Analysing Film - The Girl Chewing Gum and Une Femme Est Une Femme - Essay Example

? Analyzing Film: The Girl Chewing Gum (1976, John Smith) and Une femme est une femme (1961, Jean-Luc Godard) The movies of 60s and 70s have been appreciated more because of their film techniques and cinematography more than the actual plot. For the movie The Girl Chewing Gum released in 1976 the director John Smith have brought into picture the narrative mode in film making (Smith). For the French movie Une femme est une femme released in 1961 director Godard has attempted realist music for the movie. Such new techniques have been innovations in film making. In the Smith’s film the reality of a busy street in London has been captured as a fiction. The chance technique has been found against order (Smith). Godard has used film techniques that are not usually used and contradict the basic film making techniques. Tracking shots were used for shooting the movies which also happened to be quite long (Burch, xii). The narrative lines that have been used by John Smith had wide usage in old films related to love stories or comedy. Usage of these forms of film techniques has expanded the possibilities of film making (Burch, 145). The movie techniques found for these films happens to be quite a differentiated one and can be adopted as a learning principle for the future film making. The current paper intends to make an analysis of the two films on the basis forms of film techniques and the application of chance and coherence noticed in these films. The works of Godard were known to be obsessed with themes. Most of the success of the director lies in making narrative movies (Roud). For Smith the works have been considered as quite sharp. The movie of the movie has been elaborated by numerous relishing scenarios (Smith). The idea of their film techniques can be understood more clearly with consideration and analysis of the two mentioned movies. The stories The story of the movie The Girl Chewing Gum directed by John Smith is about a voice guiding the busy streets of London. The voice is a fiction and is invisible. Only two landscapes are shown – the busy London streets and a countryside which is 15km away from the busy streets of East London (Synopsis). It basically portrays the real world in the form of a fiction. The invisible voice demonstrates all day to day work. Birds are directed towards flying, movement of the clock arms has been instructed. The specialty of the movie lies in the fact that the movie has not been shot as a usual documentary (“The Girl Chewing Gum”). This is a short film with duration of just eleven minutes. There is no central character in the film, rather all the ordinary people in the streets passing by has been posited as an actor. The invisible is found in conversation with all these actors and at the same time instructs them. As the film passes by the busy streets and the location changes into the country side the director ends the film on an interesting note. With the burglar alarm in the background, the director leaves for the viewers a guess work. The viewers are left to wonder whether the man wearing a trench coat spotted once in the busy streets of London is a thief. His suspicious look at a lady does convince the majority that the man is indeed a thief. As the movie proceeds the viewers gradually realize the images separation from the sound part with passing of time (Bocko). Une femme est une femme directed by Jean Luc Godard is the director’s third feature film. The story is basically about a love triangle where two men fall in love with the same woman. The movie involves the female character Angela who is a striptease star and the two male characters Emile and Alfred. Being refused to have a baby by her boyfriend Emile, Angela moves on to another guy Alfred who agrees to fulfill her desires. The whole act of moving on was done by Angela to instill jealousy within her boyfriend. Again Alfred happens to be the best friend of Emile. Emile aware about Angela’s desperation for a baby allows her to sleep with his friend Alfred (“Une femme est une femme”). It is actually a silent film which contains realist music. The movie with a simple plot has a name related to the plot meaning ‘A Woman is a woman’. This is because the movie revolves round the feelings and desires of the central female character Angela played by Anna Karina. At the end Angela is found just taking advantage of Alfred’s love for her and using him up to fulfill her desires. With her desires satisfied she returns to her boyfriend Emile. Ultimately Angela’s love takes her back to her boyfriend and she and Emile patch up in the climax of the movie. They end up being a couple again. The specialty of the movie lies within the expressions displayed in the movie where the director adds a personal touch. Godard has displayed weird characters in this movie who are not serious at all about emotions and feelings of one another. They have the tendency of not revealing their feelings to their loved ones. Such an instance is seen in the movie where Angela does not want to confess her inner love to her boyfriend Emile neither she accepts his sorry although she forgives Emile within her heart. The movie too breaks the barrier between truths and lies and ends up on an ironical note. The energetic Paris and its liveliness of the 60s era is very much visible in this film (Lacker). Analysis Analysis of experimental international movies like The Girl Chewing Gum and Une femme est une femme is undertaken to explore all the theoretical aspects of films. Studies on film making require an analysis of film and video techniques. Interviewing eminent film makers can also be of great help in this respect (White). The analysis of the above mentioned films have been performed with respect to film techniques used and chance and coherence. Forms of Film Techniques With categorization of films as theatrical and cinematic the forms of film techniques should be used in accordance with the category of films. The scenes displayed in the movie can be short for the story as we find for The Girl Chewing Gum. Here the story progresses through sound and set of instructions. No intense dialogues have been used. On the other hand Une femme est une femme can be considered to be a cinematic film which has numerous exchange of dialogues which also establishes drama for the film. The underlying comedy or any other emotion comes out with the delivered dialogues (Rabiger, 273). This is seen for the scene shot in the cafe where the characters Angela and her ex- boyfriend Alfred exchange many dialogues. Drama is added in the scene with Angela’s emotions of distress and her dialogue, “the truth should look different from a lie” (Lacker). John Smith has always been an experimental and differentiated filmmaker and his films have received worldwide attention. Most of them have also been chosen for screening at a particular festival or in a museum. The director has always followed a precise structure for film making and has always been inclined towards the narrative mode. All such forms of film techniques are visible in his movie The Girl Chewing Gum released in 1961. The director here has shown determination to capture the interactions of nature within his film (Frye). Thus in two shots of the movie one captures the busy streets of London and the other shows the view of countryside. Picturization is again a very important component of film techniques used. It determines whether the mode of the film is going to be a silent one or anything else. The film maker needs to ponder over a particular music before giving the visual entity to the film. This is required to finalize the forms for the movie. Picturization is solely concerned with development of a specific style for making the film (Rabiger, 274). Godard has used the neo-realist musical form in order to develop the theme for his movie Une femme est une femme. The form of technique is quite different and does not pertain to traditional film making. The movie just delivers the idea of music although it is not musical in real sense (MA1052 Critical Theory and Textual Analysis). In contrast Smith has followed the formal structure that is applied towards film making and techniques used have delivered the usual combined effect of sound and image. The director has conducted an examination of the responses of the images to the provided. This has been done for better understanding of the relation between sound and images. The voiceover has been recorded after such an examination (Synopsis). As per the shots of film making the film maker can either call for long shots or the short ones. The conventional techniques used produce an element of excitement for mobile shots. Close up shots have also been a common phenomenon. John Smith has made extensive use of close up shots for his movie The Girl Chewing Gum. This has been done by blocking some characters to focus on a central character. Understanding the film language is very important for the director for short films like The Girl Chewing Gum (Rabiger, 207). This is evident as the director once focuses on an old man, then on a clock and after that on something else. The director has taken close up shots for each of these actors. The film was also completed in two shots – one for the busy streets of London and another capturing the view of countryside (Synopsis). Most of them have been travelling shots. Moreover Smith has placed reliance upon long shots for making this movie. Even during performing video shooting the director took a three and a half hours shot in order to make a 96 minute video. For purposes related to film making he has taken shots containing 17 hours of video tape (Frye). Similarly Godard has also used close up and focused shots for his movie Une femme est une femme (Grost). This is done for a better display of expressions and emotions in the camera. Such closes up shots were used effectively to capture Angela expressions which contained emotions of sadness while she was walking with her head held down. The director just like Smith in The Girl Chewing Gum has also used travelling shot to capture such expressions (Lacker). Music is an important element of movies and also an important for techniques of film making. The approach towards music for the movie needs to be tailored in accordance with the necessities of the movie especially the demands of the associated drama of the movie (Henderson and Williams, 3). For his film Une femme est une femme Godard just delivers the idea of music. The technique here has been neo-realist music (MA1052 Critical Theory and Textual Analysis). Visual bells as well as whistles have been used frequently for the movie. In accordance with the associated drama one can find sound effects in the movie which happens to be quite goofy. Childish sort of style has been displayed by the director in choosing musical techniques. Apart from the background music and the recorded voiceover the movie also contains musical numbers (Lacker). Smith for his film The Girl Chewing Gum has used approaches and techniques for music in such a way that images and soundtrack appears interconnected. The responses of images to such sounds were carefully examined by the director before recording the voiceover (Synopsis). Chance and Coherence The use of chance operations in a significant manner is very important for successful film making. The musical score depend a lot on chance operations. It is important that chance operations are towards coherence in order to symbolize a theme or any object in the movie. The pattern of any musical score is created with the use of chance operations (Harris, 228). For Smith it is seen that in his film The Girl Chewing Gum the chance is against the order (Smith). In the movie footage it is found that chance events occur on the busy streets of London. The events containing chance operations have been posited to have the effects of a theater and that too, a continuous one. This is reflected in the scene of the movie where the instructing voice points out to a man in the rightward direction who was wearing a white colored boiler suit. The attention is diverted here with a consistent discussion. But again the shouting voice is heard over the microphone. Thus the chance operations bring in this form an element of comedy and this obviously makes the viewers break down into laughter. The narrative mode displayed in the movie takes the form of social commentary (Herbert). Narrative modes have also been used by other film makers to seek attention from viewers. Chance and coherence are important elements of cinematography and John Smith has made effective use of these operations in his movie The Girl Chewing Gum. The position of actors and the motive behind emphasize upon each and every actor has been properly justified throughout the movie. The underlying meaning for highlighting every actor is clearly understood from the form of the movie. Thus the cinematic expressions displayed in the movie appear to be coherent (Wees). Chance operations constitute a medium to judge the efficiency of cinematic expressions. This is also evident in case of the Godard movie Une femme est une femme. The vibrant colors have been utilized efficiently in accordance with the drama presented in the film. The Musical score created by such operations is an outcome of intense experimentation with audio and the films techniques used for giving visual entity to the movie project. This is found to be coherent with the typical form of Godard films such as Une femme est une femme (Glynn). Conclusion The movie The Girl Chewing Gum and the French movie Une femme est une femme are considered to be one of the best works of eminent filmmakers John Smith and Jean- Luc Godard respectively of the 60s and 70s. Analysis of these films has revealed their adopted style of film making. Godard has been found to adopt a different style from the traditional film making while Smith is found to stick to the formal structure of film making. For his movie The Girl Chewing Gum, Smith has adopted a narrative mode as film technique which has also been his usual preferred area. The whole movie has been completed in two shots one highlighting countryside and the other the busy streets of London. Both the film makers have made extensive use of close up shots in their movies for better display of expressions. While The Girl Chewing Gum has only a voice directing the actors, the French movie also contains exchange of a couple of dialogues between the three central characters. The Smith movie shows various interconnections of soundtrack and the set of images whereas for the Godard visual bells as well as musical numbers have been included in the movie. Clearly Godard has adopted the neo realist musical approach giving the idea of musical. For the Smith movie the chance operations are found to be against orders. They have adopted the theatrical style. The cinematic expressions are found to be coherent. For the Godard movie the musical score displays intense experimentation which simply pertains to the style of Godard movie. References: 1. Bocko, Joel, What’s in a Name?: The Girl Chewing Gum, Rabbit, A Walk Through H, Wonders in The Dark, January 5 2012 from: https://wondersinthedark.wordpress.com/2011/12/25/whats-in-a-name-the-girl-chewing-gum-rabbit-a-walk-through-h-%E2%80%A2-fixing-a-hole-avant-garde-month/ 2. Burch, Noel. Theory of Film Practice, London: Secker and Warburg, 1973 3. Frye, Brian, ‘Interview with John Smith’ Millennium Film Journal, (2003) 39-40, 32-49, January 5 2012 from: http://mfj-online.org/journalPages/MFJ39/JohnSmith.html 4. Glynn, Stephen, Issue 7: Film Reviews, Scope, January 5 2012 from: http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/filmreview.php?id=196&issue=7 5. Grost, Michael E, The Films of Jean Luc Godard, mikegrost, January 5 2012 from: http://mikegrost.com/godard.htm 6. Harris, Mary Emma. The arts at Black Mountain College, United States: The MIT Press, 2002 7. Henderson, Sanya Shoilveska and Williams, John. Alex North, film composer, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2003 8. Herbert, Martin, “John Smith”, Frieze Magazine, 2010, January 5 2012 from: http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/john_smith/ 9. Lacker, Ben, Godard’s Ironic Erotics in Une Femme Est Une Femme, nyu.edu, January 5 2012 from: http://www.nyu.edu/cas/ewp/lackergodard05.pdf 10. MA1052 Critical Theory and Textual Analysis, Une Femme est une femme (Jean-Luc Godard, 1961) 11. Rabiger, Michael. Directing: film techniques and aesthetics, Oxford: Elsevier, 2008 12. Roud, Richard. Godard, 2nd Edn, London: Thames and Hudson, 1970 13. Smith, John, Selected Films, John Smith, January 4 2012 from: http://www.johnsmithfilms.com/texts/sf3.html 14. Synopsis, MUBI, 2008, January 4 2012 from: http://mubi.com/films/the-girl-chewing-gum 15. Wees, William C, Early Cinema: Symposion, SixPack Film, January 5 2012 from: http://www.sixpackfilm.com/archive/veranstaltung/festivals/earlycinema/symposion/symposion_wees.html 16. White, Rob, “Cover”, Film Quarterly, (2011), 65.1, C1, January 5 2012 from: http://www.jstor.org/action/showArticleInfo?doi=10.1525%2FFQ.2011.65.1.cover 17. Smith, John (director) The Girl Chewing Gum, Royal College of Art, 1976 18. Godard, Jean- Luc (director) Une femme est une femme, Georges de Beauregard, 1961 Read More