I think Hitchcock was over rated. His films did use many techniques that make him a good topic to study in Art of Film, but I did not find them entertaining. Hitchcock was a good but over rated director.
His title was "the master of suspense." The use of suspense in his stories makes is spot on. In Virtigo, the evil plot twist is revealed in just the right way so that it makes you wonder when and how the main character will uncover it. He also makes great use of subjective shots for when the characters are looking at something. The example from Rear Window has been brought up many times in class. He does an amazing job telling these stories, but the stories are not that entertaining.
The plots for his movies are entertaining as stories but not as movies. Rear Window and Virtigo are very slow to begin with and do not noticably pick up the pace in any way. I did not find these movies as entertaining as some of the others that I watched, but that is ok. These movies were better learning tools than entertaining tools, and that is exactly what we should watch in school.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Monday, February 25, 2008
Monsieur Verdoux
In his 1947 film, Monsieur Verdoux, Charlie Chaplin plays a highly skilled killer/con-man/ladiesman/hand model. The title character, Verdoux, goes around France in the late 1920s marrying women, killing them, then running off with all their money. This movie was interesting due to some of the changes that Chaplin made in his style in 1947, but even more interesting because this movie was the reason why Chaplin was hated by Joe McCarthy.
The look and feel of this movie is unlike any Chaplin movie that I have seen before. The script was writen by Orson Wells, but Chaplin bought the script from Wells. Not that much of Chaplin's physical comedey is in this movie. Most os the humor comes from when Verdoux implies that he is about to kill someone. for instance, one of his wives kept nagging him about locking the doors before they went up to bed. Verdoux said to her "I took extra care this time." Another aspect that made this movie different was the sound. In this movie, the sounds of footsteps and doors closing could be heard. there were none of those creepy gaps in the sound like in the Great Dictator. Charlie Chaplin also changed his look after WWII. After WWII people named Adolf started to go by "Alfred" and Chaplin got rid of the mustach that made him look like Hitler. I did not recognize him in this movie without the Hitler-stach or any of the falling down all the time. I do not think that anyone would think this was a Chaplin film unless Wikipedia and Netflix told them so.
I do not know how McCarthy knew this was a Chaplin movie. It is not like he had Netflix or Wikipedia (Al Gore did not invent those things yet). Joe McCarthy blacklisted Chaplin for making this movie. At the end, Verdoux is captured and can not escape without breaking the Haze code. Under the Haze code, people who engage in acts of sex or violence in movies can not live happily ever after(ie they are "badguys"), unless they are disposing the "badguys." Verdoux killed a bunch of people, so he was a "badguy" and had to be brought to justice. As Verdoux is on trial, he makes a speach comparing himself to capitalists and arms dealers. This speach condemned "Merchants of Death" (arms dealers that got the US into WWI) and most capitalists. He called them murderers on a larger scale for making bombs that kill people. Shortly after we find out that Verdoux is a commie, he makes his walk to the gillotine.
The look and feel of this movie is unlike any Chaplin movie that I have seen before. The script was writen by Orson Wells, but Chaplin bought the script from Wells. Not that much of Chaplin's physical comedey is in this movie. Most os the humor comes from when Verdoux implies that he is about to kill someone. for instance, one of his wives kept nagging him about locking the doors before they went up to bed. Verdoux said to her "I took extra care this time." Another aspect that made this movie different was the sound. In this movie, the sounds of footsteps and doors closing could be heard. there were none of those creepy gaps in the sound like in the Great Dictator. Charlie Chaplin also changed his look after WWII. After WWII people named Adolf started to go by "Alfred" and Chaplin got rid of the mustach that made him look like Hitler. I did not recognize him in this movie without the Hitler-stach or any of the falling down all the time. I do not think that anyone would think this was a Chaplin film unless Wikipedia and Netflix told them so.
I do not know how McCarthy knew this was a Chaplin movie. It is not like he had Netflix or Wikipedia (Al Gore did not invent those things yet). Joe McCarthy blacklisted Chaplin for making this movie. At the end, Verdoux is captured and can not escape without breaking the Haze code. Under the Haze code, people who engage in acts of sex or violence in movies can not live happily ever after(ie they are "badguys"), unless they are disposing the "badguys." Verdoux killed a bunch of people, so he was a "badguy" and had to be brought to justice. As Verdoux is on trial, he makes a speach comparing himself to capitalists and arms dealers. This speach condemned "Merchants of Death" (arms dealers that got the US into WWI) and most capitalists. He called them murderers on a larger scale for making bombs that kill people. Shortly after we find out that Verdoux is a commie, he makes his walk to the gillotine.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
The Great Dictator
The Great Dictator was one of Charlie Chaplin’s first movies with sound. This movie was made in 1936 and ridiculed Hitler around the same time he was coming to power.
This movie interested me because last year in US History, Mr. Simpson, the history teacher, said that this movie accurately reflected the way Americans saw Germany. He said that Americans did not take Hitler seriously as a threat in the mid 1930s. Charlie Chaplin acts just the way he does in any of his other comedies when he portrays Hitler. The three stooges are basically a mitosis of a typical Charlie Chaplin character, and that does not look like a serious threat to me. Charlie Chaplin has a very quirky style.
Chaplin’s style has a few interesting key techniques. In order to replicate his style, you need to get his walk down. He walks with his feet perpendicular and pointing outward. Doing this will be accompanied by a tendency to kick slightly and lean back as you walk. Walking like this in public will make people think you are drunk or just a creeper. Most of his humor is physical, like falling down or picking fights with inanimate objects. The idea of picking a fight with an inanimate object more specifically reefers to having difficulties with various contraptions. For instance, in the beginning of the Great Dictator, Chaplin portrays a soldier in WWI who tries to load a cannon, but he has some problems operating the mechanism. Another classic example from a different film is when his coat gets hooked on a nail on a swiveling table. Then he tries to get a glass on the other side of the table.
Chaplin mostly had experience with silent movies and so he still used much of that same physical comedy. Another sign of this movie being an early sound movie is the fact that some sounds are missing. Doors shut soundlessly. No sound is heard as combat boots march across gravel to a plane. I think that biplane was the infamous German stealth baron. Its engine had an inaudible drone.
This movie interested me because last year in US History, Mr. Simpson, the history teacher, said that this movie accurately reflected the way Americans saw Germany. He said that Americans did not take Hitler seriously as a threat in the mid 1930s. Charlie Chaplin acts just the way he does in any of his other comedies when he portrays Hitler. The three stooges are basically a mitosis of a typical Charlie Chaplin character, and that does not look like a serious threat to me. Charlie Chaplin has a very quirky style.
Chaplin’s style has a few interesting key techniques. In order to replicate his style, you need to get his walk down. He walks with his feet perpendicular and pointing outward. Doing this will be accompanied by a tendency to kick slightly and lean back as you walk. Walking like this in public will make people think you are drunk or just a creeper. Most of his humor is physical, like falling down or picking fights with inanimate objects. The idea of picking a fight with an inanimate object more specifically reefers to having difficulties with various contraptions. For instance, in the beginning of the Great Dictator, Chaplin portrays a soldier in WWI who tries to load a cannon, but he has some problems operating the mechanism. Another classic example from a different film is when his coat gets hooked on a nail on a swiveling table. Then he tries to get a glass on the other side of the table.
Chaplin mostly had experience with silent movies and so he still used much of that same physical comedy. Another sign of this movie being an early sound movie is the fact that some sounds are missing. Doors shut soundlessly. No sound is heard as combat boots march across gravel to a plane. I think that biplane was the infamous German stealth baron. Its engine had an inaudible drone.
Art of Film II
This is a divider between what I posted for the first and second semester in Art of Film.
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