Mise-en-scéne is crucial to classical Hollywood as it defined an era ‘that in its primary sense and effect, shows us something; it is a means of display. ' (Martin 2014, p.XV). Billy Wilder 's Sunset Boulevard (Wilder 1950) will be analysed and explored with its techniques and styles of mise-en-scéne and how this aspect of filmmaking establishes together as a cohesive whole with the narrative themes as classical Hollywood storytelling. Features of the film 's sense of space and time, setting, motifs, characters, and character goals will be explored and how they affect the characterisation, structure, and three-act organisation.
Have you ever felt safe somewhere, but realized your only protection was ignorance? In Jacqueline Woodson’s When a Southern Town Broke a Heart, she introduces the idea that as you grow and change, so does your meaning of home. Over the course of the story, Woodson matures and grows older, and her ideas about the town she grew up in become different. When she was a nine year old girl, Woodson and her sister returned to their hometown of Greenville, South Carolina by train. During the school year, they lived together in Downtown Brooklyn, and travelled to.
If America, as a whole, took a survey about what the population thought was the most well written literary genre of our history, what would they choose? Would America choose science fiction, fantasy, nonfiction, or perhaps a romance as the best novel type of novel. Most likely, the book that would win the day is books about local color, a realistic look at other people’s daily walk in life. Ever since Mark Twain came on the scene, Americans love the look, the dialogue, and thought process of people in another walk of life. Bret Harte, a man of all trades, who moved to California to work in a mine, published a short story in 1869 called “Outcasts of Poker Flat.”
In the first few chapters alone he references a book on the architecture of railway stations (pg 21, note 1), the weather section of a newspaper (pg 33, note 1), and a marriage licence (pg 48, note 42); all of these sources only supported minute details, but they gave significant credibility to how meticulous Boyle was when he researched the book. His attention to detail continues to be apparent when looking at the sources he chose when supporting the wider narrative. Boyle makes use of everything from court transcripts and witness testimonies, to census data and immigration data, to create an exquisitely detailed window into the race relations and political environment of 1920s
Through an in depth analysis of Alfred Hitchcock's ‘North by Northwest’ (NBNW), it becomes evident that in order for films to be able to entertain their audiences they must ‘weave’ or manipulate images, characters and issues. This is evident through two particular scene within the film, including: chapters 5 and 26 (clickview). Hitchcock's manipulation of issues and characters in NBNW to entertain the audience is exemplified through the severity of the issues faced by the protagonist, Roger O Thornhill (R.O.T) and his comical response and attitude towards the adversity he faces.
Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. 15th ed. Vol. 1. New Yok: Random House Incorporated, 1938. 311-61.
Readers feel happy, good, and positive when reading chapters about Burnham, but when reading Homes’s chapters, readers feel frightened, afraid and fearful. Larson’s diction creates contrasting tones to reiterate the balance of good and evil that Burnham and Holmes embody in this
James Baldwin’s short story, “Sonny’s Blues,” tells the story of two brothers living in 1950s Harlem. The story depicts the relationship of the brothers as the younger brother, Sonny, battles to overcome a heroin addiction and find a career in jazz. In “Sonny’s Blues”, Baldwin’s shifting portrayal of Harlem mirrors the changing relationship of the two brothers: while both the city and the relationship were originally with dark uncertainty, by the end of the story, the narrator has begun to find peace both within his surroundings and his relationship with his brother. At the beginning of the story, before Sonny returns to Harlem, the narrator never describes his surroundings, only the people in them.
Introduction When reading a play, it is fundamental to pay attention to details within the play for a script envisioned in more than one way. Moreover, discovering those critical items found in the play is important in helping one criticize the play correctly since; a critic is able to see the quality and mistakes found in the play. Likewise, the critic is also able to see valuable and critical things missed by the reader since as critics they looked at different functions within the play. With that said, this paper is going to explore two critical approaches seen in “Death of a Salesman” a play written by Arthur Miller (1915 – 2005). Those critical approaches are Reader-Response Criticism and Psychological (psychoanalytic) criticism.
Although Capote writes of how welcoming and peaceful the Kansas town of Holcomb is, his main purpose of describing the town is to emphasize the changes that take place in the wake of one family’s murder, therefore Capote is able to articulate the shifts in the community into an embodiment of a seventh death. Capote utilizes personification to add a sense of fear to the pallet of feelings that the citizens in Holcomb have been constrained to. He first describes how out of character the town has become simply by their purchase of locks, and goes on to discredit the locks by saying: “Imagination, of course, can open any door---turn the key and let terror walk right in” (Capote 88). The personification of imagination, making it able to open any door, gives the thought of imagination a complex connotation. It makes the reader contemplate of the possibilities that a non-physical concept can make possible in the physical world.
There is always that one person that makes a story so interesting and impossible to get one's eyes off of. The novel, Montana 1948 by Larry Watson was a book that had good, bad and terrible things in it. A family that was well known to the town of Bentrock was involved with multiple incidents that brought negativity to the people. It was a town diversified between Indian and Caucasians. People that were influential to the novel made bad choices, caused and solved problems and also led to serious moments that others couldn’t see meaning and truth behind.
DeLillo projects Jack Gladney’s reality rather seamlessly. DeLillo thoughtfully curates the small college town aesthetic through details such as “the time of the spiders” and the modest, suburban, supermarket that you would likely find in a town like Blacksmith. DeLillo engulfs the reader in Jacks day to day functions through the juxtaposition between professional and family life. We see that Jacks duties and interactions at the College-on-the-HIll are not isolated to his personal life. Just as real people do, he uses his personal time to further his professional skills by learning german, and he keeps communication with his coworker, Murray Siskind.
T.C. Boyle 's latest novel gallops through the wilderness and its rider is the human psyche. Seemingly ordinary people attempt to shed light on real problems. From slamming through "one of the million and a half pot-holes cratering the street" to "The wheel stopped….And it was never going to start again," Boyle delivers on his promise of dramatic and exquisitely detailed prose.
Opinion on the melodramas of Douglas Sirk has flip-flopped since his key films were released in the 1950s. At the time, critics ridiculed them and the public lapped them up. Today most viewers dismiss them as pop trash, but in serious film circles Sirk is considered a great filmmaker--a German who fled Hitler to become the sly subverter of American postwar materialism. One cold night this winter, I went up to the Everyman Cinema in Hampstead, north of London, to see a revival of a restored print of Sirk 's “Written on the Wind” (1956). This is a perverse and wickedly funny melodrama in which you can find the seeds of “Dallas,” “Dynasty,” and all the other prime-time soaps.
Introduction This essay examines the Cassavetes’s unique approach in his films he directed especially in Faces (1968) and Shadow (1959) in creating alternative forms of performative expression. Cassavetes’s approach focus on spontaneous, unstructured performance of characters, contradict to Stanislavski 's system that focus on emotion memory or actor’s past experience to bring out the expression on stage. In this essay, Cassavetes’s first film, Shadow, will be compared to his fourth film, Faces, to see development in Cassavetes’s approach in performance of character. Shadow is a film about interracial relations between African-American and white Americans in 1950’s New York, starring Ben Carruthers as Ben, Lelia Goldoni as Lelia and Hugh Hurd as Hugh, the only dark-skinned among three siblings.