Alfred Hitchcock famously admitted that his formula for good film narrative was “Torture the women” (Fawell 680). He probably didn’t realize how far the implications of this statement might be metaphorically extended into an analysis of his own works. Given the implications of scopophilia as outlined by Laura Mulvey in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” and the feminine corollary articulated by Doane in “Film and the Masquerade: Theorising the Female Spectator,” there seems to be no satisfying identity for the female cinema viewer. In “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ inspired by King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun (1946)” Mulvey suggests that women can only occupy the subjective viewing position as cinema spectators (or within the diegesis of a film) during the occasional identification with the male gaze in a trans-gendered moment of sexual identity slippage. It appears that Hitchcock made an effort to provide at least two women with a semi-subjective perspective in his 1954 thriller Rear Window. Along with the blatantly scopophilic character Jeffries (James Setwart), Lisa (Grace Kelly) and Stella (Thelma Ritter) participate in his rear window voyeurism. Ultimately, however, the women are unable to maintain a subjective viewing position in the narrative of Rear Window and are otherwise coded as mere fodder for marriage, or for viewing pleasure, and little else. As such, Rear Window is a meta-scopophilic cinematic excursion in which the characters on screen act out the very gendered scopophilia that Mulvey and Doane assign to the cinematic viewer. Rear Window constructs femininity in a way that relegates the woman to the exclusively objective position as a signifier in the fulfillment of masculine marital relations or domestic needs, and as an object of the male gaze.
The opening scene of Rear Window establishes the movies two motifs: male scopophilic voyeurism, and an appropriate position for women in marriage and domestic pursuits. The roguish and dashing reporter Jeffries has sustained a leg injury and is convalescent in his apartment home. To pass the time he makes a habit of observing his neighbours in the courtyard and apartments adjacent his rear window. The panning long-shot which opens the film frames a young blonde beauty in the ludicrous posture of putting on her brassiere in front of a large picture window followed by her dance/exercise routine which frequently affords an ample view of her backside as she bends over facing perpendicularly away from the camera. The rest of the visible neighbours establish a fable of the feminine role in appropriate and desirable marriage. The scene pans across at least two married couples in different stages of wedlock – one pair of newlyweds, and a couple apparently longer established; a lonely woman pining for companionship whom Jeffries labels “Miss Lonelyheart” (She actually enacts the rituals of a goodly domestic wife with an imaginary husband in her desperate longing for a male companion.); an upper-class debutante socialite entertaining various suitors whom Jeffries describes as “a queen bee with her pick of the drones”; and another couple that breaches these illusions of marital bliss – a sedentary wife in the throes of “nagging” her husband while he carries out domestic duties (Rear Window). To clarify any ambiguity in the marital myth that might arise from the last couple, the wife, Mrs. Thorwald, is promptly eliminated from the narrative. It is later revealed that she was murdered. With the exception of Mrs. Thorwald and the half-naked blonde beauty (who is later absorbed into the marital domain of normalcy when her husband returns from his military absence), all women in the narrative are coded as appropriately hungry for marriage.
Enter Jeffries’ home-care nurse, Stella, to articulate these motifs. She scoffs at Jeffries’ resistance to marrying a woman that he describes as admittedly “too talented, too beautiful, too perfect” in her upper class lifestyle (Rear Window). Although Jeffries seems to feel that Lisa is above his class station, she is clearly coded as both fashionable and easy too look at. Stella behaves as an expert on marriage while poor Jeffries seems to be clueless, albeit confidently condescending, making comic of poor Stella’s authoritative posture. Stella at verbalizes an attempt to naturalize the marital myth regarding a fantasy past that never existed. She informs Jeffries that “every man is ready for marriage when the right girl comes along,” and laments the loss of the days when a person would simply “see someone, get excited, get married” (Rear Window). Hitchcock presents her nostalgic description as common-sensical, but considering arranged marriages and class-based marriages remained common in Western culture until as late as the nineteenth century and even into the twentieth, one wonders to what mythical past she refers.
Enter the heroine, Lisa, to exemplify the woman as both an object for viewing, and as a mere signifier in the male narrative of bachelorhood to marriage. Initially, Jeffries describes Lisa to his nurse-maid as a woman who expects him to marry her. To that point in the film, however, Lisa has not yet been present. Her motivations are narrated entirely by Jeffries’ voice of masculine authority. Lisa is given almost no agency in this regard and she is entirely objectified before she even appears on-screen. When she finally does appear she is framed in a soft-celled lens as a vision of beauty followed by a cut-shot of Jeffries’ eyes opening from his slumber to view her. His gaze is steady. Hers is distracted. Lisa becomes the metonymic microcosm of the scenes depicted in the courtyard – the appropriately subordinate object in the masculine narrative of marriage and the feminine object of the male gaze. Lisa voices her blatant acceptance of this objectified position. When Jeffries expresses concern that Thorwald might see them spying on him, she dismissively states, “I’m not afraid. I’ve been looked at before” (Rear Window). In this statement she characterizes women as in a submissive position in which they should delicately repress their feminine fear of the powerful male gaze, as foolishly naïve to the dangers of the outside world, and specifically as objects for viewing.
Rear Window provides two types of scopophilia for the male viewer. In her essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey defines these types. The first “arises from pleasure in using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight. The second, developed through narcissism and the constitution of the ego, comes from identification with the image” (Mulvey 62). The male viewer is able to enjoy the objectified beauty of such marriageable women as Lisa and the exercising beauty. The male viewer is also able to identify with the dashing but injured Jeffries as the driving force of the narrative and the central character. Within the diegetic confines of the film, Jeffries too exercises the voyeuristic scopophilia that Mulvey delineates. He enjoys viewing the micro-narratives of marriage and beauty that unfold before his rear window creating a cinematic meta-scopohilia. “In an analysis of Rear Window, Douchet takes the film as a metaphor for the cinema. Jeffries is the audience, the events in the apartment block opposite correspond to the screen” (Mulvey 66, 67). Indeed the cinematic choices of framing and the diegetic performances of the tenants adjacent his rear window, particularly the scantily clad young beauty who regularly dances and performs in front of a ludicrously revealing picture window, clearly indicate a screen-framed performance space. Both the windows he looks into and the window out of which he looks create a framing of what he observes that is identical to that of the frame of the movie screen. Jeffries regularly pulls back from the window and into darkness out of his concern that he too might be seen emphasizing how the frame of his window might limit his field of view. The male viewer of the movie is provided the opportunity to identify with Jeffries in both the narrative of his relationship and as he engages in his own screen-framed voyeurism.
In Rear Window women are excluded from the subjective viewing position. Mulvey summarily excludes women from scopophilic positions when she states that “pleasure has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure” (62). Perhaps anticipating the need to reconcile the female viewer with scopophilic identification, Hitchcock initially locates two female characters in the subjective viewing position in Rear Window. Jeffries coaxes both Lisa and Stella to share in his voyeurism. Specifically Lisa becomes involved in the viewing as part of her ploy to move into Jeffries’ apartment. However, Hitchcock cannot maintain her position as viewer and must move her from the viewing arena (in Jeffries’ apartment) to the viewed stage (the courtyard and the apartment of the killer). Likewise, Stella is moved from her viewing perspective to the stage as well when she assists Lisa in digging up the garden. The subjective viewing position that Hitchcock initially establishes for these women succumbs to the narrative need to reposition them into an objective position of being viewed by Jeffries before they are absorbed back into their appropriate domestic settings.
Hitchcock uses the convention of woman as a mere signifier in the male narrative to highlight a masculine-work/feminine-domestic binary in Rear Window. In “Women’s Cinema as Counter-Cinema,” Claire Johnston observes that “woman represents not herself, but by a process of displacement, the male phallus … [W]oman as woman is largely absent” (Johnston 33). Lisa fulfills this condition in two ways. Firstly, she represents an absence in that the details of her private life are left vague and are absent from the on-screen narrative. She is a socialite debutante but never seen in that environment on her own. She is only represented as an extension of Jeffries’ life – the nagging girlfriend that is pushing him towards fulfilling his masculine role as husband. He makes clear that he wishes to remain the other archetype available to men – dashing in his exciting career and vehemently independent (Johnston 35). Secondly, While Jeffries is debilitated from a leg injury, in the ‘incorrect’ positioning of Jeffries’ purgatory in the domestic space when he cannot fulfill his manly duties of working, he cannot escape effeminized emotional paranoia and curiosity. His male confidante, Tom Doyle (Wendell Corey) tries to placate him but Lisa continues to fuel his suspicions. In turn, he projects his phallus onto Lisa. She must perform the dangerous ‘work’ that he cannot. It is she who digs up the garden and it is she who infiltrates Thorwald’s apartment. For appropriating Jeffries’ masculine role, she is duly punished. She suffers an assault at the hands of Thorwald’s rage when he catches her in his apartment.
There is a sexual fetishism to Lisa’s movement into the objective viewing space (Mulvey 66, 67). At the beginning of Rear Window, Jeffries has little interest in the marriage that Lisa desperately wants with him. As she engages with him in the viewing of the courtyard, she manages to arouse enough interest in Jeffries that he allows her to spend the night. Johnston again accurately observes that “in order to be accepted into the male universe, the woman must become a man” (Johnston 35). However, Hitchcock does not wish to maintain this identity for Lisa and he safeguards her feminine role by highlighting her sexuality. She unpacks a tiny suitcase that seems to hold only lingerie. Once she moves into the courtyard and becomes the object of Jeffries’ male gaze, her peril allows Jeffries to feel a concern for her of which he was previously unaware. She is no longer the independently capable uptown socialite, but rather the vulnerable damsel in distress. In this ‘corrected’ position for her, as object rather than subject, Jeffries’ sexual interest is activated. The narrative ends with the intimation of her more permanent residence in his apartment – a 1950s allusion to sexual activity. The scopophilic objectification of Lisa is tied into her coding as sexual, marriageable.
Rear Window codes the feminine as an object for viewing or as an object for marrying. Doane states that “films demonstrate that the woman as subject of the gaze is clearly an impossible sign” (Doane 141). When Lisa takes up her position as viewer with Jeffries, she gets herself into trouble. Lisa is allowed to live but she is first assaulted, and then arrested before she is returned safely to Jeffries’ domestic sphere. In the closure of the film, even the micro-narratives valorize the feminine role in the masculinised romantic narrative. “Mrs. Lonelyheart” is ‘rewarded’ with male companionship for her behaviour-appropriate marital longing. The otherwise inexplicably single beautiful exercise-dancer sees the return of her male partner, who was apparently absent for military reasons. To signify feminine complicity with this codification the film ends with a scene that naturalizes Lisa within a male-work/female-marriage binary. Lisa reads an adventure magazine which momentarily locates her sensibilities in the sphere of masculinised activity. It is clear, however, that this magazine is only a ruse to mollify Jeffries against his concerns regarding their marital compatibility. As Jeffries slumbers, she discards the first magazine and takes up a fashion magazine, re-locating herself in a constellation of signifiers that codes women as passively feminine, fashionable, available for viewing, and marriageable. In this way, Hitchcock may have inadvertently tortured the women characters in Rear Window by relegating them to an objective position from which there appears to be no cinematic escape, at least not within the confines of 1950s popular cinema.
Works Cited
De Lauretis, Teresa. “Oedipus Interruptus.” Feminist Film Theory: A Reader. Ed. Sue Thornham. New York: New York University Press, 1999. 83-96. Print.
Doane, Mary Ann. “Film and the Masquerade: Theorising the Female Spectator.” Feminist Film Theory: A Reader. Ed. Sue Thornham. New York: New York University Press, 1999. 131-145. Print.
Fawell, John. Hitchcock’s Rear Window: The Well-Made Film. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004. Print.
Johnston, Claire. “Woman’s Cinema as Counter-Cinema.” Feminist Film Theory: A Reader. Ed. Sue Thornham. New York: New York University Press, 1999. 31-40. Print.
Mulvey, Laura. “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ inspired by King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun (1946).” Feminist Film Theory: A Reader. Ed. Sue Thornham. New York: New York University Press, 1999. 122-130. Print.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Feminist Film Theory: A Reader. Ed. Sue Thornham. New York: New York University Press, 1999. 58-69. Print.
Rich, B. Ruby. “The Crisis of Naming in Feminist Film Criticism.” Feminist Film Theory: A Reader. Ed. Sue Thornham. New York: New York University Press, 1999. 41-47. Print.
Thornham, Sue. “Introduction to Part II.” Feminist Film Theory: A Reader. Ed. Sue Thornham. New York: New York University Press, 1999. 53-57. Print.
Williams, Linda. “When the Woman Looks.” The Dread of Difference. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin, University of Texas Press, 1996. 15-34. Print.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Mise-en Scene of Confinement in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amelie Poulain
Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 2001 French film Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amelie Poulain is an innovative cinema-narrative experiment. Jeunet cross-employs conventions from genres other than melodrama such as an almost documentary style expository voice-over, and a meta-cinematic technique whereby the character visually acknowledges the camera. Equally innovative is Jeunet’s use of mise-en-scene, particularly in the scene between time signatures 27:43 and 30:30. Jeunet uses such techniques as contrast, setting, props, lighting, and framing to create an environment that is increasingly confined in both space and motion, and that draws Amelie towards the inevitable anagnorisis that she must escape such an insular existence.
The scene opens as Amelie ascends the winding and somewhat labyrinthine stairwell of her Parisien apartment complex. As she moves up the stairwell, she is interrupted by the voice of another tenant, Raymond Dufayel, in the doorway of his apartment on the landing below her. On his invitation, Amelie moves out of the more spacious stairwell into the confines of his apartment.
Upon entering his apartment, Amelie is drawn into an increasingly confined space. The lighting is dingy and yellow. In stark contrast to the empty stairwell, the apartment is noticeably cluttered and littered with myriad eclectic set pieces. In this environment, Amelie is initially framed in the uncomfortably narrow passage of Dufayel’s front hallway. She gingerly creeps into his main room in which archaic set pieces and his geriatric presence create a sense of decay. The suffocating and dungeon-like space seems to close in around her. As Dufayel discusses his painting collection, Amelie is visually drawn into the even more confined space of his even more cluttered closet. Rear shots of the two characters with the limited space of the closet between them are framed to exclude any external space creating the visual illusion that Amelie might be swept into this closet with no other space in which to escape.
Dufayel’s Renoir copies are the conversational focus of the scene in which Amelie is likened to “the girl with the glass of water” (Jeunet). As Amelie holds a glass of red liquid, the same colour as the liquid in the glass of the girl in the painting, she is centred in the rear of the shot between Dufayel and his canvas. Amelie’s face appears brightly painted with makeup compared to the grizzled face of the aged man. As a representation of Amelie, the painted girl is a clear metaphor. Dufayel explains that he has been painting the same image annually for years. He describes the difficulty he has had capturing the enigma of the “girl with the glass of water” (Jeunet). The girl in the painting is fossilized in endless iterations of the same enigma, never in motion, separated from the rest of the characters in the painting, and then locked in Dufayel’s closet. The similarity between Amelie and the girl in the painting highlights the notion that she runs the risk of becoming the girl in the painting – an inanimate enigma locked in a closet in endless iterations of the same futile and meaningless existence. The entire mise-en-scene of the scene is replete with representations that threaten to entomb Amelie in the confined space.
Amelie’s moment of realization comes when her enclosed proximity to Dufayel is at its most intimate and it almost appears that he might well physically absorb her into his isolation and decay. She flees his apartment with what dramatically appears to be a new outlook. Indeed much of the rest of the film concerns itself with how Amelie escapes from her fossilizing pattern through romantic intrigues. Jeunet incorporates elements of lighting, setting, and props into a symbolic and metaphoric environment to artistically complete this narrative outcome. All elements of the mise-en-scene support the theme of the larger narrative in which Amelie must break free from the solitude of her own past and shyness, from the confines of her Dufayel-like apartment, and from a Dufayel-like destiny of isolation, loneliness, and futile repetition in order to realize her romantic aspirations.
Works Cited
Jeunet, Jean-Pierre, dir. La Fabuleaux Destin, d’Amelie Poulain. UGC; Miramax, 2001. DVD.
The scene opens as Amelie ascends the winding and somewhat labyrinthine stairwell of her Parisien apartment complex. As she moves up the stairwell, she is interrupted by the voice of another tenant, Raymond Dufayel, in the doorway of his apartment on the landing below her. On his invitation, Amelie moves out of the more spacious stairwell into the confines of his apartment.
Upon entering his apartment, Amelie is drawn into an increasingly confined space. The lighting is dingy and yellow. In stark contrast to the empty stairwell, the apartment is noticeably cluttered and littered with myriad eclectic set pieces. In this environment, Amelie is initially framed in the uncomfortably narrow passage of Dufayel’s front hallway. She gingerly creeps into his main room in which archaic set pieces and his geriatric presence create a sense of decay. The suffocating and dungeon-like space seems to close in around her. As Dufayel discusses his painting collection, Amelie is visually drawn into the even more confined space of his even more cluttered closet. Rear shots of the two characters with the limited space of the closet between them are framed to exclude any external space creating the visual illusion that Amelie might be swept into this closet with no other space in which to escape.
Dufayel’s Renoir copies are the conversational focus of the scene in which Amelie is likened to “the girl with the glass of water” (Jeunet). As Amelie holds a glass of red liquid, the same colour as the liquid in the glass of the girl in the painting, she is centred in the rear of the shot between Dufayel and his canvas. Amelie’s face appears brightly painted with makeup compared to the grizzled face of the aged man. As a representation of Amelie, the painted girl is a clear metaphor. Dufayel explains that he has been painting the same image annually for years. He describes the difficulty he has had capturing the enigma of the “girl with the glass of water” (Jeunet). The girl in the painting is fossilized in endless iterations of the same enigma, never in motion, separated from the rest of the characters in the painting, and then locked in Dufayel’s closet. The similarity between Amelie and the girl in the painting highlights the notion that she runs the risk of becoming the girl in the painting – an inanimate enigma locked in a closet in endless iterations of the same futile and meaningless existence. The entire mise-en-scene of the scene is replete with representations that threaten to entomb Amelie in the confined space.
Amelie’s moment of realization comes when her enclosed proximity to Dufayel is at its most intimate and it almost appears that he might well physically absorb her into his isolation and decay. She flees his apartment with what dramatically appears to be a new outlook. Indeed much of the rest of the film concerns itself with how Amelie escapes from her fossilizing pattern through romantic intrigues. Jeunet incorporates elements of lighting, setting, and props into a symbolic and metaphoric environment to artistically complete this narrative outcome. All elements of the mise-en-scene support the theme of the larger narrative in which Amelie must break free from the solitude of her own past and shyness, from the confines of her Dufayel-like apartment, and from a Dufayel-like destiny of isolation, loneliness, and futile repetition in order to realize her romantic aspirations.
Works Cited
Jeunet, Jean-Pierre, dir. La Fabuleaux Destin, d’Amelie Poulain. UGC; Miramax, 2001. DVD.
Interview with the Vampire and the American Perspective
One of the most popular movies following a renewed interest in the vampire myth in the 1990s is Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994) based on Anne Rice’s 1973 novel. Rice is also credited with penning the screenplay for the movie. Rice’s narrative participates with the rising representation of sympathetic vampires visible in such films as Coppola’s 1992 version of Dracula. Moreover, Vivian Sobchack, in her essay Bringing It All Back Home: Family Economy and Generic Exchange refers to a late twentieth century trend in horror film marked by a “mutual spatial relocation to the American landscape and temporal relocation to the present” (Sobchack in DD 145). Historically, most vampires were a foreign threat. By the 1990s, the vampire was ripe for sympathetic appropriation into the geography of American culture.
Indeed, this film is concerned with an American perspective. The opening pan-shot highlights a blood-red neon sign that identifies the location as San Francisco. The narrative is framed in that American location as Louis explains his life as a vampire to a San Francisco journalist. The narrative within that framework is also framed in America. Louis’ tale begins on a 1790s Louisiana plantation and it is to America he will return at the end of his narrative.
On a smaller scale, the cinematography also highlights a preoccupation with perspective. Following the opening pan-shot, the camera moves into the city and follows what appears to be the first-person perspective of Louis as he silently weaves his way through the crowds and traffic of the night-time streets of San Francisco. Jordan repeats this pattern at the end of the movie from Lestat’s perspective. Using both narrative framework and cinematography, Jordan effectively creates a domestic American perspective.
Works Cited
Sobchack, Vivian. “Bringing It All Back Home: Family Economy and Generic Exchange.” The Dread of Difference. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996. 143-163. Print.
Indeed, this film is concerned with an American perspective. The opening pan-shot highlights a blood-red neon sign that identifies the location as San Francisco. The narrative is framed in that American location as Louis explains his life as a vampire to a San Francisco journalist. The narrative within that framework is also framed in America. Louis’ tale begins on a 1790s Louisiana plantation and it is to America he will return at the end of his narrative.
On a smaller scale, the cinematography also highlights a preoccupation with perspective. Following the opening pan-shot, the camera moves into the city and follows what appears to be the first-person perspective of Louis as he silently weaves his way through the crowds and traffic of the night-time streets of San Francisco. Jordan repeats this pattern at the end of the movie from Lestat’s perspective. Using both narrative framework and cinematography, Jordan effectively creates a domestic American perspective.
Works Cited
Sobchack, Vivian. “Bringing It All Back Home: Family Economy and Generic Exchange.” The Dread of Difference. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996. 143-163. Print.
Dracula 1931
Tod Browning’s 1931 Dracula presents the viewer with a meta-cinamatographic narrative that carries with it a subtle didactic function. By marrying silent film convention with audio dialogue, Browning has created a bridging film that educates audiences how to accept narrative with the new advent of sound, much in the same way Sabine Hake describes Nosferatu (1922) as demonstrating “a kind of promotional self-referentiality that draws attention to the cinema and foregrounds its means” in order to “show audiences how to appreciate the cinema in its increasingly sophisticated products” (37-38). Dracula covertly educates audiences to understand narrative not only in the conventional visual way established in the era of silent films, but also in the newly available ‘talkie’ format. The narrative in Dracula is carried in two distinct ways: visually and through spoken dialogue.
The convention of inter-titles from the silent film era is present in different formats that seem to ease the viewer out of such conventions into other expository forms. Early in the film, spoken narration is introduced as an important element. The verbal warnings of the village peasants to Renfield are almost exclusively expository. They inform the listener/viewer (via dialogue with Renfield) that Dracula’s castle is a house of vampires and that to travel there is certain doom. In this way, the dialogue takes the place of the traditional inter-title that would have formerly provided such exposition as information from an omniscient narrator, or as dialogue presented in a textual form, on-screen. In fact, the convention of the inter-title is maintained in several ways early in the film. Visuals which provide the audience member with the perspective of the reader on-screen make use of newspaper articles that fill the position formerly occupied by the inter-title. From printed newspaper articles the viewer is informed of the tragedy on the ship on which Dracula traveled, amongst other things.
Other visual conventions are also present. While the opening scene is dialogue-laden, much of the early part of the narrative contains very little dialogue. The characterization of Dracula is accomplished with sweeping histrionic movements, slow and deliberate. His white shirt and pale face float through scenes in which his black clothing renders his body invisible against a black background. Most scenes are filmed by a stationary camera positioned as the theatrical fourth wall. Dracula, however, is often shown in close-up creating the sense that he is threateningly too near, closing in. The camera occasionally sweeps towards him creating the illusion that he is gliding across the room in a supernatural movement (an image to which Coppola paid homage in his version of Dracula (1992) when Oldman sweeps across the room). The only other character seen in such ominous close-up is Mina, and only once she has become a vampire herself.
The thematic juxtaposition of Dracula against Von Helsing is also visually deployed. They are both elderly, powerful figures that dictate what happens to poor Mina. They are visual foils. Von Helsing is white haired while Dracula’s hair is jet black. Von Helsing is almost always in the light and in the civilized confines of a Victorian home. Dracula is almost always enshrouded in darkness and mist, and usually outdoors, or in his castles of wild foreign origin or ruin. Dracula takes residence in the wild ruins of Carfax Abby, a setting to which the viewer is only exposed towards the end of the film. Its threatening backdrop is a strong contrast to the otherwise secure setting of Mina’s home, otherwise invaded by open windows and wild bats. The wild outdoors is a visual foil to the civilized indoors.
However, the conventional visual of the silent film is married into a new form of juxtaposition. Dracula and Von Helsing are likened as foils through speech. They are the only two characters who carry ‘foreign’ accents. All of the other characters have normalized Victorian British accents. They are both verbally bombastic, authoritative, and patriarchal. This similarity allows the thematic difference of the scientific Von Helsing to be more effectively contrasted against the archaic wildness of Dracula. The latter half of the film maintains the visual conventions established in the earlier parts of the film, but is laden with far more dialogue. Through dialogue we learn of Dracula’s weaknesses, his designs on Minna, the methods by which he can be thwarted, and the superstition come science that Von Helsing believes he represents. The use of newspaper inter-titles is abandoned entirely as the climax of the film approaches, and audiences have been conditioned to follow the narrative through dialogue. However, the dialogue remains largely expository, and carries only the esoteric details of the narrative, while the emotional impetus of the film is carried through visual convention. Shakespearean text-based narrative, this is not, but rather a unique representation of the changing artform of film at the cusp of the silent film era, and the ‘talkie.’
The convention of inter-titles from the silent film era is present in different formats that seem to ease the viewer out of such conventions into other expository forms. Early in the film, spoken narration is introduced as an important element. The verbal warnings of the village peasants to Renfield are almost exclusively expository. They inform the listener/viewer (via dialogue with Renfield) that Dracula’s castle is a house of vampires and that to travel there is certain doom. In this way, the dialogue takes the place of the traditional inter-title that would have formerly provided such exposition as information from an omniscient narrator, or as dialogue presented in a textual form, on-screen. In fact, the convention of the inter-title is maintained in several ways early in the film. Visuals which provide the audience member with the perspective of the reader on-screen make use of newspaper articles that fill the position formerly occupied by the inter-title. From printed newspaper articles the viewer is informed of the tragedy on the ship on which Dracula traveled, amongst other things.
Other visual conventions are also present. While the opening scene is dialogue-laden, much of the early part of the narrative contains very little dialogue. The characterization of Dracula is accomplished with sweeping histrionic movements, slow and deliberate. His white shirt and pale face float through scenes in which his black clothing renders his body invisible against a black background. Most scenes are filmed by a stationary camera positioned as the theatrical fourth wall. Dracula, however, is often shown in close-up creating the sense that he is threateningly too near, closing in. The camera occasionally sweeps towards him creating the illusion that he is gliding across the room in a supernatural movement (an image to which Coppola paid homage in his version of Dracula (1992) when Oldman sweeps across the room). The only other character seen in such ominous close-up is Mina, and only once she has become a vampire herself.
The thematic juxtaposition of Dracula against Von Helsing is also visually deployed. They are both elderly, powerful figures that dictate what happens to poor Mina. They are visual foils. Von Helsing is white haired while Dracula’s hair is jet black. Von Helsing is almost always in the light and in the civilized confines of a Victorian home. Dracula is almost always enshrouded in darkness and mist, and usually outdoors, or in his castles of wild foreign origin or ruin. Dracula takes residence in the wild ruins of Carfax Abby, a setting to which the viewer is only exposed towards the end of the film. Its threatening backdrop is a strong contrast to the otherwise secure setting of Mina’s home, otherwise invaded by open windows and wild bats. The wild outdoors is a visual foil to the civilized indoors.
However, the conventional visual of the silent film is married into a new form of juxtaposition. Dracula and Von Helsing are likened as foils through speech. They are the only two characters who carry ‘foreign’ accents. All of the other characters have normalized Victorian British accents. They are both verbally bombastic, authoritative, and patriarchal. This similarity allows the thematic difference of the scientific Von Helsing to be more effectively contrasted against the archaic wildness of Dracula. The latter half of the film maintains the visual conventions established in the earlier parts of the film, but is laden with far more dialogue. Through dialogue we learn of Dracula’s weaknesses, his designs on Minna, the methods by which he can be thwarted, and the superstition come science that Von Helsing believes he represents. The use of newspaper inter-titles is abandoned entirely as the climax of the film approaches, and audiences have been conditioned to follow the narrative through dialogue. However, the dialogue remains largely expository, and carries only the esoteric details of the narrative, while the emotional impetus of the film is carried through visual convention. Shakespearean text-based narrative, this is not, but rather a unique representation of the changing artform of film at the cusp of the silent film era, and the ‘talkie.’
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Rory's first paycheque ever: FAIL!
You know your son is dull when . . . How dumb do you have to be to make such a mistake!? Who do you know named "Bory!?"
Friday, June 24, 2011
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play
presents
William Shakespeare's
HENRY V
at the University of Victoria
Phillip T. Young Recital Hall - MacLaurin Building B Wing
July 19, 20, 21, 22, and 24
Tickets: $22.50
Students and Seniors: $13.50
Children under 12: $5.00
available at ticketrocket.org or by calling 250-2-8-7936
visit http://childsoldiercycle.ca/www.keepitsimpletheater.com/index.htm
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Interview with the Mom-pire
With my unique personality blend of arrogance and unorthodoxy, I have never been a fan of parenting magazines. All too often they are aimed exclusively at the elite upper middle-class and filled with advice and hippie-parenting programs for which the rest of the (real) world could afford neither the time nor the money. I guess poverty has made Marianne and I a little cynical, but as I unfortunately learned long ago, cynicism is closer to realism than optimism. Nevertheless, as parents, and as just people, we have more positivity, laughter, and love than most (truly cynical but entirely pretentious) parents we know.
Recently while listening to Marianne storm through one of her characteristic parenting-polemics, I was struck with an idea for a magazine in response to the ubiquitous local periodical, Island Parent Magazine which we decided to call Candid Parent Magazine. We thought a great idea for a weekly column would be one in which we feature submissions from equally irreverent parents entitled WTF!? Below is our debut entry. While I have created a make-believe framework for the following fictitious interview, most of my, and all of Marianne's hilarious statements are quoted verbatim from our otherwise quite candid conversation.
MJ: Boys mature later than girls. That's why Rory has only just started to lie in the same belligerent way Megan does.
CPM: I find it interesting that the word 'maturing' is used to describe a new-found propensity for lying.
MJ: Well that's what it is! They're maturing into teens and that is teen behaviour!
CPM: I know, I just think its ironic. I might choose the word 'developing' into teenagers rather than 'maturing' in the context of lying.
MJ: It's incredible. As parents you suffer through all of these awkward and irritating changes, forced to observe and participate the whole time! It's a fucking nightmare!
CPM: Wow! Mother of the year award does NOT go to Marianne Christopher! That is a bold and revealing statement - spoken like a woman who truly hates mothering.
MJ: No, no! I love the kids. I just hate them sometimes.
CPM: Ahhh, the contradictory enigma that is you.
MJ: You know that Father's Day stuff on your desk? Camille made that stuff herself, you know. She's actually good at stuff like that when she puts her mind to it. She can actually do stuff, like, . . . make coffee, . . . and that other thing she does.
MJ: Again, astonishingly negligent and dismissive. Your inattentiveness is unparallelled. I'm truly amazed.
MJ: Oh, hush. You know what I mean. And Aiden got that cool dancing bursary. When he's medicated he can actually accomplish things too without you wanting to strangle him.
CPM: You know, you're evil.
MJ: I'm not evil. I just have a lot of kids and no time for sugar-coated, half-assed, liberal parenting.
CPM: You're partly evil - like, . . . 80%.
MJ: What!?
See you in hell,
Shakes.
Recently while listening to Marianne storm through one of her characteristic parenting-polemics, I was struck with an idea for a magazine in response to the ubiquitous local periodical, Island Parent Magazine which we decided to call Candid Parent Magazine. We thought a great idea for a weekly column would be one in which we feature submissions from equally irreverent parents entitled WTF!? Below is our debut entry. While I have created a make-believe framework for the following fictitious interview, most of my, and all of Marianne's hilarious statements are quoted verbatim from our otherwise quite candid conversation.
MJ: Boys mature later than girls. That's why Rory has only just started to lie in the same belligerent way Megan does.
CPM: I find it interesting that the word 'maturing' is used to describe a new-found propensity for lying.
MJ: Well that's what it is! They're maturing into teens and that is teen behaviour!
CPM: I know, I just think its ironic. I might choose the word 'developing' into teenagers rather than 'maturing' in the context of lying.
MJ: It's incredible. As parents you suffer through all of these awkward and irritating changes, forced to observe and participate the whole time! It's a fucking nightmare!
CPM: Wow! Mother of the year award does NOT go to Marianne Christopher! That is a bold and revealing statement - spoken like a woman who truly hates mothering.
MJ: No, no! I love the kids. I just hate them sometimes.
CPM: Ahhh, the contradictory enigma that is you.
MJ: You know that Father's Day stuff on your desk? Camille made that stuff herself, you know. She's actually good at stuff like that when she puts her mind to it. She can actually do stuff, like, . . . make coffee, . . . and that other thing she does.
MJ: Again, astonishingly negligent and dismissive. Your inattentiveness is unparallelled. I'm truly amazed.
MJ: Oh, hush. You know what I mean. And Aiden got that cool dancing bursary. When he's medicated he can actually accomplish things too without you wanting to strangle him.
CPM: You know, you're evil.
MJ: I'm not evil. I just have a lot of kids and no time for sugar-coated, half-assed, liberal parenting.
CPM: You're partly evil - like, . . . 80%.
MJ: What!?
See you in hell,
Shakes.
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