shook The World in the Western world at the time and butchered due to its content, has always been considered problematic for audiences and critics alike and the standard critique of the film soon became “The Film as a whole is difficult and incoherent.” (Sperbur) Although if analysed properly, you can see that it has powerful political and social messages to convey and comprises of film form that Eisenstein himself called “intellectual film.”

I am planning to write about the 1999 film Fight Club, directed by David Fincher. This movie is about a nameless insomniac office worker (the narrator) who has become, as he views, a slave to consumer culture. He begins attending support groups for diseases he doesn’t have to subdue his emotional state, and he begins to sleep again. He meets Marla Singer, another fake attendee of support groups, she is an incredibly mysterious woman who is obviously a bit crazy, yet the narrator seems drawn to her. On a flight for his job, the narrator meets the character Tyler Durden, a hip, stylish man who sells soap for a living. When the narrator's apartment blows up, he calls Tyler and begins to live

The untouchables is a movie based on the true events that occurred when the eighteenth amendment was passed. The eighteenth amendment established the prohibition of production, transport, and sale of alcohol. The Federal Agent Eliot Ness wants to stop Al Capone, who is the top of organized crime. It was a hard job for Eliot Ness because Al Capone with his money bought many policemen, politicians, and other important people, therefore Eliot Ness could trust anyone. Eliot Ness had to choose no more than twelve men to form his squad. The Untouchables were formed by Eliot Ness, and another nine men he picked, they were called the Untouchables because they never accepted any bribes. Al Capone One of Al Capone’s men offered Eliot Ness $2,000 to stop interfering with the organization and an additional $2,000 if he continued to cooperate. Eliot Ness’s plan was to make an impact in the income of the gangsters, so they couldn’t pay for protection. (Biography.com)

When it comes to the film industry, entertainment is the tool used to acquire what is desired, money. The main goal for filmmakers when they create a film is to attain money in addition to the money spent to make the movie. Therefore, in some films that they like to base off of true accounts, it is somewhat necessary to dramatize or embellish the story to really tug at the heartstrings of the films audience. They achieve this goal by the use of dramatic music, ambient lighting, and a small amount of tweaked diction. The Fighter is an excellent example of this dramatization in action because throughout the film the characters are faced with a multitude of decisions that must be made. The choices they make require the characters to choose

The romantic idea of the auteur is described by film theoretician, André Bazin, observing the film form as an idealistic phenomenon. Through the personal factor in artistic creation as a standard reference, Bazin primarily refers to an essential literary and romantic conception of the artist as central. He considers the relationship between film aesthetics and reality more important than the director itself and places cinema above paintings. He described paintings as a similar ethical creation to film stating a director ‘can be valued according to its measurements and the celebrity of the signature, the objective quality of the work itself was formerly held in much higher esteem.’ (Bazin, 1967: 250). Bazin contemplates the historical and social aspects that indeed hinder a director’s retribution to their own personalised film, thus en-companying their own ideological judgement upon the world ‘more so in cinema where the sociological and historical cross-currents are countless.’ (Bazin, 1967: 256)

By analyzing the historical contexts of these specific movements, we take a deeper look at society's social, religious, economic, and political conditions that existed during a certain time and place. These relevant factors profuse mass influence into a filmmakers decisions while in the production process of a film. Additionally, these components have the role of establishing distinct trends in the film industry. Each movement has its own purpose for creating each film in regards to a stylistic standpoint.

Montage, a name synonymous with Editing, is an original film style with different techniques used by the Soviet filmmakers between 1924 and 1930 to construct a film narrative. Montage is the connection between one shot and the other, a continuous or discontinuous relationship between shots. According to David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson (2012: 478), Soviet directors maintained that, “through editing, two shots give birth to a feeling or idea not present in either one”. This ‘feeling’ or ‘idea’ then guides a viewer into understanding or making a “conceptual connection” of the narrative (Bordwell 1972: 10). Strike (1925) and Mother (1926), directed by Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin respectively, are films made in the Soviet Montage era that show a juxtaposition between shots across the film. This essay discusses the different techniques used in these films that show the functions and effects of Montage.