She must deliver the government plan to an end and be successful. She is determined and uses all her feminine best cards. At the beginning of their meeting she seems to be a superficial, sex interested woman, giving a slight sense of nymphomania. Du Continue Reading...
The spectator is unwittingly sutured into a colonialist perspective. But such techniques are not inevitably colonialist in their operation. One of the innovations of Pontocorvo's Battle of Algiers is to invert the imagery of encirclement and exploit Continue Reading...
This ties closely with Hitchcock's belief that "dialogue means nothing" in and of itself. He explains, "People don't always express their inner thoughts to one another, a conversation may be quite trivial, but often the eyes will reveal what a perso Continue Reading...
According to Francois Truffaut, "Hitchcock is universally acknowledged to be the world's foremost technician, even his detractors willingly concede him this title," and other critics state, "Hitchcock is one of the greatest inventors of form in the Continue Reading...
From this came our insistence on the drama of the doorstep" (cited by Hardy 14-15).
Grierson also notes that the early documentary filmmakers were concerned about the way the world was going and wanted to use all the tools at hand to push the publi Continue Reading...
Analyzing a Scene: Hitchcock and the Male Gaze
There is a scene in Hitchcock’s I Confess (1953) in which the leading lady played by Anne Baxter descends an outdoor staircase to the man she loves waiting below. Hitchcock uses a tilted or Dutch a Continue Reading...
Genre: The Conventions of Connection" by Leo Braudy is a bold and well-written article which acknowledges how too often in film theory and criticism, genre films are dismissed as fluff and all-together one-dimensional pieces of art. Braudy makes a st Continue Reading...
Formalism
The subject of films is a matter of dreams for many persons though the attraction has come down after the new medium of video has come in. Yet, for some it is still the medium to dream in.
To get into the concept of formalist film theory, Continue Reading...
It shows that children, who we expect to be innocent and trusting, can have a very dark side, and that can be horrifying, although I wouldn't really call this a "horror" film, either. I would call this a psychological thriller with a twisted ending. Continue Reading...
War Films
Taking Jeanine Basinger at her word would leave us with far fewer war films than we think we have. Basinger is a 'strict constructionist,' accepting as war films only those that have actual scenes of warfare (Curley and Wetta, 1992. p. 8; Continue Reading...
Cinema 1950s
1950s was a decade of change for the U.S. - cinema was no exception, as it modeled itself to accommodate the social changes U.S. society was going through. Films not only provide entertainment to masses but are also believed to express Continue Reading...
Cold War and Film
Generally speaking, the Cold War has been depicted as an era of spy games and paranoia in popular films from the 1960s to the present day, but the reality of the era was much more complex. The Cold War was a period of military and Continue Reading...
Landscape as Replacement of the Mulvey Female in "The Searchers"
In her famous essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey posits that men in Hollywood cinema, responding to demands of the ruling ideology, "can Continue Reading...
The basic materials might include tin cans, fragments of speech, a cough, canal boats chugging or natural snatches of Tibetan chant (all these are in a work called Etude Pathetique).
Musical instruments are not taboo: one piece used a flute that wa Continue Reading...