“Window Water Baby Moving” and The Power of Montage

Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein states in “Firm Form: Essays In Film Theory” that “Montage is an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots—shots even opposite to one another: the “dramatic” principle”. Eisenstein believes that if placed on top of each other, two photographed immobile images may result in the appearance of movement. Eisenstein’s philosophy aligns with Kuleshov, a Soviet film theorist who invented the idea that juxtaposing two shots can create greater meaning via the relationship established between them. In his classic masterpiece Battleship Potemkin, Eisenstein created an intense and violent sequence with this principle of dialectic montage. The constant change between shots—transitions from long sequences to quick jump cuts—structures like a roller-coaster and keep the viewer’s eyes wide open. An example for his brilliant use of montage is the shot of three stone lions in different positions: the first is asleep, the second awakened, and the third looking up. Influenced by the Kuleshov’s effect, Eisenstein used these shots in a way that gives the viewer an impression of a lion from sleeping to awakening to rising up, representing a symbol of Russian people are triggered and determined to fight against Czar. Without a doubt, Eisenstein’s editing technique serves as mental stimulation rather than a narrative medium, enabling him to spread out political propaganda through emotional catalyst to the viewer. Similarly, early Stan Brakhage films bear the influence of Sergei Eisenstein’s theories about montage—triumphing the importance of editing in the process of making films, the power of the juxtaposition to signify intellectual and ideological meaning. Many aspects of Brakhage’s experimental works include fast-paced montage, hand-held camera, painting on film, superimposition, time lapse and jump cuts. Among these, rapid montage is probably the most visible and interesting aspect of Brakhage's filmmaking style. The perception of imagery in Brakhage's works bring the cinematic experience to a different level: An image that the viewer observes on screen may, in fact, result from the movements within a shot. Moreover, there is no clear sense of time or of whether a coherent event might occur. Many of Brakhage’s films transitions from shot to shot so quickly that it is impossible to keep track of what they show. Brakhage’s experimental works have gone beyond the conventions, breaking down continuity with each shot refusing to connect conceptually with each other. Among Brakhage’s tireless body of works, I have found Window Water Baby Moving so astonishing, overwhelming, mind-blowing and raw. The confrontational experience of witnessing a new life being brought into the world in this breathtaking experimental work is undoubtedly achieved and lifted by the power of montage. 

Brakhage’s Window Water Baby Moving is filled with gorgeous, vibrant home video footages: warm, orange-ish colors, water permeating over skin, eyes, smiles, touchings and visible appearance of a baby’s head in the womb—all of these imageries capture the stunning process of a child being born. The opening diagonal shot shows the window, which is then followed by a montage sequence of the sunlight reflecting on the water in a bathtub where Brakhage’s pregnant wife, Jane is bathing. Abrupt shots demonstrating Jane’s beauty, her skin and facial expression is placed next to shots of her struggle and pain when giving birth to the baby. Jane’s body is in motion together with the rapid appearance of water and light. At the moment when Jane’s is in her labor, Brakhage cut from shots of her painful expression to her smiling face from earlier footages, mixing the window and water shots in-between. This utilization of montage somehow helps alleviate the distressing experience and allows the poetic aspect of the film to expand. Later, the viewer sees the shot of Jane and Brakhage embracing each other appear between shots in the bathtub of their hands. The combination of these shots creates a montage sequence that possesses the ability to evoke deep affection, intimate connection between Brakhage’s work and the viewer without any necessary soundtrack. In addition, the lighting in the shots of Jane giving birth is immensely pure and natural, elevating the close-ups of her body as the baby slowly emerges from the womb. Brakhage continues to combine such sensitive shots with fleshly bathroom scenes so as to recall the joyful memories they both shared and waited till this momentous event of a new life being introduced to the world. The last sequence of Window Water Baby Moving contains a series of heartfelt moments of Brakhage holding his newborn in inexplicable happiness. Captured by Jane after she had given birth, these shots wrapped up the movie in a profoundly humane and aesthetic way. As a consequence, what can be clearly seen about the success of Window Water Baby Moving is its montage and the way the images are edited together.

After all, Window Water Baby Moving is an emotional attachment that could only be created under the hands of Brakhage and his love to Jane. The film intertwines between the tenderness of a romantic relationship and the roughness of labor, both reinforcing and enriching the other. There are not so many films that address sex and childbirth as vividly and poetically as Brakhage’s does. What makes Window Water Baby Moving so special is that it gives other men and women an unique experience to sympathize with the process of giving birth. One remarkable aspect that adds to the distinctive beauty of Window Water Baby Moving is the close-ups of Jane: Her eyes closed and her eyebrows distorted in a way that shows as much blissful as suffering. The film’s portrait of a mother whose considerable care for her child while the baby is in the womb adds a spectacular layer to the viewer’s emotions. The movie also captures child birth at its rawness, all the fluid and vulnerability of a woman is fully exposed in front of the camera. Furthermore, the absence of sound contributes to the realism of the film and helps immerse the viewer into the act of solely witnessing and absorbing the context. The fact that there was no dialogue or music also allows the viewer to feel his/her natural emotions rather than being manipulated by the sound. As a result, by solely observing the truth unfolding itself on screen, Brakhage’s Window Water Baby Moving is completely open for different interpretation. All the commitment, care and pain undergone in the pre, during and post stages of giving birth are fully documented by Stan Brakhage, the filmmaker and the father. The combination of composition, colors, lights and camera angles ultimately produces a breathtaking visual poem about the relationship of a man and a woman, and the child they have created together. On the surface, Window Water Baby Moving may be a movie about childbirth, but in depth, Brakhage’s film is probably one of the most thoughtful movies ever made on displaying the magnificence and revulsion that happen from the cycle of life. Overall, Brakhage’s Window Water Baby Moving walks the viewer through a series of montages: the woman’s pregnant stomach in various stages of development, the woman bathing, and eventually giving birth in a sequence of unchronological order. Window Water Baby Moving serves as an artistic expression, capturing a real-life event by jumping between time and space, unfolding each shot with strong intentionality and style. Window Water Baby Moving also establishes a transformation in Brakhage’s filmmaking style, his movement towards the representation of different ways of observing and understanding the surrounding world. 

Eisenstein notes in “Firm Form: Essays In Film Theory” that, “Step by step, by a process of comparing each new image with the common denotation, power is accumulated behind a process that can be formally identified with that of logical deduction. The decision to release these ideas, as well as the method used, is already intellectually conceived. The conventional descriptive form for leads to the formal possibility of a kind of filmic reasoning. While the conventional film directs the emotions, this suggests an opportunity to encourage and direct the whole thought process, as well”. Brakhage’s passion for film originates from his dedication for human experience, and he has explored the relationship between the two to a more profound level than any filmmakers. What all of his experimental films shared is an obsession with montage—how different editing strategies could have an influence on how the viewer “intellectually” perceives one image to another. Without a doubt, utilizing the power of montage, Stan Brakhage’s Window Water Baby Moving is rich both in content and aesthetics, opening up several questions about knowledge and perception. The montage sequence is created with subtlety, constantly keeping the viewer off the balance, hiding in and out of every frame, long haunting him/her hours and days after the film has ended. 

Works Cited

Window Water Baby Moving. Brakhage, Stan. 1959. 

Eisenstein, Sergei. Film Form: Essay in Film Theory. A Harvest Book. 1929. 

The Realistic Virtue Of Cinema

Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 Italian neorealism masterpiece, Bicycle Thieves is an exceptional example of a film whose raw plausibility embodies the intrinsic aesthetic of realism. Realism is a socially critical reflection of the society, a cinematic convention that displays the reality of life. Whereas, realist films present to the viewer real-world issues by portraying and treating them in a creative way. As such, “realism” refers to the reproduction of reality, while ‘realistic’ refers to the actual truth. This convoluted disparity was brought up by the influential French film theorist, Andre Bazin, who claimed that the credibility of a film did not originate from its authenticity, but from the identity between the photographic image and its object. De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves triumphs elements of rawness and psychological intensity, from then on offering a comment on socio-political problems, demonstrating post-war Italy’s desperate conditions of hunger, oppression and unemployment. By addressing these brutal realities on screen, cinema acts as a medium of conceptualisation of a nation, depicting the Italian day-to-day activities. Moreover, when the viewer witnesses reality under a child’s perspective, the emotional conflict often evokes tough visualisation. Not only does this happen in De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, but many devastating cinematic depictions of politics and poverty also utilize this point of view, such as Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1962 Ivan’s Childhood, Charlie Chaplin’s 1921 The Kid or Sean Baker’s 2017 The Florida Project. Nadine Labaki’s 2019 Capernaum is no exception—the film shows the refugees crisis and the underclass in a chaotic circumstance, with non-professional actors and on-location shootings contributing to the film’s documentary-like realism. This paper will, therefore, examine Andre Bazin’s ideology in the realistic aesthetic at work in cinema by exemplifying Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, especially the ending sequence and its influence on contemporary cinema such as Nadine Labaki’s Oscar-nominated foreign language film, Capernaum. 

In What Is Cinema? volume 1, Bazin states, “The quarrel over realism in art stems from a misunderstanding from a confusion between the aesthetic and the psychological; between true realism, the need that is to give significant expression to the world both concretely and its essence, and the pseudorealism of a deception aimed at fooling the eye a pseudorealism content in other words with illusory appearances”. According to Bazin, what makes a film “realistic” does not lie in its superficial surface, but the substance and the content. It is not about“looking” real, but “being” real. Without a doubt, the root of neorealism exhibits in its reconstruction of reality, as Italian filmmakers aspire to illustrate life in the most compelling manner. Moreover, while realism considers the connection between artistic form and reality, neorealism explores the relationship of cinema with reality in different historical, cultural and political dimensions. What mostly differentiates realism from neorealism is the level of credibility and emotional attachment that prompts the viewer to sympathize with the story. On discussing Bicycle Thieves, Bazin notes, “In Vittorio de Sica’s Ladri de Biciclette, Italian neorealism contrasts with previous forms of film realism in its stripping away of all expressionism and in particular in the total absence of the effects of the montage. As in the films of Welles and in spite of conflicts of style, neorealism tends to give back to the cinema a sense of the ambiguity of reality… The means used by De Sica is less spectacular but they are no less determined to do away with montage and to transfer to the screen the continuum of reality”. Neorealist films, undoubtedly, gives a realistic texture of the contemporary issues that aim at moving the sympathies of the viewer. The protagonist of Bicycle Thieves, a working-class man who suffers from the pressing economic necessities, represents the whole Italy’s impoverished masses. De Sica’s neo-realist approach was shown in his use of on-location shootings and non-professional actors that result in high visual believability. Shooting on-location helps create a mise-en-scene with a realism beyond traditional constructed sets, while casting non-professional actors allows De Sica to manifest his protagonist as an anonymous representative of the broken system, an unknown man free of the preconceptions imposed on known actors or stars. Throughout Bicycle Thieves, the viewer is trapped into a world of class divides and penurious individuals similar to the protagonist. This crucial actuality is reinforced by the film’s ending when Antonio lowers himself to become a thief, implicitly demonstrating how this seemingly singular story plays into the greater narrative of a corrupted society. Antonio’s desperate search for the bike is communicated to the viewer through the indifference of the fractured society around him. Here, by utilizing special techniques of neo-realist films, long take and quick montage, close ups to medium to long shots, De Sica subtly builds up a physical and psychological world that exists beyond the protagonist.

Although heart-wrenching, the last sequence of Bicycle Thieves does not bring to the viewer feelings of depression, as it shows that the protagonist did not lose his humanity, nor his son’s respect and appreciation. The fact that Antonio, who seems to lose almost everything, does not lose his son is what brings this neorealist masterpiece a sincere soul. As the viewer has come to sympathize with Antonio’s desperation to possess a bicycle, they subjectively hope that he can succeed in stealing the bicycle no matter how much morality he is being taken away. The combination of hesitation, lingering, and feelings of guilt has created one of the most iconic and poignant ending sequences in the history of cinema. The camera follows Antonio and Bruno as they pass by a football stadium where a huge number of bicycles have been parked outside. The tracking shot allows the crowd near the stadium to be gradually revealed as the father and son walk towards the place. At one point, the camera stops and becomes static as the viewer sees Bruno, who has been trailing behind Antonio all day, comes to the pavement and sits down to rest. The noise of the crowd outside the stadium emerges on the soundtrack as the film transitions to a medium shot of Antonio’s face reacting to the crowd and the bicycles. His hesitant attitudes and self-contradiction between guilt and desire to possess a bike is strongly conveyed in this scene. The camera constantly changes from a long shot of the crowd to a medium long shot of Bruno puzzling and waiting for his father and a long shot of the bicycles. This series of point-of-view shot puts the viewer directly into the head of the character, letting them experience his psychological state. The camera pans from right to left, directing the viewer to see something that suddenly captures his attention—a seemingly unattended bicycle near a building, then from left to right as Antonio battles in his head of whether he should make the decision. The discontinuity of montage subtly shows Antonio’s moral conflict. Antonio turns away, as if changing his mind, but he cannot resist and decides to look back again at the deserted bicycle. The camera tilts down and frames Antonio and Bruno as they sit on the pavement. Bruno keeps his eyes on his father, while Antonio has several thoughts going on in his head. Bruno is staring at him attentively and warily, as if he can read his father mind. At one point, they hear the sound of a crowd coming, and the foreground of the frame is filled with a group of cyclists passing by. An abrupt transition to a blurry shot of cyclists riding by from right to left occurs as the camera pans left with their movement until it zooms into Bruno and Antonio still sitting on the pavement, exhibiting some reactions. The contrast between the static and depressing look of the father and son and the dynamic motion of the cyclists enhance the feeling of loss that Antonio and Bruno have gone through. This shot is extremely powerful as it shows plenty of bicycles taunting in front of the Antonio’s eyes; yet hopeless and desperate as he is, he cannot even acquire one of those. The camera cuts to a medium shot of Antonio standing up again, but this time his facial expression shows more worriedness and conflicts towards the crowd and the bicycles. This moment seems to signal a fulcrum of the film, when “things can go either way for the character”—Antonio can either accept his misfortune and go back to his poor daily life or sacrifice his ethics for a bike that will guarantee him a job to escape poverty. Here, it seems as if the viewer is forced to look at the world through the perspective of child, witnessing the injustice and chaos of the society during that period. The point-of-view long shots of the crowd and people getting their bicycles are quickly cut between the medium shot of Antonio looking. As Antonio realizes that it is too late to steal one of the bikes at the parking area, his intention to get the bike near the building is higher. De Sica builds up an unbearable tension, cutting between an exhausted Bruno sitting on the pavement, patiently looking at his dad, who walks back and forth, looking at the endless number of bikes, as well as an unattended bike near a building. These two shots show an interesting contrast between a man who desperately need a bike to change his life, and a boy who understands his father’s struggles. The camera continues to follow Antonio as he turns back to watch the unattended bicycle and turns back again towards Bruno. De Sica creates suspense through the technique of retardation and hesitation—delaying the occurrence of an event so that when it happens, it will be more intense. At the same time, the sea of people getting their bicycles and riding in front of his eyes makes Antonio’s intention to possess one almost unbearable. Antonio’s action of taking off his hat and touching his hair indicates the tortute of his conflict. When he puts his hat back on, it signals that he has come up with a decision. As Antonio makes up his mind, he gives Bruno a streetcar fair and tells him to wait at Monte Sacro. Thinking that he has made his son go away, Antonio turns around and slowly walks toward the deserted bike. But Bruno, like a sticky conscience, disobeys his father and follows his footsteps. When Bruno is scolded to go away and exits from the frame, the camera continues to follow Antonio as he heads towards the bicycle. This scene serves as the most defining moment for the main character: As Antonio looks at the bicycles and decides to lower himself to do what has been unethical throughout the entirety of the film, it gives the viewer an impression that the unfairness of society has prompted a fine man to become different.  The viewer sees a long shot of Bruno running for the streetcar, but he misses it; now the viewer knows something that Antonio does not. Bruno's missing the streetcar further intensifies the suspense by adding another complicated element, an ethical and psychological layer. The film then cuts to a long shot of Antonio now sneaking in closer distance to the bicycle, evoking mixed feelings of suspense and excitement that remind me of Hitchcock's films. Eventually, Antonio decides that his only choice to support his family is to steal a bicycle. The camera stays from a substantial distance from Antonio, witnessing his immoral actions. Antonio goes closer to the unattended bicycle, summons his courage, and jumps on it, but he is then quickly noticed and chased by a crowd of people in the road and the owner of the bike. The camera pans past Bruno as he shockingly and surprisingly witnesses his father become a thief, being surrounded and pulled from the bike. The shaky cinematography captures Bruno’s expression resembling the motion of the bike at a rapid pace, thus it creates a sense that Bruno is looking directly at his father. In the next medium shot, the viewer sees an emotional Bruno runs into the angry crowd surrounding his father, crying. At this poignant moment, the viewer can see Bruno’s care for his father and their misfortune are heightened than ever. The camera changes to a long shot of the train disrupting the crowd and Antonio being taken towards the camera direction. In a long shot, as a group of people escorts Antonio away, Bruno finds his father's hat and dutifully cleans it off so as to preserve the little dignity that his father has left. Here, Bicycle Thieves reaches its immoral pinnacle that sets it apart from other conventional Hollywood endings. As Antonio is being escorted toward the police station, the bicycle’s owner notices Bruno, who is carrying Antonio's hat. In a moment of benevolence and sympathy, when he sees Bruno crying, he decides to forgive Antonio and asks the crowd to let him go. Lowering himself to thievery and being humiliated in front of his son, Antonio has now reached a new low. The closing shot shows Antonio bitterly walking away, with Bruno walking his side and grasping his hand. Bruno’s actions of grabbing his father’s hand shows his support and sympathy for Antonio as the despair and hopelessness has turned even his father, the finest man, into a thief. Though Antonio tries to get rid of Bruno aside previously, the son knows his father better than his father knows him: He stands by his father despite his failure and hardships. De Sica’s brutal reality and honesty haunts the viewer to the end—he does not shy away from the injustice of life, he makes Bicycle Thieves so raw and mundane by demonstrating that happy endings do not exist in real life.

The “Best Foreign Film” category at the Academy Awards always leaves a strange fascination for the viewer, as these non English-speaking motion pictures take them out of the lavish spectacles and “American” ideologies in Hollywood films, presenting a more diverse portrayal of people and cultures through unique perspectives. With its view of the world through a child's lens, Nadine Labaki’s Oscar-nominated Capernaum has gone beyond the conventions of documentary or fiction filmmaking. Capernaum is rooted in realism as the main character’s court case challenges a Syrian patriarchal system where children were born in an impoverished circumstance that lead to them being raised and cared improperly due to their parents’ ignorance. It is a heartbreaking film that not only portrays pure humanity despite struggles, but also presents the chaotic threats surrounding children, from the rumble of traffic to adults who want to take advantage of them. There is a cinematic difference between De Sica’s and Nadine Labaki’s films: while Bicycle Thieves reaches the viewer's mental state by capturing the lassitude of everyday’s misery, its modest plot revolves around a man on search for his stolen bike, its sense of moral outrage is reflected by the unsophisticated locations and actors, Capernaum is meticulously packed in every shot, following a non-chronological narrative structure, with shaky, claustrophobic cinematography and low camera eye-level. The film’s harrowing sequence, as a lonely desperate Zain wanders the streets pulling the baby along in tow, reminds the viewer of Vittorio De Sica, Charlie Chaplin and Sean Baker in its masterful examination of childhood ingenuity and innocence deteriorated by the injustice and ignorance of the society. In an interview with Gulf News, Labaki even says, “For me, politics and art are intertwined. As an artist, it’s my responsibility to be involved in what’s happening around us. It’s a duty. It’s not really a choice”. Needless to say, Bicycle Thieves and Capernaum serves as stunning archetypes of social realistic cinema, not only because they inherit all of neorealism’s defining characteristics, but they also perfectly describes the hardship and unfairness of life, allowing the viewer to experience and witness reality in its purely raw and truthful substance.

Philip Rosen notes about Bazin’s ideology in Change Mummified: “The central grounds in Bazin’s account of the experience of reality through cinema, and hence of an auteur’s style, is not physical reproduction, but the nature of the relation of a preexistent to the film. That relation is inseparable from preservation as an obsessive issue for the subject”. It seems as if the realistic power of Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves and Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum lies in the way they deal with bittersweet real-life problems in the most convincing, honest and delicate way, ultimately enabling the viewer himself to question and sympathize with the reality they witness on screen. 

Works Cited

Bazin, Andre. What Is Cinema? University of California Press Berkeley. 1994

Rosen, Philip. Change Mummified. Cinema, Historicity, Theory. University of Minnesota Press. 

De Sica, Vittorio. Bicycle Thieves. 1948. Sequence 1:20:00 - 1:29:27

Labaki, Nadine. Capernaum. 2019. 

Aridi, Sara. Nadine Labaki reveals ‘Capernaum’ is a rallying cry. Gulf News Entertainment. December, 2018. https://gulfnews.com/entertainment/arab-celebs/nadine-labaki-reveals-capernaum-is-a-rallying-cry-1.61019553

Yasujiro Ozu and The Art of Simplicity

Bordwell and Thompson’s Art Cinema and The Idea of Authorship essay discusses the rise of authorship in the 1950s and 1960s, stating that “Auteurism sensitized viewers to narrative experiments that expressed a director’s vision of life. It also prepared viewers to interpret stylistic patterns as the filmmaker’s personal comment on the action”. To be specific, the auteur theory claims that the director’s vision plays the most important role in shaping a film’s theme or visual expression, and the viewer can quickly recognize a director’s consistent styles and aesthetics choices throughout his or her career. One of Japanese greatest directors, Yasujiro Ozu’s most remarkable and noticeable traits lie in the unexpressed lessons beneath his materials’ surface and their ability to touch worldwide audiences. In Devotional Cinema, on discussing the notion of “self-symbol” in which an object possesses a symbolic meaning for its own existence, Nathaniel Dorsky notes that “Yasujiro Ozu is of course a great exponent of self-symbol. Every shot, every cut, every character, every situation of the story, while definitely functioning in the context of a narrative, is not referring to anything but itself. Each moment opens in terms of what actually is”. Without a doubt, each subject presented in Ozu’s film stands as a testimony of its own, and his profound examination of Japanese socio-economic condition through a simple technical and stylistic tendencies further affirms his auteurship. This paper will, therefore, analyze Ozu’s artistic identity through exemplifying the contrast between Eastern and Western values, the traditional and newly emerging beliefs in “Late Spring” (1949), ultimately showing Ozu’s cinematic devotion to portraying the middle-class family, their struggles and deep care for one another.  

Utilizing low camera angles, masterful composition and contemplative pacing, Yasujiro Ozu’s idiosyncratic style rebels against the conventional rules of cinema, ultimately evoking a nostalgic and reflexive mood in mundane life events. Unlike his contemporary Akira Kurosawa whose samurai epics are more dramatic and expressive in styles, Ozu’s filmography—spanning over almost 3 decades—triumphs simplicity and melancholy. There always exists a sense of tranquility, ambience of time that Ozu wants to linger and hold onto as long as possible, and his films often invite the viewer into the process of unpacking each layer of meaning beneath all those seemingly empty shots. Ozu’s cinematography does not purposefully manipulate the viewer’s perspective on any singular person, but instead acknowledges the presence of all characters, who seem to be embedded in the same quiet world on screen. Ozu’s iconic shooting techniques can be recognized by his use of static shots and breaking the 180-degree rule with 360-degree, evoking a three-dimensional space inhabiting all characters. Ozu positions his camera point-of-view lower than usual, not only creating a beautiful composition between the foreground and the background, but also honoring the traditional sitting gestures of Japanese people. He cuts directly from one scene to the next, creating an imaginary continuous space after the character leaves a room and enters another, or intertwining separate scenes with "pillow shots" of landscapes, objects, trains and boats. His script only focuses on ordinary people living their daily lives: walking, sleeping, eating or engaging in small conversations. The main conflict in Ozu’s films often occurs among family members, whether it is an elderly couple’s distance from their children in Tokyo Story (1953), or young sons’ disappointment towards their father’s modest status in I Was Born, But.... (1932). Nevertheless, all of his characters are built upon a basis of sensitivity and sympathy towards one another, no matter what hardships they need to endure. Ozu's thorough understanding of the kinship structure and his compassion to the repetition of everyday life give these apparently normal disputes an overwhelming emotional attachment rarely seen in contemporary films. Without a doubt, Ozu lets the complexities of the human condition hidden in the quiet temperance of everyday: On one hand, his meticulously crafted and stylised world displays the obvious rawness; on the other hand, it challenges the viewer’s perception of the banal currents.

Due to clashing ideals between assimilation, adaptation and nostalgia, preservation that Westernization left in post-war Japan, Ozu’s films tend to show the obstacles and stigmas that are imposed on Japanese people. He enriched Late Spring with several Japanese allusions of conventional household and nature elements, ultimately presenting one of the most powerful family portraits on screen, a film profound in the ambiguous. Late Spring’s story about a father-daughter relationship displays the roots of social problems in Japan. Its opening shot capturing a railway station sign with both English and Japanese words, subtly implying the social transformation that Japan was going through. The daughter, Noriko represents the crossroad between traditional and modern values—she has faith in marriages, yet is also stubborn and objects to divorces and remarriages. There are two worlds that Noriko is torn between: the modern belief that a mature girl needs to be get married and the perceived traditions that a daughter continues to take care of her father. The final sequence of Late Spring when Noriko’s father sits alone in an empty house, peeling an apple somehow symbolizes the sad ending of an old-fashioned Japan. Despite all of the efforts in convincing his daughter to get married, he keeps the sorrow and loneliness for himself. The viewer feels an immense respect towards an old man who sets his self-esteem aside to ensure his daughter’s a stable future. Ozu chooses the waves of the sea to end the film, suggesting an everlasting cycle of life, hope and new beginnings. This imagery also points towards a reflection of the land, where people struggle with social transitions, suffer from the concept of departing and sacrificing. An article published on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy also examines this transience of “mono no aware” in Ozu’s films: “A vase standing in the corner of a tatami-matted room where a father and daughter are asleep; two fathers contemplating the rocks in a “dry landscape” garden, their postures echoing the shapes of the stone; a mirror reflecting the absence of the daughter who has just left home after getting married—all images that express the pathos of things as powerfully as the expression on the greatest actor’s face”. In conclusion, Ozu’s films has moved beyond the extreme simplification with sublime metaphors to give the viewer a thoughtful lesson on basic virtues of human beings. 

As David Bordwell describes Late Spring as a “largely sombre study of the necessity for father and daughter to part”, it is undeniable to recognize Ozu’s specialization in unpacking family relationships, telling an uncomplicated, yet heartfelt and universal story about a father and daughter’s struggle to reconcile and find each other’s happiness. His films stood the test of time as a reminder for generations after generations to reflect on their traditions, preserve the prosaic and long-established values against the drastic impact of Western acculturation. Regarding Ozu as an auteur not only pays tribute to his exquisite body of works that share the same characteristics, but also affirming the essentialness of the auteur theory in the history of cinema, as it celebrates a visionary filmmaking mindset that leaves a mark on itself. 

Works Cited

Late Spring. Yasujiro, Ozu. 1949.

Bordwell, David. Thompson, Kristin. Art Cinema and The Idea of Authorship. Film History: An Introduction. Second Edition. McGraw Hill. 2003

Dorsky, Nathaniel. Devotional Cinema. Small Press Distribution. 2003. 

Japanese Aesthetics. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Dec 2005. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/japanese-aesthetics/#MonoNoAwarPathThin

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: Femininity Representation In The 1950s

The rise of popular culture in the 1950s shaped certain ideologies on gender stereotypes and American consumerism, which consequently prompted a wave of rebellion and dissatisfaction against these social conventions. The economic power taken over by women while their husbands were on duty during World War II enabled them to move beyond their subversion and realize their feminine identities. Meanwhile, the popularity of television incentivized Hollywood studios to experiment with various techniques to attract more audiences. Coming from this borderline era, Howard Hawks’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)—starring Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell, whose public images were often conceived as erotic female representation—is highly aware of its status in a changing climate of cinema. Nevertheless, their performances in the film affirm an embodied female subject, in which their roles challenge and ironize standardization, ultimately evoking sympathetic feminist identification. In addition, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes possesses a vibrant style of the 50s, in which each scene looks like a harmonious painting, colorful costumes matching its set design. This paper will, therefore, explore the gender politics in the 50s in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes—the concept of the male gaze, American consumerism, female assertion and solidarity; as well as the film’s lively mise-en-scene and technological advancement through diagnosing specific musical sequences and scenes.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes simultaneously provokes and perverts the idea of the “male gaze”, with two female protagonists, Lorelei Lee and Dorothy Shaw, fully dictating their power over men—the camera finds them as objects of visual fascination, looking at others without acknowledging themselves being observed. Laura Murvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema states that “In a world by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness” (Murvey 841). To be specific, since it is a gaze of both desire and anxiety, the “male gaze” that organizes the cinematic glamorization of women necessarily signifies the possibility of aggression that realizes male activity and female passivity as physical violence. This gaze is not just the visual attitudes of empirical men, but virtual spectator position determined by narrative cinema’s conjunction of scopophilic pleasure (the pleasure of seeing without being seen). The camera’s point of view in most Hollywood films often comes from a male cinematographer’s perspective, regarding women with fetishistic excitement; thus Gentlemen Prefer Blondes undoubtedly serves as an iconic example of women objectification, in which it equates women as precious goods, symbols of male’s success. One of the film’s most memorable songs, “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend”, is often mistaken to celebrate materialism, yet it indeed triumphs a woman’s desire for financial independence. Lorelei sings and dances in a fancy pink gown with long glove, accompanied by a group of gentlemen in a matching color background stage. Throughout the sequence, the viewer is shown from the perspective of the traditional male gaze, allured into Lorelei’s performance. The moments when Lorelei looks directly into the camera, delivering the line “But get that ice or else no dice...” and when the viewer sees a reverse shot of her fiancé, Gus in the audience watching as she tosses him a belt of diamonds seem to confront the gaze and push back this concept. These shots underline the importance of viewership during that period, while also offering a social commentary on the male gaze. In this scene, Lorelei is conscious of Gus’s gaze as well as others’ and she is taking full advantage of it. Another scene of Dorothy also demonstrates this flipping of the male gaze: She wanders around a gym, freely takes pleasure in looking and flirting with the Olympic team. The camera displays massive fleshly male bodies in various exercises, as she manages to resist the temptation and sort her way through a maze of indifferent individuals. By and large, she seems disaffected by this dehumanized spectacle, since all of her erratic glances, whether yearning or skeptical, are treated by apathetic and aloof stares. In the beginning of the sequence, the camera sets Dorothy apart in long and middle shots, emphasizing her isolation from the labyrinth of athletes. However, towards the end, when she sits near the edge of the swimming pool and gets knocked into the water, Dorothy suddenly becomes a part of that estranged community. A group of men pulled her out and put her onto their shoulders, while a waiter serves her a drink. The song “Ain’t There Anyone Here For Love” also implicitly directs its messages to the offscreen Lorelei, whose absorption in materialism equates the longing for love conveyed here. Without a doubt, this scene gives much authority to Dorothy and validates female aspiration, ultimately proving its effort in claiming women’s changing status in society. In summation, spectacle has always been an indispensable element in Hollywood 50s films, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’s marvelous production design with extravagant costumes and choreography not only generates one of the most impressive musical segments in film history, but also constructs an accurate representation of femininity in the 1950s, uncertain between sexualized conformity and liberated expression.

Another scene from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes that possesses a political allegory, exposing glimpse of colonialism behind typical exoticism is when Lorelei meets Piggy, a wealthy owner of a diamond mine. Following the end of World War II, with promising socio-economic growth, affording to buy expensive goods was considered as possessing a stable quality of life. Piggy’s character represents an American view towards consumerism that was pervasive in this decade. The fact that the diamond mine he owns is in Africa also refers to the Civil Rights movement and racial discrimination at the time. A specific shot of Peggy’s face, when Lorelei realizes his occupation, resembles a large diamond, which demonstrates a literal interpretation of him by Lorelei. Similar to the scene when Dorothy observes the Olympics athletes, this scene plays out as a reversal of the conventional objectification of women, indicating their shifting status in society. An article on “Times Higher Education” notes that “Lorelei literally turns her back on the "monuments" of culture to admire the icons of consumerism and luxury, and this definition of the blonde as brainless and materialistic quickly became entrenched as a stereotype”. Without a doubt, she is not objectifying Peggy for sexual desire, but rather the materialistic gain that she wishes to attain from him. Later, Piggy’s wife arrives and shows Lorelei her tiara, yet she doesn’t know how to put the tiara around her neck, and doesn’t believe Dorothy’s advice about wearing it on her head. When she finally wears it the right way, she is enamored of its stylistic presence and exclaims: “I just love finding new places to wear diamond”. Eventually, Lorelei decides to strategize her charisma to seduce Piggy and get the tiara for her luxurious jewelry fantasy. As a result, the sarcastic allusion in this scene shows the hypocrisy of capitalism, whose unrealistic American Dream of owning material goods was only accessible to white privileges. 

Despite all of these social terrain and gender inequality, Dorothy and Lorelei’s charming solemnity of friendship and support for each other still shines. The most defining feminist moment occurs at the end of the film when the two swap their identities: Dorothy, disguised as Lorelei, appears in court testifying for the stolen diamond tiara. This brilliant scene carried out by Jane Russell somehow exhibits the inauthenticity of Lorelei’s dumb-blonde characteristics, the lack of difficulty in which a false appearance by another woman can deceive oblivious men. Dorothy takes off her fur coat, reveals the flamboyant outfit and “attacks” the judges with Lorelei’s classic song “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend”. Oddly, the men in the courtroom quickly enjoy her impromptu performance and turn into attentive audiences. What can be clearly seen is that Dorothy’s appealing aggressiveness and confidence has brought seriousness and justice to collapse. The last scene of Gentlemen Prefer Blonde marries the two allied women by removing the men from the frame, connecting the image of Lorelei and Dorothy as partners—this eventually certifies their companionship and rapport, which is remarkably liberated during this supposedly patriachal time period. Dorothy and Lorelei enter the great hall in two identical bridal dresses, veils, and bouquets. Each character has a separate close-up with her fiancé before the camera frame narrows down, zooming into the two women’s close-ups. Dorothy and Lorelei give a satisfactory glances at each other, then turn back to the marriage officiant as the ending title “The End” appears on screen. The film’s construction of female sovereignty subverts and overturns the gazing males—they act on their own endeavors and motives: While Monroe's character chases money, Russell's character wants love. Yet, both of them are determined and indomitable about their actions, and do not let the surroundings influence their thoughts or intentions. Douglas Sirk’s melodrama All That Heaven Allows (1955) also revolves around a couple struggling under the 1950s’s societal repression and offers a comment on class and conservative ideas. The fact that a widow who has an affair with a young gardener is alienated by her high-status friends reflects the close-mindedness of the community during post-war America. Cary, as played by Jane Wyman, is a woman torn between the desire for romance and the preconceived obligation she has always inhabited. Nevertheless, towards the end of the film, Cary’s pursuit of happiness releases her from all norms and strings of pleasing other people’s expectations to fight for her own life. Likewise, the radiant enchantment and bonding between Lorelei and Dorothy provide Gentlemen Prefer Blondes with a profound feeling of female empowerment, revolutionized against the patriarchal values of its time. As a consequence, Hawks’s portrayal of female solidarity through building up two fearless central characters has added a solid element to the film’s feminist message. 

In conclusion, overshadowing the male gaze with women’s fierce attitudes and sex appeals, criticizing American consumerism that only pays attention to superficiality, strengthening female solidarity and navigating the constraints of a patriarchal world—all of this aforementioned themes have made Gentlemen Prefer Blondes an unforgettable musical comedy piece of the 1950s. The fact that Howard Hawks grants his female characters ownership of their own desires makes Gentlemen Prefer Blondes a surprisingly quintessential film that still resonates with many of today’s problems. In the 21st century, the feminist movement in Hollywood has witnessed several sexual assault survivors from various religions, races, beliefs standing up and overthrowing powerful figures. In the era of silence breakers such as “Time’s Up” and “Me Too”, the impact of Howark Hawks’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes from post-war America has built up a rudimentary, compelling cinematic study on the issue of gender roles, breaking away stereotypes of the male gaze, materialism, and powerlessness that have long been imposed on women in the society. 

Works Cited

Murvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Braudy, Leo. Cohen, Marshall. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Oxford University Press. 2004.

Hammill, Faye. They're called dumb, materialistic sexual predators - but millions are dyeing to join them. Times Higher Education. January 2003. 

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/theyre-called-dumb-materialistic-sexual-predators-but-millions-are-dyeing-to-join-them/174039.article#survey-answer

Gaslight (1944): A Cinematic Study of Psychological Manipulation

Film noir, emerging in the 1940s, serves as a reflection and presentation of Hollywood with socio-economic problems during the war and post-war periods. Originated from the 30s gangster films, this gloomy and pessimistic genre, literally meaning "black film", often address crime issues and consist of dark plots, victimized femininity in contrast to toxic masculinity. The combination of social disorientation, hopeless romanticism and gendered power struggles unleashed in those post-war years was addressed in a lot of films produced during that period. The mid-1940s generated several psychological thrillers but George Cukor’s Gaslight (1944) stands out with an enthralling narrative structure, spectacular production design, and stellar performances delivered by Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer and Joseph Cotten. Gaslight shares many elements with film noir, whose characteristics is signified through the dull atmospheric Victorian London setting and melodramatic style revolving around the attempt of a husband in driving his wife insane for deceitful purposes. Through Cukor’s skillful direction, Gaslight creates suspense through manifesting its complicated character study and psychological perplexities. This paper will, as a consequence, examine Gaslight’s cinematic treatment on the topic of mental abuse, its allusion to a patriarchal system where women are vulnerable and regarded as victims, especially the feminine defiance in the film’s ending sequence, as well as the film’s similar stylistic characteristics with film noir and its political allegory—the way politicians nowadays make use of media to control and popularize people’s mindset. 

George Cukor's Gaslight is a claustrophobic yet enthralling thriller about emotional control and manipulation. The story brings to light a patriarchal system where men dominate over women by diminishing their dignity with false psychological claims, labeling them as frantic and hysterical. The term “gaslighting” is defined by Wikipedia as “a person seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity”. Paula, a young woman who lives with her aunt in London, later moves to Italy after her aunt is killed during a burglary. Years later, Paula marries a pianist named Gregory Anton, played by Boyer, and the couple returns to her aunt’s house; yet a series of unexplained events happen, especially the secretive dimming of the gas-powered lights that serve as a metaphor for Paula’s weakening mental health and perception of herself. Paula’s pretentiously compassionate husband imprisons her in their antique house, forbidding any outside visitors and slowly convinces Paula that she is losing sanity through an accumulation of incidents. For instance, there is a scene when Gregory accuses Paula of taking and hiding a picture from the wall, which makes her absolutely frightened, gradually move away from him. The camera slowly zooms in, focusing on Paula’s striking look at her husband; her seemingly soft, broken voice questioning her own self: “Yes, the picture has been taken down. Who took it down? Why has been taken down?” The fact that Gregory calls the old servant into the room to observe the empty wall and requests her to “kiss the bible as a solemn oath telling the truth” emphasizes the realism of the situation. Even when Paula excuses him that “I didn’t know” and “If I ever do all of these meaningless things…”, his affirmative, uncanny statement has such a weight that allures Paula into believing in her own forgetfulness and delusion. Her begging that “If that was true, you must be gentle with me, you must bear with me please” ultimately displays her subversion towards him, her inferior feminine identity under the patriarchal context. In another scene, Gregory told Paula that her mother was mad and died in an asylum, and that he even talked to the doctor about the symptoms, making his lies more compelling: “It began with her imagining things that she heard noise: footsteps, voices and then the voices begin to speak to her and at the end she died in an asylum with no brain at all”. Here, Gregory came towards Paula, using acrimonious words to make her collapse and heighten his authority. The film traps the viewer in the same shoes with Paula's, mentally manipulated and disturbed by the autocratic Gregory. His projection of false ideals on her mind is irritating, which makes Gaslight is frustrating to watch, ultimately showing the film’s effective demonstration of the villain’s evil act. Nevertheless, it is always obvious for the audience that Gregory is the one who murdered Paula’s aunt, and he is deviating Paula’s mind for his own plan of stealing her aunt’s hidden jewels. Therefore, due to the film’s unrestricted narration, the viewer accompanies Paula thoroughly through several stages of demoralization and knowing what exactly is happening. 

The suspense is built up not only from the mystery of the villain’s actions, but from the viewer’s unspoken longing hope for Paula’s realization beneath every tension moment. Nevertheless, Gaslight doesn’t allow Paula to take the initiative and figure out the predicament herself—she remains the fragile and easily-crumbled woman. It is not until inspector Cameron, played by Cotten, breaks into the house without Gregory’s notice that Paula is woken out of unconsciousness and finds out the letter that the murderer sent her aunt days prior to her death. When Cameron points out that by driving her insane, Gregory “would have control of your (her) property”, Paula recounts her childhood memories of witnessing the horror. The word “me” slowly comes out of her mouth, as Paula bitterly realizes she was “the little girl”—the spectator of murder in the old days. However, despite his heroic appearance, Cotten’s character is awkwardly incorporated into the story, instead of a more feminist resolution: Paula redeeming herself, fighting back against masculinity oppression. Gaslight subjects Paula to such extreme difficulties that the slight development of romance between Paula and Cameron at the climax is somehow inappropriate. Cameron's presence in Gaslight clearly shows the conventions in classical Hollywood films: There is no more convincing solution rather than a romance. Despite Cameron's part in triggering Paula's regain of dignity and awareness, Gaslight’s brilliant ending scene indeed gives the viewer a deeply satisfying confrontation between Paula and her husband. Gregory is tied to a chair, powerless in front of his wife, their positions finally reversed. As usual, he tries to coax her into freeing him: “Be quick Paula! Get me the knife”; yet this time, instead of being obedient, Paula bitterly taunts and mocks him with the possibility of freedom before letting the detective take him away. Here, she is finally able to turn his strategies back on him, take the words that he used to manipulate her for a different purpose. She utilizes the knife as a reference to the illusion of her own insanity that Gregory has placed in her head: “Are you suggesting that this is the knife I hold in my hand? Have you gone mad my husband? Or is that I who are mad?” The camera interchanges between close-ups of their faces, displaying a dynamic revenge, a long-delayed outrage bursting out. In the end, Gregory has to admit that Paula is not mad, and the empty, straight look on Bergman’s face has conveyed it all. Without a doubt, Gaslight presents the viewer with a sharp examination on psychological abuse and comments on society's contempt towards women, in which their concerns are rejected, their voices are drowned out.

Stylistically, Gaslight’s mise-en-scene also contributes to its dark tone and adds an important layer to its complicated depiction of mental manipulation. The opening scene occurs on the night of the murder, with bleak Victorian buildings and gloomy silhouettes in the scenery. This cinematic beginning helps bring to light the protagonist traumatized by the crime she has just unexpectedly disrupted and witnessed. Cukor focuses on the film's atmospheric setting, masterfully capturing an old London with flickering gaslight lamps, foggy streets and pavements. Interestingly, Bergman’s face is utilized as a surface, allowing the high contrast lighting to illuminate and brush with shadows and warm tone. Cukor constantly highlights Paula’s face in close-ups, lingering on silent shots of her simply contemplating or looking around. The movement of her eyes, facial expression and subtle actions together deepen her suffering. In addition, the film won an Academy Award for Best Art Direction - Interior Decoration (Black and White) in 1945 for the works by Cedric Gibbons, William Ferrari, Edwin B. Willis and Paul Huldschinsky. An article on “Graffiti with Punctuation” notes that, “Their magnificent work aided in the creation of the film’s claustrophobic atmosphere, particularly in the townhouse interiors. The vast number of props and set dressings in the interior scenes, and their artfully specific placements, were particularly impressive”. Without a doubt, Cukor’s crew has successfully evoked an oppressive and suspenseful vibe in the Victorian townhouse in which most of the scenes take place. 

Besides its theme of emotional abuse and manipulation, Gaslight also possesses a political message, which still apply to many of nowadays social issues—especially the way leaders make promising statements to deceive ordinary Americans, fooling them into believing in a corrupted party, spreading out misleading propaganda. The Boston Globe published an article on “Gaslighting is back in the Trump era”, stating that “It is what our new president tries to do when he repeats claims that his inauguration was the most well-attended ever or that there was massive voter fraud perpetrated by illegal immigrants; it is what his spokespeople engage in when they substantiate those claims with what they refer to as “alternative facts”. Another article published by Teen Vogue also addresses this term of “gaslighting”, providing several statistical evidence to support its argument: “Trump won the presidency by gaslight. His rise to power has awakened a force of bigotry by condoning and encouraging hatred, but also by normalizing deception”. Without a doubt, considering the current political discourse atmosphere, especially with the appointment of the new president, which causes divisive sides and ideologies, the use of “gaslighting” is more frequent than ever. Nevertheless, it is not only conceived in a gender spectrum with the oppressive masculinity over femininity, but it has expanded in different aspects of the society. The hidden political message can also be seen in other contemporary films from the same era, especially Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca (1942), whose characters represent different standpoints in World War II, and the mythological image of the idealized American hero is portrayed through Humphrey Bogart’s character. Casablanca seems to motivate an American audience who is reluctant to set aside their political beliefs to get engaged in other rightful ideologies. Likewise, George Cukor’s Gaslight seems to inspire the theme of empathy and self-recognition so that people regardless of races, religions or political beliefs can be considered as equals. “Gaslighting” should not be used to discriminate against women, isolate people of color or separate any marginalized community from the majority. As a consequence, Gaslight’s political allegory hidden under the entangled plot and insightful character study, which still resonates and ignites many of today’s problems, has made it one of the most important film noirs of the 1940s. 

In conclusion, Gaslight has presented the viewer with a thoughtful study of psychological abuse and manipulation through its atmospheric paranoia mise-en-scene and exquisite storytelling technique from George Cukor. It has stood the test of time for being one of the most influential thrillers of the 1940s film noir era, capturing feminine spirit and hardship under a patriarchal system and influencing many of the contemporary social movements in casting doubts on the psychological tactic “gaslighting”.

Works Cited

Malouf, Lisa. Five Star Films #85: Gaslight (George Cukor - 1944). Graffiti with Punctuation. December, 2015. 

https://graffitiwithpunctuation.com/opinion/2015/12/30/five-star-films-85

Burr, Ty. Gaslight is back in the Trump era, but where does it come from? The Boston Globe. January, 2017.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2017/01/26/turning-down-lights/g0pZzMMe7uCHxqWItwJGlM/story.html

Duca, Lauren. Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America. Teen Vogue. December, 2016 https://www.teenvogue.com/story/donald-trump-is-gaslighting-america

Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights (1931)

Despite the domination of talking pictures in the late 1920s, Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights (1931) blazed its way into the era, serving as one of the most remarkable landmarks in silent cinema, which bridges all elements for which Chaplin is remembered, from slapstick and pathos to melodrama and social satire. As City Lights unfolds, the Tramp character represents those outsiders neglected by the society, showing different layers of desire, struggle and compassion. He forms relationships with two individuals whose incapability to see him: a drunk suicidal Millionaire who doesn't recognize the Tramp and a blind Flower Girl who mistakes his noble status. Nevertheless, their “blindnesses” allow them to see the Tramp’s inner personality, a kind-hearted fellow who repeatedly saves the Millionaire’s life, and a man who is willing to risk everything to give the Flower Girl a chance to restore her eyesight. Undoubtedly, the success of City Lights lies on its universal language, which transcends all cultural and political barriers. This paper will, therefore, examine the advanced cinematic techniques in the City Lights (including the utilization of frame, lighting, performances and sound design), the theme of misrecognition and the act of seeing, as well as its comedic style and presentation of human complexity in comparison to Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last, ultimately demonstrating how Chaplin’s film goes beyond social convention and remain one of the purest examples of timeless filmmaking.

Most of Chaplin’s films utilizes the effect of the camera frame to its fullest: To Chaplin, the border of the screen is not simply an edge, but a dynamic boundary that helps intensify the interior of the image. Chaplin’s films not only create a visible organization among subjects on the screen, but also adopt defined perspectives on the action, as well as give rise to off-screen implications. He brilliantly refines the foreground, middle-ground and background to enhance the vibrancy of a scene, in which each shot is full of action and meticulously choreographed. Chaplin’s editing style, as a consequence, depends on the characters’ activities within a frame and their logical continuity into the next frame. His use of close-ups in-between long and medium shots to intensify emotions helps distinguish the importance of the human face from its physical surroundings. In addition, the gorgeous cinematography is accompanied by the use of standard three-point lighting system within the Hollywood studio era. Key lighting appears during daytime scenes, evoking a sense of optimism and liveliness, while fill lighting is used for nighttime or indoor scenes to show contrast and urgency. Back lighting functions as a way of illuminating the characters and creating a realistic nuance. Furthermore, Chaplin’s focus on facial expressions plays a crucial role in City Lights—the Tramp’s face is highlighted with makeup and subtle gestures to evoke his eccentricity and empathy. His appearance as a peculiar man degraded by the general public is not just to amuse the viewer but also insert Chaplin’s social criticism. City Lights seems to imply that the Tramp’s misfortune results from both modern capitalism and economic depression. For instance, at the beginning of the film, the Tramp is seen on a monument during an inauguration, crawling up and down, trying to get away from the crowd’s attention. This series of comedic gags refers to the defiance of the government and those who support the bureaucratic power system. Some people are giving speeches, but what the viewer hear is not real voices but distorted, mumbling and ridiculous sound effects. Although City Lights has no spoken dialogue, it possesses a synchronized soundtrack with diegetic noises and stylized music scores, whose rhythms energize and connect different visual segments, accompanying the actions and sustaining the dynamic pace of the film. Without a doubt, the employment of frame, lighting and silent film’s standard components such as intertitles and body language have all contributed to City Lights’s universalization. 

A major concept permeating City Lights is the idea of mistaken identity and seeing the true nature of people, a theme that defines social conflicts and anonymity problems in America’s mid-twentieth century. In one scene, the Tramp crosses paths with a suicidal Millionaire who is about to throw himself into the river—the Tramp saves the Millionaire from alcoholic despair, they become friends and the Millionaire takes him to several entertainment places. However, when the Millionaire is sober, he has no memories of nighttime events and treats the Tramp with the hostility that the wealthy reserves for the poor. This mismatched friendship between the Millionaire and the Tramp is ironic in itself: While the Tramp has no precious assets, the Millionaire possesses an endless supply of cash. The Millionaire character represents the whimsical ignorance of the rich forces, who shape this unfair and arbitrary system where underdog like the Tramp has to struggle. Chaplin’s comments on class boundaries are literalized through drunkenness, which refers to the shortsightedness and artificiality of the upper-class. In addition, Chaplin adds a sentimental romance between the Tramp and a blind Flower Girl, who mistakes him for a rich benefactor. Since the Flower Girl and her mother comes close to poverty, the impulsive and kind-hearted Tramp steps forward to support her condition. To gain money for her eyesight operation, the Tramp involves himself in several humiliations and violations, from working tirelessly to desperately fighting in a boxing match. In another adventure with the Millionaire, the Tramp asks for his help and benefits from his drunken generosity, yet after the Millionaire gives a big amount of money to the Tramp, his house is burglarized and surrounded by police. The Millionaire later regains consciousness and is unable to identify the Tramp, whose pocket is now full of cash; thus, the Tramp is then captured and jailed by authorities. At the end of the film, one of the most heart-breaking scenes in cinema history: The Tramp, while wandering on the street after being released from prison, encounters the Flower Girl at her new shop. They catch each other’s eyes; she hands him a flower and puts a coin in his palm, which recalls her of the feel of his hand. The camera changes between the surprise and tenderness in the Flower Girl’s and the nervousness and longing in the Tramp’s eyes. The flower here symbolizes the permanence of compassion that they both share, even after she realizes that he is only a poor human. In Charlie Chaplin’s official website, he shared some reactions towards this ending sequence: “I’ve had that once or twice, in City Lights just the last scene, I’m not acting. Almost apologetic, standing outside myself and looking. It’s a beautiful scene, beautiful, and because it isn’t over-acted.” It is also stated that, “He spent many laborious weeks on the deceptively simple scene where the Tramp and the flower girl first meet, setting up the premise of the story. Here, in two or three minutes, through action alone, he establishes the meeting of the two people; the Tramp’s recognition that she is blind, and his instant fascination and pity and the girl’s misconception that this poor creature is a rich man. At the end of the sequence, having built up the sentiment to a high pitch, he brilliantly dashes it with a touch of broad comedy”. In conclusion, Chaplin’s personal insertion into the film with much characteristic mania and determination to shoot a silent in the rising era of the talkies only adds to the uniqueness of City Lights. Central to its success is the way Chaplin incorporates different disjointed, short gags into a coherent feature. Even contextualized his enormous filmography that generated Modern Times (1936), earlier masterpieces—The Kid (1921), The Circus (1928) or  The Gold Rush (1925)—City Lights still stands out as an uninterrupted narrative through excellent mise-en-scene, cinematography, sound design and performance.

While Chaplin brings his own improvised idiosyncrasy to create universality and touch any viewer regardless of generation or nationality, Harold Lloyd’s style stands on a different mode. Although he is regarded along with Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton as a master trio of the classic comedy, his humorous, romantic drama is built upon a specific purpose. In contrast to the Tramp’s oversized pants, bower hat and cane—Lloyd’s character’s trademark is a pair of glasses, a straw hat and a suit, which makes him look like a young nerdy who wants to fit in and flourish in life. His character usually exhibit a positive and playful attitude, which differs from Chaplin's marginalized, romantically oriented Tramp. However, unlike the politically deconstructive Chaplin, whose personas resonate easily with today’s audiences, Lloyd's screen personality is almost forgotten. His Safety Last (1923) features an average countryside man trying to make ends meet in a big city in order to impress his fiancee. The Boy lands a job as a clerk in a department store, but his promising letters home to the fiancee allure her belief in his fortune. The second half of the film shifts into a surreal twist when The Boy has to replace his friend to get $1000 by climbing a 12-floor building. By making his character so believable and authentic, Lloyd elevates the death-defying stunts and absurd humor, especially the legendary climbing sequence, to an extremely suspenseful level. The tension between a realistic character and a a non-realistic circumstance keeps the viewer simultaneously excited and worried for the character. According to PBS, “Lloyd knew that if he could keep an audience on the edge of their seats like this, he could make them laugh even harder. So, using the tricks of photographic perspective, he began to shoot scenes that looked as if they were happening on the sides of buildings, on scaffoldings, or hanging from clocks. These acrobatic hi-jinks seemed amazingly real in a time before special effects”. Lloyd is not as sentimental or inventive as his contemporary Chaplin—his style is, instead, a minimalist one: From the mundane situation of a clerk in a clothing store who desperately needs to earn money, he finds himself swinging and holding ontoonto a giant clock on the side of a building. The Boy’s desire to earn a living is the rudimentary cause of all of his troubles; on the other hand, the Tramp’s bad luck is caused by societal ignorance and class differences. Much of the plots in Safety Last and City Lights revolves around the pursuit of a girl, yet Lloyd’s building-climbing demonstrates manly bravery on some aspects, while the Tramp’s struggle to pay off the Flower Girl’s debts shows his profound inner personality instead of masculinity. Triumphing mime, gestures and facial expressions, the Tramp character is relatable to any viewer—the fact that he doesn’t talk much, a difference from Lloyd’s loquacious charisma, also contributes to his innocence, cluelessness and honesty. He serves as a symbolic figure himself, standing for the primitive expressions of humanity, hope and optimism. 

As Chaplin constructs City Lights from personal insights and experiences, its simplicity and affectionate depiction of human complexity build up such a poignant story, ultimately justifying the endurance of silent film and its visual power. It is undeniable to say that Chaplin’s openness and willingness to depict reality despite its harshness moves beyond traditional filmmaking to reach worldwide audiences.

Works Cited

City Lights. Chaplin, Charlie. 1931.

Safety Last. Lloyd, Harold. 1923. 

Robinson, David. Filming City Lights. charliechaplin.com. 2004. https://www.charliechaplin.com/en/biography/articles/4-City-Lights

Brownlow, Kevin. Gill, David. Harold Lloyd. The Third Genius. PBS: American Masters. January 2006. 

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/harold-lloyd-about-harold-lloyd/647/

The Art Of Opening Scenes In “Caché” and “The Conversation”

Remarkable movies often grab viewers' attention from the get-go and provide a compelling hook that entices them into the story from the very beginning shot. With Michael Haneke’s Caché (2005) and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974), viewers are introduced to two of the most eyes-opening and mind-bending psychological thrillers of the film industry. Though both movies maintain an admirable balance between content and aesthetics, serving as an in-depth exploration into the concept of surveillance, their opening scenes differ significantly in the emphasis of mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, and sound design elements. This paper will examine how both the opening shots in Caché and The Conversation establish the fundamental framework through which the viewer perceives the rest of the masterpieces, yet they are different in affirming a mysterious atmosphere, which portrays the elements of film technique and further contributes to the deeper meaning of the movies. 

Both Caché and The Conversation possess a nontraditional beginning, which grounds the viewers in the protagonist’s observation and sets up the stage for the movies’ theme of surveillance. Caché opens with a static shot of the exterior of Georges Laurent’s house as he walks over to his car during an early morning. Nevertheless, not until the next shot comes up does the viewer realize that he is watching, along with the characters, a videotape sequence. With just a single image, Haneke brilliantly places the characters’ life under surveillance and engages the viewer with Cache on a conscious, rational perspective rather than a subconscious, emotional one. As Cache utilizes restricted narration, the viewer’s knowledge is limited by the characters’ point of view. When Georges wonders “How did I manage to miss this guy? I can’t figure it out.”, Anne replies, “Maybe the camera was in the car.” With these assumptions in mind, Haneke puts the viewer on a journey of surveillance to experience as much as the characters; the viewer is able to watch these cassettes entering the movie impossibly and disrupting the story in a philosophical level. Likewise, in The Conversation, the viewer “listens to” the opening scene—a conversation between a woman and a man in busy Union Square in San Francisco. The movie employs remarkable photographic techniques so as to give the viewer an illusion of watching the scene as through optical surveillance devices. The viewer observes the couple—Ann and Mark—walking through the public square over the shoulders of several forefront pedestrians. These techniques put the viewer into the Harry Caul’s state of mind and create an impression that the viewer is spying on the couple himself. The camera functions like a surveillance device, engaging the viewer with the mystery and tension of The Conversation’s plot. Furthermore, as the movie’s screenplay was written in the 60s amid the Watergate scandal, The Conversation serves as an iconic representation of surveillance and the political repercussion of a society in which people are put under surveillance and their privacy is being threatened at all times. Without doubt, through two unforgettable opening scenes, both Michael Haneke’s Caché and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation successfully pushes viewers to think critically and acknowledge cinema as a means of seeing the truth and the art of surveillance. 

Through mise-en-scene, Caché develops an atmosphere of a contemporary setting, while The Conversation creates a more vibrant and upbeat environment. Caché begins with a long take that extends over two minutes, overlooking a narrow urban street and centering on a house somewhere in Paris, France. Employing different elements of mise-en-scene, Haneke challenges viewers in their power of observation and makes them aware of their status in front of the camera. Just as the hidden observer is watching the Laurent family inside the screen world, the viewer is watching Georges and Anne outside of the screen world. On a superficial level, the viewer is looking at a simple videotape; but it is in watching the videotape that prompts other upcoming events that intensify throughout the film until the ambiguous and mysterious ending. On the contrary, The Conversation impresses viewers with a vigorous environment in San Francisco, a crowded public place in which Harry Caul is conducting his surveillance work. The public square is apparently anonymous, with people surrounding while Anna and Mark are walking together, but little do they realize they are being taped. Even though the environment appears to be busy, this open space makes the couple more vulnerable and exposed. As a consequence, mise-en-scene plays an essential role in both Caché and The Conversation, ultimately contributing dramatic effects and meaning to the movies’ narrative. 

Another film technique that shapes the viewer’s impression of movies from the first shot is the art of cinematography, which succeeds in both Caché and The Conversation with an astonishing distortion of the cinematic lens. Caché’s beginning scene, a typical long zoom shot, captures an ordinary street as the camera frame centers on a house with nothing significant passing by. All of a sudden, the film credits appear horizontally as though someone is typing on the screen. Then, not until the image rewinds does the viewer know that he is watching a video recording. The stationary framing and surveillance-like positioning of the image signalize the subsequent recordings that will come up in later scenes. However, as the film continues, the viewer faces the impossibility of differentiating the video recordings from the movie itself. As viewers concentrate on the scene and expects the frame to end at any moment, it just lasts for much longer, intriguing their curiosity and patience. Likewise, The Conversation begins with an astonishing three-minute long take: the camera starts with a wide angle on the square, where the enigmatic conversation takes place. The camera lens slowly zooms in on the square and later in on a mime, which highlights the auditory disconnect from the visual in the film. When the camera lies at the top of the shot, the noise of the square sounds distant; but as the camera pushes in, the sound becomes more audible and crunchy. This camera position’s main purpose is to draw the viewer into the movie through the auditory perspective of the surveillance expert, Harry Caul. As a result, the cinematography in both Caché and The Conversation’s opening scenes leaves a lasting impression on the viewer and their understanding of the film as a powerful medium. 

Furthermore, Caché and The Conversation serves as faultless examples of movies whose editing and sound mixing are used to perfection. In Caché’s opening scene, the sound volume is relatively low, especially in the static shots of the house; yet when the scene changes to the couple’s conversation in the room, this low volume gradually increases to a higher level. Haneke also uses minimalistic editing techniques to develop his narrative while still restricting the information given to the viewer. Instead of explicitly displaying to the viewer what he wants to see, Haneke utilizes subtle editing techniques to alter how the viewer watches Caché, forcing the viewer to delve deeper into the story to solve the puzzle and gather different pieces together into a concise narration. In this way, the viewer is like a detective himself, spying in on the story of the movie to gain more knowledge than what he already knows. Similarly, the editing technique of The Conversation demonstrates Harry Caul’s characteristic and how he uses his machinery to analyze what he hears. In the opening scene, when the viewer hears Harry’s co-worker, Stan’s voice for the first time, the shot is taken from Harry’s point of view; thus it seems like Harry has been interrupted while concentrating on his work. Moreover, The Conversation’s sound design also reaches the movie’s exceptional balance between a psychological thriller and an in-depth character study. In the opening scene, in order to find out what Mark and Ann are talking about, Harry Caul investigates multiple overlapping dialogues, on-location sound, and abstract noise. Consequently, he hears a piece of the conversation that leads him to a belief that the couple is in danger: “He would kill us if he had a chance.” The sentence itself makes him torn between his moral dilemma and occupational hazards, and the repetition of this sentence throughout the movie sheds light on the theme of paranoia. Undoubtedly, The Conversation’s opening scene has become one of the most revolutionary scenes in film history in terms of sound mixing. In summation, the combination of editing and sound design creates a magnificent effect in both Caché and The Conversation, ultimately demonstrating the influence of film techniques on what the viewer sees and hears.

In conclusion, in movies that focus on the art of surveillance like Michael Haneke’s Caché and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, the manipulation of mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, and sound design elements plays a vital role in shaping the opening scenes through the lens of a videotape, which gives viewers an unusual yet refreshing way in approaching these two masterpieces. 

Works Cited 

Cache. Haneke, Michael. France 3 Cinéma. Canal. Bavaria Film. Wega Film. 2005. 

The Conversation. Ford Coppola, Francis. The Directors Company. The Coppola Company. American Zoetrope. 1974.

The Art Of Plot That Shapes The Story In Memento

Viewers always have a strange fascination for Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster works, which range from his paradoxical art Inception (2010) to his mysterious thriller The Dark Knight Rises (2012) to his astonishing scientific Interstellar (2014) and recently to his monumental war film Dunkirk (2017). Instead of presenting a story in its chronological order, the director is well-known for constructing intricately layered plots like an enigma, demonstrating them in such a way that challenges the viewer’s intelligence while simultaneously engaging their mind with psychology concepts. Among these, Nolan's Memento (2000) serves as one of the most classic and perplexing psychological thrillers of the 21st century. The movie revolves around Leonard Shelby, who experiences short-term memory loss and struggles to search for the person who murdered his wife. Memento’s unique plot becomes a key factor in the movie’s successful story-telling technique. Its chronologically backwards structure, which challenges viewers to keep up with the story, accomplishes two remarkable effects: restricting viewers to the protagonist’s mental state and perception, as well as challenging the assumptions that viewers might have towards the characters in the movie. All of these aforementioned accomplishments shape viewers’ understanding of Memento, ultimately expressing Leonard’s uncertainty and skepticism towards each event happening to him after experiencing anterograde amnesia and being unable to form new memories. 

Memento’s backwards chronological plot enables viewers to be in Leonard’s shoes and empathize with his experience. The investigation adventure unfolds from his perspective, yet the plot also restricts viewers’ knowledge to Leonard's observations, which ultimately shapes their understanding of the movie. As viewer’s understanding is limited to Leonard’s point of view, they never know what is happening when a scene starts because they are traveling backwards through time. To be specific, every color scene is in a reverse sequence and each indicates approximately ten minutes of the storyline, which represents the lengths of Leonard’s memory. These segments are intertwined by shorter sections of black and white scenes in chronological order that make up one sub-plot in which Leonard is talking on the phone with an unknown cop. Here, Nolan uses reverse plot to magnify the restrictive narration, revealing only Leonard's perception and feelings. This restrictive narration causes uncertainty in Memento and force viewers to put the puzzle pieces together from the protagonist’s mindset. For instance, the scene in which Leonard meets Natalie in a restaurant shows Leonard’s trying to read Natalie’s body language and figure out what kind of person she is. Likewise, viewers see this woman on screen for the first time and it’s difficult for them to understand thoroughly her purposes and her role in the movie. In this scene, Natalie seems visually disappointed that Leonard wasn’t able to remember her, but she eventually gives Leonard the number plate of a guy called John G. Without fail, in all of Memento’s scenes, the camera is either over Leonard’s shoulder or taking close-ups of the main character. Through this way of cinematography, a solid relationship between the viewers and Leonard is established. In short, due to the backwards chronological plot which leads to restrictive narration, viewers are constantly alert, drawing clues about the movie’s context from Leonard’s actions and the ways in which other characters react to them. 

Memento’s backwards chronological plot also challenges the assumptions and stereotypes that viewers may hold towards each character in the movie. Throughout the film’s current and flashback scenes, each character’s personalities are gradually revealed and transformed. By beginning the movie with its conclusion, Nolan’s use of the reverse technique builds suspense and structures the plot so as to invite viewers into the mystery of Teddy’s death. Viewers might assume that Teddy is the person who killed Leonard’s wife, and Leonard is the antagonist of the movie. However, as the movie goes on, the question of who the true antagonist is is brought into consideration. Is it Natalie, who manipulated Leonard into kidnapping Dodd, or is it John G, who was supposed to kill his wife, or is it Leonard himself, who chose to ignore the facts and lied to himself to be happy? Nolan keeps viewers guessing by withholding a primary piece of information until the very end of the film, Leonard’s self-deception. The most compelling revelation lies at the end of Memento in which Leonard’s conflicts aren’t just a consequence of his condition, but he deliberately lies to himself. It turns out that Sammy's story was indeed Leonard's story. Leonard’s wife was still alive after the incident but could not deal with his condition, so she decided to have him kill her with the insulin used to treat her diabetes. After hearing Teddy’s explanation, Leonard refuses to believe it. But then, he gets the idea of forgetting about what Teddy told him and manipulating his notes to lead to an unexpected conclusion that Teddy was his wife’s murderer. What can be clearly seen from this ending scene is that Leonard isn’t completely lying to himself; he is guilty of confirmation bias, accepting only the facts that affirm his previous conclusions. Moreover, Leonard is not the only character in the film who is not what he seemed. Throughout the film, Teddy’s appearance gives the impression to viewers that he actually developed a real sympathy and friendship towards Leonard. However, as viewers reach the end, Teddy turns out to be a dirty undercover cop, simply having Leonard go around different towns finding drug dealers, setting up fake deals, and making him kill these people so that he can earn the money. Another complex character of Memento, Natalie has the personality of a caregiver, a woman who would voluntarily go out of her way to help the innocent. Nevertheless, her character takes a dramatic twist as the plot reveals the pivotal role that she plays in this game. Natalie’s manipulation of Leonard to get rid of Dodd and Teddy in order to revenge for her boyfriend shows her true personality as a convolutedly mysterious woman. As a consequence, Memento’s backwards narrative structure allows viewers to make their own assumptions of the characters, from then on expands their minds with plot twists and surprises of their true identities and roles in the movie. 

In conclusion, Nolan’s remarkable motion pictures always take viewers out of the lavish spectacle and conventional ideologies of Hollywood films, presenting a more distinctive portrayal of human psychology through unique perspectives. With the backwards chronological structure and the combination of color as well as black and white sequences, Memento is, without a doubt, an excellent representation of how the plot differs from the story in such a way that successfully captures viewers’ attention. Memento’s plot is presented with subtlety, hiding in and out of every frame, and continues to haunt the viewers hours and days after the film has ended.

Works Cited

Nolan, Christopher. Memento. 2000. Summit Entertainment.

Sims, David. How Memento Set The Framework For Christopher Nolan’s Career. March, 2016. The Atlantic.