Scene Analysis of The Sixth Sense

Scene Analysis of The Sixth Sense

In the film the Sixth Sense a young boy named Cole has paranormal

contact with the dead. He can see things that other people cannot,

namely the ghosts of the dead walking around him. The scene which I

have chosen to analyse to answer my title is the scene where he is at

school and brings up facts about what used to go there like people

being hanged and eventually he erupts at this former pupil now teacher

who used to have the nickname Stuttering Stanley. Cole brings back

this fact about him from the ghosts of the people he sees. The teacher

had lost his stutter but Cole brings it back.

At the start of the scene the teacher is talking in a very confident

voice, he is very assertive and calm. The camera angle also reflects

this, as it is set at the back of the class from the perspective of a

pupil, it shows all the pupils looking at the teacher. This acts as a

total contrast to what he used to be like when he had his stutter.

This also makes the end of the scene seem more emotional as we see the

teacher lose his temper by smashing down on the table and begin

stuttering.

Throughout the scene a boy is writing lines on a blackboard. The image

and sounds that this can create are put to good use to add to the

meaning and to create emotions in the viewers. When Cole says about

how people used to be hanged in the building the boy writing on the

blackboard suddenly halts, this movement creates a screech of the

chalk against the board. It's a harsh sound. It shows the mood and

feel of the scene has changed. This s because before we had the

constant noise of the chalk against the blackboard but after the

screech the noise has stopped creating a more uncomfortable

atmosphere. The harshness of the sound also mirrors the harshness of

what Cole had just said.

Another use of the blackboard is to show the downwards spiral of the