The Prestige

Formalist Criticism:

In reviewing Christopher Nolan’s 2006 film The Prestige, I am going to look at the significance of his film and its relationship to others.

The funeral scene in The Prestige where Cutter is eulogizing the death of Julia is, I think, of great significance to the rest of Nolan’s film. In this scene, Angier, Cutter and company our paying there respects to Julia in a hallway where the dead reside. Angier and Cutter are standing on one side of Julia’s coffin. In the next moment, Borden walks up to the opposite side of the coffin, visually dividing the characters for the viewers’.  Angier questions Borden about which knot he tied on Julia’s hands and Borden replies with a genuine “I don’t know.” Borden then leaves, walking away from the camera, from Angier’s point-of-view.

Before this scene, Nolan’s direction of a nonlinear narration has the audience unsure of what exactly has happened and who should receive their sympathy. Who is definitively in the wrong is unclear. This moment, however, I believe splits the characters and thus gives the audience Angier to sympathize with.

Nolan has created a scene of equality with tones white and black and the same image of ongoing tombs behind both Borden and Angier. The only thing that separates the two men is the coffin of Julia and the lingering question of whether or not Borden tied the wrong knot. This scene is thus a moment of clarity for everyone; Angier, who has decided that Julia’s death was Borden’s fault, Cutter, who never liked Borden much and this moment gave him justification, and the audience who think that they finally understand who was in the wrong. The only person who is uncertain is Borden; he doesn’t know which knot he tied.

            Later, in Angier’s death scene, Nolan has created a parallel image of the morgue at Julia’s funeral. Fallon is standing over Angier who is lying on the ground, wounded by a gunshot. He now has the upper hand, it no longer matters which knot was tied because Angier tricked Borden to his death. It is now clear to both the audience as well as Fallon that the villain is Angier.

As he walks away from Angier, the camera tracks backward in front of Fallon, revealing a scene almost identical to the image at the morgue. Except, instead of tombs, we see rows and rows of glass containers, each one filled with water and one of Angier’s dead clones. This example, I think, also justifies Christopher Nolan as an auteur. 

"Psycho" Essay 1 Outline

Main Argument:

• ·         I am going to take an ideological approach to further analyze the scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho where Marion Crane is in her bedroom with the stolen $40,000 packing her suitcase.  Although both a formalist and an ideological approach are applicable to Psycho, this particular scene I think is best looked at through the eyes of an ideologist.

Claim 1:

·      Ideological Approach and Sergei Eisenstein:

o   According to Eisenstein, the meaning of a film is arrived at through relationship between two successive shots, independent of one another.

o   Support: Sergei Eisenstein’s article “The Dramaturgy of Film Form”

·      Formalist Approach and V.F. Perkins:

o   Perkins takes a “synthetic” approach to criticism in which he considers how various elements of a film compliment the film as a whole. What one particular scene means in context with the entire film.

o   Support: V.F. Perkins excerpt from “Film as film: Understanding and judging movies.”

Claim 2: Ideological Approach

• ·      In the scene where the audience correctly assumes that Marion is about to leave town, a sequence of shots occurs which begin with a medium shot of Marion in her bedroom, looking worriedly at something off camera. As the camera pans down and tracks forward, we see that the envelope filled with money is on her bed, along with an open suitcase. This opening shot is important because it lets the viewer know that Marion did not go to the bank to deposit the money. I would argue that it is the first turning point for the film. Before this scene, we as viewers have nothing to be suspicious or anxious about. We had little reason to suspect that she would take the money home. As the scene continues, we are shown one shot after another of Marion getting dressed, packing her belongings, and glancing down at the envelope. This scene is only approximately a minute and a half but is the movies first manipulation of fear. Through this sequence of shots and the music that accompanies them, the spectator begins their decent into Marion’s problems. Yet, at the same time, we have very little background on the character. We can’t be sure why she is taking the money and we have no idea where she is going with it. But that doesn’t matter in this scene, because all we need to know is that she is taking it and to feel the anxiety she feels.
• ·      Support: Eisenstein’s article “The Dramaturgy of Film Form”

Claim 3:

• ·      Because of the emotional effect on the viewers, I believe that an ideological approach to the packing scene would be the optimal choice.
• ·      Support: Eisenstein’s article “The Dramaturgy of Film Form”

"The Grapes of Wrath"

The moment I have decided to dissect from John Ford’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” is the one we discussed in class. It is when the Joad’s slowly drive into the migrant camp. By placing the camera on top of the Joad’s truck, Ford was able to capture the faces of disgruntled migrant workers from the point-of-view of the Joads. The decision to position the camera at that angle was, I believe, intended to give the viewers the same perspective as the Joad’s, in order to empathize with their family and not with the people going through very similar situations.  

I chose this moment because in class we spoke about the differences between John Steinbeck’s novel and John Ford’s adaptation of Steinbeck’s novel and about how maybe some of the spirit in Steinbeck’s book was lost in Ford’s translation. Now, although I have never read the novel, from the class discussion I am under the impression that John Steinbeck’s intent for this book was for readers to empathize with migrant workers in general, as a unit. And on the other hand, using this migrant camp scene as an example, Ford is allowing the audience to empathize with the Joads and only the Joads.

I think there is a little too much assumption involved in this theory however. I am willing to argue that John Ford’s decision to have us follow the Joads from beginning to end was purely a cinematic one. I think it is possible that Ford thought, in order to get viewers to believe in a story and empathize with a situation, they need to be able to truly care about the characters in the story. 

 To further emphsize this point the I use modern day broadcast news as an analogy; people only tend to care about news when there is a face attached to it. For instance, if an anchor on CNN announced that John Smith had died, a very few amount people would pay much attention. Now if later in the day, the same anchor reported they had made a mistake and the deceased was actually Oprah or Obama, it would catch the attention of a massive amount of people, all over the world. There would be shrines on sidewalks with groups of crying people huddled together, holding candles. It is much easier to be empathetic toward things you care about, things that are tangible.

Also, it seems true to the nature of “survival of the fittest” for the other migrant workers to not welcome the Joads with open arms. These people are hungry and tired.

Validity of Auteur Theory

            Yes, I think auteur theory is a valid area of film studies, if not only because it exists and was very prominent in recent history. 

"Masculin, Feminin"

The “moment” approach when analyzing film is the idea that there is a moment in any film that stands out to the individual viewer or spectator.  It is always subjective and often times, the viewer will have no idea what the moment means within the context of the film or why, at first, the moment has significance at all. Nonetheless, within the “moment” approach, the spectator will relate their moment’s significance to the rest of the film and then be able to use the film to explain or justify cinema as a form of art. I used this approach to analyze Jean-Luc Godard’s film “Masculin, Feminin.”

The “moment” hit me about 25 minutes into the film. There is a sequence of shots that I believe Godard manipulatively and masterfully set up in order to throw the viewer off track.

The first shot is of a train passing by an open window in an apartment. The shot that follows is of Paul cracking open the doors of a moving train and looking out and around. In the third shot we are back in the apartment where this time we see Madeleine walking up to the window to look at the passing train. And finally we see Paul closing the train’s doors and walking back toward the center of the train.

These first sets of shots are establishing for the scene that follows. In all, they comprise only 20 seconds of the film and yet this moment stood out to me.

When considering most of Hollywood’s productions of movies, the filmmaker-audience relationship is usually on a “what you see is what you get” basis. For the most part, camera angles and editing styles are clear and concise in a film out of Hollywood. So from the point of view of a moviegoer who is used to seeing Hollywood films, it would be safe to assume that Godard is using parallel editing to tell us that Paul is either just leaving from of just arriving to Madeleine’s home. But after watching the confusion of the first 25 minutes of this film, I questioned my initial assumption of parallel editing. Perhaps Paul is neither leaving nor going to Madeleine’s. Maybe Paul just happened to be looking out of the train doors and maybe Madeleine was watching a different train pass by her window. For all we know, these two events happened during different times that night or even different nights all together.

I believe this moment is significant to the rest of the film in that it reiterates the notion that Godard seems to be manipulating his audience. Throughout “Masculin, Feminin,” and many of his other films, the audience is thrown for a loop again and again. As soon as you think you have figured out Godard’s mind and method, he presents another obstacle.

On the whole, I think this film represents cinema as a form of art. Making and perceiving art is a subjective process. What one person may like another may hate and vice versa. However, whether or not you liked a piece of art is insignificant if the artist has effectively swayed your opinion. George Carlin famously said that when doing a comedy special, if the show was good, he was able to manipulate the audience into agreeing with whatever he said. So much so that when every single audience member was on his side, he would contradict himself and get them all to agree with his contradiction.