Bordwell 10e ppt_ch11
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Transcript of Bordwell 10e ppt_ch11
Chapter 11
Film Criticism: Sample Analyses
1© 2013 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
Sample Analyses
• Narrative films, alternatives to narrative form, documentary, and analyses that emphasize social ideology will be examined.
• All of the films discussed can be analyzed in other ways as well.
• These analyses are examples of strategies that you can apply in your writing.
2© 2013 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
The Classical Narrative Cinema: His Girl Friday
• Segmentation shows the pace of character interactions contribute to the overall pace.
• Deadlines within the plot and the clash of character traits and goals propel the cause and effect.
• Time and space are subordinate to cause and effect.
• Telephones play an important role in cause and effect.
3© 2013 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
North by Northwest
• Using classical narrative patterns, a strict time scheme and motifs keep the narrative unified.
• Point-of-view shots offer a degree of subjectivity.
• Continually emphasizes surprise and suspense through careful manipulation of the hierarchy of knowledge.
• Hitchcock also uses climactic sequences.
4© 2013 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
Do The Right Thing• Stretches traditional Hollywood conventions
while still upholding conventional techniques.• Setting and a limited time frame unify the plot.• The main causal action falls into two lines: Sal’s
relations with the community and Mookie’s personal life.
• Cinematic technique loosely uses the continuity system and emphasizes the community as a whole.
• Style also stresses the underlying problems in the community.
5© 2013 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
Do The Right Thing
• Characters create goals sporadically.• Will conflicts be resolved peacefully or
violently?• Lee’s choices emphasize the community as a
whole.
© 2013 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved. 6
Narrative Alternative: Breathless (À Bout de souffle)
• A classic story line presented nonclassically.• Rejects classical Hollywood causality.• Classic film technique is also rejected, using
instead location shooting, and natural light and sound.
• Often breaks away from traditional editing techniques.
7© 2013 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
Tokyo Story (Tokyo Monogatari)
• Spatial and temporal structures are emphasized over narrative events.
• Camera and editing patterns involve using a full circle.
• Taken together, film technique suggests a different relationship among setting, duration, and story action than exists in a classical Hollywood film.
8© 2013 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
Chunking Express (Chung Hing sam lam)
• Involves six characters in two distinct stories presented side-by-side.
• The lines of action in the two parts aren’t linked causally, which forces you to seek other connections.
• Motifs link the two stories, as does the theme that change is a part of love.
9© 2013 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
Documentary Form and Style:Man with a Movie Camera
• Takes the “kino eye” idea as the basis for the film’s associational form.
• Exploits the power to control our perception of reality by means of editing and special effects.
• Draws a connection between the camera and human actions.
• Explicit and implicit meanings may be missed by viewers who aren’t familiar with Russian.
10© 2013 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
The Thin Blue Line
• Uses narrative form, but not in a wholly linear way.
• Form and style shape our sympathies subtly and ask us to reflect on the obstacles to arriving at the truth about any crime.
• It is both an account of what really happened while sending the message that persistent inquirers can eventually arrive at truth.
11© 2013 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
Form, Style, and Ideology:Meet Me in St. Louis
• Reinforces certain aspects of a social ideology: American values of family unity and home life.
• Dialogue, stylistic devices, and mise-en-scene contribute to the feeling of a happy family life.
• Referential, explicit, implicit, and symptomatic meanings all emphasize the social ideology.
12© 2013 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
Raging Bull
• There is both sympathy and revulsion towards Jake.
• Narrative and stylistic strategies make Jake a case study in the role of violence in American life.
• The narrative organization of incidents and motifs suggest that male aggression pervades American life.
• Stylistic techniques depict the violence as disturbing but also mesmerizing.
13© 2013 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.