Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List is based on Oskar Schindler’s life during World War II and how he saved over 12,000 Jewish people’s lives. Spielberg uses diegetic and non-diegetic sound, camera angles and shots, motifs and limited colour to create tension within the film. Tension would build in three specific scenes that also had an emotional impact on the audience. The Liquidation of the Ghetto created tension by the soldiers talking in German throughout the scene. The Little Girl in the Red Coat created tension by adding colour and having her walk through the chaos going unnoticed. Finally Auschwitz created tension by using camera angles and string instruments.
Tension is built within the Liquidation of the Ghetto by Amon Goeth’s “inspirational” speech which is used to motivate the German soldiers. The speech foreshadows that history is about to be made and something bad is going to happen to the Jewish people. Once the ‘Final Solution’ begins Jewish people are being filed into the streets and their belongings are taken from them. People are being shot for no reason and in spite of what is going on; doctors and nurses are giving poison to the terminally ill patients so they do not suffer. The people who were hiding are found and were shot. Spielberg uses diegetic sound throughout this scene to create emotion within the audience. Gun shots and a sense of mourning can be heard which creates tension by having an unknown fate for the surviving people. The audience begins to wonder if they are going to the labour camp or a concentration camp. Panning is used to show each aspect that is happening throughout the liquidation. It shows the audience the impact that is had on the Jewish people. Amon Goeth’s speech foreshadows tha...
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...r from white to black to represent the ashes. Trains throughout the film are a motif for death and life. Earlier in the film Mila Pfefferberg told the women the story of Auschwitz and no one believed her they shaved their hair and with stars of David on the doors. This foreshadowed the gruesome events that happened while the women were at Auschwitz and what actually happened to many Jewish people. This created tension by keeping the audience guessing what goes on behind the walls of Auschwitz.
Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List is based on Oskar Schindler’s life during the Holocaust of World War II and how he saved over 12,000 Jewish people from the labour and concentration camps. During The Liquidation of the Ghetto, The Girl in the Red Coat and Auschwitz diegetic and non-diegetic sound, camera angles and shots, limited colour and motifs are used to create tension.
The Holocaust was one of the most devastating events to happen to us a world. On an ordinary day 1,000 people would be plucked from their everyday lives in ghettos. Over 30,000 Jewish people were arrested on Kristallnacht and taken to concentration camps. According to one source, “Over eleven million people were killed and about six million of them happened to be Jews” (“11 Facts”). Producing movies based around the Holocaust is a very controversial topic. There is the ever prominent argument on wheatear or not Holocaust based films can help us understand the different aspects of its reality.
I would like to point out the poignant cinematography, which was very innovative for its time. The narration and the filming introducing what was about to be uncovered must have been extremely moving in a melancholy way. The mise-en-scène is both compelling and haunting, each frame cleverly editied. Resnais experimented with what is known as the long shot, and the 360 degree shot, to make the voyeur very aware of the unbalanced composition. The panning of the film tracking back from Auschwitz brings us a close up, of barbed wire. This clearly suggests that this isn't what it appears to be. Resnais films the past in black and white, and the then present in colour. The ambiance is chilling, and the composed background music unique. Where normally dramatic loud music would be used to express the abonimation and enormity of the most horrendous scenes, Resnais did quite the contrary.
In the film, symbolism was everywhere. In the beginning of the film, the pictures of the city were in black and white and dull shades, giving the city a gloomy look. The camera angles made the cars in the city appear tiny, and the buildings appear very large to symbolize how small everything was amongst the city. The interiors of the office buildings and the panic symbolized that there was no way out. The soundtrack of the film was symbolic to the tension of the film. The darkness of visual composition of the lighting in the film, symbolized the darkness of the human nature in the story.
Michael Khan was the film editor for Schindler’s List and won the Academy Award for Best Film Editing. This was his second Oscar he won for best film editing, the previous was for Raiders of the Lost Ark which was also directed by Spielberg. The dominant method of editing in Schindler's List was cutting to continuity. One of the functions of continuity editing in Schindler’s List is to differentiate the condition between two circumstances in the story. This form of editing is called crosscutting. As we know that in Schindler’s List there are two groups of people involved, the Nazis and the Jews. The condition between the two groups are very different of the fact that one is colonized by the other. The crosscutting is utilized to demonstrate
Denial is another theme in this film which helped to save the Jewish race. Even as they are forced into the ghetto and later into labor camps they are in denial of their real situation. When they are in the ghetto they are optimistic and believe that the bad times will pass, and even when killing surrounds them they won’t let themselves believe the worst.
Enhancing the sustained fright of this film are an excellent cast, from which the director coaxes extraordinary performances, and Bernard Herrmann's chilling score. Especially effective is the composer's so-called "murder music," high-pitched screeching sounds that flash across the viewer's consciousness as quickly as the killer's deadly knife. Bernard Herrmann achieved this effect by having a group of violinists frantically saw the same notes over and over again.
These ideas all correlate with how we view World War II history and how Inglourious Basterds muddles our previous thoughts on how these events occurred. Many Americans have watered down the depiction of Jewish oppression during Nazi reign to swiftly round up concentration camps. What Quentin Tarantino and the Jewish film community wanted to illustrate through this film is how this is an incorrect overgeneralization. Inglourious Basterds illustrates more realistic Jewish life during Nazi reign and the constant terror they faced. This oppression was far more personal, intimate, and cordial yet brutal altercations invoked through self-defense and hatred.
In conclusion, I have demonstrated how Coppola exploits a wide array of sound and editing to create suspense, intensity, and anxiety in the sequence to affect the audience’s emotions, using diegetic ambient sound effects, non-diegetic music, voice over and four editing types. With this sequence, Coppola has shown the savagery of war and our complicity in this violence as an audience.
The film that I have chosen to analyze is “The Purge”. “The Purge” is a 2013 American horror film directed by James DeMonaco. It was released on June 7, 2013, to mixed reviews. I will be analyzing “The Purge” by looking at conflict theory, class division, the importance of the ethnicity of each individual character, and the government’s overall political and economic agenda. In brief, I believe that Purge night takes place because of Conflict theory, due to political and economic agendas.
Director Mark Herman presents a narrative film that attests to the brutal, thought-provoking Nazi regime, in war-torn Europe. It is obvious that with Herman’s relatively clean representation of this era, he felt it was most important to resonate with the audience in a profound and philosophical manner rather than in a ruthlessness infuriating way. Despite scenes that are more graphic than others, the films objective was not to recap on the awful brutality that took place in camps such as the one in the movie. The audience’s focus was meant to be on the experience and life of a fun-loving German boy named Bruno. Surrounding this eight-year-old boy was conspicuous Nazi influences. Bruno is just an example of a young child among many others oblivious of buildings draped in flags, and Jewis...
Schindler’s List had a great effect on me personally. I thought that Thomas Keneally did an excellent job in making the reader feel the events of the time. Perhaps what I found to be most interesting in Schindler’s List is a question of morality. I began asking myself the question, would I be as heroic as Oskar Schindler if I were in his shoes? I think that this is exactly what Keneally wanted us to do; he wanted us to look at ourselves and analyze what’s inside. Historically, I find Schindler’s List to be very important not only because it is tells of a shameful time in western civilization, but also because the events that took place in the novel occurred only yesterday. After all fifty years is almost nothing in historical terms. Perhaps the novel’s greatest strength is this feeling that the events that transpired in Schindler’s List are in fact modern history.
From the first moment of Schindler's List to the very last, you will be amazed by the strength and resilience of the Jewish people during this horrendous time in their history. You will witness and feel their pain and horror in this very graphic, yet painfully true story. Steven Speilberg deserves all of the awards this film had brought him. It is a time in history we should never forget and pray that we will never witness again.
How can someone fully understand a tragedy such as the Holocaust? Many say the event ineffable to anyone who wasn’t there to begin with, but people are still striving to achieve complete or near complete comprehension. In order to do this people have used multiple media like books and recordings but the one that gives “the greatest illusion of authenticity” is movies. The purpose of Holocaust-filmmaking is to help people get a grasp on what it felt like to be in the middle of such a horrific thing as the Holocaust. If this isn’t done, then the true emotions won’t influence the audience who won’t find a way to preserve the history of the Holocaust and memories that took place in those awful times will be lost forever. Many films of the Holocaust
In the film The Truman Show directed by Peter Weir, during a sequence of events in which the protagonist, Truman Burbank, goes missing everyone in the vicinity of his last known location assume search positions in an effort to locate and capture him. This sequence uses several film techniques to add to the atmosphere and mood of this moment with the intention of comparing these events to ones of concentration camps that were used in World War Two. This Intention I believe is used to show and compare the conditions in which the protagonist and the victims of concentration camps were treated. The techniques that are used to achieve this intention are the lighting, the sound, the way the camera is used and the actions of the characters in this sequence.
Therefore, it is possible to notice how the cinematography, the mise-en-scene and the editing are used to resemble the peculiarities of the space in which the actions are taking place. For instance, the first part is characterized by long pan or tilt shots, the camera is steady but still manages to follow the characters actions. The editing points to the linear occurring of the events. Also, the characters and the objects are usually methodically placed in the scene. All of the elements are used to convey the rigid organization, efficiency and control typical of the military environment. On the other hand, in the second part, there are usually shorter shots and steadicam shots. The camera is free to investigate the space of action. Here, the editing is used to create a dynamic perception of the events. In this way Kubrick is able to bring in the spectators’ minds the chaotic reality of the war. Moreover, colors become another tool to communicate to the audience this sort of split within the film. In fact, after Pyle’s death the viewer can notice how those metallic and cold colors, that are present at the beginning of the film, shift into wormer colors. It is actually through Pyle’s suicide that the the spectator gets this switch. In that scene the dark red blood stains, and ideologically violates, the cold white tiles of the bathroom. This film is also different on