The very first film I would watch is also one of the greatest British movies ever made. Lindsay Anderson's 1973 mammoth allegory "O Lucky Man!" is a masterly blend of the funny, the lewd, the depressing and the surreal. What's even more amazing is that this immensely ambitious work is only the director's third feature film, the others being the appreciated 1963 film starring a young Richard Harris entitled "This Sporting Life, and the other, more prolific title being the subversive, anti authoritarian classic "If...."(1967). "O Lucky Man!" shares the director and star of the latter, Malcolm McDowell. "If...." was McDowell's feature film debut, in a starring role no less, proving a compelling anti hero, perfectly suiting the expectations of its context; late 1960s, when conventional practises were beginning to be rejected, and the hippie notion surged. Before "O Lucky Man!", McDowell had truly become a star, thanks to his iconic performance in Stanley Kubrick's disturbing and highly influential "A Clockwork Orange." Despite his fantastic performances in these previously mentioned films, McDowell in "O Lucky Man" gives a truly layered, nuanced, and puissant performance, perhaps because the original idea for the film was conceived by McDowell from his own experiences as a coffee salesman.
The first scene of the film is in silent/black and white, with McDowell revealed a south american who steals a coffee bean from a plantation and has his arms cut off. It's definitely something else. The entertainingly haphazard plot begins as everyman Mick Travis (McDowell) is working at a coffee company. He is assigned to sell coffee door to door in parts of northern Britain. He fails to sell more than a few bags. It is then when he begins his ody...
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...of the cinematic medium. It offers a multitudinous array of biting social satire, incredibly ambitious in its scope, targeting many of the issues that were most prevalent at this time. Like "If....", this is scathing, diverse social witticism and lampoonery of the upmost care and intelligence.
One of the many triumphs of Anderson's film is the performance of McDowell. He truly is a diversely talented actor; playing a despicable villain two years prior to this film, and then playing such a morally flawed, but innocent and wide eyed everyman; a breath of fresh air amongst a consumerist, capitalist western world and its flagitious populus Anderson so vividly comments on. A further admirable feat is its coherence as a singular work. At two minutes shy of three hours, Anderson crafts a tale that never bores in the slightest, one that only a born filmmaker could provide.
The only real way to truly understand a story is to understand all aspects of a story and their meanings. The same goes for movies, as they are all just stories being acted out. In Thomas Foster's book, “How to Read Literature Like a Professor”, Foster explains in detail the numerous ingredients of a story. He discusses almost everything that can be found in any given piece of literature. The devices discussed in Foster's book can be found in most movies as well, including in Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic, “Pulp Fiction”. This movie is a complicated tale that follows numerous characters involved in intertwining stories. Tarantino utilizes many devices to make “Pulp Fiction” into an excellent film. In this essay, I will demonstrate how several literary devices described in Foster's book are put to use in Tarantino’s film, “Pulp Fiction”, including quests, archetypes, food, and violence.
Society tends to associate propaganda films with issues such as Nazi Germany and their film messages for their country; however, it is also possible for small independent companies, groups of like-minded people and individuals to use the media of film to incorporate messages for our society (The Independent, 2010). These messages are often in relation to changes that individuals should make in order to improve the standards by which they live their lives and changes to everyday habits that will benefit the individual, the individual’s family, a group of individuals or even a single person (Barnhisel and Turner, 2010).
Braff himself has a warm, easy-to-watch screen presence. He can say nothing during the lull in a conversation, while the camera remains focused on his face, and it feels right. Portman and Sarsgaard are also genuine, each wonderfully relaxed in their roles. Production design is superb: details in every scene are arranged well, and the photography, by Lawrence Sher, is - like the story and the acting – unpretentious, never distracting, tricky or cute. This film never seems to manipulate us; instead it engages us, arouses our curiosity and amusement, bids us gently to care about Andrew and Sam and even Mark, leaving us entertained in the best sense. This movie is as confident, as secure in itself, as comforting, as a well worn pair of house slippers or your favorite reading chair. A splendid film. Grade: A- (09/04)
The films Young Frankenstein and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest can be viewed as a critical analysis of society’s issues and dysfunctions in the form of satire and parody using humor. While Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks cinematic version of the gothic novel, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, uses parody in the form of Horatian satire, which is achieved through gentle ridicule and using a tone that is indulgent, tolerant, amused and witty. The film One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the adaptation of the Ken Kesey novel, uses a form of satire called Juvenalian satire which is demonstrated in the form of attacks on vice and error with contempt and indignation. Horatian satire will produce a humor response from the reader instead of anger or indignation as Juvenalian satire. Juvenalian satire, in its realism and its harshness, is in strong contrast to Horatian satire (Kent and Drury).
Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
Citizen Kane expounds how an overreaching ambition for power can corrupt previous altruistic motives to inevitably lead to an individual’s moral degradation. Welles reveals the flaws of the idealised 20th century American Dream, where the increased focus on
Whether or not a naïve approach to film as an inclusive medium holds true to fact, however, is questionable. Since its popular arrival in American culture during the 1930s, film has sparked controversy over ...
In the short story “Being There”, by Jerzy Kosinski, there are multiple examples of satire that are displayed throughout both the book and the movie. A few of them are: media, death, politics, and racism. The satire of the media was very similar in the book and the movie. Media played a big role in society and still does to this day.
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
... movie stars like royalty or mythical gods and goddesses, viewing the drama between great archetypal characters in a personal psychic realm. By considering the statements made and their societal impact from a Marxist perspective, Benjamin’s method is highly effective, as it does not simply consider art in terms of pure aesthetics anymore, but considers art’s place in a society capable of mechanically reproducing and endlessly duplicating film, photography, and digital art. His qualm with losing the aura and mystique of an original work is negated by the cult of movie stars, the adoration of fame, the incorporation of soundtracks which embody a particular time period, cinematographic allusions, and time-capsule-like qualities of a film such as Basquiat, a 90s tribute to the 80s, produced both as a part of and resulting from the art movements and trends it addresses.
Since the creation of films, their main goal was to appeal to mass audiences. However, once, the viewer looks past the appearance of films, the viewer realizes that the all-important purpose of films is to serve as a bridge connecting countries, cultures, and languages. This is because if you compare any two films that are from a foreign country or spoken in another language, there is the possibility of a connection between the two because of the fact that they have a universally understanding or interpretation. This is true for the French New Wave films; Contempt and Breathless directed by Jean-Luc Godard, and contemporary Indian films; Earth and Water directed by Deepa Mehta. All four films portray an individual’s role in society using sound and editing.
As a practical sociologist, Charlie Chaplin film Modern times embodies the ideas of hyper-rationalization of Max Weber and the false consciousness of Karl Marx. His film critiques the structural evolution caused by modern society. Through satire, the film reflects the lived reality of modernity by showing how individual agency succumbs to ruthless pragmatism, and how false consciousness is taught to marginalized individuals.
Neill, Alex. “Empathy and (Film) Fiction.” Philosophy of film and motion pictures : an anthology. Ed. Noel Carrol and Jinhee Choi. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. 247-259. Print.
...n able to reach otherwise. With unlimited possibilities and the creative minds in the world, the film industry is likely to consider seeing drastic changes. Like the world has in the past, peoples’ likes and dislikes will change with the ever-changing technological world. What we enjoy as a society in 2005 is likely to be considered as bland as we consider the black and white silent films, in the years to come.
Movies take us inside the skin of people quite different from ourselves and to places different from our routine surroundings. As humans, we always seek enlargement of our being and wanted to be more than ourselves. Each one of us, by nature, sees the world with a perspective and selectivity different from others. But, we want to see the world through other’s eyes; imagine with other’s imaginations; feel with other’s hearts, at a same time as with our own. Movies offer us a window onto the wider world, broadening our perspective and opening our eyes to new wonders.