'A bout de souffle', Jean-Luc Godard's eerste 'feature' film (1960), heeft een vrij simpele verhaallijn, dat geschreven is door vroegere collega en vriend Francois Truffaut: Een man steelt een auto in Marseilles en rijdt naar Parijs. Tijdens deze rit wordt de hoofdpersoon, Michel Poiccard, aangehouden door de politie wegens het overschrijden van de maximum snelheid, waarna hij een agent neerschiet en rennend verder gaat naar de lichtstad. In Parijs moet hij geld ophalen bij een vriend van hem en probeert hij een Amerikaanse vrouw, Patricia, over te halen om mee te vertrekken naar Rome. Zij twijfelt over haar liefde voor Michel, wat resulteert in verraad, aangezien ze uiteindelijk, wanneer ze op het punt staan Parijs te verlaten, de politie informeert over het adres waar Michel op dat moment zich bevindt. In plaats van te vluchten besluit Michel te blijven en op de politie te wachten om naar de gevangenis te gaan. Maar wanneer de politie arriveert, werpt een vriend een pistool naar hem in een laatste poging hem te redden. De politie raakt in paniek en schiet Michel neer, waarna hij wankelend door de straten loopt om uiteindelijk aan het einde door zijn knieën te zakken en te sterven.
Dit is in grote lijn het verhaal in 'A Bout de Souffle' en hoewel de film amuserend kan zijn zonder een poging te ondernemen de film te analyseren, kan de status van 'meesterwerk' alleen begrepen worden door een analyse van zijn historische context. We moeten, vooral in een film als 'A Bout de Souffle', proberen de cinematografische stijlen in Europa en Amerika in 1960 te begrijpen.
Er zijn drie aan elkaar gerelateerde feiten over Godard en zijn 'A Bout de Souffle' die de film tot een nieuw historische mijlpaal maken op het gebied van de kunst (met name de audiovisuele kunst).
Ten eerste, was Godard extreem bewust van de relatie van zijn medium met andere vormen van expressie. Vooral literatuur, filosofie en de schilderkunst. In zijn stijl valt deze 'interconnectiviteit' tussen de verschillende media duidelijk op te merken. In een interview in 1962 zegt hij: "Voor mij is de continuïteit van alle vormen van expressie erg belangrijk."#
Ten tweede, hoewel 'A Bout de Souffle' een enorme afkeer kent van de geaccepteerde methodes van cinematografie, kende Godard zijn plek in de evolutie van filmstijl, en kunnen we zien dat deze afkeer een manifestatie is van het bewust zijn van die geaccepteerde norm.
Analysis: Shinto: The Way Home’s organization is quite useful because it moves in chronological order and it leads the reader in a way that allows for understanding the most unrelatable Ideas of Shintoism. The book uses many Japanese terms and names that may lead confusion for the audience as they have to learn the vocabulary to understand many of the statement Kasulis uses. Kasulis also lack an argument through most of this work and he seems to focus on supplying information as accurately as possible. The author discusses a variety information pertaining to Shintoism making it useful
Film Noir, as Paul Schrader integrates in his essay ‘Notes on Film Noir,’ reflects a marked phase in the history of films denoting a peculiar style observed during that period. More specifically, Film Noir is defined by intricate qualities like tone and mood, rather than generic compositions, settings and presentation. Just as ‘genre’ categorizes films on the basis of common occurrences of iconographic elements in a certain way, ‘style’ acts as the paradox that exemplifies the generality and singularity at the same time, in Film Noir, through the notion of morality. In other words, Film Noir is a genre that exquisitely entwines theme and style, and henceforth sheds light on individual difference in perception of a common phenomenon. Pertaining
Bordwell, David. “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice.” Film Theory and Criticism. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. Oxford University Press, 2009: 649-657.
Providers must act in the best interest of the patient and their basic obligation is to do no harm and work for the public’s wellbeing. A physician shall always keep in mind the obligation of preserving human life. Providers must communicate full, accurate and unbiased information so patients can make informed decisions about their health care. As a result of their recommendations, providers are responsible for generating costs in health care but do not generate the need for those expenses. Every hospital has both an ethical as well as a legal responsibility to provide care, even if the care may be uncompensated.
The reason that the two books of Cinema 1: The movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image are important is Deleuze’s contribution to create a revolutionary argument by inter-cutting between cinema and philosophy. These books show a genuine method of how Deleuze established a creative connection between examples of historical movies such as that of Cecil B. de Mille’s and Nietzsche’s essay on nineteenth-century German historiography (Deleuze, 1983).
Shimazono, Susumu. 2005. "State Shinto and the Religious Structure of Modern Japan." Journal Of The American Academy Of Religion 73, no. 4: 1077-1098. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed April 23, 2012).
This essay uses a contemporary short film and an 18th century text to discuss Chatman's concern of bestimmtheit in films. I hope to address certain concerns such as the extent to which a film can "specify" a particular object and what this specification does with regards to our understanding of the text. In addition, I will relate the compression of information into imagery to the limitations of time, given that a short film has a limit of 15 minutes. To do this, I shall analyse the cinematography of the short film, and show how relevant they are in bringing out certain scenarios described in Defoe's text. The short film in question is The Periwig-Maker, a clay-animated film directed by Stephen Schaeffler and narrated by actor Kenneth Brannagh, and it will be analysed with relation to the text it is based on, A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe.
This essay will outline an introduction to the premature years of motion pictures and developments that helped shape cinema as we know it today. This paper will explore the roles of the early pioneers and the extent to which their contributions shaped cinema. In particular, it will look at how E.S Porter and D.W Griffith improved on the early years of cinema as result of influences from Louis and Auguste Lumiere and George Melies.
Since the very first actualities from the Lumière brothers and the fantastical shorts of Maries Georges Jean Méliès, cinema has continually fulfilled its fundamental purpose of artistic reflection on societal contexts throughout the evolution of film. Two French cinematic movements, Poetic Realism (1934-1940) and French New Wave (1950-1970), serve as historical bookends to World War II, one of the most traumatic events in world history. The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939) is a classic example of French Poetic realism that depicts the disillusionment in society and government politics by a generation already traumatized by the monumental loss of human life during the First World War. Breathless (Jean Luc Godard, 1960), one of Jean Luc Godard’s most iconic films, portrays the next generation’s consequential feelings of loss and struggle. Both Rules of the Game and Breathless embody the spirit of their respective movements while exploring realism and redefining the purpose of cinema. However, while Rules of the Game contrasts the formative and realistic traditions through long takes and deep focus, Breathless breaks cinematic conventions through distanciation techniques and disjunctive editing to convey disillusionment and cinematic realism. Though these techniques and definitions of realism are seemingly oppositional, Godard and Renoir both hold to the same cinematic purpose of communicating their feelings of disillusionment towards society with the audience.
Elsasser, Thomas. "National or International Cinema.'" New German Cinema: A History. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989. 279-306. Print.
Carl Theodor Dreyer, Four Screenplays; Translated by Oliver Stallybrass ã1970 by Indiana University Press, Bloomington
Arnheim’s body of theory suggests that the necessity of human intervention to implement plot, tropes, and culturally legible symbols raises a film to a higher level than a mere copy of reality, and that this interpretation and expression of meaning is “a question of feeling” or intuition on the part of the filmmaker. (“Film Theory and Criticism” 283) One consequence of effective directorial intervention is that differences in speed, stops and starts, and what would otherwise be jarring gaps in continuity can be accepted by viewers, because if the essentials of reality are present, th...
Divorces are easy to obtain in the United States but the decision needs to be carefully examined. According to statistics, “divorce makes sense in the 10 percent to 15 percent of troubled marriages that involve high-level and persistent conflict with severe abuse and physical violence” (Dafoe 1). In the other 85 to 90 percent of marriages, the marriage can and should be reconciled. Many couples simply take the easy way out, find a lawyer, and end the marriage without ever trying to examine whether or not a conclusion can be reached other than divorce.
Gaudreault, A 1990, ‘Showing and Telling : image and word in early cinema’, in Elsaesser, T & Barker, A, Early cinema : space, frame, narrative, BFI Publishing, London, pp. 274-281.
Shinto, the indigenous religion of Japan, survives even to this day and lies at the basis of Japanese society. Shinto played and continues to play not only an enormous role in general Japanese society, but also regarding the roles of women both in general society and the society within traditional Shintoism.