The line of stylish crime thrillers is long and filled with as many winners as there are duds. Thankfully, director Cédric Jimenez has a real winner on his hands. With the Scorsesean formula - bombastic and stylish set-pieces, musical moments, clever camerawork - there is a lot of room to fail, if only in the sense that failure is the age old triumph of style over substance, the understanding of a film being solely relegated to the understanding of its surface elements. To craft a good crime thriller of this genre necessitates a deft hand, balancing the stylish elements with a human connection. It’s reassuring, then, that The Connection is able to strike a good balance between its gorgeous but subtle seventies-inspired crime moments and the …show more content…
The leads, Pierre Michel (Jean Dujardin) and Gaètan ‘Tany’ Zampa (Giles Lellouche) are absolutely captivating. On the “Making Of” bonus feature, commentary regarding Dujardin’s acting is usually directed towards his physicality. After all, Dujardin did win the Academy Award for Best Actor in 2011 for the silent comedy The Artist. To see him in The Connection, one begins to notice the way he makes use of physical space in scenes. The audience understand’s more of Pierre’s approach to life from the way he acts in scenes, not just from what he says. Add to that the irreverence air of his character, no doubt partly influenced by his comedic background, and he provides an engaging hero and excellent foil for Tany. Where Pierre is jokey and carefree, Gaètan lives in a world of perpetual anxiety. This basic dynamic is ready to be exploited for those moments of conflict where all bets are off. A particular scene on a hillside road bursts with tension, undercut by the gorgeous visuals behind the two leads. The most basic clash of philosophy at The Connection’s heart drives a number of the film’s most interesting scenes and makes the smallest acts of aggression seem like a full scale war. Give the two characters equal cunning and resources, and the resulting ideological war becomes gripping and
This brief essay examines racism in the 1974 motion picture Conrack. The movie is an adaptation of Pat Conroy's autobiography, The Water Is Wide. The main character, Conrack, a young white male teacher portrayed by Jon Voight, is assigned to teach students from poor black families on a small island off the coast of South Carolina. The small community has little contact with the outside world and develops its own language. He finds the students essentially illiterate and their education neglected by state authorities. Poverty and their race cause neglect of their educational needs. The black school principal has convinced the students they are stupid and lazy. Conroy begins teaching the students useful, essential life skills. The community has no interest in learning about anything away from the island. The community has lived in fear of a nearby river because none can swim. While trying to improve the students' level of knowledge and their enthusiasm for
Like most things captured on film for the purpose of being marketed, the richness of gangster life, with sex, money, and power in surplus, is glorified, and thus embraced by the audience. And as a rule, if something works Hollywood repeats it, ala a genre. What Scarface and Little Caesar did was ultimately create a genre assigning powerful qualities to criminals. Such sensationalism started with the newspapers who maybe added a little more color here and there to sell a few more copies, which is portrayed in Scarface’s two newspaper office scenes. Leo Braudy denounces genres as offending “our most common definition of artistic excellence” by simply following a predetermined equation of repetition of character and plot. However, Thomas Schatz argues that many variations of plot can exist within the “arena” that the rules of the genre provide.
It is a concurrent agreement in the film industry that Alfred Hitchcock is nothing less than a legend when it comes to the suspense and thriller genres of film. That being said, many filmmakers unsurprisingly aspire to adopt his style in more recent films. Movie critique Andrew O’Hehir suspects that this is the case with Mark Pellington’s production, Arlington Road, which follows the story of a man taken with the idea that his neighbors are terrorists. Although Pellington’s production possesses distinctively Hitchcock-styled qualities in its editing, storyline, and themes, O’Hehir argues that it is “…ultimately just another maddeningly ill-conceived tribute placed at [Hitchcock’s] feet.” However, it cannot be determined if Pellington meant for Arlington Road to be a tribute at all. The film may have a multitude of resemblances to Hitchcock film, but its finale fundamentally distinguishes itself unique to O’Hehir’s assumption.
My Thesis aims at observing the suspense and fear showed through themes and techniques in films directed by Alfred Hitchcock’s movies Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, The Wrong Man, and The Man Who Knew To Much. He controlled when the audience felt certain emotions by filming with different camera cuts, close ups, different camera angles, contrasting between light to dark scenes, and adding certain music to different scenes.
Existentialism, as defined by Luke Mastin, “...is a philosophy that emphasizes individual existence, freedom and choice.”(2008). There are multiple occasions in which an individual can encounter an existentialist situation without acknowledging it. For example, choosing to go to school one day or not would be considered freedom of choice, which connects with the philosophy of existentialism. In the context of existentialism, Søren Kierkegaard’s theory correlates to the movie, Before I Fall directed and adapted by Ry Russo-Young from the novel written by Lauren Oliver, due to the many movie scenes that involve an existentialist moment as exemplified through the main character in relation to Kierkegaard.
Aside from its acting, the other major influence which Mean Streets had upon American film-makers was through it's use of a rock n' roll soundtrack (almost perfectly integrated with the images), and in its depiction of a new kind of screen violence. Unexpected, volatile, explosive and wholly senseless, yet, for all that, undeniably cinematic violence. The way in which Scorsese blends these two - the rock and roll and the violence - shows that he understood instinctively, better than anyone else until then, that cinema (or at least this kind of cinema, the kinetic, visceral kind) and rock n' roll are both expressions of revolutionary instincts, and that they are as inherently destructive as they are creative. This simple device - brutal outbreaks of violence combined with an upbeat soundtrack - has been taken up by both the mainstream cinema at large and by many individual `auteurs', all of whom are in Scorsese's debt - Stone and Tarantino coming at once to mind.
In the film, there are two opposite ideologies working against each other and influence how a character can view situations.
One of the most prominent and influential directors in New Hollywood was Italian-American Martin Scorsese. His first major critical success, and what is often considered his “breakthrough” film, was 1973’s Mean Streets. This film helped to establish Scorsese’s signature style in regards to narrative and thematics as well as aesthetically. Scorsese developed a unique and distinct directorial flair to his films, with reoccurring themes, settings, cinematography, and editing techniques, among other elements. This led a number of film critics to declare Scorsese an “auteur,” similar to Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, and other auteur directors of the French New Wave.
Film Noir, a term coined by the French to describe a style of film characterized by dark themes, storylines, and visuals, has been influencing cinematic industries since the 1940’s. With roots in German expressionistic films and Italian postwar documentaries, film noir has made its way into American film as well, particularly identified in mob and crime pictures. However, such settings are not exclusive to American film noir. One noteworthy example is Billy Wilder’s film Sunset Boulevard, which follows the foreboding tale of Joe Gillis, the desperate-for-success protagonist, who finds himself in the fatal grips of the disillusioned femme fatale Norma Desmond. Not only does the storyline’s heavy subject matter and typical character structure suggest the film noir style, but also Wilder’s techniques of photography and empty, worn-down settings make for a perfect backdrop for this dark approach at filmmaking.
People flock to horror movies each year. Usually to be scared. Another is to solve the question of Who done it? Unfortunately, a lot of these horror movies fail to scare people or make the killer so obvious the audience gets bored. Occasionally, there are a few horror movies that stick out. Scream, directed by Wes Craven, is one of them. Wes Craven is always toying with the viewer's fears. Always finding ways to scare the audience at every turn. He also plays with the viewer's head, and has them second guessing themselves. How does he do it? Well, as one of the characters in the movie exclaims, "There's a formula to it. A very simple formula. Everybody's a suspect!" This paper will discuss how Craven uses sound, camera shots, and mise en scene
The crime thriller genre is known for devices such as heists, kidnappings, interrogations, captivities, and ransoms. Famous crime thrill...
The Soloist (Foster, Krasnoff & Wright, 2008), is based on a true story of Nathaniel Anthony Ayers Jr. who develops psychosis and becomes homeless. In the film, Nathaniel is considered a cello genius who is discovered on the streets by Steve Lopez, a journalist from the Los Angeles Times. Steve was searching for a city story and he decided to write a newspaper article about Nathaniel. Nathaniel always had a passion for music. He was a child prodigy and attended Juilliard School of Music. However, he faced many complications at Juilliard, particularly hearing voices speaking to him. Unable to handle the voices, Nathaniel dropped out and ended up living on the streets of Los Angeles. Steve and Nathaniel develops an unexpected friendship, in which Steve tries to help Nathaniel to live a normal life; having a home, treat his mental disorder, and to fulfil his dream of being a cellist again.
Think about your favorite movie. When watching that movie, was there anything about the style of the movie that makes it your favorite? Have you ever thought about why that movie is just so darn good? The answer is because of the the Auteur. An Auteur is the artists behind the movie. They have and individual style and control over all elements of production, which make their movies exclusively unique. If you could put a finger on who the director of a movie is without even seeing the whole film, then the person that made the movie is most likely an auteur director. They have a unique stamp on each of their movies. This essay will be covering Martin Scorsese, you will soon find out that he is one of the best auteur directors in the film industry. This paper will include, but is not limited to two of his movies, Good Fellas, and The Wolf of Wall Street. We will also cover the details on what makes Martin Scorsese's movies unique, such as the common themes, recurring motifs, and filming practices found in their work. Then on
In Breathless, Michel is portrayed as a dastardly yet sympathetic character whose fat death seems tragic and fitting all at the same time. The way the film is edited makes it so the audience feels some sympathy for him. He morality is unclear and slightly confusing, but that makes him cool. The way the camera focuses on him, the way he acts, the way he handles his cigarettes, the way he casually walks through life void of rules, and the fact that his actions are almost always accompanied by smooth jazz on the soundtrack, help elevate him. Michel Poiccard might not have much substance, but he has a lot of style.
Although there were many concepts that were present within the movie, I choose to focus on two that I thought to be most important. The first is the realistic conflict theory. Our textbook defines this as, “the view that prejudice...