Human Values Through Film Design: Chaplin’s Modern Times and The Great Dictator

Charlie Chaplin learned comedy while working in vaudeville, and he went on to make genre comedies like many of his contemporaries. Compared to his peers Chaplin is sentimental in his story telling; he is more expressive, and his tramp character is lovable. As well as being a top-notch comedian and actor, Chaplin also directed the majority of his films. He was intelligent, and he was conscious of human suffering in the world around him. The times were hard for most people, the Great Depression provided troubles for people. He was gifted with an intuitive sense of cinema that let him make personal films, rich in humanity, when most movies were manufactured by a studio system that felt movies were a product and not art. Modern Times and The Great Dictator are two socially conscious films of his that have continued to find appreciative audiences.

Chaplin plays two roles in The Great Dictator, and each character has their own stories. The Dictator, Hynkel plans and plots to take over the neighboring country, and then the world; but he has to face several political and personnel problems that pop up. Meanwhile the Jewish Barber has to fight to survive; because Hynkel puts pressure on the Jews of Tomania, and is harassed by the Stormtroopers. The Barber is able to find love with Hannah, played by Paulette Godard. The end of the film has mistaken identities, caused by the fact that Hynkel and the Barber look so much alike; this was inspired by the fact that Hitler copied Chaplin’s mustache in real life. The ending of The Great Dictator has the Barber addressing a crowd of the dictator’s soldiers, and he gives them, and the whole world, a plea for peace. In this plea Chaplin stops acting as the Barber and speaks as himself; he stops speaking to the Tomanian troops and speaks to the citizens of the world. It is a beautiful and moving piece because Chaplin speaks his mind, and addresses his audience directly which few filmmakers do.

In The Great Dictator, while the Jewish Barber is in the hospital, after the first World War, time passes and the world changes drastically. To let the audience know that the world has changed since the end of the war, Chaplin uses a montage sequence. The screen fades from the Barber and his friend being told the war has been lost to whirling newspaper presses. The presses symbolize the gears and wheels of the world spinning, passing, and changing. Chaplin fades through different printing presses, and we see different shots of machines until a newspaper headline comes at us; “Armistice!” The camera fades into a crowd of happy people in the streets cheering the end of the war. Then the Barber is shown in the hospital, with his head bandaged. We are shown more headlines, many of them contemporary with Chaplin’s timeline, giving the audience a sense of time, “Lindberg flies Atlantic.” This is an attempt to speed the audience up to the present. The headlines show terrible times in the fictitious country of Tomania, which is a metaphor for Germany, and this helps us understand the last headline, “Hynkel Party Takes Power!” It parallels Hitler’s rise to power. The montage then shows us one last shot of the barber walking around so we know that he is in good health and alive, before giving us the film’s first shot of Hynkel. The montage sequence is important to the narrative because it gives the audience a greater sense of the timeline. For Chaplin’s original audience, it provided a brief history of the parallel world that he has created, wherein Hynkel stands in for Hitler. For modern audiences the montage gives them a greater understanding of the timeline, reminding and informing them of past events, letting the audience see the deplorable conditions of Tomania and how a person like Hynkel could rise to power. In less than a minute, several years worth of knowledge is given about the Barber and the conditions of Tomania.

The most beautiful and haunting sequences of The Great Dictator is when Hynkel dances with the globe, tossing it up into the air and gracefully catching it. Chaplin uses many long takes, and avoids cuts unless they are needed for an emotional affect, such as a close up of Hannah during Chaplin’s closing speech. In this sequence Hynkel tosses the globe. Rather than have the camera follow the globe up, the camera cuts to the globe and then follows it down. When you become used to this, the camera follows the globe up and then cuts to Chaplin lying down on the table. While it is not an extreme use of editing as many modern editors would use, it is subtly jarring. Hynkel is a pleasant person, but under the personality he is a violent brute. The quick subtle edits highlights this in Hynkel’s dance; he is dangerous. Finally, at the end of the sequence, he grabs the globe and it bursts, just as the Earth would have if Hynkel or Hitler would have conquered the Earth. In the most moving scene in The Great Dictator Chaplin uses little cuts for a greater emotional appeal. When he gives his speech and plea for humanity, which goes about five minutes, the camera cuts only once. Chaplin just stares straight into the camera for each whole take, breaking the “fourth wall” by looking at the audience. This contrasts with Hynkel’s dance and shows that Chaplin uses editing to highlight emotional aspects of the film.

The Great Dictator has a threatening yet humorous scene wherein Hynkel addresses members of the Jewish Ghetto through a loudspeaker. Chaplin speaks so it sounds like German, but it is just gibberish, and no translation is given. It is not what Hynkel is saying, but how he says it, that is threatening. We are set up in a previous scene where he states that he is going to threaten the Jews. While on the loudspeaker we see the Barber and Hannah reacting. They are on a crowded street when Hynkel’s voice booms in, and in seconds they are the last ones standing; everyone else has disappeared. The walk down the street at an increasing speed, but when Hynkel’s voice becomes more threatening they hide. There is no visible danger here, only the perception of Hynkel’s threat to them. The combination of the set-up, the sound production, and the acting make this sequence both frightening and hilarious.

Modern Times has plenty of plot and action by Chaplin’s design, compared to The Great Dictator the action veers away from the story. It is Godard’s urchin propels the Tramp into the next adventure. They dream of a future, and attempt to help each other. Chaplin tries to support her; declaring he will get her a home even if he has to work for it. It breaks off into events, going away from the story and into the plot; surviving the conditions of a city in 1930. We watch Chaplin working, imprisoned, and Godard as she works in a restaurant. Humor often works when the story and the plot diverge from the story, and perhaps this is why it was such a successful film. The Great Dictator on the other has less non-diegetic material, comparatively; and the action keeps more to the story. Plot developments in The Great Dictator build up to the speech in the end of the film; while not every piece of the plot fits the story it is tighter than Modern Times.

Chaplin had a strong ideology that was very pro-humanity, and he portrayed his views in his films. He gave the films implicit meanings that he consciously thought about for long periods. Modern Times shows how Chaplin felt about the industrial era, and how technological efficiency has dehumanized mankind. When the Tramp is working in the factory tightening bolts, he gets so caught up in the work that he does not notice that he is pulled into the machinery as he tightens the bolts of the machine. His body is contorted through painful-looking gears; he has become a piece of the machine itself.  Chaplin’s plea for humanity to the soldiers, 

“Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes — men who despise you — enslave you — who regiment your lives — tell you what to do — what to think or what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men — machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men!...Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth the future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie! They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people!”

Chaplin rose to fame during the Great Depression, and was conscious of the ruin around him. As Hitler rose to power many people in the United States supported him and his quest against the Jews; which appalled Chaplin. He knew that he could use his film as an overt and subtle weapon against social injustices he perceived.

Chaplin played with the frame rate in many of his films. By using the frame rate of 18 fps, or another speed, he could give the story a greater pacing he felt that he wanted. It allows for Chaplin to move in a manner he could not on his own; the Tramp could then move faster, be more graceful, or be clumsy. The effect works; it is subtle enough for the audience not to notice it. Paulette Godard’s character in Modern Times is introduced by showing her cutting a bushel of bananas and throwing them to children. She is a desperate and hungry street urchin. The frame rate is sped up; so that she is furiously cutting the bananas, which gives her more spirit and voraciousness as she goes at it. If watched her at a normal fps rate it would not create the same effect; the change is needed to make her seem more feisty. Later the Tramp goes swimming and somersaults into less than a foot of water in the lake. The reaction of Chaplin to this event is intensified by the action being sped up. It is only a short gag, but the audience spends more time watching him prepare for the dive than in the actual water. He stretches, and warms up, then dives. Another person would have somersaulted more awkwardly, and it would have only appeared painful, but Chaplin’s choreography combined with the adjusted fps rate makes it humorous to the audience instead of painful. 

Modern Times, while a “silent film,” still made use of recorded sound; such as music, sound effects, and features Charlie Chaplin singing. The sound is postsynchronous, recorded after filming. It is the amalgamation of silent film techniques with prerecorded diegetic sound that makes the film interesting and unique. Whenever people talk to each other we cannot hear them, instead we read their lips or read the title cards. However, whenever a person talks through a machine, whether it is the Henry Ford-like boss, or a news radio announcer, we get to hear a voice. The only time that we get to hear a voice is through a machine. This adds to theme of the movie—the dehumanization of people because of technology and the “advances” of modern times: people have lost their voices, and they have become slaves to the machines they work for. When Chaplin’s boss comes down to see him and talk to him directly he no longer has a voice as he did when he was on the monitor. Everything he says goes unheard, and only the most important dialogue ends up on a title card. The restaurant scene of the film has Charlie Chaplin singing. However, the character loses the lyrics of the song and has to make up the lyrics. Instead of singing in English he sings in gibberish, imitating French. We can even hear the audience members cheering and laughing at his humorous gestures. Combined with Chaplin’s gestures and dancing, it is a humorous scene. Although the song is the first time many people have heard Chaplin’s voice, the scene is still more about the comical movements and gestures that he performs. This could have been Chaplin’s way of trying to defy modern conventions, which made many of his peers go over to talkies. Even in a historical moment, as Chaplin’s voice being heard, it is still about the pantomime and the mimegesis.

Chaplin would often use a deep focus in his films. He came from a theatre background, and would stage action so that he could use a longer shot, rather than a traditional establishing shot followed by close ups. Characters often speak to each other on screen together instead of two close ups intercut. In the shots of Godard’s Gamin with Chaplin’s Tramp, they talk facing each other, with their sides to the audience. Then in the factory scenes he uses a deep focus, giving us a sense of grandeur and depth in the factory. We can watch the great big gears in the background turning, and men wheeling machinery around with as much focus as Chaplin and other workers in the foreground. He was aware of his body as a comedic tool, and wanted to put it entirely in the shot. 

Chaplin uses suspense as a comedic tool in both films by dangling his characters over danger while neither character is aware of it. In Modern Times Chaplin’s Tramp is rollerskating around a multi-level department store to impress his girlfriend; and while doing so comes close to death by approaching an open ledge. It would be an impressive feat of bravery, but the tramp is blindfolded, and he inches closer to the ledge with each pass. The audience fears for the Tramp, but he is unaware that he is in danger of getting hurt while showing off. The comedy kicks in when his girlfriend, Hannah, warns him and he takes the blind fold off. Now he is no longer graceful and flails about to get away from the ledge, getting closer to it. His surprise combined with the relief he never got hurt is what makes the scene funny. This replays in The Great Dictator when the Barber and Hannah escape the stormtroopers; with all of the friends’ belongings, including a hat box placed over the Barber’s eyes. The two run up to the roof, and the Barber runs out onto a beam unaware that a misstep could mean his death. His friend calls out to him to be careful. The Barber comically drops several items he is holding to his friends dismay, thinking he is placing them on the ground. Again, while we fear for his safety, the true comedy comes in when he takes the hat box off his head and looks down, he finally drops all the items and flails about until he can reach the safety of the roof. The dramatic build-up of Chaplin’s falling climaxes with his becoming aware of his danger, which leads to his safety and the audience’s release of emotion with laughter.

Modern Times and The Great Dictator are a culmination of everything that Chaplin had learned working on film years prior. They also show his ability to adapt and grow; he redeveloped himself to use sound design, and even use speech as a comical and dramatic device. Most impressive of Chaplin is how he used his films not just for entertainment or for self gain, but he used them to promote social values he developed. He was worried about industry destroying men’s souls, and a dictator destroying the world. There hasn’t been anyone quite like Chaplin since.

Gilda: The Singing Dancing Noir Heroine

"Sure, I'm decent."

Gilda is both interesting and terrifying to watch for the relationships the characters carry with each other. Johnny starts off as the narrator, but then by the end almost becomes the villain. The love triangle between Johnny Farrell, Ballin Mundson, and Gilda suggests relationships both of love and of doom, as is the case of Ballin. Through mere suggestion we question the nature of relationship between Ballin and Johnny, whom are extremely close. Then there is the sadomasochistic relationship between Johnny and Gilda. She walks and talks like a femme fatale, but she rises beyond being one by being sympathetic and relatable. In the 1940s it was traditional in films to show women in housekeeping roles; except in film noirs, wherein women who rebel against patriarchy would be punished. In the noir world women were not allowed to get ahead, or be freed; they were to be controlled. Gilda becomes unusual because of it’s portrayal of the title character in a different light; trying to promote herself, exhibiting herself in sexually, yet Gilda is depicted as being sympathetic. Gilda is more optimistic in the film world. Gilda is not a femme fatal, and she is able to persevere through her afflictions and come out the better for it.

Gilda is represented in strange ways. One of Ballin’s rules is that the club should be filled with men and unattractive women, so that Ballin can further control the gamblers by forcing their focus on gambling. With her appearance, Gilda disrupts the focus, redirecting it to herself. She is an exhibitionist, daring to challenge the authority of men over her body, by singing and dancing. Ballin has the rule that woman and gambling do not mix; however, Ballin when confronted by Johnny Farrell with this rule responds, “My wife does not come under the category of women.” Ballin may perceive and be attracted to Gilda for the fact that her behavior is masculine rather than feminine. There is an implied homosexual relationship between Ballin and Johnny. With that in mind it would be safe to assume the thing that attracted Ballin to Gilda would be her femme fatal like behavior. Femme fatales in noir is that they try to act like men rather than be servants of men, so is this could be the element that attracts him toward her. Gilda, the character in the movie world and the movie in our world, becomes a challenge toward patriarchal society. Richard Dyer writes that “The casting of Hayworth as Gilda gives the character a positive charge (where femme fatales are usually negative, in the sense of being absent in terms of personality, mere functions or the eternal unknowable.)”

. What becomes the strangest part of Gilda in the film noir universe is that she becomes sympathetic. Instead of a femme fatal sent to castrate the men, she becomes a woman fighting for her own happiness and freedom from those who are continually trying to control her.

Much of the uniqueness of the character of Gilda is created by Hayworth, the actress who played her. Other noir films had to get smaller actresses to perform due to small budgets; however, Gilda was not a B picture and therefore could afford a name actress. Rita Hayworth brought her charm to the performance of Gilda. Dyer writes about in the 40‘s Rita was considered a ‘love goddess’ for heterosexual men, but she was also “an identification figure for heterosexual women.” Dancing, he explains, was unnecessary for the character but was there because Hayworth was known for dancing. Dyer continues, “They introduce a new element into the construction of the character as a sexual object -- namely, movement.” The elements of dancing, movement, singing, and exhibitionism are all important to understanding the character Gilda, and her relationship with Johnny. He is always trying to control Gilda, not allowing her to dance, sing, or move freely. 

Johnny is punishing her, we are never told directly why and it becomes irrelevant.  Naremore probably best explains the noir hero by stating “In many cases, the noir protagonist's ability to serve as a role model is undercut by his quasi-gay relationships with men, by his masochistic love affairs with women, and by his more general weakness of character.” 

The extremes that Johnny goes to can not be justified in his treatment toward Gilda. In terms of plot development, the Nazis could have been interchangeable with gangsters. Nazis become a symbol of Johnny and Gilda’s relationship in the film and a reminder of the extremes of controlling people, allowing intolerance and hatred to blind people as it did Johnny. Johnny becomes a dictator in his treatment of Gilda, and her apartment, which he never visits, becomes her prison, from which she is never allowed to leave. After she runs away and is told that it is safe, she realizes that it was all a ruse, she was never safe. Though Ballin tries to kill Johnny and Gilda at the end, he never quite succeeds in behaving more outrageous than Johnny. He is controlling of Gilda even when she is married to Ballin, and forces her to play the good wife to Ballin. Motivations could stem from revenge against her, or that he wants Ballin to be happy and have an obedient and good wife, because of his feelings toward Ballin. Both of which could be true but it never really matters. Johnny feels threatened in the end by Gilda and that is why he treats her the way that he does. Angela Martin said, “she doesn’t necessarily have to kill or harm anyone, she just carries the threat by her very presence.” This better explains the reasoning of Johnny’s behavior. Johnny runs the casino with his own Gestapo, and treats Gilda with the hatred and intolerance that a dictator has for minorities, because he feels she is a threat by being there.

Here Gilda is caught dancing with another
man, and Johnny has come to pull her away.

Gilda refuses to allow herself to be controlled. She puts up with the cruelty Johnny gives her, perhaps, more than most would. Through it all she dances, she sings, she owns herself and refuses to be owned by Johnny, by keeping her movement free. While Hayworth was a pin-up model, and a sexual fantasy for men, there is a feminist element of freedom with her in this role. Dyer wrote “the particular kind of movement, the association with it of Hayworth’s image, its narrative placing, all make it possible to read Hayworth-as-Gilda... in Marjorie Rosen’s terms: ‘for the first time a heroine seemed to say, “This is my body. It’s lovely and gives me pleasure. I rejoice in it just as you do”, or else in terms of male heterosexual enjoyment of the character - of surrender rather than control.” An element of male masculinity in film noir and Gilda becomes about control, as Johnny controls Gilda.

Another difference between Gilda and other film noirs is everything gets straightened out, for the most part, and ends with a more traditional happy ending. Instead of being punished in the end, Gilda is rewarded. Johnny changes, acknowledges his wrong-doing against Gilda and asks for her forgiveness. Ballin, the only person standing between them and won’t let them go, gets killed. The two go off together away from the casino and the Nazis. While the change of Johnny is presented logically, with Uncle Pio and Detective Maurice Obregon appealing to Johnny to be more sympathetic and reasonable throughout the film, but the transformation is still quick and magical. Not surprisingly, some of the writers were women, and perhaps that is why this stands out as a more pro-feminist film. So the writers could have been trying to appeal to men to drop misogynistic behavior and live harmoniously with their female counterparts.

Johnny fights Nazis and cops who want to control him. Johnny even fights off luck. Then he ends up trying to control Gilda. Why should Gilda be any more controlled than he? Film noir exemplifies masculine behavior, and Gilda’s plea is to allow the Gildas of the world to continue to sing and to dance. Gilda is not a femme fatal because she is not one sided, and she becomes sympathetic. Gilda is free because of her movement. She sings and dances, and refuses to allow herself be controlled. Unlike many film noirs female characters, Gilda becomes a role model for women.

¹ Dyer, Richard. ‘Resistance Through Charisma: Rita Hayworth and Gilda.” Women in Film Noir. Ed. Kaplan, E. Ann.British Film Institute. 2008. 119.

² Dyer, Richard. 120

³ Dyer, Richard.

⁴ Naremore, James. More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles. 2008. Ebook edition.

⁵ Martin, Angela. ‘Gilda Didn’t Do Any of Those Things You’ve Been Losing Sleep Over!’: The Central Women of the 40s Film Noirs.’ Women in Film Noir. Ed. Kaplan, E. Ann.British Film Institute. 2008. 208.

⁶ Martin, Angela. 208.

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