In the Mood for Love - French Impressionist Cinema

Today, I would like to discuss about French Impressionist Cinema, which also called as the first avant-garde or narrative avant-garde. It is a term applied to a group of French films and filmmakers in 1920s. After World War I, French filmmaking never fully recovered. The industry tried to recapture the audience by imitate Hollywood production methods and genres. Then, they emerged a movement which is Impressionism that consist of young directors such as Abel Gance, Louis Delluc, Germaine Dulac, Marcel L’Herbier and Jean Epstein.

French Impressionist Cinema is a movement popular from 1919 to 1928. It explores psychological causes of the film. It gives the narration considerable psychological depth and revealing play of the character’s consciousness. It also concerns about the mental state of characters, either is in dreams or fantasies. This impressionist manipulates plot time and subjectivity by showing the flashbacks or memories in film. There is some visual depiction of metal states via cinematography and editing, which are use of irises, distorted visuals, point of view (POV) editing and camera movement. The filmmakers use irises, superimpositions and masks to indicate the characters’ thought and feeling. The visuals are distorted or filtered or vertiginous the camera movement to show the effect of dizzy or drunkenness in film. POV and rhythmic editing are used in film to show the experiences of particular situations of characters. In French Impressionist Cinema, camera movement is smooth. It can be brought about by frame mobility. For example, the camera can be tied to cars, wheels, bobsleds or cables. Unfortunately, French Impressionist Cinema was trigged off slowly due to lack of interests by mass and also rising of cost of production.

(Source: http://www.lovehkfilm.com/reviews/ab3219/in_the_mood_for_love.jpg)

In the Mood for Love is a 2000 Hong Kong film directed by Wong Kar Wai, starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung. It is a love story between Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li Zhen (Maggie Cheung). In Hong Kong in 1926, Chow Mo Wan, a journalist, rents a room in an apartment of a building with his wife. On the same day, Su Li Zhen, a secretary from a shipping company, rents another room next to him with her husband. They become next-door neighbours. Then, they find out that their spouses having an affair with each other spouses. This is where they begin their delicate relationship.

According to David Bordwell’s theory, French Impressionist Cinema can be shown in four main aspects which are camerawork, mise-en-scene, optical devices and characteristic editing patterns. As I mentioned above, French Impressionist Cinema focuses on exploring the psychological causes of the film. That means the film shows the audience what actually the characters think and feel. In the film, In the Mood for Love, there is several scenes that showing the mental states of character via cinematography and editing. The director, Wong Kar Wai, uses the irises, superimpositions, and masks to indicate characters’ thought and feeling. For example, in the scene where Su Li Zhen (as “Su”) finally receives a phone call from Chow Mo Wan (as “Chow”) who disappeared for a few days, then she goes to meet him at the hotel room that Chow rents before so that they can work together on the martial arts serial for the newspaper without attract attention from others neighbours. This particular scene has some shot that shows the character’s feeling. When Su is on her way to meet Chow, there is a close up of her in the car to show her expressions. She looks very eager and anxious. Another part is when Su reaches the hotel, and she goes up the stairs then goes down then goes up again. This editing shows Su is struggling whether she wants to go to meet Chow or not. It also emphasizes her eagerness in this particular scene.

Besides, mise-en-scene also plays an important role in this film. In the scene where Chow is smoking in his office, the audience see him from back first then the camera will focus on the smoke that drift above him. The visuals are edited to show the sense of dizzy of character. The smoke represents Chow’s annoyance. His mind is cloudy like the smoke as the relationship of Su and him is unclear and complicated. It is a visual communication with audiences.

There are number of POV editing and rhythmic editing to show character’s experiences. The scene when Su goes to buy noodles at the noodles stall and Chou eats noodles at the same stall. This shows that they are both lonely person who do their things alone and eat alone without accompany of their spouses. Another one is when Su cannot go to meet with Chou for a period as her has warned by the house owner. She has no choice but to pretend to join the mah-jong game among the neighbourhood. This scene goes in slow motion to show that this is a hard time for Su. Time goes slowly, she is not enjoying the mah-jong game but she has to pretend to look happy. All these scenes are accompanied by the background music, Yumeji's Theme. It makes those scenes look like repetitive and similar.

In this film, the director also manipulates plot time and subjectivity which is flashbacks and memories. The scene where Chou is looking for something in his apartment in Singapore but he cannot find the thing he wants. Then he saw a lipstick stained cigarette butt in his ashtray. The actual timeline is Su goes to Singapore and visit Chow’s apartment secretly. Then she smokes a cigarette, that’s why the lipstick stained cigarette comes from. Then she calls Chow, who is working for a Singaporean newspaper, but she remains silent when Chow picks up the phone. She takes away the slipper that she left in Chow’s Hong Kong apartment last time when she leaves. This is the reason why Chow is desperately searching for something in his room at first. He is looking for Su’s slipper that he brings along to Singapore from Hong Kong as a momento.

In conclusion, the director, Wong Kar Wei, uses a lot of techniques to show the psychological and mental of characters. He uses a different way to interpret the love story between Chow Mo Wan and Su Li Zhen. He focuses on the spouses that being cheated compared to the cheating one. They don’t even show up the face. Even today, when a director wants to show a character’s feeling in some abnormal state of mind, French Impressionist techniques of camerawork and editing which are the blurred imagery, superimposition, slow motion, accelerating cutting and etc. are used. 

Dark City - German Expressionism

Today, I would like to discuss about German Expressionism, which is a creative movement beginning in Germany in early of 1900s. Besides, I also will discuss about how this movement relates to film industry and also the film of this week, Dark City.

As I mentioned above, German Expressionism is a creative movement that appeared in Germany from 1919 to 1926 and reached a peak in Berlin during 1920s. German Expressionism is influenced by the Expressionist movement in modern art of early 1900s. There are some themes that highlighted in this movement which is self-analysis, revolt, sexual savagery, madness and primitive. It is widely used in many industries such as literature, architecture and theatre. It spreads into cinema in term of narrative, set and mise-en-scene. It is most apparent in set design and chiaroscuro lighting which is low key lighting. We can see that German Expressionism’s style includes oblique camera angle, distorted bodies and shapes, gothic style in looking and framing, high contrast lighting that creates dramatic shadows, and the content is usually about surreal and gothic, unnatural acts or realities. This movement can be said that is brought in from Germany to USA as the filmmaker migrated from Germany to USA, and they bring their making practice into Hollywood. This has a great influence on horror film and film noir.

(Source: https://www.google.com/search?q=dark+city&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=643&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwirpOrG4ILOAhXKvI8KHQ4fCZQQ_AUICCgB#imgrc=Hf4CpjfkVcR8eM%3A)

About the film, Dark City. This is an American neo-noir science fiction film directed by Alex Proyas in 1998. The screenplay was written by Proyas, Lem Dobbs and David S. Goyer. The story starts with the main character, John Murdoch, woke up in a bathroom and there is a naked woman dead body around him. He becomes the suspected of murder but he can’t remember anything even his wife. So he was trying to find out what happen to him and the city where he lived. Slowly, he approaches the truth while he is running away from the police and a group of mysterious group known as “Strangers” who want to kill him.

There are some German Expressionism elements that we can found in this film. Firstly, the chiaroscuro lighting, which is the most appeal in visuals. There is a low key lighting shown in the set designs of film. The high contrast of lighting creates an obvious shadow. This can enhance the investigative nature of the film. The audience will be curious and want to have a closer look to that specific scenes. The high contrast provides the audience a sense of mystery. They will want to know what will happen next in the film. For example, when John Murdoch wakes up in the bathtub, the entire bathtub is very dim. This will make the audience has an idea like “Where is this place? Why so dark?”. Then they will pay attention on it. Furthermore, the narrative also sets that the whole story happens at night, there is no day time in the film. This also highlights the dark, damp and cramped atmosphere.

The second element is primitive sexual savagery. It means the killer was targeted to murder. All the victims are women. The weapon is also a very traditional murder weapon, a knife. For example, the murderer in the film, Mr. Hand, kills the victims (all are women) by knife. He even depicts spiral patterns on their body with that knife. This will bring out the sense of sick and madness of the murderer.

Then, we can see a lot of gothic, bizarre and stylized design in the film. There is distorted sets and bodies in some scenes. For example, during tuning, the sets and buildings are spinning and changing differently. Besides, the Strangers also have a different look with normal human proportion. Their body looks longer and higher and they always wear in black. This also makes their walking style looks different with human. The setting of the Strangers’ movement that are reminisce of the past events shows a Gothic style design. It looks dark and depress.

As a conclusion, a German Expressionism film shows a highly stylized visuals, chiaroscuro lighting and strange camera angles. It shows a big contrast between light and dark. The storyline need to be match with the visuals in term of lighting. That’s why the horror film and film noir much influenced by German Expressionism. It creates a dramatic effect on feeling. The audience will feel like this film is sick, depress and gloomy.

Before I wake

Today, I would like to discuss about the movie “Before I Wake” by Mike Flanagan in 2016. I will discuss the genre of this movie and how it relates to the semantic and syntactic approach.

Genre is a way of organizing films according to type. As Rick Altman said, the best method of categorizing films is semantic and syntactic approach. Semantic means the visuals, mise-en-scene of the films, which are locations or settings, makeup and costume, lighting, and actor’s behavior and movement. Syntactic means the themes of the film and we can derive it from the narrative of the film. Genre analysis must only be made by combining both components, semantic and syntactic.

Why we should have genre for the films?

The film must possess universal semantics and syntaxes that found in corresponding genres in order to fall into any particular genre. It can be the guideline for the director to do a film. It also lets the audience has a choice to choose what type of film they want to watch easily. Genre can display the characteristics of the film by semantic and syntactic approach. The director knows that what scenes should be include in the film to humour the audience’s expectation. For example, in an action film, there must be extended chase scenes, fast cuts shots to show expression of every characters and repeating scenes in different angle. These is what audience expect to see in the film. When directors are familiar with these “laws”, they try to innovate new things into the film so that the audience will not be bore.

(Source: https://www.google.com/search?q=before+i+wake&

espv=2&biw=1366&bih=643&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiiidbA2u_NAhWHuI8KHVC4BHYQ_AUIBigB#imgdii=OpLFSYe3xNu9tM%3A%3BOpLFSYe3xNu9tM%3A%3BFLZ6yrAoUqyN-M%3A&imgrc=OpLFSYe3xNu9tM%3A )

Back to our film for this week, Before I Wake. It is an American supernatural fantasy horror film directed by Mike Flanagan and co-written by Flanagan and Jeff Howard in 2016. The story is about Jessie and Mark, a couple who just lost their son Sean, adopt a new foster child named Cody. This child is really lovely and pleasing but the problem is he refuse to sleep at all. Slowly they found out that Cody’s dreams will become reality. Jessie attempts to use Cody’s power to meet with Sean. But nightmare comes one after another and starts to harm their life. In order to save their family, Jessie and Mark must find out the hidden secret behind Cody’s dreams.

As I mentioned before in my several blogs past few week, horror is one of the oldest genres from Hollywood. Horror is the main genre for this film as it contains a number of scenes to frighten the audience. There are a few subgenres under horror categories which is unnatural, psychological and massacre or slasher flicks. This film is in the unnatural as Cody has the supernatural power. The nightmare that created by Cody, Kanker, actually is himself, he tries to protect himself as his dying mother told him “I’m always with you” when he was really young. He does not understand what is cancer that time so he read it as “kanker”, where the nightmare come. There are also some old tricks that usually used in horror film. For example, the children ghost hide under Cody’s bed, there is someone behind Jessie who she can’t see but the audience can, and the dead child, Sean, comes back to interact with parents. The bathtub scene where Sean accidently die is really a horror scene for me especially when Jessie came through a room and she saw the same things happen in front of her. But actually it is an illusion created by Cody’s nightmare. We can see that Jessie is really anxiety and miserable. She is struggling whether will she goes to the bathtub or just ignore it and goes to save Cody in another room.

The idea of this film is very interesting and attractive at the beginning, but the ending seems like not following the usual horror film trend. I think that the director wants to combine horror film and touching storyline to show the love between mother and son. It looks like a combination of genre in this film but not mixed very well. The child has supernatural power but ended with actually the nightmare is himself. It is an anti-climax for me. The story ended with Jessie hugs Cody and tells him all the characters in the story will have a happy ending. The point is the film did not tell the audience how about the innocent people that eat by the nightmare? Where they go? It looks like an open ending for the audience to imagine and no too much explanation for Cody’s supernatural power.

Lastly, genres evolve from times to times until now. The combination of genres makes the narrative different so that the audience will not be bored. But genres should have to be audience based, following the expectations of industry. For this case, I didn’t not see what I expect in the ending.

ParaNorman

Today, I would like to discuss about genre which means categories of film and film types. According to Rick Altman, the method of categorizing films is semantic or syntactic approach. Semantic means the visuals, mise-en-scene of the films, which are locations or settings, makeup and costume, lighting, and actor’s behavior and movement. Syntactic means the means the themes of the film and we can derive it from the narrative of the film. For example, types of characters, hero vs antihero, ideologies and structures of film. Genre analysis must only be made by combining both components, semantic and syntactic.

The movie poster of Paranorman.
(Source: https://www.pinterest.com/rottentomatoes/)

The movie that I want to relate with these ideas is Paranorman. It is an American 3D stop-motion animated horror comedy film produced by Laika and distributed by Focus Featuresand. It was released on 17 August 2012. The story is about Norman Babcock, an 11 years old boy who can speaks with the dead. His strange behavior makes him always bullied by his peers. The town where he lived is being cursed by the witch who died unjustly 300 years ago. Norman uses his special ability to speak with the dead (zombies and witch) to save his town.

(Source: theconceptartblog.com)

There are some genres we can classified for this film such as horror, comedy and adventure. This combination makes the film content and narrative more interesting.

HORROR

Horror is one of the oldest genre from Hollywood. Normally, it is designed to frighten and makes the audiences panic. It is often in a terrifying, shocking finale, while captivating and entertaining the audiences at the same time in a cathartic experience. There are a few sub-genres for horror film such as unnatural, psychological, massacre or slasher flicks. The film, Paranorman, is under unnatural, which is the zombies. In this film, we can clearly see that the zombies enter to the town where Norman lived from their grave after they arise by the witch’s curse. This is one of the main idea for horror genre, threat to normalcy, which means an external force threatening civilians.

 Judge Hopkins, the leader of the zombies.(Source: http://www.moviemail.com/img/blog/headers/939_139.jpg)

Another six cursed zombies.
(Source: https://i.imgur.com/6BaCTkS.jpg)

We can see semantic approach in this film. Some scenes bring out the sense of depressed and scary with the lighting. Some scenes bring out the sense of unbalanced with play around the mise-en-scene. There also can see the makeup (design) for the character is done to show the bodily mutations and mutilations of zombies, such as the brain is hanging out of the head, the bone can be seen without the skin, the dead’s skin is in blue or green colour and etc.

(Source: http://aboutzombies.tumblr.com/post/41373924994/paranorman-zombie-monster)

(Source:http://aboutzombies.tumblr.com/post/41373924994/paranorman-zombie-monster)

(Source:http://aboutzombies.tumblr.com/post/41122008083/paranorman-braaains)

(Source:https://www.reddit.com/r/HighQualityGifs/comments/2kw1gy/zombie_attack_from_paranorman/)

COMEDY

Comedy is designed to draw laughter out of audience. Exaggerations of situations, characters and their behaviour, language and action to entertain the audiences. There are four types of comedy which is slapstick, screwball, dark comedy and parody. But there just slapstick and dark comedy appear in this film. Slapstick is a universal comedy with broad, aggressive, physical and visual action. The characters required a well performance skills so that the film looks funny. There are some funny scenes appeal in this film. One of them is when Judge Hopkins, the leader of zombies drops on the wind mirror of Mitch’s car. Zombies should be scary in this film, but this scene is a spoof.

(Source: http://van-kuver.livejournal.com/)

Another one is the vending machine snack scene. The zombies approach when the guy is buying the snack at the vending machine. He keeps looking and waits the snack to drop out from the machine but he is so scare because the zombies come nearer and nearer. He runs away when zombies almost one step distance with him. But then the snack finally drops out and he keeps shouting and returns to the vending machine to collect the snack and runs away again.

(Ckeck out the video of vending machine snack scene in  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvXRlnIyLKk )

Dark comedy are dark, sarcastic, humorous and sardonic stories to help the audiences examine otherwise ignored darker serious subjects. For example, death. Norman can speak to the dead such as his grandmother and Mr. Prenderghast. Actually both of them already die and this is a sad thing. But Norman still able to talk with them just like they never leave before. The scene where Mr. Prenderghast die also is a funny scene. He was in his room and die in a sudden stroke. At first his soul comes out from the body and back into it again, and he said “Not yet, not yet.” The audience will think that “OK, this guy still has some time…” but suddenly he dies and the soul cannot be back to his body again. He is die for real this time.

(Source:https: //ilackfocus.wordpress.com/2015/10/30/paranorman-31-days-of-halloween-day-25/)

ADVENTURE

Adventure is a genre that revolves around the conquests and explorations of main character to find the truth or treasure. The film normally take place in many locations and play historical myths. For Paranorman in this case, Norman takes his adventure to solve the witch’s curse. He has no choice but to come out from his ordinary world which is his normal life, and reads the book in front of the graves just like what Mr. Prenderghast asked him to do. He faces some difficulties at first but then he gets help from his fellows. They move together to the goal. At last, he found the truth about the witch, Agatha. He able to persuades her to stop to hurt everybody. Norman reminds her that there must be someone who was kind to her. This is the journey where Norman learn and grow. No just him, but everyone. His family starts to accept who is he and his ability that can speak to dead.

I think that genre is important in film industry. It is not just a guideline for the film making, but it also gives the audiences to choose the categories of film that they want to watch easily. Combination of genres will make the narrative more interesting and complete, it also will attract the audience from different preferences.