Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice - Essay Example

FILM LOG By Location “Sunset Blvd” by Billy Wilder The of the film is from the famous boulevard that runs through Beverly Hills and Los Angeles, California. The time the film was produced; Paramount Pictures had dominated the film industry in Hollywood and thus did most of the movie distributions. The movie Sunset Blvd is among the Classical Hollywood films that were mass produced (Smith 2001). The stars in the movies were used to differentiate the classical films from the standard films. The leading role of the film was William Holden as Joe Gillis. He is handsome and contains sex appeal that draws the viewer to the storyline. The first time the viewer notices his sex appeal is the scene in the driveway where a woman calls him, apparently mistaking him for someone else (Lewis 2008). His costar. Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond acts as a faded movie star who is very attractive. She draws Gillis into her fantasy world. The movie proves to be a film noir from the point we get a view of the beautiful Gloria at the Sunset Boulevard mansion (Culbertson 2006). Most of the people at the time cared about seeing an appealing character on screen rather than the quality of the film thus casting Swanson. The screen goddess Swanson had “a lot of Norma in her” according to the director of the movie. She was sophisticated and as beautiful as a goddess. It is the main reason the director decided on the character. “Samson and Delilah” by Warwick Thornton The movie “Samson and Delilah” has received numerous awards, including Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The award, which is an extremely prestigious award, was for a best first feature film (Davis 2009). The movie received critical acclaim because of its interesting storyline. It is a love story between two teenagers that live in a remote community in Central Australia. The characters fit in well in the film as Samson, Rowan McNamara, gives voice to the boys who are like him. Samson, however, has a weird character that is not straight forward. He only speaks once throughout the entire film. The writer of the movie, Thornton says the movie has its basis in the Aboriginal community in Central Australia because the children in the region are written off (Gearing 2010). The two teenagers that fall in love have fought all their lives to be great. Delilah has to take care of her grandmother single-handedly (Redwood 2009). Viewers get to experience a different side of Australia that they did not know. The success of the movie is in the setting and the film’s intimate mode of storytelling. The film also has a powerful sense of truthfulness (Davis 2009). “Samson and Delilah” builds its tensions by having small changes in the movie’s repetitions of the daily actions of the teenagers. An example is when Samson tries to move in with Delilah and Nana. Delilah finds different ways of refusing Samson’s advances like throwing his beddings over the fence. “The Thin Blue Line” by Errol Morris “The Thin Blue Line” was nominated by critics as one of the greatest documentaries ever made. The film has reflexive strategies that suggest the existence of certain parallels between the interpretive activity of the documentary viewer and operation of the film’s legal system (Nichols 1991). The film is a fascinating documentary about the murder of a police officer. It rejects what has been the definition of the two earlier styles in any documentary evolution. These two are the direct address and cinema verification (Izod and Kilborn 1998). The films have a unique style of expression. The individual style becomes apparent through obtrusive formal element uses, such as a microscopic close-up. Another example is the slow motion of cinematography. The film constructs the character of the protagonist, Randall Adams in a way that undermines every try by the viewer to know him. Due to the film being a real story, Adams, who had a false accusation of the murder got a release from prison the following year (Brooke 2014). His case got reviewed by the court, and his innocence was proven. The title of this documentary is from the prosecutor of the case comment during the closing argument. The statement was, “the police are the "thin blue line" separating society from "anarchy"” (Brooke 2014). The documentary received its critical acclaim from presenting a series of interviews about the reenactments of the shooting. Also, the investigation, which has its basis on the recollection and the testimony of Adams, Harris, the judge that had the precision over the case. “Citizen Kane” by Orson Welles Many critics around the world term “Citizen Kane” as one of the greatest movies to ever be in production in Hollywood. The sophisticated, fresh, and classic masterpiece that is “Citizen Kane”, very famous all over the worlds most famous. The movie has many remarkable performances and scenes, narratives and cinematic techniques and experimental innovations. The features are part of what makes the movie unique (Wollen 2004). The cinematography, the acting, the stuff of a hundred dissertations is the best the players in the film can offer. The direction, of the movie, was superb, so much so that Welles remains a household name to this day. Citizen Kane has a unique status in the canon of American cinema and a singular place in Hollywood history. The film had its creation by a few brilliant artists who were given the unprecedented creative freedom to do whatever they felt fit (Rosenbaum 2001). It happened at the height of the Hollywood studio system. Studio bosses had a control in every aspect of filmmaking from production to distribution to the exhibition. The film had an incredible spearheading by an extraordinary triple-threat talent, Welles, who, at only 25 years old, had already cut his teeth on radio and stage. He had, however, never before made a film. The film has its setting with numerous shadows that appeal to the viewer (Martin 2001). The scene where Kane is with at his first wife at the breakfast table is the most incredible scene in the film. “Blow-Up” by Michelangelo Antonioni “Blow up” is an allegory of the vicissitudes of the photo that was in the image-saturated “mod” environment of consumerist London. The writer, Antonioni tracks what critics call the material conditions that are part of the crisis in indexicality. The movie has received critical acclaim as being the best film of 1966 (Bordwell 2004). The language and the direction of the film were incredible being the first English work by Michelangelo Antonioni. Antonioni had however been contacted earlier to produce English films, but he had never done so in “Blow Up”. The film received several nominations at the Cannes Film Festival. It won the Grand Prix award finally among the many nominations (Williams 2008). The movie is controversial and brought many arguments all the world over its explicit sexual nature. There were several explicit scenes in the movie. The film subsequently broke the production code that was in force at the moment of its outstanding box office and critical success (Williams 2008). The success of the film was a prove as one of the final events that made the MPAA film rating system to start operating. The success finally led the industry to abandon the production code in 1968 (Lev 1993). The film is of a glamorous nature as we see several glamor models and photographers on set. The photographer lives a high-end life, but things change after he captures murder on the camera. The glitz and glamor changes to be a tragedy. References Bordwell, D 2004, “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice,” in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (ed.), Film Theory and Criticism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brooke, M 2014, “The Thin Blue Line,” Sight and Sound 24. Culbertson, A 2006, “‘Who Owns This Place?’ Clashing Values in Sunset Blvd.” Bright Lights Film Journal, retrieved from http://brightlightsfilm.com/owns-place-clashing-values-sunset-blvd/#.VNLIQC4-J2A Davis, T 2009, “Love and Social Marginality in Samson and Delilah,” Senses of cinema 51, Retrieved from http://sensesofcinema.com/2009/feature-articles/samson-and-delilah/ Gearing, C 2010, “Reclaiming the Wasteland: Samson and Delilah and the Historical Perception and Construction of Indigenous Knowledge in Australian Cinema,” M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 13:4 retrieved from http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/252 Izod, J and Kilborn, R 1998, “The Documentary,” in John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson, ed., The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lev, P 1993, “Blow-Up, Swinging London, and the Film Generation,” in his the Euro-American Cinema, Austin: University of Texas Press. Lewis, J 2008, American Film: A History, New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Martin, A 2001, “Light My Fire: The Geology and Geography of Film Canons,” Senses of Cinema 14, retrieved from http://s168.n228.n6.n64.static.myhostcenter.com/LightFire.php Nichols, B 1991, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Redwood, T 2009, Warwick Thornton and Kath Shelper, “On Making Samson and Delilah,” Metro Magazine 160, 30‐34. Rosenbaum, J 2004, “Introduction,” in his Essential Cinema: On the Necessity of Film Canons, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Smith, G 2001, ‘“It’s Just a Movie”: A Teaching Essay for Introductory Media Classes,” Cinema Journal 41:1,127-134. Williams, JS 2008, “The Rhythms of Life: An Appreciation of Michelangelo Antonioni, Extreme Aesthete of the Real,” Film Quarterly. Wollen, P 2004, “Citizen Kane,” in James Naremore, Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane: A Casebook, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Read More