Film History II

  The Hollywood musical attempts to create a bridge between live performance and the industrial film productions of Hollywood. The sense of engineering in film is masked with bricolage and crafted communities within productions. The churning out of films is made to look more human and folk rather than products removed from the audience.  With these points in mind, I want to look at one particular scene in Singing in The Rain. The  "Make 'Em Laugh" number features Cosmo goofily (and incredibly athletically) dancing through a set that is in the middle of being put together. The scene is sparked by a somewhat gloomy Don Lockwood getting cheered up by Cosmo. It is a friend who sees Lockwood and in turn acts to change that--showing human connection. I think that in a way, this gets at that sense of crafted community that the Hollywood musical aimed to create. The fact that Lockwood is an actor is highlighted in this moment but he still shows that he encountered trouble in lif...

After watching Kung Fu Hustle , there was one type of scenario that really stuck with me. When one person (or few--like when the three kung fu masters go up against the axe gang) successfully battles a mass of opposing fighters. The odds of the lone fighter (or small group) winning the battle often seems so improbable. But contrary to the looming doom presented by being completely surrounded and outnumbered, there seems to often be hope in these scenes. The fighter(s) moves with the fluid movement of a Hong Kong cinema fight scene and staves away their potential downfall. The experienced fighter skirts just on the edge of potential failure, but in the end is able to surmount their problems with the human body alone. I think that this in a way speaks to people's emotions of fear, hope, and despair. It would be so easy to feel despair when completely surrounded--and in a way, this sort of despair is not too distanced from the everyday. In these fights, the individual must face up aga...

     Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief explores Italian Neorealism’s sense of reality in many ways, but one mode that I find particularly interesting is the way in which time seems to incessantly flow forward in the world of the film. Much like in the everyday world, time, and the harsh realities that ensue, is inescapable.  Antonio Ricci is stuck in the forward momentum of the necessity of finding his bike in order to work and feed his family. I think that this pull onward is reflective of the inescapable pull of time that we experience in real life. In a film, time can be manipulated and paused and sped up—but to a family struggling to keep afloat that inescapable pull forward can contribute to a threatening spiral initiated by one thing going wrong. The loss of the bike is much more than the loss of one physical option, but rather the threat of the loss of food and wellbeing for his family.  When leaving the house with his bicycle on his shoulder, Ricci cl...

      The film The 400 Blows by François Truffaut is a prime example of a French New Wave film. It features many of the qualities that new wave filmmakers valued in a production. Some of which includes the rejection of authority, handheld camera work, distancing tactics, and city-scapes. Paris unrolls beneath Antoine’s feet with lingering shots that enable the viewer’s eye to roam the street. He often darts through traffic without a second look at the cars and their traffic laws. There are plenty of street scenes in the film that give the eye enough time to roam around the frame--exploring free from the guiding hand of cuts. The lack of editing in these parts helps create that sense of freedom and sense of participation that the French New Wave thinkers incorporated in their works. Eugene McCreary in “Film History: New Wave Cinema and ‘68” states, “The spectator was free, or at least freer, to notice something of his own choice, to permit his attention to linger on a...