Comparing Eraserhead and Nightmare on Elm Street IV
essay iam going to be looking at two films in particular. Eraserhead, a successful surreal film by D. Lunch, and Nightmare on Elm Street iv. These are films that distort the real.
he contributions of surrealism to twentieth century art and literature are widely recognised. It would be almost impossible to write a survey of modern art or a history of modern literature or literary theory without the inclusion of surrealism. The aesthetics of the surrealists, and their impact on later artistic styles and movements in Europe, America, and elsewhere, are the subject of a growing body of work. Contemporary film, photography, and even advertising have been said to owe a debt to surrealism; and the name and work of Salvador Dali, if not of Aragon or Breton.
Andre Breton talked of surrealism as "the prehensile tail" of romanticism, (in the shadow and its shadows). The objections that we often have in reality, as soon as we are talking of surrealism in film/cinema, we find that these objections are lost. We seem to enter a world where the unconscious ans conscious do not meet. You are in a "conscious hallucination" argues Jean Goudal.
"Life in the street outside no longer exists. Our problems evaporate, our neighbours disappear. Our body itself submits to a sort of contemporary depersonalisation which takes away the feeling of its own existence. We are nothing but two eyes revited to ten square meters of white sheet." (pg:86-87)
According to Breton, "language has been given to man so that he may make surrealist use of it" (proclaimed in his First Manifesto of Surrealism of 1924, pg 35 language of revolt:dada and surrealist literature and film).
For Freud there was...
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...rious dream, and "supported by the sumptuous visual conception: the swirling composition of the sets and the camera movement, the often heady transition of shots." (pg:396: vera Dika 'From Dracula-With Love':In the Dread of Difference). She adds that images seem to superimpose one on the other, understanding the screen as a pictorial plane rather than as a lived scene and images dissolve into others based on visual similarities and meanings. (give example)
The film is fragmented interms of story, decentred when are talking of the characters within it, and artificial/fake when it comes to sets and acting. According to Dika,, surrealism can often be cited in the films tendency for combustive combinations and for disruption of its internal continuity. In Eraserhead the films narrative transitions do not have conventional Hollywood invisibility and linearity.
The cinematic techniques and postproduction actions can make or break a film. The two films showed in class so far are nearly polar opposites, both showing how a director can achieve or fail to achieve the status of “normal” story telling. The epitome of “normal” story telling and film noir, The Maltese Falcon directed by John Huston in 1941, shows how to use camera angles and post production techniques to keep the viewers engaged and on the edge of their seat. On the other hand, Freaks directed by Tod Browning in 1932, is considered a textbook example of how to make a movie confusing for an audience to follow. Both of these films clearly exhibit different cinematic techniques and postproduction edits, that make can either
Adaptation is an essential part of the motion picture industry, with a majority of films based on literature and other forms of source material coming out of Hollywood every day. One of the most controversial examples of adaptation, at the time, was the great Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 dystopian drama A Clockwork Orange, based on the novel by Anthony Burgess. In a futuristic society ruled by gangs, corruption, and “ultra-violence,” psychotic teen Alex (wonderfully portrayed by Malcolm McDowell) volunteers for a government-regulated experimental treatment to rid himself of his wrongdoings after committing an act of murder. Through the film, we follow this tragic anti-hero’s journey to discover the central theme of fate - whether the government controls human order, or if there is a freedom of choice. Although the film was originally blasted by critics for its excessive use of violence and sexuality, it has since become recognized as one of the most psychologically captivating pieces in cinema, earning its place among AFI’s “100 Years...100 Movies” list. Clockwork Orange’s fascinating mise-en-scène (staging, lighting, costuming), cinematography, music selection, use of voice-over-narration, and narrative structure brilliantly establish the novel’s realistic satire of the dystopian future, making the film one of Kubrick’s most successful adaptations.
These juxtaposing elements are never revealed under a glaring light, however. Davies uses prose that is nothing short of elegant, and weaves a mythical tale that is imbued with much realism. Real-life incidents are transfused with many amazing "coincidences," paving the path to surrealism.
Surrealism in the 1920s was defined as a fantastic arrangement of materials that influenced Miró, due to the fact that he was one of the most original and sympathetic artists during the Surrealism periods. Miró was born into the Catalan culture in April 20,1893 in Barcelona, Spain (Munro 288). Having to be born into the Catalan culture gave Miró an opportunity to have an intense nationalist activity. In which much attention was paid not only to political expressions of the need for autonomy, but also to the re-Catalanizing of every day life (Higdon 1).
Surrealism, who has not heard this word nowadays? World of the dreams and everything that is irrational, impossible or grotesque, a cultural movement founded immediately after the First World War and still embraced nowadays by many artists. In order to understand it better it is necessary to look deeper into the work of two outstanding artists strongly connected with this movement, and for whom this style was an integral part of their lives.
When Dali was born in Spain, in 1904, Matisse’s masterpiece Luxe calme et volupté was shown at the first exhibition of the Fauves group. Four years before that Freud’s publication, The Interpretation of Dreams, and around this time Albert Einstein discovered relativity. Einstein’s relativity composed with Plank’s quantum quark theory destroyed the structure of the now out dated Newtonian theories. With the plexus of art and science making quick advances they were destined to collide, and with the surrealists firm approach to the scientific method, it’s seems simple to concur that the studies of Einstein and other strong nuclear physicists would have influenced the group. Looking in Dali’s Persistence of Memory and expounding on the w...
Willard Bohn states in his article Surrealism to Surrealism: Apollinaire and Breton, “The primary function of Surrealism clearly to liberate the Freudian Unconscious, and tap its powerful force via automatic writing, automatic speech, and the analysis of dreams”(Bohn, 205). Bohn is trying to say that surrealism was another way of exposing Freud’s theory on the unconscious. I agree with w...
Berliner, Todd and Cohen, Dale J. "The Illusion of Continuity: Active Perception and the Classical Editing System." Journal of Film and Video 63.1 (2011): 44-63. Project MUSE. Web. 14 Feb. 2011. .
Surrealism and realism are complete opposites. Surrealism means “beyond reality”. It is when someone creates art or literature that used images that represent unconscious thoughts and fantasies. It basically means that there are realistic characteristics is a non-realistic environment. Surrealism is usually represented through art. An example of surrealism is when Ned swam all these pools thinking it has only been a few hours, but in fact it had been a few months or ye...
Antirealism in film transcends and brainstorms the fantasies that never become reality. Even though antirealism is apprehensive with a smaller amount then actual stuff, our observation for an...
Rene Descartes was a philosopher who introduced a popular philosophical method called Radical Doubt in his book Meditations on First Philosophy. Descartes “proposed discarding any kind of belief that could be doubted, [because it] might be false”. In both Shutter Island directed by Martin Scorsese and The Shining directed by Stanley Kubrick, the viewers are introduced to characters that doubt the very existence of reality, much like Descartes, and who are drowned in the depths of insanity. Fear, paranoia, and doubt are the main ingredients that make both movies a psychological mind maze that constantly teases the brain in every turn. Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick are both masters in cinema direction and are not regulars in the horror genre. Nonetheless, both have created a product that makes viewers question what it's like to be sane. The goal of this essay is to demonstrate the similarities and differences between Shutter Island and The Shining based on their themes of insanity, isolation, and alcoholism.
Surrealism and the surrealist movement is a ‘cultural’ movement that began around 1920’s, and is best known for its visual art works and writings. According to André Berton, the aim was “to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality” (Breton 1969:14). Surrealists incorporated “elements of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and ‘non sequitur”. Hence, creating unnerving, illogical paintings with photographic precision, which created strange creatures or settings from everyday real objects and developed advanced painting techniques, which allowed the unconscious to be expressed by the self (Martin 1987:26; Pass 2011:30).
Alfred Hitchcock is one of the most recognized directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood for his suspenseful and meticulously designed films. Although Hitchcock experimented with a few bold camera movements, the majority of his films followed the Hollywood style known for its seamless camera techniques aiming to depict reality. The reality shown on screen is limited to the perspective of a single protagonist, since the narrative is “psychologically and, therefore, individually motivated” (Hayward, 64). Analyzing the ways in which cinema recreates an illusion of reality through plot devises and character arcs exposes how “contrived and limited [on screen reality] is and yet
René Magritte is a 20th century Belgian Artist. He was influenced by André Breton -a writer known as the founder of surrealism-for his 1924 Surrealist Manifesto, Sigmund Freud-a neurologist-for his psychoanalysis that repetition is a sign of trauma. He studied at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris between 1916 and 1918.1 After leaving because he thought that it was a complete waste of time, and upon meeting Victor Servranckx-a fellow artist who introduced Magritte to futurism, cubism and purism-Jean Metzinger and Fernand Leger had a large influence on his early works of cubism.
Surrealism first developed in the early 1900s. 1917 is the when it first appeared. It first appeared in Paris, France. André Breton is usually referred to as the person who initiated this art movement first. He is considered the founder of surrealism. He wrote the Surrealist Manifest document. This document initiated the movement. He thought it was important for someone to understand the power of dreams. It developed during both of the World Wars. It initially started in poetry and writing and it started getting more and more popular in the art world. It was also used in a speech by the President of Council ...