Editing of a Gangster Film

The mise-en-scene used in Bonnie and Clyde is what created the classic film we enjoy today. While the film editing in this film was revolutionary to the entire industry, that isn’t what viewers remember. According to the book, Film Art, “Many of our most vivid memories of movies stem from mise-en-scene.” In this film, the mise-en-scene is an important as that quote suggests. It is responsible for a variety of the most essential aspects of the movie. Bonnie and Clyde implemented mise-en-scene to describe characters, promote symbolism and solidify motifs throughout the film.

     The movie begins in New York, in 1843, with a gang fight. Bill “the butcher” Cutting’s gang of “nativists” have challenged the “dead rabbits” (a gang of mostly Irish immigrants) to a fight to settle once and for all who is the most powerful gang in the area. After an intense battle the “nativists” win by killing the leader of the “dead rabbits”, also Amsterdam’s (the main character’s) father.

Film noir is a famous era of filmmaking that defined the cinematic experience in Hollywood for a whole decade. No film can correctly represent such a influential cinematic era like Gun Crazy directed by Joseph H. Lewis. Gun Crazy is a unique expression of film noir of the 1950s that utilizes many cinematic elements in unparalleled ways to tell its story in a distinct fashion. Lewis uses cinematic techniques such as lighting, composition, editing, music, and mise-en-scene of the opening sequence to establish the tone and character motivations of the story.

The movie “Bonnie and Clyde” is a Netflix mini-series movie, which follows the timeline of real life criminal events committed by Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Bonnie and Clyde were notorious criminals for strings of crimes such as robbery, theft, and murders committed over a span of two years. The crimes Bonnie and Clyde committed described a variety of criminological theories including social learning theory, strain theory, and rational choice theory.

DePalma utilizes zooming and film cuts to show how the American dream is for everyone. Scarface, following the traditional film three act narrative structure, ends it second act with Tony Montana immediately after executing his old boss. The camera opens on a close up of Tony Montana. The camera then cuts to a shot of a moving blimp saying, ‘The World is Yours’. Before the blimp’s message can move to an advertisement, the camera then cuts back to Tony Montana, holds for a few seconds, the zooms out to a long shot encompassing the entire house. DePalma purposefully chooses to film this scene this way. Opening on a close up of Tony Montana show the audience that he is the focus of the scene. When the camera cuts to the slogan on the blimp the audience enters the eyes of Tony Montana for cut. They see the slogan the same way Tony Montana sees it. When the camera zooms out and shows the entire house and Tony Montana’s new wife, the audience understands that Tony Montana now has everything he could ever want. By keeping Tony Montana in the center of the frame, the audience can remember Tony Montana from the beginning of the film and see how far he has come. The audience can then see that Tony Montana has achieved the American dream. DePalma utilizes zooming and film cuts to show how the American dream is for everyone.

“All my life I’ve been a lonely boy.” Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo 66 is a peculiar, surreal film to analyze. As a semi-autobiographical work, Buffalo 66 greatly exaggerates the events in the film and makes the viewers suspend disbelief on more than one occasion. Yet despite this, the main focus of this film is a broken Billy Brown’s emotionally raw journey seeking revenge but instead finding unconditional love through Layla in the end, and the formalist film techniques used here enhance this. Through the deliberate use of photography, staging, and movement, Buffalo 66 works as a formalistic classicism film, a predominantly classicism film with strong elements of formalism, on the style continuum.

“Bonnie and Clyde” is a kind of a realistic, drama, comedy, tragic, gangster movie, which was produced by Warner Bros and directed by Arthur Penn. This movie was released in 1967 and it was based on real-life events. Bonnie and Clyde were two criminals who were traveling around central United States, robbing banks in the hope of becoming rich and famous. Before they began being partners in a crime, Bonnie was a hot, blonde waitress who worked in a café and did not like her job because boys who came to the café usually wanted to take advantage of her. On the other hand, Clyde was a young, handsome, small town thief who was robbing small stores and gas stations for a living. They both lived in hope to change their old, boring lives.

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.

In the interview, John Huston explained the function of cuts. Without moving our heads, human eyes will not pick up the information in between looking from one object to another. Basically, your eyes can juxtapose two or more objects. This is a cut. Film Editors use cuts to discard information that doesn’t push the story forward.

At the time of its release in 1967, Bonnie and Clyde was the subject of intense debate. While the American film critic Roger Ebert hailed it as a milestone in American moviemaking, Bosley Crowther, another critic, referred to it as “a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick

The movie “Fight Club” is an American based film that was produced in 1999. The production was done after the release of a novel in 1996 by Chuck Palahniuk. The movie involved stars such as Edward Norton, Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter and David Fincher is the director. An overall analysis of the video shows that it is a very disturbing film in that it questions our conscience, our phobias, obsessions, reality as well as habits. Many individuals up to date presume that it is visually stimulating, insightful and at the same time provoking.

The camera movement was cleverly done. The film was fast paced with the change of first person to third person view during the police chases and shoot outs. This makes the film very exciting and enjoyable. Bonnie and Clyde were living glamorous criminal life that is unattainable to make many.

The gangster movie genre is one of the most popular among the modern movies and some of the best film directors have produced some very excellent gangster movies. For my first film analysis, I decided to analyze my favorite gangster movie of all time. The movie that I analyzed is called “Scarface” and is directed by Brian De Palma. It was released in 1983 and is still a super hit movie today. Let me go through a short summary of the movie.

Bonnie and Clyde is reckoned as one of the 60s' most talked-about, volatile, controversial crime/gangster films combining comedy, terror, love, and ferocious violence, and regarded as one of the first films of the New Hollywood era, in which it broke many taboos and was so popular amongst the

The shot transitions are cuts which maintain the flow of the narrative and the character’s actions.