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film theory
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Film Theory
What is an auteur?• A .ilmmaker usually the director whose movies are characterized by a
.ilmmaker's creative in.luence
Andre Bazin
Auteur French for 'author'. politique des auteurs, a manifesto drafted in the 1950s by a group of French .ilm
directors and criticscelebrated the role of the director as the 'author' of a .ilm, 'Hollywood studio system'.
History of Film as the history of Auteurs• Like Artists• Original work• Creative Control• Personal .ilm language• Auteurs often start the conventions of genre, but do not follow them
Notes on the 'Auteur' Theory by Sarris 1962 (American)• the technical competence of the director• the director's distinguishable personality (style)• and interior meaning.
Why Hitchcock?• Long career beginning in early years of .ilm industry• Work in Europe and America• Innovation in .ilm making• Master of suspense and audience’s reception of the .ilm • In.luential in later genres like the American Slasher or the psychological
thriller. • Inspired by avant-‐garde expressionism, surrealism, but .ilms still
attracted mainstream audiences • French New Wave acknowledged him as an auteur
The technical competence of the director• Expressionist lighting• Story telling visually in silent era• Use of the subjective camera• Dolly zoom• Clever use of montage and cutting to create tension in spite of the
production code (1939-‐60)
1920• It was around 1920 when Hitchcock joined the .ilm industry, he started
off drawing the sets (Since he was a very skilled artist)• Continued his apprenticeship alongside Graham Cutts at Gainsborough.• In 1925, studio head Michael Balcon dispatched Hitchcock to Germany• Saw .irsthand the work of masters like F.W. Murnau
A scene from F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu. 1922
The Lodger 1927
Subjective Camera Shots Champagne (1928)
Subjective Camera in Jamaica Inn
The technical competence of the director• The dolly zoom is an unsettling in-‐camera special effect that appears to
undermine normal visual perception in .ilm. • A dolly counter zoom is also variously known as: • Back Zoom Travelling • Smash Zoom" or "Smash Shot" • Vertigo zoom • The " Hitchcock zoom" or the " Vertigo effect" • "Hitchcock shot" or "Vertigo shot • A " Jaws shot" • A "zido" • A "zolly" • "Telescoping" • A "contra-‐zoom" or "trombone shot" • Push/pull • A Stretch shot • More technically as forward zoom / reverse tracking or zoom in / dolly
out
I look up, I look down
Cutting and Montage• “What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out?”
Pyscho 1960 story board
the director's distinguishable personality (style)• Expressionism – form evokes emotion• Cameo appearances of the director• Narrative is often visual rather than told through dialogue• Continuous of certain actors (Cary Grant, James Stewart , Tippi Hedren,
Doris Day, Joan Fontaine)• Obsessive use of the blonds• Suspense
• Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.”
Suspense• Suspense is generated when the audience can see danger his characters
cannot see…• "There's no terror in the bang of the gun, only the anticipation of it." • his earlier work could create vivid terror in the mind of the viewer with
very little spatter on the screen.
Expressionism• Hitchcock .ilms are not concerned with realism or naturalism• He is interested in story telling and evoking emotional responses in his
audience• “Give them pleasure the same pleasure they have when they wake up
from a nightmare”
Voyeurism
Trauma
Decent in madness
Spy on my wife, she is acting strangely
Voyeurism
“Madeline”
Voyeurism and subjective shot
Doubling of blondes, uncanny likeness
Jump in the river
Scottie saves her
• Scottie: “Their true name is Sequoia sempervirens—always green, ever living.”
“Suicide of Madeline”
Scottie descends into madness again
Living through a break down
Judy – an accidental meeting
Judy/Madeline lives again
Transformation is complete
Colour is used in an expressionistic way
• See .ilm clip of Hitchcock• “Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.”
Cameo of the director
interior meaning• 1938 Hitchcock leaves Gainsborough studios to work in America• David O Selznick introduces him to pyschoanalyis• They make (Rebecca,1940) (Spellbound, 1945), (Notorious, 1946)
Collaboration with Salvador Dali
The Art of Alfred Hitchcock, Donald Spoto• Bird’s-‐Eye View• The Birds. They are the most prominent motif in Sabotage, and they
appear in Young and Innocent (1938), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Jamaica Inn (1939), and Saboteur, and ominously presage the action in Psycho.
The Birds as harbingers of doom (1963)
Dial M for Murder
Self-‐Proclaimed fears• “I am scared easily, here is a list of my adrenaline -‐ production: 1: small
children, 2: policemen, 3: high places, 4: that my next movie will not be as good as the last one.”
Themes that are revisited• ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events,• mistaken identity, • espionage, • murder and madness.
• sly wit and moments of macabre humour,• strong sexual themes,• explorations of the darkest corners of the human mind • always “Hitchcockian” suspense.
• -‐ relationship between order and chaos•
-‐ search for identity• -‐ existential anxiety, free will •
-‐ guilt, transference of guilt •
-‐ death drive, other themes from Freudian psychology •
-‐ relationship between the sexes •
-‐ relationship between a spectator and an image • projection of guilt and desire, • nature of cinema
Classic bilms• Gerald Mast "The best American .ilms of the present (and of the future),
like those of the past, can and will succeed in transcending their immediate temporal, commercial, technological, and cultural limitations... “ (1981, p45)
Critique of the auteurIt presents a canon of .ilms made by ‘elites’ (many male auteurs)It disguises the work of others (cinematographer, art director, screen writer, editor, sound technicians …)It offers a universal view of qualityIt is a capitalist device by selling a .ilm by virtue of it’s director
The Death of the author (Barthes, 1977, p143)• The explanation of a work is always sought in the man or woman who
produced it, as if it were always in the end, through the more or less transparent allegory of the .iction, the voice of a single· person, the author 'con.iding' in us.
Barthes 1977 p148• we know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the
myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.