Orpheus

I could sit here and try to analyze this movie for a week straight, and there'd still be things left uncovered or unexplained. The entire movie was wrapped up in an airtight bubble of confusion, and I think that's kind of the point. The complete inability to understand, the way I see it, is a form of chaos. In Greek myths, before the world existed there was only chaos, and I think that chaos is the no man's land between worlds. I also think that's why they repeatedly tell him not to try to understand, and why the otherworldliness of the mis-en-scene provided by the remains of WWII is basically rubble and destruction. Let me explain-- chaos is the opposite of order, and order can be represented through cities and the accomplishments of people. To see these destroyed, like the ruins of Europe, is a clear indication that the characters have left "our" world, and that that world isn't based on the same order we understand. ...I don't think I explained myself sufficiently, but hopefully you can get the general idea.

Cocteau's use of things from the war, like the rubble and the radio transmission, is a brilliant way to represent this chaos because the war was chaotic, and many things from war don't make sense to most people. Seeing and hearing things that would remind the audience of the war would bring up emotions they experienced at the time, adding to the overall effect of the movie. I think it's sad that some of the movie is lost to later generations who can't appreciate all the effects of the movie because they don't have a personal connection to it.

At the beginning of the movie, I thought it was bit like film noir because Orpheus is a hero with a flaw who meets this mysterious lady who (literally) takes him into another world. Although I wouldn't call this film noir, there's something in this I want to address, bear with me, I'll try to make sense. The article mentioned that in some versions of this myth Orpheus preferred male company before his wife died. I started to think about the relationships btwn Orpheus and men and women, and now I think that Death (the woman) isn't who sucked Orpheus into the other world. She took him to another world in a literal sense, but the "world" he lives in for the majority of the movie isn't in no man's land but in his car listening for poetry. Because of this, I think the male poet on the radio is what really pulls him in and gets him hooked. After his return home, he stays in his car and prefers sitting in the car to his wife's company, and spends most of his time with Hurtubise--in this instance he prefers men to his wife (who just happens to be pregnant, making her more feminine than other women in the film).

One thing I found interesting but not really important to the overall picture (please feel free to enlighten me if it is significant, I'd really like to know) is that the otherworld is a dreamlike place, but dreams are open to all kinds of interpretation, but there is no room for any interpretation or anything other than straight fact in the actual place. For example, they wanted Orpheus' exact occupation, and were not able to recognize the subtleties between being a writer and a poet, but it was very important that they had the right information. Now that I think about it, the scene before the judges is like the opposite of a dream inside a place that seems to be made of dreams: the room is nothing special, it looks nothing like where they had just come from and seems like it could be from the real world, and the basic interaction during the scene was very serious and not dreamlike at all.

SUCCESS!!!!

Attention everyone! All technical difficulties with this blog are now and forever (hopefully) over!

I’ve reposted all my posts from the earlier films, I apologize that they are up so late. Please comment on whatever you like, especially if you disagree with me, I love criticism and debating. =)

Laura

I’m not sure what my problem is, but there is something about this movie that I feel I’m missing. Something about the movie itself or my understanding of it feel incomplete, and I’m not sure if that’s part of the mystery of the movie or because I don’t understand something, but there is something that’s preventing the whole thing to click in my head.

Many of the comparisons we’ve made in class have been between Laura and Citizen Kane. While I do see the similarities between these two films, I feel Laura is much more similar to The Third Man. To begin with, the main character is believed to be dead more the entire beginning of the movie, then comes back to shock everybody. These charactes are originally to be somehow better than they are revealed to be when we actually meet them: Harry Lime is Martins’ friend and Laura seems more like the essence of goodness rather than an actual person. Laura is a good person herself, but compared to her memory, she is missing something. (A key difference I will note is that Laura has very little impact on characters when she returns, whereas Harry’s return from the dead seems to cause all of the action to become more intense and frenzied.) The romantic connections in both films seem a little forced. It is never clear exactly how Harry really feels about Anna, how Martins feels about Anna or about how Laura feels about Lydecker or McPherson or how they really feel about her. Even when we are made aware of these connections (if only vaguely) they are not natural and seem out of place. I’m not even sure Martins’ supposed feelings for Anna are necessary to the plot. A lot of time and energy is spent in both films trying to find the bad guy, who is eventually killed.

Another connection I was unaware of is that both of these films are categorized as film noir. A friend of mine mentioned that The Third Man is considered film noir, and I felt so silly that I missed that because now it seems so obvious. In fact, I’d say that The Third Man portrays a film noir film (as described in class and the articles) more clearly than Laura did. I understand why Laura is considered film noir, but it feels like too much work to come to that conclusion. According to “No Place for a Woman,” the woman (femme fatale) is seen as an object by her possessive husband, and she kills him to get herself out of the relationship. However, once Laura discovers that her relationship with Lydecker is controlling and not good for her, she very calmly and quietly tells him she doesn’t want to see him anymore, and Lydecker is the one to become violent. (A little aside: did anyone else notice that Lydecker shot Laura in the face without even taking the time to notice it wasn’t her the first time, but when he tries again he stops and talks to her, giving her an opportunity to stop him that she wouldn’t have had the first time. Any thoughts?)

The article also states that the femme fatale was a symbol that rejected traditional family roles. I wouldn’t say this is true of Laura, because she seemed perfectly open to the idea of marriage, but the emotions that are usually involved with getting married are absent in Laura. This is like more of a rejection of the family values rather than the roles: she is fulfilling her role in society as a woman by getting married, but she doesn’t seem to care much about it either way. When she kisses McPherson, there is no indication she feels anything for him. It was a very bizarre moment when two characters spontaneously kiss and then move on with the story—there were no emotions connected to it, and I had no idea if it would happen until it really did.

It also said that this character would have a strong sexual presence, but Laura’s presence is barely noticeable, sexual or otherwise. Sometimes it feels like the clock or her portrait or the obnoxious lamp had more personality than she did, and sometimes they were even featured more prominently in the shot than Laura herself.

I’ve been thinking about the final shot of the movie, with the smashed clock. I can’t come up with a very satisfying explanation for it, but what I did come up with was that the clock could be a visual representation of the whole affair. One of the first things mentioned in the movie was the clock, and as the secret to the murder it plays an important role in the plot. It was also tangible proof of Lydecker’s presence in Laura’s life. Lydecker’s death brings an end to his interference and the threat on her life, so the ordeal is over. Since the clock is broken, she would get rid of it and no longer have any reminders or the ordeal. The broken clock as the final shot seems like the filmmakers visually saying “The End.”

The Third Man

My first impression of this movie was that the camera angles made me feel like I was watching Dick Tracy. Later I noticed that there was rarely a time when the camera shot the scene without any tilted angles, which added to the feel that everything was somehow wrong or unnatural. I think that the use of shadows also added an air of mystery, especially since one could go from being in light to the shadows fairly easily at almost any point during the film. Almost every aspect of the film had this mystery to it, though I’m not sure how to explain how …it is a mystery after all. The whole feel of how everything came together (the scenery, the shadows, character interaction, and the camera angles too) made it seem like there was something else that was just waiting to come out, and I think this never went away, even after the major conflict is resolved. It felt like a giant question mark was over everything, and it didn’t go away just because one bad guy was killed.

I read Dracula several years ago, but I don’t remember too many details because I found the book very boring. From what I do remember, the article is correct in saying that the similarities between the two stories comes more from “mood and atmosphere” than anything else. When comparing the two stories, it’s easy to spot the similarities that the article points out, but I think it’s important to find the key differences as well. The biggest difference between the two is that Dracula had far more religious symbols and themes, whereas in The Third Man the interest in Harry Lime is mainly legal. I think this is an important difference because religion didn’t have as great a hold on the world as it did when Dracula came out, so a criminal (rather than a demon) would have been a more appropriate evil figure.

That being said, I believe the emotional impact of this movie (specifically Orson Wells’ role) would have been greater for its original audience. I think they would have viewed life and death differently in the post-war era. However charming harry Lime may have been, his comment about people being meaningless dots and his disregard for human life would have struck a different chord with them and given them more reason to label him as evil.

It was confusing for me to form an opinion of Harry because the person himself didn’t seem to match the evil we’re told about. When I asked myself whether I like him or hate him as a character, the answer to both questions was no—I didn’t want him to succeed or to fail. I found this confusion very distracting, and I think that because of it, any ending to the movie would have been somehow unsatisfying.

My two favorite parts of this movie were when Martins and Anna were being chased by a toddler who seemed to lead the angry mob (although I can’t find the significance of using a child), and the chase scene through the tunnels. The chase was an amazing scene visually because there were all kinds of light tricks: shadows, reflections off the water and the walls, dark puddles against lighter floors, and the flashlights made the light and dark almost move. I loved it.

Citizen Kane

The camera work in this film seemed very obvious but subtle at the same time. A lot of this is because I watch movies so often that the camera trick don’t catch my attention really. Things like the camera angles to make Kane look much bigger and the reflections off shiny things (puddle, desk, etc.) seemed obvious, but the subtlety seemed more to be the purpose of these tricks. I understand why it helps to make Kane such an imposing character, but the reflections and moments when characters looked into the camera, though easy to spot don’t have an obvious purpose to me.

We were asked to look specifically at how deep focus was used, but honestly I didn’t notice it while I was watching the film. What I did notice was that I would spot little details in the background, then wait until they somehow became important. I’m so used to things I notice in the background being important details, usually because the filmmakers intended me to see it. In this film I noticed everything and none of it was relevant, which I found extremely annoying (especially since I completely forgot about the one tiny detail that did become important—the sled). Symbolically, I imagine this is important because every man’s life is full of tiny details and there’s no way to know what holds the most value.

The article said “the ‘message’ of the film, beyond being the mystery of Kane the character, is the mystery of reality or of life itself.” I would say this is an accurate way to sum up the film, but of course not the only way. We (as a society) usually approach the death of important figures in the same way—by trying to understand them by ferreting out all their secrets. With Kane, there were lots of unanswered questions and we never really got a true sense of the man except for how he was viewed by others. Arguably this is the truest way to know him because we aren’t influenced by his own biases, but we miss out on who he really was without his own input to his life story. Kane, and by extension any other person, remains in a shroud of mystery because there is no way of knowing the whole story, which is probably why the movie left me feeling unsatisfied. If audiences are able to recognize that you can’t understand a man (in this case Kane) through regular research, they would take the lesson and apply it to real life, making the mystery of Kane the mystery of life. Kane as an individual is largely irrelevant because he could really be anybody.

Something I still don’t understand is why there was someone screaming or laughing outside when Kane slapped Susan in the tent? I’m not sure how it was significant or even how it affected that single moment.

Warning

I should probably warn you all now that I have an unfortunate tendency to confuse people. I don't do it on purpose, and I usually don't realize when I'm not making sense, so just ask me to say something in a different way if you're confused.