"You're Not Really Looking": What is the significance of this film and its relationship to others?

Looking to Christopher Nolan’s film The Prestige (2006), I am going to attempt to answer the question: What is the significance of this film and its relationship to others?

 




The moment I would like to look at is the scene when Borden and Angier go to watch the Chinese magician at the beginning of the film. After watching the man’s show, Borden figures out that the Chinese man is really not crippled. His age and condition are an act, which allows him to hide his methods behind the performance. Borden says to Angier that total dedication to the act is key, and it is the only way to get out of “here,” as he points to the squalor and small-time theater.
 

I believe this moment and quote from Borden to be key to the significance of this film. As a director, Nolan has certainly separated himself from others in terms of style—both narratively and aesthetically. We may even call him an auteur, as his body of work thus far reflects this similar style throughout. If one then considers Nolan an auteur, we can see that he has totally dedicated himself to his trade, working to perfect his style. Perhaps Borden was right, since Nolan’s total dedication has given him great success in his field.

I personally consider Nolan an auteur, so I believe that Auteur Theory could be applied to his body of work to investigate his particular style of filmmaking. I believe that if we begin with the idea that Nolan totally dedicates himself to his projects, then it would be easy to pick out specific examples of how this is reflected in his films. For example, I could go back through The Prestige and pick out all the scenes in which Borden’s gloves tell a story of their own—whether it is he or his twin. This close attention to detail reveals the dedication Nolan has for the film, and I believe his other films would also provide many examples of this.

Ideological vs. Formalist Approach to Film- Essay 1 Outline

Main Argument: Using the first scene in Norman Bates’ parlor from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) as an example, I believe that the Formalist Approach to be the most effective method of studying film because it considers all aspects of the scene in context rather than simply the shots independently.

Background:

   Ideological Approach:

• Claim: In an ideological approach to film analysis, Eisenstein believed that meaning was derived from the relationship   between successive shots, rather than from the shots in relation to the rest of the film. 
• Support: Sergei Eisenstein article "The Dramaturgy of Film Form"

   Formalist Approach:

• Claim: In a synthetic approach to film analysis, V.F. Perkins argues that it is important to look at all the contents of a moment or scene within the context of the entire film. 
• Support: V.F. Perkins article

Which one?- Formalist Approach 

• Claim: While it may elicit emotions from the spectator, simply analyzing the "collision" of shots in a montage disregards the context of the scene in relation to the narrative and the rest of the film. I believe the Formalist Approach to be the more effective method of studying film because it is important to consider the moment or scene of a film not just in relation to the outside world, but within the context of the film in which it resides. 
• Support: V.F. Perkins article and detailed scene analysis from film

Film Analysis: Psycho

• Claim: I believe the Formalist Approach is more effective when analyzing the first scene in Norman Bates' parlor from the film.
• Support: detailed analysis from film 

The Grapes of Wrath: "I know this... a man got to do what he got to do."

According to Truffaut, film adaptations of literature have value only when undertaken by a man of the cinema. He believed that it was crucial for the adaptation to maintain the spirit of the original work. It’s interesting, then, to compare the similarities and difference between John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath and John Ford’s film adaptation to determine whether or not the film remains faithful to Steinbeck’s novel.

To begin, I want to answer the following question: Pick one moment from the film adaptation and describe how it either departs from or remains faithful to Steinbeck's novel. Is this moment "cinematic," and, if so, does it make Ford & Toland auteurs?

In Steinbeck’s first chapter, he describe the desolate setting in which his characters will be placed: “Every moving thing lifted the dust into the air: a walking man lifted a think layer as high as his waist, and a wagon listed the dust as high as the fence tops, and an automobile boiled a cloud behind it. The dust was long in settling back again.”

This description paints a vivid picture in the reader’s mind of exactly how much dust there is and how it behaves. The bleakness of the area describes not just the physical landscape of the story, but also sets the mood of the novel.

Similarly, Ford and Toland must establish the desolation early on in the film in order to set a similar mood as the novel. In once of the first scenes, Tom Joad is shown walking up a road to his family farm. As he walks away from the camera, his footsteps kick up a cloud of dust around him, invoking in the viewer’s mind the above Steinbeck passage. It’s clear that Ford and Toland looked to Steinbeck’s description to guide the filming of this particular moment.  

While Ford and Toland remain faithful to the passage, the moment in the film is also extremely cinematic and achieves something that the novel could never do: the viewer is able to see the dust actively lifting into the air as Tom walks. I do believe the decisions that Ford and Toland made in how to visually present the scene—filming Tom from behind and having him walk uphill away from the camera—provide a glimpse of the personalities of the two men as artists.  

So I end by answering this question: Most critics today dismiss auteur theory for various reasons. Do you believe it is a valid area of study in film studies? Why or why not?

 

Although most critics have dismissed it today, I do believe that auteur theory is an important aspect when studying film. I believe there are too many directors that pride themselves on a strong sense of personality in their work that it would be foolish to dismiss it. Directors known for their distinctive style include Quentin Tarantino, Tim Burton, the Coen brothers, and Woody Allen. While I do not believe that auteur theory is necessarily enough to understand a film completely, I think it is still applicable today. 

A Moment with Godard

  

Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second. 
-Jean-Luc Godard

Looking at a particular moment in Godard's Masculin Feminin, I am going to attempt to answer the question: According to the techniques used in this moment, what do you think Godard believes film should be?

Based on the moment I’ve chosen, I believe that Godard wanted to make filmmaking more accessible to people, if only just seemingly so.

The moment I chose to look at occurs toward the end of the movie when Paul interviews Miss 19. The shot is a medium shot of a young woman standing in front of a window. The woman is backlit, seemingly from natural lighting. Directly preceding this shot is a title screen that reads "Dialogue with a Consumer Product."

The caption and the interview style that Godard uses in the scene with Miss 19 interest me the most. 

The caption provides the lens through which the spectator is supposed to view the following interview, stating Godard's purpose directly. I feel like this technique makes filmmaking accessible because titles and captions are relatively easy to insert before and after scenes, which allow the director to make a statement without needing much production experience to do so. 


Moreover, his use of an interview style between Paul and Miss 19 is a simple one. The camera does not move for the entire scene, but rather stays focused on Miss 19 as Paul asks questions from off-screen. It seems like a real interview is taking place, with Miss 19 simply answering questions from Paul unscripted. Someone with very little filmmaking experience could easily set up a similar scene and would simply need to come up with questions for the interview.

Using this moment as an example, I believe that many techniques that Godard employs in the film make filmmaking seem more accessible to those with little or no experience, which seems to fit in well with the anti-capitalist and anti-consumerism message of Masculin Feminin. Other techniques that he uses that reinforce this idea are his use of long shots that do not feature (or require) much editing, as well as his use of street scenes that feature real people on the streets of Paris. Godard simply sets up a camera and films. 

While some of his techniques may seem amateurish and simple to execute, Godard really did know what he was doing. At the beginning of his career, Godard had worked as a film critic and had no actual filmmaking experience. His experience, rather, came from his close observation and analysis of films as a critic and self-professed cinephile. Since he knew the “rules” and “language” of filmmaking, Godard was able to intentionally break those for effects that are unique to his films. It is Godard's gift in making his techniques look so easy that is one of the reasons he has been cited by some as the single-most influential director on other directors of the 20th century. The Hollywood studio system that had dominated the filmmaking industry for decades made it difficult for newcomers who were either outside the industry or who wanted to bring variation to movies to make films, so Godard's approach was a refreshing change that encouraged other auteurs to try filmmaking.

Like Quentin Tarantino, to name a popular contemporary director that has been heavily influenced by Godard.

So, back to the original question: According to the techniques used in this moment, what do you think Godard believes film should be? 

My answer:  Using the moment of the Miss 19 interview as an example, I believe that Godard wanted to make filmmaking more accessible to people.