Film Theory Final Presentation

The video is not embedding into the blog so here is the link to our Film Theory Final Presentation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3SZ6po4uaE

Un Chien Andalou

Un Chien Andalou
Total Running Time: 00:16:00
Director: Luis Bunuel
Language: (silent)

This short is a sixteen minute surrealist film by Luis Bunuel along with artist Salvador Dali. This was an extremely weird film and has no conventional plot. I don’t even believe there is an actual story to this. The film is very disjointed and unsettling and in jumps from once upon a time to eight years later without anything changing. The Characters also never age. the director Luis Bunuel told Dali at a restaurant one day about a dream in which a cloud sliced the moon in half "like a razor blade slicing through an eye". Dali then told him about a dream involving a hand crawling with ants. Watching this film made me think how it pretty much plays like a music video. The film is famous for its eye-cutting scene. In conclusion, this is just an extremely weird piece of art if I must say.

Desperately Seeking Susan

Title: Desperately Seeking Susan
Director: Susan Seidelman
TRT: 104 minutes
YEAR: 1985
AWARDS: BAFTA FILM Best Supporting Actress

Directed by Susan Seidelman, Desperately Seeking Susan stars Rosanna Arquette, Madonna, Aidan Quinn, and John Torturro. The story is about a suburban housewife named Roberta. Roberta seems bored with her life and becomes obsessed with this girl susan that she reads about in the personals. Roberta tries to set up a meeting with Susan but ends up being mistaken for susan and hits her head and gets amnesia and believes she is actually Susan. The film does a good job with showing what the 80’s were like and how people acted. Also, it is a very feminist film and madonna’s character, Susan, best represents that. In the film, she is a very independent and free woman who lives her life by her own rules. Roberta, on the other hand, feels more like a prisoner in her life and seeks to escape her lifestyle and live it up.

The first article I found if from Independent Film Channel. It is not a big article but it gives some interesting facts about the movie. This film was Seidelman’s second feature-length. This film is inspired by two other films which are Julie Go Boating and Jacque Rivette’s Celine. Also, for this film, she casted hipster extras, downtown personalities, and New York thespians. Furtermore, the big dance-club sequence was filmed at Danceteria. This was the place that helped launch Madonna's career. This scene from the film also helped propel "Into the Groove” onto the music charts.

The second article is from the Los Angeles Times titled “Los Angeles Film Festival: Susan Seidelman recalls making Desperately Seeking Susan.” The article opens up by stated “If the late John Hughes is considered the filmmaker who captured the dreams and angst of 1980s teenagers, then it's director Susan Seidelman who best caught the punk, free-wheeling vibe of the decade.” In the article, Seidelman says how she was nervous about the film’s release because by this time Madonna had become famous and they wondered if her new popularity would help or harm the film. Lastly, Seidelman says how she was able to relate to Madonna’s character and balance the characters of Susan and Roberta because she was already familar with the New York scene, punk, and New Wave.

This film was probably the most interesting and entertaining film we watched all semester. It was a very entertaining movie and was well paced and had just enough humor, action, and drama mixed in. The film did an excellent job with showing the New York punk scene at the time. However, it was a little weird to see a young Madonna in the movie playing pretty much a punk being see is from a pop background. The music in the movie was very good also and the cinematography, especially in the club, well well-done. This was a good film overall.

Sources:
1.)http://www.ifc.com/movies/13417/Desperately-Seeking-Susan
2.)http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/19/entertainment/la-et-desperately-20100619

Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive

Title: The Spirit of the Beehive
Director: Victor Erice
TRT: 97 min.
Year: 1973


The Spirit of the Beehive is a Spanish film directed by Victor Erice in 1973. The film is set in 1940 right after Spain’s Civil War. Druing this time, there was rivalry between two different parties : The Nationalists and the Republicans. In the film, each girls represents a political party. The movie focuses on two young girls named Ana and Isabel. A mobile cinema brings the 1931 film “Frankenstein” to the town and two girls go an see it. Ana is horrified when she witnesses the Frankenstein monster killing the young girl in the film. Ana then becomes fascinated with the movie and she attempts to search for the monster believe that the monster actually exists.
The first article I found is The Guardian in the UK. It is titled, “Victor Erice: The Spirit of the Beehive: In the Shadow of Franco.” The article points out that when the film was made in 1973, Spanish Filmmakers had to hide their political messages in allegory such as Erice did with this movie. In the Movie, Ana discovers a Republican soldier who is hiding from Franco’s army. In Ana’s mind, The soldier is the Frankenstein monster from the film even tho the soldier is eventually found and killed. The article mentions that the film is about child-hood imaginings. Also, it is about “Franco’s long shadow cast over Spain.” The film plays as if the girls are in a dream world and is cloaked in quit and sadness. An interesting fact I found in this article is that the producer worried that Erice would never complete this film and Erice has only made very few films after. One of them is only half-completed.
The second article is simply titled “The Spirit of the Beehive.” The article points out that after the movie was released, Franco’s regime was “rotting from the inside” and Franco himself was near dying. Under Franco’s rule, political speech was restricted so people took to the arts to get their political messages across, such as Erice. Erice’s “The Spirit of the Beehive” became a calling card and showed that Franco’s regime was indeed vulnerable. The film also correctly portrayed the trouble Spanish Society and the psychological costs of it. In the film, Fernando tends to his bees and the family is pretty withdrawn from society and acts as it they are unconscious.
This film was alright. I like the story-line and how it was centered on Ana searching from the Frankenstein monster after they see the film. She believes he is a spirit in her world. The cinematography was very good with the use of muted colors and the shots were well conceived. However, I thought the film was a little slow and could have been paced a little better but I think the director intended it to be more of a reflection of the time. Overall, I think Erice did a good job with the film.

Sources:

1.) http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/1999/sep/16/derekmalcolmscenturyoffilm

2.) http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/filmnotes/beehive.htm


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Italian Neorealism and French New Wave

In class we talked about neorealism and French New Wave. Italian Neorealism is is a style of film characterized by stories set amongst the poor and working class. They were often filmed on location and frequently used nonprofessional actors. Famous directors who helped developed this style are Michelangelo Antonioni, Luchino Visconti, Gianni Puccini, Cesare Zavattini, Giuseppe De Santis and Pietro Ingrao. The first neorealist film was “Ossessione” by Luchino Visconti in 1943. It became famous globally in 1946 with Roberto Rosselini’s “Roma, citta aperta.” Neo-realism eventually went on to influence another type of film movement known as French New Wave.

French New Wave came about in the 1950s and 60s. It was influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. These directors were experimental in their films. They rejected the normal conventions of filmmaking and tried new things such as with editing, themes, and shot compositions. Some famous directors include Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut.
In class, we watched scenes from the film “Breathless.” It was made in 1960 by director Jean-Luc Godard. It was his first-feature length film and one of the first ever created in the French New Wave era. It is about a small-time thief who steals a car and murders a police officer. It is also a love-story as he tries to renew his relationship with his old flame Patricia. It won the silver Berlin Bear for director Jean-Luc Godard.