Sequoia Sempervirens of "Vertigo"

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't watched Vertigo already, do not read on.

In Vertigo, Scottie and Madeleine escape up to Muir Woods to look at the redwood trees together. The sequence is powerful not just because of the beauty of the redwoods, but because of the overpowering nature of them. Scottie and Madeleine, who is really Judy, are reduced as figures into small mammals in comparison to the sequoias. Madeleine projects her fear of death and the unknown. Scottie tries to comfort her and get her to open up, but gets pulled further into Madeleine’s lies. The feeling is of despair and hopelessness for the two characters; though they are together now, there are forces suggested ripping them apart. Those forces are the implied; through a ghost story told by Gavin and Madeleine Elster that Scottie begins to believe, and the truth that Gavin Elster has hired a doppleganger to be his wife and mislead Scottie as part of his plan to kill his wife. This sequence conveys the treachery of Scottie’s friend Gavin setting him up, Judy impersonating Madeleine to mislead him, and at the same time the supernatural happening which is all part of the set up.

Hitchcock’s use of mise-en-scene projects this sense of disparity and hopelessness in the forest sequence. The trees are huge and majestic, overpowering the image of the screen. Andre Bazin illustrates the idea of image when he said, “By image I here mean, very broadly speaking, everything that the representation on the screen adds to the object there represented.” Madeleine and Scottie are viewed in the corner as tiny figures in the screen. The dichotomy of the characters and the trees make the scene sinister. There is light in the front ground of the shot where the car is, however, in the corner of the shot Scottie and Madeleine are walking into it is darkened by the shade of the trees. The viewer in this shot is suddenly transported with the fade from a comfortable sea road to a menacing land, where we feel foreboding danger lies in waiting for us. In the next shot we have a similar placement when we see the two standing next to a large singular sequoia. Scottie and Madeleine talk about the tree, and Scottie tells her it is “two thousand years or so.” The tree’s given age, combined with the juxtaposition of the wide shot, gives us a menacing view of a giant domineering sequoia tree enveloping them. Madeleine talks about how many people must have lived and died in the tree’s lifetime, furthering the ominous feeling set in the woods. However, the film is now building up to the idea that as old as these trees are so is Madeleine’s “soul.” In the film this will propel Scottie to believe Madeleine, allowing him to become a rube in Elster’s plot.

Madeleine and Scottie are dominated by the giant sequoias. Scottie blends in, while Madeleine's coat makes her stand out.

Mortality becomes an issue in this scene.The lifespan of the trees, as Madeleine points out, shadows the life and death over several individuals during that point and time. She states that she does not like the trees, because it puts her into the frame of mind of “knowing she has to die.” The trees become a symbol of life and death; both Madeleine’s “former” life and a foreshadowing of her future death, as Madeleine Elster and then as Judy Barton. Madeleine talks about the future as if it were hopeless, and we feel as though it were hopeless because we remember Madeleine’s past “life,” and the tragic death there. This scene, as well as several others in the movie, have a sense of foreboding and disparity about them.

The forest is presented as being very dark. Light has trouble getting through the trees, the trees and the floor being covered by deep shadows. Scottie and Madeleine themselves are lit in such a way that you would almost think that they were indoors, not outside. Madeleine wears a white coat through the sequence so she stands out in the shadows; whereas Scottie is wearing a dark suit and blends in with the shadows in shots as he walks in arm with her. They are shot with soft romantic lighting, with Madeleine practically glowing. It is believable lighting within the redwood forest, and draws us into the scene. The romantic glow on her face as Scottie questions her, probing about her “past” life, as she tries to deflect the answers, makes us begin to believe her lies, just as Scottie begins to believe them as well. The two of them are in the literal and metaphoric dark as Gavin Elster, the real Madeleine’s spouse, makes his plans to kill Madeleine. The two are pawns in his plans, and Scottie is in the dark.

In the end of the sequence they leave the redwood forest. Scottie asks Madeleine where she would like to go, and she responds, “Somewhere in the light.” With that they exit the forest and go back to the beach, where they find light. Then Madeleine leads Scottie back into the darkness by answering his questions with more lies. The forest is the set up, and this is the punchline. Madeleine is then capable of telling Scottie about the deal with the grave in Spain. She questions her sanity and states that she isn’t mad, but gives into the delusional idea that her past life is haunting her. This allows Scottie to kiss her, signing his fate, as he falls in love with her. Hitchcock makes use of rear projection in this sequence by timing their kiss with the splash of an ocean wave. The two events happening at the same time make it all the more dramatic, and it seems to be destiny for the two to kiss. The whole sequence is about the disparity of Madeleine and Scottie falling for it. We believe him because the woods become a dark tunnel that they are passing through together, after which Scottie is able to “rescue” her and bring her into the light. 

Hitchcock is considered an auteur director, as well as a genre director at times. This means that there are repetitive motifs, themes, and ideologies in his films that reflect who he is and what he thinks. Robin Wood wrote, “It is only through the medium of the individual that ideological tensions come into particular focus, hence become of aesthetic as well as sociological interest.” Robin Wood explains that the suspense of his Hitchcock’s films, “his ‘suspense’ always carries a sexual charge in ways sometimes obvious, sometimes esoteric....[S]exual relationships in his work are inevitably based on power, the obsession with power and dread of impotence being as central to his method as to his thematic.”

 Hitchcock uses the obsession with power and sexual relationships in Vertigo as well, slowly developing Madeleine and Scottie’s relationship. 

Many of Hitchcock’s films have male protagonists that stare obsessively at their female counterparts, such as in Rear Window and Marnie. Vertigo has an obsessive protagonist as well. Scottie becomes a voyeur, a spectator, watching Madeleine. Laura Mulvey wrote that, “Scottie’s voyeurism is blatant: he falls in love with a woman he follows and spies on without speaking to.” In the redwoods sequence it is much the same as well. He watches her, never tells her anything but only asks her questions. Mulvey says that Scottie’s “erotic drive is to break down and force her to tell by persistent cross questioning.” That is exactly what Scottie does here in this scene; he watches Madeleine, never telling her much about himself, instead only interacting with her by interrogating her like a police officer, digging deeper into Madeleine’s hesitant stories, which makes her more believable.

The scene in the redwoods gives way to the feeling of despair about the doomed relationship between Scottie and Madeleine. As they walk through the forest, discussing Madeleine’s thoughts, we are aware of both the words she says and doesn’t say. The tragic nature of their relationship is given a feeling of predetermined doom, that life will outweigh them. Hitchcock’s use of mise-en-scene presents the redwoods as giants bearing over Scottie and Madeleine, suggesting in the long run they are insignificant, which they are, even in their own lives, being pawns in Elster’s plans. The lighting is dark and bleak in the forest, with most of the trees covered in shadows, the light hidden from them. Scottie, as well as the audience, begins to believe Madeline's deception and thinks she is being drawn in by a past life, while at the same time the atmosphere doesn’t betray the reality of Judy and Elster’s lies to Scottie. 

General Impressions from "Cabaret"

I was afraid the decadence and hedonism that I knew would be portrayed in Cabaret would be too much for me, however it was not. The film is PG and is relatively tame. The emcee I would imagine is too much for people, and there is an open tolerance of sexuality talked about with many people that more conservative persons will not enjoy. Historically the depiction of sexuality is accurate in the film. Despite what many people want to believe, all of these controversial bits we talk about today were still around then. Yet, it is not so much the elements of the sexuality that struck me but the technique.

Editing in the film was startling and moved the scenes quickly. We watch Brian Roberts yell at a Nazi soldier, and then kicked down a Nazi flag. Before we can witness the fight there is a straight cut to Roberts in bed with a broken arm and a black eye. The fight is implied, we have the set up, and the resolution, but not the actual event, it is created in our minds from the clues given. Films today rely too much on violence, and spectacle. When in fact they are incredibly unnecessary for story telling purposes, only there to provide bloodlust and dazzle us. Cabaret is all too aware that it detracts from the story, and moves it right along. There are only ever jump cuts throughout the film, no fades, or any other kind of transitions. The cuts add to the immediacy of the growing Nazi threat that is ever so present throughout the film by making us uneasy. It also challenges us as viewers to invest ourselves more into Cabaret because we would suddenly be in another scene without any indication of time or space passing, and we have to be more involved in the film to figure it out.

There was much I wanted to write about the theme of Cabaret, but after several tries to write I felt I could not do it justice without dedicating more time than I originally wanted.

General Impressions While Watching In Time.

This are general thoughts and feeling upon watching In Time. I fear that I run short here, but there is a thing as too much.

In Time, directed by Andrew Niccol, features Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried as a pair that harkens back to the Bonnie and Clyde style duo, with shades of Robin Hood. In the film time to live is handed out to people like paychecks after they turn 25, and they never age after that point. Timberlake’s character, Will Salas, is from the lower class ghettos; and is mysteriously given over a hundred years worth by Henry Hamilton before he kills himself. Hamilton, played by USA’s White Collars star Matt Bomer, gives an existential crisis that challenges the immortal upper class: no one should live forever, because what does your life matter if you don’t die. (He never says it in those direct words, but that is how I took it.) Salas then breaks into the upper class part of the city, where he meets Amanda Seyfried’s character Sylvia Weis. Together they become a Bonnie and Clyde/Robin Hood-esque duo, robbing banks for years and handing them out to the poor.

Time is measured on the arms of individuals,
like a quasi bioengineered watch.When it hits zero, you die.

Not to many films are “pure” genre films, meaning that they adhere to the rules and formulas of any one specific film. There are bits and pieces of film noir, science fiction, and caper/heist films in here. It moves slow like a film noir, never using the fast cuts that we see in most modern action films today. More importantly, in my humble opinion, there are moments the camera lingers on characters as the let an emotion settle in them, or they think. It doesn’t linger on the characters thinking in a Douglas Sirk film, it still is slower than most films, (Michael Bay,) and does mean it is more intelligent than most films, (again Michael Bay.) Many people have complained about this film being too slowThe original point of the creation of fast editing and montage was to insure the audience would not think, but allow the film to think for them,(any commercial and again, thank you, Michael Bay.) I think that intellectuals in the meantime are put off by the parrelels it may have with Bonnie and Clyde, but this is forgiveable. Films, especially American films, reuse familiar film Genre formats when presenting outlandish and abstract ideas that people may reject. If you do not believe me watch Oceans 11 and then Inception, and tell me there are no parallels between the two films. I found that the pacing of the movie, its beats, and its twists kept me into the story and entertained.

As Bonnie and Clyde meets Robin Hood, robbing the rich,
distributing to the poor.

This film draws several parallels with the real world. The first and most obvious in American culture is the concept of health care. With publicity about the American health care system by the media, example Sicko by Michael Moore, and Obama’s failing fight for a universal healthcare many people will watch the film and think that it is exactly like that. In many ways it is. It is more about the distribution of wealth, not just in the U.S., but there is also the implication of a world wide phenomenon, (the ending hints playfully at the idea of there always being a bigger fish.) We have witnessed the 99 percent riots, and the movie hints at a similar goal. 

Seyfried and her father belong to In Time’s 1 percent population. Those that live there move slowly, compared to those that live in the slums. In the slums you have to rush or else your clock might run out and you will die. The 1 percent are leisurely in their pursuits, and don’t take any risks because the only way that they can ever die is “with a bullet.” Seyfried’s characters father quotes Social Darwinism, wherein only the strong survive, as his justification for his life style. He even says that for him to be immortal, many people have to die. I know that there are those in the audience that will watch this and think he maybe over the top as a villain, but any educated person, or any person who has listened to similar people know that these are direct lines from this world.

The movie never hints at socialism, but compassion, I believe. This maybe a misreading by me because I want to believe in the Capitalist system despite its inherent flaws because I enjoy the liberties attained to me by the American system as opposed to the restrictions by the Socialist system. Timberlake and Seyfried’s characters are generous with their time, even if it means running their clocks down to a point it may risk their lives. If everyone in a Capitalist system was generous there would be no Occupy Movements, there would be no need. However, we do have Occupy because there is corruption. Social Darwinism has nothing to do with Darwin directly, or with science, but business leaders misreading of Darwin in the early turn of the century 1900’s. I’m not suggesting that every CEO or banker is like this either, but in fact I have heard many interesting discussions with some that explain it is not truly them but the main thing we are all worried about: the system broken.

If you think I am contradicting myself, I can understand your thinking. I must explain myself here a little bit. I took a Humanities class last semester, and my Professor explained that no system works properly. A socialist system, as history has witnessed, is just as corrupt as a capitalist system. It is better for us to work inside the system and try to change it, and have “compassion” as we work in it. However in the movie it never goes in this direction. Cillian Murphy plays Raymond Leon, a police detective who came from the slums, worked his way up, and now fights for the system. Timberlake and Seyfried continue to fight outside the system, tearing it down slowly. This model of change could not work in our world, because the system in our world is even bigger than the one in In Time, and therefore even more police forces. Perhaps this is Andrew Niccol working in the system for change, he made the movie with the system to get people talking and thinking. This is something I will have to research in the future, perhaps, as to his thoughts on his film.

There are many more things that can be said, and should be said about this movie. I will close with these last thoughts: it was amazing this movie was made. It isn’t subtle in who it is attacking, big businesses/banks, who are funders of big movies like this. It almost doesn’t surprise me that it didn’t get more press, and was not a success. However, with the Occupy movement this movie capture the zeitgeist perfectly, so why was it not a bigger success through grassroots? I believe that this movie though it was not a success, like many great movies such as Citizen Kane, will appreciate in time.

Film Noir: the Genre that Wasn’t a Genre

Because it is not a set genre, as Science Fiction, people disagree as to what is and is not Noir. Schrader writes, “Almost every critic has his or her own definitions of film noir, along with a personal list of film titles and dates to back it up. A film of urban nightlife is not necessarily a film noir, and a film noir need not necessarily concern crime and corruption.”

 Keeping this in mind how do we determine what is a film noir? By its style, its content, and the mood it presents we determine whether it is “Film Noir.” Noir has its own style, that harkens back to German expressionism, and it uses it to convey its mood. The mood of Noir is caused by the events of the time.

To understand film noir, we have to understand and interpret the mood of the time. World War II was ending, and soldiers were coming home. Many of them came home to the jobs, positions, and other posts of life to find their worlds upside down. Women had taken over in many aspects of society. Traditionally men were the bread winners, but with them fighting the war, now women stepped in. Women gained independence they did not have before. The change of gender roles created a threat to the masculinity for many men returning home. Many of those same men had faced tough situations that conflicted with their moral senses. The redefining of morality and the world led into existentialism. Robert G. Porfirio writes “Existentialism is an outlook which begins with a disoriented individual facing a confuse world that he cannot accept. It places its emphasis on man’s contingency in a world where there are no transcendental values or moral absolutes, a world devoid of any meaning but the one man himself creates.”

 The change of the world created an existential outlook for many of those returning from the War.

The confused existential outlook reflects itself into film noir. In Double Indemnity we witness Keyes moral confusion when he realizes that his best friend, Neff, has taken him for a ride. Again in The Third Man, Lime has taken his best friend Martins for a ride. These men are faced with the fact that their friends have betrayed their moral centers and therefore Keyes and Martins must decide wether they should betray their moral code of friendship, or their general sense of morality. The black and white world ends here and ethical decision making becomes grey. Schrader writes about the hard-boiled detective novels that Film Noir has its roots in, “The hard boiled writers had their roots in pulp fiction or journalism, and their protagonists lived out a narcissistic, defeatist code. The hard boiled hero was, in reality, a soft egg compared to his existential counterpart...”

The portrayal of women in Film Noir, as femme fatales, represent a threat to masculinity. They are powerful dominant women. Sometimes they act as catalysts for murder, Double Indemnity, try to frame the protagonist, The Long Goodbye, or use him to get to their objective, The Maltese Falcon. Gaylan Studlar writes, “the protagonist’s meeting of a woman governs his direction and his doom, a situation that would be repeated, with variations, throughout much of film noir in Hollywood’s postwar years.” The Femme Fatale is mysterious and dangerous. She is seldom presented as a fully fleshed out character. In This Gun for Hire, the hit man Phillip Raven is given a fully thought back story which he tells. Not too many Film Noir’s give this for women. Richard Dyer rights, “...woman in film noir are above all us unknowable. It is not so much their evil as their unknowability (and attractiveness) that makes them fatal for the hero.To the degree that culture is defined my men, what is, and is known, is male. Film noir thus starkly divides the world into that which is unknown and unknowable (female) and, again by inference only, that which is known (male).”

 Woman in Noir become the unknown, the grey space, defying ethics. Phyllis Dietrichson best portrays this in Double Indemnity, her personality which allows her to kill is never fully explained. She lives in the shadows, literally and metaphorically, hidden from Neff. It should be noted that not every film noir has a femme fatale. This Gun For Hire has a positive female force which makes the killer Raven reconsider his methods and actions. Just as not every noir needs a femme fatale not every noir needs to adhere to the rules of noir. 

Noir has a greater cinematic presence than other film genres do to the restrictions presented on it at the time. James Naremore writes in “More than Night: Notes About Film Noir” of the limitations that filmmakers were allowed to show. The HUAC was suppressing political commentary by the left wing filmmakers. The Production Code Administration, Will Hays, and the MPPDA would not allow filmmakers to show gruesome violence, or sexual matter. Such impositions only helped the creative process of the filmmakers, wherein they continued to put in subject matter but in a more stylistic fashion. Double Indemnity, for example, uses a fade to imply sexual intercourse, whereas the book had a sense of urgency. Yet the implication is still there, the same effect is used in the Maltese Falcon as well. “Hollywood in the 1940s always depicted sexual intercourse through symbolism and ellipsis,” writes Naremore, “Scenes such as these remind us of what Christian Metz calls the “peculiarity” of censorship, which always allows things to pass around it.... The censor...seldom leaves a blank spot or an X across a scene. “You can see the censor,” Metz remarks, much as you can see the workings of a secondary revision in dreams; usually it manifests itself as a slight incoherence or displacement...and from the point of aesthetics, it sometimes has salutary results.” He continues to talk about how censorship restrictions upon films often give it a “confusing and dreamlike” quality in many pictures. This does not just apply to sex, but depictions of sexuality, violence, and other offbeat elements of the stories censors did not like.

The style of Noir comes from the camera. Dutch angles, long shots, low-key lighting, foggy sequences, long shadows, neon lights in a night time environment, and wet streets reflecting city lights are all some of the key elements of Noir. Compositions play heavy into Film Noir. Schrader writes, “Compositional tension is preferred to physical action. A typical film noir would rather move the scene cinematographically around the actor than have the actor control the scene by physical action.” Often characters are framed so that the city seems to be bearing over them, as if it will crush them very soon. A similar ominous effect is created by filming actors low angling up so that the ceiling dominates over them. Frames within the film frame were often employed to give a fatalistic feel toward a certain character. Such as the bars that fall over Brigid O’Shaughnessy at the end of the Maltese Falcon, to represent the prison where she is sent to. There are too many film noir stylistic motifs to talk about here, but it is important to note them to understand how it ties back into the heart of Noir, its bleak existential outlook. Even when Noir has a happy ending, such as Sam Spade solving the murders in the Maltese Falcon, it is still bleak because his partner is still dead, and the woman he fell in love with is going to prison because he sent her there.

The period of time in which Noir existed was a turbulent time, marked by the war and its end. Returning soldiers were trying to understand the world that they had stepped into, having an existential crisis. Like other art film drew from the world around it at the time it existed. The filmmakers often depicted very dark material, darker than what many censors would allow them to depict literally, so instead they depicted elements artistically on the screen. Noir style is very important to understand it as a genre. However, as it has been shown here, it is important to understand the social and philosophic reasoning for using the style. Merely looking unique or splendid for artistic sake would not be enough to make it a wonderful film style.

Bibliography:

Dyer, Richard. “Resistance Through Charisma: Rita Hayworth and Gilda.” Women in Film Noir. Ed. Kaplan, Ann.

Naremore, James. More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts. University of California PRess, Berkeley and Los Angeles. 2008. Ebook edition.

Martin, Angela. “Gilda Didn’t Do Any of Those Things You’ve Been Losing Sleep Over!’: The Central Women of 40s Films Noir” Women in Film Noir. Ed. Kaplan, Ann.

Porfirio, Robert G. "No Way Out: Existential Motifs in the Film Noir" Film Noir Reader. Ed. Silver, Alain and Ursini, James. 8th ed. New York: Limelight Editions, 2006.

Schrader, Paul. "Notes on Film Noir." Film Theory and Criticism. Ed. Braudy, Leo and Cohen, Marshall. 7th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Studlar, Gaylyn. "Double Indemnity" Film Analysis: A Norton Reader. Ed. Geiger, Jeffrey and Rutsky, R.L. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2005.

Control in Gamespace

McKenzie Wark wrote the book Gamespace, drawing parallels between our reality and the beloved video games of our society. In it he drew many life comparisons, about the fomulation of our "gamespace" and ourselves, and the need for video games. Video games, he feels, are necessary because they give us options where movies do not, but unlike reality conform to fairness toward the rules. However, as video games have become more complex and advanced they become more chaotic like this world.


Yet this world is a game. As we play video games and develop theories on how to overcome the obstacles--gamer theory--we also develop theories on how to overcome obstacles in everyday life--gamespace. Gamespace is the world in which we live in. As we continue to develop theories for gamespace, the gamespace changes. McKenzie Wark argues that games like “The Sims” are so popular because this world does not follow the rules it gives. McKenzie writes in Gamer Theory, “If it is a choice between ‘The Sims’ as a real game and gamespace as a game of the real, the gamer chooses to stay in The Cave and play games. The contradiction is that for there to be a game which is fair and rational there must be a gamespace which is neither.”(49) In “The Sims” the player follows the rules given to get to achieve career goals they wish to succeed in. However, in the real world many of us have followed the rules only to get passed over. When I was in Retail Management I followed all the rules to move up the ladder, however, because of office politics that were beyond my reach, another person was given a promotion that was meant for me. This is the gamespace that we live in, a place that contains shifting rules, which do not always result in predictable success.

So what then allows for success in society? Wark writes, “Here is the guiding principle of a future utopia, now long past: ‘To each according to his needs; from each according to his abilities.’ In gamespace, what do we have? An atopia, a placeless, senseless realm where quite a different maxim rules: ‘From each according to their abilities--to each a rank and score.’ Needs no longer enter into it. Not even desire matters.”(21) As if we were in a game, our abilities best determine who we are in society. Our everyday life is like a game; we are driven to compete and succeed, to win against all others. “Gamespace wants us to believe we are all nothing but gamers now, competing not against enemies of class or faith or nation but only against other gamers.”(24)

Those who have control over the gamespace wish to keep control; they are the military-entertainment complex. Like a video game, gamespace and its inherent rules can grow stale and boring. Wark states “Boredom becomes pervasive, uncontainable--a real threat.” Wark continues that the military-entertainment complex displaces the boredom of one game into another, always striving to keeping players entertained. “Boredom with any particular game is always displaced onto another game, before it calls into question the imperfections of gamespace as a poor excuse for how one could live and labor among these richly productive and seductive lines.”(173) The enemy of the game is boredom because it recalls for gamers the fact that “the most deluded of gamers can eventually realize that their strivings have no purpose, that all they have achieved is a hollow trophy, the delusion of value, a meaningless rank built on an arbitrary number.”(166) Wark wrote this examining gamers and games, but in gamespace this can be applied as well. The accumulation of products, goods, money, and land all amount to a hollow trophy. Society has to change the rules of gamespace, the same rules that frustrate us and passed me over for a promotion, otherwise the players may leave or try to change the gamespace.


http://www.amazon.com/Gamer-Theory-McKenzie-Wark/dp/0674025199/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331713647&sr=8-1

Societal Backlash against the Images of the Spectacle Society

This was written in December during the beginning of the 99% protests but thought I would publish it now with no good reasoning.

Many Americans among the group that is currently being called “the 99%”--the group behind the widespread “Occupy” activities--have grown tired of not having power over their own lives. The Watts Riot in 1965 was similar to today’s Occupy movement in causation, but different in execution. Debord writes in the Decline and Fall of the Spectale-Commodity Economy, ““The Watts riot was not a racial conflict: the rioters left alone the whites who were in their path, attacking only the white policemen, while on the other hand black solidarity did not extend to black store-owners or even to black car-drivers.” Class separation has long been ignored in America, and class of wealth has now become a spectacle of its own. Those of us in the 99% are given to view the lifestyle of those in the 1% as a commodity, something to aspire to, something to aquire. However the lifestyle of the 1%--and the power that it represents--remains a spectacle for the 99%. The Watts riot and the 99% movement are both about tearing down the separation brought on by viewing the spectacle of the 1% class.

The Watts Riot was a backlash against the spectacle created by capitalism. The blacks in the riot had become frustrated with a system that would not help them, but flaunted, in a spectacular fashion, commodities in front of their eyes. They looted the 1%, taking items from stores. Debord again writes, “The Los Angeles blacks take modern capitalist propaganda, its publicity of abundance, literally. They want to possess now all the objects shown and abstractly accessible, because they want to use them. In this way they are challenging their exchange-value, the commodity reality which molds them and marshals them to its own ends, and which has preselected everything.” After being taunted to want commodities, they wanted to tear down the walls of spectacle and take what they wanted. 

Spectacle creates a schism for society. We experience life without having personal experiences. In an advertisement, we watch people use a vacuum cleaner, and they tell us how great it is; vicariously we understand how smooth and quiet it runs. Yet we have never used the vacuum. Debord writes in the Society of the Spectacle, “Separation is itself an integral part of the unity of this world, of a global social practice split into reality and image.”(3) The combination of separation and spectacle exists not only with commodities, but in all aspects of life. Government becomes a spectacle wherein many people feel that they can witness political events, but that they have no direct effect on them or their world. Tension builds and mounts until people have had enough and riot, or create movements.

The events of the Watts riot raised questions. Looters would take stolen fridges to homes without power. This is an example of the overwhelming desire for commodities. Debord continues in the Decline and Fall of the Spectale-Commodity Economy, “Once it is no longer bought, the commodity lies open to criticism and alteration, whatever particular form it may take. Only when it is paid for with money is it respected as an admirable fetish, as a symbol of status within the world of survival.” What is forgotten by the general population is that the images in advertisements and other forms of propaganda spectacle are nothing. As Debord says in the Society of the Spectacle, “The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.” What is an image but printed ink, or light reflected from a screen. We give meaning to the images; the images have no thought or real power but what society gives them. Steven Shaviro comments on Andy Warhol’s view of images, “Images are nothing like objects. When things retreat into their images, the way they do on TV, they lose their solidity, their palpability, their presence. Images have a weightlessness that is both mysterious and soothing. They haunt us, like ghosts; they empty out space, the better to flicker interminably in the void. Images are premised upon a visibility so extreme that it relegates the world to a state of almost transparency.”

We allow the spectacle of society to control and run our lives. However, it is not real, it has no true power. Yet our relations with those images give them power: power to separate our society into classes, power to make us desire commodities that have no use. They, in the end, are nothing. However, we want them to be something, and that is why they have power.

Sources:

¹ Debord, Guy. The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy,The Situationist International Anthology, 2006; http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/10.Watts.htm

² Shapiro, Steven, 16 Andy Warhol, Doom Patrols, 2007, http://www.dhalgren.com/Doom/ch16.html

When Harry Met Holly: Existential Crisis Portrayed in The Third Man

Existentialism is one of the philosophies of choice for Film Noir, and The Third Man presents us with an existential crisis. The Third Man, written by Graham Greene, is a Noir world that exists in what critics term “Greeneland.” James Naremore describes Greeneland as “a world of dingy rooming houses, canned fish, drooping aspidistras, and doomed characters.” This is the world that Holly Martins lives. Martins is of the Noir world, an alienated “Hemingway hero.” American in a British-occupied Vienna. He arrives to find out that his friend, Harry Lime, whom he has come to visit at Lime’s request has died. Martins investigates foul play against Lime, and discovers that his friend is not who he thought him to be. Martins becomes confused in a world where not only he, but we the audience, do not speak the native tongue. His previous beliefs of right and wrong, good and evil, are challenged. Martins eventually must reconcile his beliefs and act on his beliefs to be authentic with himself. The Third Man shows us, using the film language attributed towards Film Noir, the existential struggle that Martins must go through as he learns the true nature and identity of his best friend.

Martins tries to understand his world but he is constantly befuddled as he gains new revelations. He is not cool like Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon; instead he is a schmuck in way over his head. Martins is not clever, either; for most of the first half of the film he believes that the police have murdered his friend Harry Lime. In most Noir films it would be typical for the police to be bungling, incompetent, or even the killers. However, the character Colonel Calloway is competent and presents Martins with empirical evidence that it is Lime who is immoral. With this, Martins begins to believe that things were not as he perceived them. Martins gets drunk repeatedly throughout the film, and his testimony is not taken credibly by others because of it. Robert G. Porfirio writes, “The Hemingway hero is a person ‘to whom something has been done’; that most central to this hero is the loss, and an awareness of it.” What Martins has lost is his friend, first in a literal way, and then in a spiritual way. As much of a schmuck as Martins is, he means well, and has a good heart. He is a moral person who stands by his friends. Morality is at the center of the conflict in The Third Man. Martins wants to help his friend Harry Lime, spending the first half of the film searching for Lime’s killer. We are given an interesting backdrop in the dog-eat-dog landscape of post war Vienna. The moral crime in the film is the existence of a black market for medicine. Martins is shown that Lime is watering down penicillin to steal the rest and sell on the black market. It is a blow to Martins, because his friend Lime is not just rebelling against authority, like they did in their youth, Lime has become a killer.

Halfway through The Third Man, Martins stumbles tipsy out of Anna’s flat and into the street. He sees Lime in a doorway, and is shocked by the revelation that his friend is still alive. Not just alive, but hiding from Martins as well as the police. Everything terrible that Martins found out that Lime had done, he is still doing. It is an existential blow to Martins, because now he has to determine the fate of his friendship, and eventually the fate of his friend who is draped in shadows.

Shadows play an important part in revealing that Lime is still alive. We are set up for the revelatory scene while Martins is in Anna’s apartment saying goodbye to her. Martins moves away from a flower box in the window and the camera pans through the flowers to give us a shot below of the street. We see the dark figure of a man in the street looking up at Anna’s apartment, but we cannot see his face. He moves back into a doorway and into the shadows. Then a cat comes over to him and plays with his shoes. After Martins is finished talking with Anna, he goes back into the streets. Martins would have walked right past Lime, who is hidden in a darkened doorway, but the cat meows, drawing attention to him. Martins looks at the doorway, which is shown with canted angles. At first Martins heckles the man from behind a wall, but then walks over to a ledge, leaning his back against its wall. All Martins can see is Lime’s shoes. Then we hear an angry local woman, and she turns the light on. The light the old woman turns on would not be as bright as the one shown on Lime’s face; its artificial, giving a dramatic introduction to Lime. With the light on Lime there are shadows of shadows of window panes behind him. These become symbolic bars for Lime, because he is a wanted man, and upon arrest would go to jail. We are shown a canted angle shot up of Martins’ reaction to the news his friend is alive. Martins’ world is again twisted and skewed. As the emotion of the reunion sets in, the camera pans into Lime’s face for a close up. Lime is grinning proudly like a friend who just pulled a gag on his best mate.

Then the light goes off and Lime disappears into the shadows again. Martins runs toward him, but a random car driving by delays him and gives Lime a chance to escape.

The shadowy doorway is empty when Martins gets there, but he hears loud footsteps and chases after Lime.

Martins does not see Lime’s face again in this sequence but see’s Lime’s shadow after he turns a corner. Lime’s large shadow is on the wall running away from him. Janey Place and Lowell Peterson write, “Claustrophobic framing devices such as doors, windows, stairways, metal bed frames, or simply shadows separate the character from other characters from his world, or from his own emotions.” The shadow is used tremendously in The Third Man. It is used to portray mystery as seen in this scene. It is an element of thrills when Lime is chased through the sewers by the police with their shadows looming around every turn. Martins’ Austria becomes a world of literal shadows. Within the context of this scene, the shadow literally keeps the mystery of Lime’s identity from Martins, like a blank sheet pulled over him. Then after Lime takes off, neither his face nor even his back are seen; instead we just see his shadow from around a corner. Martins is disconnected by his emotions and a lack of knowledge. Lime and Martins have become separated here by secrets, ethics, and shadows.

Director Carol Reed uses dutch angles on and off throughout the film. It becomes even more uneasy to have a shot with a dutch angle, followed by a cut back to Martins with a normal angle, and then to cut away and back once more with another dutch angle. Martins is shown dutch against the wall, and then again not dutch. After he moves across the street he is dutch again. It is as though Reed doesn’t want us to become familiar with one or the other, but always keeps us on our toes. The use of dutch angles follows Martins’ confusion and frustration in many other scenes as well. The more confident that Martins is in confronting Lime’s killer, he is shown in normal shots; then as Martins’ shock of Lime’s being alive hits him, the dutch angles return. It is an uneasy world for Martins, and for the viewer.

This scene in the film shows Martins in an existential crisis. “Existentialism,” writes Porfirio,” is an outlook which begins with a disoriented individual facing a confused world that he cannot accept.” Martins has been told his friend was killed, and now he faces a dead man, no longer dead—his best friend who has indirectly killed many people. Porfirio continues, “It places its emphasis on man’s contingency in a world where there are no transcendental values or moral absolutes, a world devoid of any meaning but the one man himself creates.” Martins has been confronted by the police for their help, which conflicts with his relationship with Lime. Only Martins can decide what he can do. This scene is about choice, for Martins to decide if he should live an “authentic” or an “inauthentic” life. Inauthentic is to reject values of oneself. Whereas an authentic life is to “discover the ability to create one’s own values; in so doing each individual assumes responsibility for his life through the act of choosing between two alternatives.” Choice comes later in the film, but should be noted here. The crisis arises at this scene of the film fully for the first time, meaning that Martins must look within himself authenticate his values and decide whom to help.

The revelation of Harry Lime being alive is midpoint in the film. At the beginning of the film, Martins arrived in Vienna to see his friend. Now, in this scene, Martins finally sees and understands his friend. The search for Lime’s killer has changed Martins’ outlook and view of Lime. In this scene, with little dialogue, and none of it from Harry Lime, Reed created a dramatic scene using many of the techniques attributed to film noir. We see the challenge that the crisis pushes Martins into, before he begins to state it in the following scenes with the police and then Anna. Martins loves his friend Lime, but knows he has a greater duty in stopping him to be authentic with himself.

1. Naremore, James. More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts. University of California PRess, Berkeley and Los Angeles. 2008. Ebook edition.
2. Peterson, Lowell and Place, Janey. "Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir." Film Noir Reader. Ed. Silver, Alain and Ursini, James. 8th ed. New York: Limelight Editions, 2006. 84.
3. Peterson, Lowell and Place, Janey. "Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir." Film Noir Reader. Ed. Silver, Alain and Ursini, James. 8th ed. New York: Limelight Editions, 2006. 68
4. Porfirio, Robert G. "No Way Out: Existential Motifs in the Film Noir" Film Noir Reader. Ed. Silver, Alain and Ursini, James. 8th ed. New York: Limelight Editions, 2006. 81
5. Porfirio. 87