hurt with Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, and Bill Murray in the comedy Caddyshack, and see life from the eyes of mob henchmen, Tom Hanks, in the crime and gangster film Road to Perdition. American cinema has used Alfred Hitchcock to create fear for many years like it was displayed in the horror film Psycho, has allowed us to sing in dance with the cast in the musical Chicago, and check out, momentarily, from reality in many science fiction films. American cinema has taken us back in time as we rode horse-back with our western heroes John Wayne and Clint Eastwood or put on the badge with the brothers of the law in Tombstone. Some of the greatest impacts from the world of cinema have been from films that covered war.
Released September 29, 1950, Sunset Boulevard is a film noir of a forgotten silent film star, Norma Desmond, that dreams of a comeback and an unsuccessful screenwriter, Joe Gillis, working together. Ultimately an uncomfortable relationship evolves between Norma and Joe that Joe does not want a part of. Sunset Boulevard starts off with an establishing shot from a high angle shot with a narrative leading to a crime scene shot in long shot (a dead body is found floating in a pool). The narrative throughout the film established a formalist film. Cinematography John F. Seitz used lighting and camera angles in such a way to create a loneliness and hopefulness atmosphere.
In 1940s, California was described as a dream land or a land of opportunity. The literature and film industries of the Los Angeles showed quite conspicuously stability at that time. The image of the Los Angeles was the place of the opportunity and success. In the Nathanael West’s book, The Day of the Locust, the story starts with the actors marching in the Hollywood (West 59). Massive number of people out in Hollywood waiting to be hired or luckily be hired.
Mise-en-scéne is crucial to classical Hollywood as it defined an era ‘that in its primary sense and effect, shows us something; it is a means of display. ' (Martin 2014, p.XV). Billy Wilder 's Sunset Boulevard (Wilder 1950) will be analysed and explored with its techniques and styles of mise-en-scéne and how this aspect of filmmaking establishes together as a cohesive whole with the narrative themes as classical Hollywood storytelling. Features of the film 's sense of space and time, setting, motifs, characters, and character goals will be explored and how they affect the characterisation, structure, and three-act organisation.
This sense of hostility springs forth from the misconstrued view of literature being the superior art form among the two, extending to the apparent artistic inferiority of cinematic adaptations, which seemingly “betrays” its source material. But the idea of cinema as a potent and dynamic art
Ed Brubaker’s graphic novel The Fade Out is a captivating crime noir graphic novel that explores the corruption in Hollywood in the 1940’s. Set in a time where the movie industry was booming and the location was seen as the land of opportunity and good fortune, Brubaker reveals the ultimate goals of the people in this business, where power and greed can corrupt even the most well intentioned people. Behind the scenes of the lavish and adoring Hollywood lifestyle lay corruption, greed, and deceit. In this video, I will analyze The Fade Out as a story that sheds light on corruption during the time period to show the audience just how far someone will go to protect their reputation.
Many films of the silent movie era are melodramas, which was a term used back then purely as a descriptive word to describe a movie and not a ‘negative’ term the way we use the term today. Chaplin’s film is a melodrama that invokes the emotions of his audience. Some elements of melodrama are present in Chaplin’s film The Gold Rush, the characteristics of a melodrama aid in analysing how melodramatic a silent movie is. An element of melodrama is, a situation - an occurring conflict in the film created by the screenwriter to evoke an intense emotional response from the viewers.
Billy Wilder, who’s birth name is Samuel Wilder, was born June 22, 1906 in Sucha, Galicia, Austria-Hungary and died March 27, 2002 in West Los Angeles, California.1 Billy Wilder studied law at the University of Vienna but soon after decided he no longer wished to become a lawyer and went on to become a writer. ‘In 1926 he worked as an interpreter for the jazz band leader, Paul Whiteman, on a tour around Europe, which ended in Berlin.’2 Finishing his tour in Berlin is what led him to mingle with the artistic world of actors, where he met “figures in the growing German Film industry resulting in him being hired as a ghost writer of scripts for established writers. ”3 In 1933 was the rise of Adolf Hitler causing Billy Wilder to flee to Paris due
During the 1920s, American society began to adopt values that threatened the traditional values that remained from the 1800s. Many of these changes were a direct result of the youth culture of the time and how their uncertainty of who they were helped contribute to these changes in values. Throughout the decade, the struggle between modern and anti-modern values was exemplified in literature, drama and silent film of the American culture. “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” represents the conflicting modernist and anti-modernist sentiments of the time through its use of cinematography and characterization. “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans”, the 1927 film by F.W. Murnau, is a shining example of the struggle between modern and anti-modern values that
Sunset Boulevard (1950), directed by Billy Wilder, is a black and white film, where Norma Desmond, a famous actress of the silent film era, cannot come to terms with her career’s end. Desmond meets a guy named Joe Gillis, a struggling writer who is in financial trouble. The two come to an agreement that Gillis will polish up her script, which Norma believes will be her ticket back to the big screen, and Norma will take care of Joe financially. The one thing Norma and Joe have in common is that Hollywood has deemed both of them as undesirable. Norma experiences delusions of grandeur, and Joe cannot get his scripts picked up by a studio.
The play Macbeth by William Shakespeare and 1941 film Citizen Kane possess many similarities in themes and characters, despite the completely different settings and plots. Both main characters are ambitious and determined to achieve a goal, even to a certain point where they lose everything truly meaningful to them. While Macbeth strives to become king of Scotland, Charles Foster Kane attempts to become popular and influential. Both Macbeth and Citizen Kane desire to be powerful members of their respective societies and receive respect and recognition from their acquaintances. In both works, they acquired everything they thought they wanted, yet realised they could not have what they truly desired, essentially ending up with “nothing of value”.
Introduction This essay examines the Cassavetes’s unique approach in his films he directed especially in Faces (1968) and Shadow (1959) in creating alternative forms of performative expression. Cassavetes’s approach focus on spontaneous, unstructured performance of characters, contradict to Stanislavski 's system that focus on emotion memory or actor’s past experience to bring out the expression on stage. In this essay, Cassavetes’s first film, Shadow, will be compared to his fourth film, Faces, to see development in Cassavetes’s approach in performance of character. Shadow is a film about interracial relations between African-American and white Americans in 1950’s New York, starring Ben Carruthers as Ben, Lelia Goldoni as Lelia and Hugh Hurd as Hugh, the only dark-skinned among three siblings.
The Warner Brothers are telling a rich, suave, exciting and moving tale, set alongside the absorbing circumstantial of a sleek café in a North African anchorage, beside a sundry crowd of schemers , lawbreakers and absconding European refugees in their film Casablanca. The movie falls under the genre of a hardboiled romantic adventure style. To make it very alluring, it embraces a blue-chip thriller cast of Humphrey Bogart, Iris Bergman, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Loire, Conrad Veldt and Claude Rains. Yet again in Bogart pictures, it has swathed a gentle love story within the crinkles of a close-fitting contemporary theme. Warner’s in this film stimulates the audience heart to take a bound.
In the film Sunset Boulevard many characters struggled with wishes, lies and dreams of fame and fortune. The film states the corruption in Hollywood and that people will do anything to get ahead. With hope and delusion each character tries to gain happiness, while only being self-destructive and isolating themselves. The characters ultimately deny their problems and confuse those around them. One character in the film who struggles with her wishes, lies and dreams is, Norma Desmond, a washed up actress.
In the film Sunset Boulevard many character struggled with wishes, lies and dreams of fame and fortune. The film states the corruption in hollywood and that people will do anything to get ahead. With hope and delusion each character tries to gain happiness, while only being self-destructive and isolating themselves. The characters ultimately deny their problems and confuse those around them. One character in the film who struggles with her wishes, lies and dreams is, Norma Desmond, a washed up actress.
