North By Northwest Identity

1112 Words3 Pages

“Creating a master plan for a consistent visual texture or style that is artistically suited to the film story to be told” (Petrie and Boggs 75). This is the main universal goal of all filmmakers. This blueprint for success is the way the films North by Northwest, The Third Man, and The Piano accomplished such astounding and visually beautiful performances. These three films successfully balance the use (or lack of use) of color, lighting, setting, costumes, and makeup to create a film that is harmonious from beginning to end. The film North by Northwest has a plot based around identity. These identities are mostly portrayed through visual aspects, mainly in the setting. For example, during the scene at Mount Rushmore, when Roger Thornhill …show more content…

Once Ada (Holly Hunter) and Flora (Anna Paquin) arrived to New Zealand, they were greeted with the dark grey and blue of the ocean and the cold off white of the sands. The only thing that is a warm color is the oaky piano. This allows the viewer to get a glimpse of how Ada feels to be so far away from home and how her piano is the only warmth in her life. The filmmakers from this movie used what the book calls an effective “color palette”. These limited number of specific colors (in this case, the brown piano) emphasized throughout the film to communicate the feelings of a character. (Petrie and Boggs 76) Without this effect, the feelings of Ada wouldn’t be portrayed as clearly and the drastic difference from what her life was like back in Scotland wouldn’t be so drastic. The use of light in this film wasn’t as prominent as it was in the former two. The opening scene, the audience is looking through Ada’s eyes as she is looking through her fingers. The quick changes of light to dark look like the white and black keys of a piano, signifying the major part it plays in the film itself and in Ada’s life in general. She then opens up her hands and reveals a green garden and her daughter on a pony being led by a servant. This setting represents her life as a wealthy woman in Scotland and the colors are drastically different from the muddy and rainy New Zealand. This on-location work effectively emphasizes the dreary atmosphere that is mimicked in the mood of the main characters. Going back to that wet scene where Ada and Flora arrive, they are wearing large puffy dresses that are a reflection of their life before. They seem silly and look very uncomfortable. The clothes the girls wear and the way they dress is a representation of how they are clinging to what they have known in their old life as they are (literally) thrown into a foreign, new

Open Document