Choose 3 of the films we watched in class and answer the following questions. Answer all questions for each film to create at least 3 hearty paragraphs.
Le Retour a la Raison
Entr'acte
Le Ballet Mecanique
Un Chien Andalou
Meshes of the Afternoon (this is the one with the Maya Deren interview)
What do you notice about the film's presentation of cinematic space? What do you see on screen? For example, lots of landscapes or closeups? Moving or statics camera?
How does the director's use of lighting help to create meaning?
Do you identify with the camera's lens? What does the director compel you to see? What is left to your imagination? What does the director leave out altogether? Describe the mise-en-scene and how it helps to create meaning in the film.
What implicit meaning do you find in the film?
If you can't get enough of the avant garde cinema, check out this site: http://www.ubu.com/film/.
If you want to look more into Jonas Mekas, go here: http://jonasmekas.com/diary/
Meshes of the afternoon:
ReplyDeleteMaya Deren utilizes primarily a static camera and closeups often at a dutch angle to disorient the the viewer. She creates the feeling that we the viewers are uninvited visitors in a dream or perhaps a memory. The consistently bright and softly lit scenes she presents combined with the strange visuals further this dreamlike feeling. As far as implicit meaning i believe the film is about the fragility of the self and the human desire to preserve that.
Un Chien Andalou:
This film uses an almost always static camera and close ups but the shots also often frequent medium distance shot length and the occasional long shot. In frame is more often than not the characters of this narrative if you can even call it that. Furthermore the lighting is used often to highlight further the focus of the shot in conjunction with the rule of thirds, the soft yet focused light conveys a certain air of unreality not quite a dream yet not quite real either. I believe that the film implicitly is about the circle of life what with its looping sound track and repeated death imagery as well as the shifting nature of the primary man suggesting rebirth.
Entr’acte:
Entr’acte features a still camera for the vast majority of its shots until ~13:30 in which the film takes a turn in pace as the funeral procession must chase down the hearse leaving the static camera behind until the very end of the film. The lighting of the film all seems very natural nothing about it suggests a dream or something similar in nature. The film is implicitly about life and the rapid changes it can undergo in mere moments.
Le Retour a la Raison:
ReplyDeleteThe camera is always static, not moving around to display a landscape but merely showing a series of abstract images meant to be absorbed one by one. There are no landscapes or human figures, but unsettlingly familiar silhouettes of nails, carnival lights, and formless negatives. Lighting is used in high contrast; it is mostly black and white, shades of gray are rare. Shots seen previously in the film are repeated but with inverted colors, implying duality, sameness, and cyclical repetition (perhaps of internal and external conflict). The viewer does not identify with the camera lens because the viewer is not meant to identify with the lens; there is no earthly eye that we can imagine seeing such a series of images. The film displays struggles, in the conflicting negative images, jarring formless displays, and in scenes such as the cardboard "pound sign" suspended in a spotlight, swinging helplessly and exposed in the harsh light, completely vulnerable.
Entr'acte:
In the first part of the film, the camera is static, showing the viewer a series of nonsensical images, similar to Le Retour a la Raison. In contrast to Le Retour, the images are of more concrete three-dimensional objects. The mind can make more sense of them, although the series in which they are presented still manages to confound. We are presented with various shots of bizarre rooftop antics interspersed with shots of an illuminated ballerina dancing on a glass surface. Eventually these abstractions give way to a narrative and we follow the loose story of a man who is shot on a roof and his funeral procession. The lighting is reminiscent of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari; the primitive camera combines with a harsh afternoon sun to create a divisive contrast between black and white. The world has a washed-out appearance, tying into the film's discussion of death. The camera is mounted on a car and follows the runaway hearse, and the audience can identify with it more than in La Retour. Here, we become part of the chase, and increasingly rapid chase sequences are faded over shots from a roller coaster, implying a lack of control and choice regarding living and dying. Essentially the film is about death, with the man dying and being reborn, just as a bird is created from the egg that is destroyed. As the funeral-goers try and chase the runaway hearse, they are oblivious to the increasing pace of the chase, indicating the human tendency to chase after death and the quickening pace at which time passes.
Un Chien Andalou:
Adopting a more traditional shooting style, Un Chien Andalou uses both static and panning cameras. The shots are more regularly composed, commonly displaying entire rooms with medium shots, or a character or two with a close up or medium close up shot. In the city scenes, people and objects always fill the scenes, and death is everywhere. In the forest interlude, wide open shots are used, representing a change of pace. The final shots at the beach are open yet empty and barren. Hollywood-esque lighting is used, the characters seem to glow while casting dark shadows on the wall. The film takes on a dream-like quality that displays surrealist ideas and Salvador Dali's influence. This dreaminess appears in shots such as the one that shows ants crawling out of the man's hand, to his minimal shock. We identify with the camera lens because, like us, it is an innocent bystander in the midst of violence and vice. The film aims to offend the viewer's sensibilities; just as an eye is sliced open onscreen, the audience's eyes are attacked by images evoking accidents, decay, gore, and rape. Associating these offenses with city life, the film pushes a post-WWI statement about government and corruption as well as the rape of the European people.
Le Ballet Mécanique:
ReplyDeleteThe directors use of cinematic space in this film is very interesting, because Fernand Leger’s use of mirrors to give depth to a shot. This gives each repeated shot, whether flipped or turned upside down, the feeling of a kaleidoscope. A great deal of the shots are closed, which gives the figures a trapped feeling, and almost gives it a sense of being animated, or like stop motion, because of the jerkier montage editing style used. It was pretty difficult to find meaning in this film because of the strange subjects, and the contradicting images, but a subject that resonated was the “girl” dancing ballet. The closed shots used to only show her hands and feet and movement made the viewer believe she was a girl, but then eventually the camera panned up and showed the “girl” with a large beard and a man like face, showing nothing is always what it seems. This shows how Leger used camera angle and shot composition to delay meaning, and to keep the reader hanging, by seeing all the “girl’s” body parts before the viewer sees a face. For implicit meaning, the film conveys thoughts of anti war, and nothing is as it seems.
Meshes of the Afternoon
In this film, the whole thing is that it feels unreal, almost lucid and dreamlike. As it begins, the viewer sees a woman, but never her face, her hands and feet, but her most important features stay a mystery. A lot of the action in this film is left uncompleted due to montage editing, which also contributes to a more dreamlike state. From the beginning Maya Deren has a heavy use of shadow, and since the audience still hasn’t seen the subject’s face, her face is only seen through shadow, which is an interesting technique. There is a lot of color differentiation between very dark blacks and very bright whites, which contributes to the use of dark shadows, which perhaps symbolize death. The audience only sees the girl’s face after she sees the cloaked person who can only be assumed to represent death. The camera movement dictates the girl’s movement, which shows that the four sides of the camera lense are also her walls, being trapped. All of this also contributes to the idea that life is a dream, which is the implicit meaning.
Un Chien Andalou
This film uses a more narrative storyline, almost more comprehensible to the viewer, rather than Le Ballet Mecanique, but doing so there are very disturbing actions combined with very calm movements and music, which still conveys a feeling of being avant garde. There is again a huge difference between dark blacks and bright whites, with almost no saturation, which could convey the heavy difference between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. There is a lot more implicit meaning in this film, like the subjects changing between dead and alive between shots, which could mean that we (the audience) are basically living dead, just going through the motions as they say, and cannot tell the difference between happy/sad, or dead/alive. My interpretation was that the directors intended the audience to be confused, but I did find out that in a lot of Salvador Dali’s art ants represent death, and the woman is frightened by ants in a guys hand.
The avant-garde movement in film meaning “advance guard” began as French artists of the dada, surrealist and cinema pur era began to make experimental films shortly after the First World War. Rene Clair, a French surrealist artist, was famous for his sight gags and experimental films that possessed a contempt for bourgeois “respectability”. His 1924 film Entr’acte is know for one very famous shot of a rollercoaster ride. In this film, there is an evident use of many long shots to show cityscapes as well as their inhabitants. These longer shots of the city elude the the overall implicit meaning that everyone is involved in the war aside from the higher upper class which is shown through the constant up tempo non diegetic music playing in the background.The camera is often static and all the only kinesis in the film is that of the characters on screen or the common folk. The shots that do include movement of the camera such as the repeated shot of the rollercoaster carry higher importance because it is so rare we see the camera move. The movement of this specific shot causes for more verisimilitude and puts emphasis on the meaning of the shot as a whole- that war and life are a series of unpredictable ups and downs just like a rollercoaster. In this film the viewer does identify with the camera lens, partially because since there is no present narrative we don't associate each shot with a point of view other than our own. The director leaves out the narrative entirely in this film so the only factor to focus on is the overall implicit meaning. The mise en scene in each shot differs in quality but is similar in quantity. Every shot shows a large sum of something whether it be marching people, vehicles, or buildings the quantity stays high which shows how everyone is involved in war. Because a lot of artists and director in this era of film were in France during WWI they were placed directly in the center of conflict so they were obligated to serve as ambulance drivers, nurses, and members of the community, this being said Clair uses the implied meaning that every person is affected by wars through his use of large quantities in the mise en scene of his shots in this film.
ReplyDeleteThe most famous and what I believe is the most disturbing avant garde film was a collaborative magic realist film directed by Luis Buñel and Salvador Dali. Un Chien Andalou has a sense of continuity through the recurrence of the same actors and because of its ambiguous title cards that read, “Once upon a time”, “eight years later”, it causes this loose narrative to be very vague. This film has a unique and varying presentation of cinematic space, in some shots like the final scene where the woman is walking down the beach we see a long shot and we also see extreme close ups of insects often such as the ants coming out of the physical manifestation of death’s hand and the extreme close up of the butterfly in the woman's apartment. Most shots are static but they have different angles of the same action, such as when the woman is surrounded by a crowd of people, there are birds eye view shots of this action as well as close ups and middle shots of the woman and the box. The director entirely leaves out a simple narrative although we see the same characters and people we have no idea of who they are or what their tragic flaws may be, but because they have no known personality anyone in the audience can relate to them. I believe the overall implicit meaning of this short film is that death is inevitable. The scene with the woman getting hit by a car towards the beginning of the movie is shot in one long shot of cars passing by the woman and each time they get closer to her the background music builds up to cause the audience a great deal of anxiety due to the suspense they create. At the end of this prolonged shot the woman is hit by a car and she has no way of avoiding that ending thus saying death is inevitable. Another example of this is when the physical manifestation of death backs the main woman into the corner of her apartment. A medium shot shows us this action where only her and the death manifestation are in shot which shows how death, figuratively and literally, consumes us, especially when our country is thrown into war.
DeleteMaya Deren was a highbrow academic who started as a dancer in Russia but quickly began to make some of the most important experimental films of the forties and fifties. With all of her films and her most famous, Meshes in The Afternoon, Deren aimed to “create an experience” for her viewers. This film was produced in 1943, two years before the end of the second world war, which is clearly shown through the overall implicit meaning of the film: through lack of communication and self doubt death is the only outcome. The presentation of cinematic space is limited to medium shots and close ups in this piece in order for the audience to completely dive into the main character’s own human psyche. All of the shots in this film are static to imply the main character being stuck in time, however they do sometimes give the illusion of movement for example in the overhead shot of the main character in her staircase. This compilation of shots gives shows the women moving to different places on the screen without ever showing her actually moving- this shot shows that she has no purpose and she is moving through her life with no meaning. The director once again leaves out a steady common narrative which allows the audience to relate to the character entirely because they have little to no conflicting traits.
DeleteMeshes of the Afternoon:
ReplyDeleteIn this short avant garde film directed by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid there is a confusing story in which you could say there is a story, but it is overall open for interpretation. The films presentation of cinematic space is very different from normal films. In example many shots are full of a presentation of an object like the knife or the bread. There aren’t many shots showing a full human figure. When there is it isn’t original or basic shot composition. They use all the space available on the screen and tend to frame things closer than perceived as normal in the time before the avant garde movement. There is an insane amount of kinesis in the frame. There was never a dull moment in the frame. There is an extremely interesting moment where the frames kinesis was used to simulate changes in gravity. The director’s use of lighting effects the meaning because of the connotation of sharp shadows. The director used it to increase suspense and tension. In this short film we identify with the woman because our restricted point of view. Not only that, but there is a shot where the shot is obviously a point of view shot is from the woman sitting in the chair looking out the window. The Director compels us to see the dark woman moving fast because of the increase in music volume when looking at the character. On top of that there is always a glare on the creatures chrome face. Even emphasizing this we are never shown or told who the chrome character is. Around the end of the film we think it could be the man who shows up, but it is never revealed because of the confusing plot of the avant garde film. When showing a close up to the chrome figures face we see a cgi reflection of the woman’s face. Which also suggests the figure is the woman, but again never 100% revealed. The Director ends the kinesis of the film at the end when showing a still of the woman laying in the chair. Which is something that the director leaves out and that is who really killed the woman. The Director creates a mise en scene with the flat colors. Not only is it shot black and white, which could have just been a technological boundary, but the white’s are very flat and similar and the darks are obvious. There is an emphasis put on black because of the figure. From the looks of things the film could be addressing the fo pa of suicide and how the emotions of a woman are very prominent. During this era women were taking a more active and equal role in society. I think that it could be used to express suicide. This is characterized by the avant garde music because physiological films were extremely mentioned during this era. Breaking the boundaries of films before by showing real human emotion and revealing everyday human experience. This is shown by the camera kinesis because the camera follows her movements like it is actually performing the movements and allows us to basically walk behind in her footsteps.
DeleteBallet Mecanique
In this film by Fernand Leger there is something absolutely beautiful about the way that he captures machinery. The first thing that I notice about cinematic space is that it is extremely controlled. He uses the kaleidoscope effect to control the boundaries and to keep the frame closed. Everything is a closeup and it really emphasizes looking closer and things. One thing is the way that when recording machine movement he uses the kaleidoscope to display a never ending effect. This could represent the never ending cycle of war. Especially because of the industrialism that war brings. Not only is the closed frame used for continuation, but also represents a disorientation that war brings and the images focus on the mechanism in everyday life. It shows how engineering affects everyday human existence and frames it in the screen so that we understand that meaning. There is a very high contrast in the entire film. Blacks are used to represent machinery and it really emphasized the darkness of war. The Blacks are black and the whites are really white. There is hardly something to identify with in this film because of how much it disorients you, but you would identify with the lense because of the kinesis. Because the things on the screen disorient you the lense is the only thing to identify with. This creates a disconnect from war and actually makes war seem like the iron giant. Something the director leaves to our imagination is what is outside of the boundaries where the director cuts off the screen when framing. Though this is something often thought it is emphasized because of the kaleidoscope and extremely closed frame. It leaves us wondering what type of machinery is this? The constant use of circular and consecutive motion creates a feeling of never ending which could represent the feeling of never ending war because WWII was a direct result of the ending of WWI.
Un Chien Andalou
In the Avant Garde film Un Chien Andalou directed by Salvador Dali and Louis Bunuel there is a series of confusing events presented in an even more confusing way. The composition of the frame is very closed which in a way could be used to disorient the viewer even more and even when using a longer shot there is a lack of more than one things happening at a time and on top of that they avoid a overlooking shot of the world as to not introduce. Everything in the shot is important and put there for a reason. There is a collection of static camera shots where they use jump cut to disorient the viewer on time, consecutivity and place. The director uses a very strong fill light and ambiance. The lighting makes the skin seem white and pure and almost ghostly which us used to emphasize the plot of the man coming back to life. Again as in other films the director chooses to leave out connecting shots that might pull the scene together. Instead we are disoriented by time changes and certain cuts. We identify with the camera lens because we are disconnected from the characters because of the jump cuts. The director compels us to see the repetitive struggle between the couple through several lives by using close ups on their faces to make sure the audience can identify the couple. A certain meaning that I see behind this film is actual the continual struggle of war and how it is sort of like a relationship because war is caused by human relations. Cinematically the repetition of close shots of the hand could represent the destruction war brings not only on its environment, but a person’s psychi. He closes up on the gun and always on the series of death scenes throughout the short film.
Un chien andalou:
ReplyDeleteIn this film, the screen is mostly filled with closeups of people and actions, specifically hands and eyes. The camera is almost always static, giving us a limited, outside view of the characters even though we see it mostly through closeups. The screen always seems to be crowded or fixated on someone’s hands/eyes. This gives a feeling of importance to those parts and shows the world outside of our characters as being a very confusing place; a scene that shows this very well is where there is a large, bustling crowd around the hand in the street.
The lighting in the film obscures the setting. There are a few moments when the setting changes around the characters around the shot’s cuts. It gives a feeling of surrealness (appropriate considering Dali had something to do with the film) and contributes to the overall dreamlike-quality of the film. Because of this, we sense a universality in the meaning of the film, and how it does not matter where or when you are, the meaning is still important. Another contributor to the dreaminess of the film is the time jumps in it (8 years later, sixteen years prior) and the initial fairytale introduction, once upon a time. Having the film introduced with “once upon a time” gives it the same timelessness of a fairytale.
At first I didn’t see any connection between the audience and the lens, I thought the audience was part of the movie and the lens was an outsider watching, but then (mostly because of the music, static camera, and irregular timing) I came to the conclusion that we are watching from the afterlife. It’s like we’re corpses watching everybody come to us. When the director first juxtaposes the eye and the moon, we know that the eyes are important, and I think he shows us that our eyes are our souls and our hands are our mortal bodies. One of the only times we see an animal in the film is when we see the large cow-like animals with their eyes gouged out. It shows how animals and humans are quite similar except for our actions (hooves compared to hands). Humans are able to be more cutting and intricate with their actions than other animals can, leading to a more complex view of the world and a different type of soul. I think this is shown very well in the same scene because the animals are dead on top of pianos; pianos are very complex instruments that you only need your hands to play.
I think the film’s implicit meaning deals with hidden sexuality, gender roles in society, and obviously love and death (obviously because the two musical selections in the film are Wagner’s Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde where the title characters die in love, and tangos, a very intimate, sensual dance). I think the director presents a fluidity in gender roles right in the beginning of the movie with the eye cutting shots. It starts off with a woman having her eye cut, then a shot of the moon-eye being cut by a cloud, then back to a man with his eye being cut. The action and time are the same, but the gender of the person changes, showing that it doesn’t matter whether a man or woman was in the chair. I think the point is that having social roles based on gender is stupid. This is shown again with the man riding the bike with some women’s clothing on. Later, when the other man (society) rips off the women’s clothes and throws it out the window, we see that society isn’t accepting of the film’s ideas.
Le retour à la raison:
DeleteThe screen is always filled with the subject of the shot in this film. Similar to “Un chien andalou,” the camera is static for most of the film. The film shows the progression of objects from lifeless, to lifeless but animated, to full of life. I think that’s the reason referred to in the title that we are returning to, life.
The lighting used by the director here emphasizes the movement of the objects. For example, the carousel lights in the middle of the film. The lighting here obscures the setting enough to where we only clearly see the artificial light of the carousel moving, none of the people that should be on or around it. I think this shifts the focus from people/objects to creation.
I feel like the audience sees through the lens as a creator observing his work. From the nails and salt to the carousel and the woman, we see the creation becoming more intricate until it becomes human.
I think the film is about our progression through life; it starts off quite simply, and continually gets more intricate until we mature. Nails and salt can’t do anything without someone using/taking care of them and neither can babies.
Meshes of the Afternoon:
This film has a wide variety of shots - closeups of the motifs throughout the film and wider shots of the actions. Most of the shots were focused on the woman and what she was holding, either the flower, the knife, or the key. The camera’s movement changed depending on who the audience was meant to be.
The lighting in this film is really dark, giving it an eerie, deathly feeling. There is an obscene amount of black in the film. In the shot later on in the film of the ocean, it almost looks black, showing death as a big, expansive thing. I think the director uses the film to obscure the lines between what’s real and fake.
The audience identifies with the woman and her path to death in the movie. The camera is always from her point of view until the very end, and even in the dream section, we are seeing what she sees in the dream. The director leaves out the entire scene of the woman’s death, we only see the aftermath. We know that she was marked from the scene where there are three of her sitting at the table. I saw that scene as kind of a Russian roulette. Every time they went for the key, and they were safe if their hand came back clean, but when it came back black, they were all shocked by it, and that’s when the we see the woman about to be killed in the dream. The killer is then replaced by the husband, but she still has the death thoughts leftover from the dream. She can’t escape them and eventually dies.
I think the movie is about a fear of death. The death happens in a very comfortable place, her home, and she kills herself, afraid of any other way she might go.
Un Chien Andalou
ReplyDeleteIn Un Chien Andalou particular attempt are made to disorient the viewer as much as possible while still having very clear plot lines (or actions at least). The film is made avant-garde not by the shot types or composition necessarily, but instead the techniques utilized to instill a sort of “what-the-hell-is-this” perception of the film. The usage of extreme closeups seen in Un Chien Andalou is pragmatic in portraying the ridiculous and unrealistic nature of the film. We see this first during the infamous eye slice match cut scene, where the action of the eye being cut open is shown in a dramatic extreme closeup. A similarly shocking closeup is used in a later scene in which a man is introduced (a boyfriend?), and insects are coming from his hands. This time, just as prior, the closeup is as much of a shock as the action taking place, and increases the effectiveness of such a cut. Lighting in Un Chien Andalou is used to further the mysterious sense present in the film. I see Dali’s influence on the film in two major ways, one of course being the strange and surreal actions and characters, but the other being the way light, and shadows specifically, are used to paint the frame and create larger than life images on the screen. During the course of the film, whenever the shot is not a closeup, shadows fill the frame, whether thrown against the pavement or the wall. These shadows follow characters in their actions, and sometimes cover and coat them. This is where the true meaning comes in. These shadows trailing characters represent their inner demons, dark and unwelcome normally but ever-present in the world of the film. I believe it was the main goal of such harsh lighting the film to create a sense that these characters dark insides are twisted and everpresent. As for the lens, its perspective shifts throughout the film from that of a bystander to that of window into the action. This is so that viewers may both be in the world of the film, and view the world as well. Luis Buinel really gives us a masterpiece with this short film, as it is representative of art as a whole, and all that it can represent (even in its most extreme).
Nice analysis, Ben; however, you didn't talk about 3 of the films. :)
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