- Psycho (1960) - Alfred Hitchcock
The movie is about a couple who meet in a hotel in phoenix Arizona to discuss their marriage plans. They discuss about the scarcity of finances to afford a decent marriage. Upon returning to the offices the lady, Marion, gets a client who brings $40000 to buy an apartment for his daughter. Marion devises a way in which she can elope with the money where she succeeds. The movie director shows how desperate Marion is to get finances. She embarks on a long journey out of town. She has a lot of troubles on the way from suspicion by the police to tiredness.
Her boyfriend Sam Loomis and her sister are concerned about the whereabouts of Marion and embark on a mission to try to find her. Meanwhile, Marion gets accommodation at a hotel called Bates motel where the owner Norman invites her for dinner and narrates about his mother mental illness. It is on this fateful night where a black shadowy people appear and stabs Marion while showering. The directors of the movie uses terrific sounds in the horrific scenes to prepare the viewers that something strange or tragic is bound to happen (Sullivan 2006). Visual aspects in a movie are very effective in explaining to the viewer that there is something unusual in a movie. The presence of the shadowy figure sends signals to the mind of the viewer that there is a chance of harm or death. Moreover, the sounds that accompany the scenes supplement the visuals in sending signals of impending danger (Chion 1994).
- Orlando (1992) -Sally potter
The film Orlando starts on a deathbed where dying Queen Elizabeth promises him great riches only if he decides not to fade out or grow old. She promises to give him land and, a castle on it as part of her deal with him. After her death, Orlando lives in the castle for centuries trying to study and practices arts like poetry. The film shows how the character fails to befriend a celebrated poet after she criticizes his poem. Orlando life changes when the government assigns him an ambassador’s role in Turkey. Fracas erupts in the embassy and he is almost killed.
The film makes a very mysterious twist when Orlando wakes up the next morning. He wakes up a lady after sleeping a man. This raise a lot of lawsuits limn his native home where they argue that since Orlando is a woman, she has no right to inherit any land or property. She gets a lot of troubles in the next centuries. The lawsuits that she faces plus her misfortunes in love makes her very miserable. The film ends with a young Orlando walking down a street with a baby girl in a tow. She has a book she wants to publish and is on the lookout for a possible publisher. The film depicts the tribulations that women faced in the society in regard to their rights. We can see that as soon as Orlando changes into a woman, she is relinquished all her rights of owning land and property (Anneke 1998).
- Tarnation ( 2003)- Jonathan Caouette
This film is a documentary that focuses on the life of the producer Couette. This film show the relationship the Couyette had with his mother who had been diagnosed with electroshock during her youthful days. The movie unfolds in form of a diary that seems to have been recorded during the lifetime of the Couette (Russel 1999). Due to his mother’s illness, he is forced to go and live with the grandparents in Houston, Texas. He has a lot of complications and quirks but the grandparents struggle hard to afford a better life for him. Couyette is raised by a single mother who is not mentally stable since his father is absent from him almost throughout the movie. The movie starts with a monologue of a woman who is in an abusive relationship.
Later in the movie, Couette develops a gay relationship with David Sanin and they move to New York. His mother has lived with them for many times and they have a very unusual family relationship though they survive the tides of sustaining a gay family. Russell defines autoethnography as work that describes the life of one and has some diaristic elements (456). All the events in the movie had been recorded in a diary and also video recordings from specific aspects of the life of coquette. The film has very attractive sound tracks from the songs by Steve Kibey and Donnette Thayer, Dolly Parton, mark, low and others. The trailers of the movies have instrumental l sounds by John Khalifa.
- Citizen Kane (1941) Orson Welles
The movie is among the best movies of the 20th century. The movie become famous due to the controversies it generated. The movie raises the issue of civil and labor rights and this made it almost to be banned. Its production was delayed. The movie was a milestone in transforming the American film industry. It fed the post war fascination with screen realism (Graham 2002).
The movie was released during the new wave in French. It was a time when the French cinema was being transformed from being more of literature to cinema. The wave gave a radical change in cinema that would trickle throughout the world. Directors used films to convey the message. Directors ignored the film conventions and produced films in their unique styles that would better convey the message. They were moving away from the old conventions that guided the production of movies since they thought the conventions were hampering the ability of the movies to use cameras to convey messages. This was a clear change in the movie industry. The first decade of movie production had witnessed movies that used more literatures.
The movie was masterly and revolutionary. It utilizes cuts, erratic and random sound design and mismatches in sound. Kanes efforts to clearly deliver messages through cinemas greatly contributed to the cinematic revolution. The movie is of remarkable depth and complicity (Graham 2002). The movie is also a hymn to failure. Welles fails to put his remarkable energy to real life. Kane’s tremendous resources and capacities are wasted.
- Breathless (1960) Jean-Luc Godard
The movie is about a young man Michel who turns out to be a criminal. He steals a car and shoots a police officer. On his way to escape the police, he meets Patricia an American girl and befriends her. He impregnates Patricia and when questioned by the police she realizes that Michel is on the run. Patricia tells him that she has betrayed him. Mitchel is shot dead. The films utilization of jump cuts and bold visual styles attracted attention from most people.
It also reflects that neoformalism was slowly coming up in the film industry. There is a great distinction between perceptual and semiotic properties of a film. Films guide our attention to salient narration information and play a part in defamiliarization (Watson 2003). The film industry in French was revolutionizing particularly due to the technological advancements and the directors need to produce films that are not tied by conventions.
The movie clearly illustrates love and betrayal. Mitchel loved Patricia who later betrays him. The director clearly uses jump cuts up to link various episodes in the film. This makes the movie very interesting to watch. All this were as a result of the new wave that was taking part in French. The directors had realized that films could be made more meaningful if cinemas are exhaustively used. The wave led to decolonization and reorganization of the French culture. The kind of movies that we have today is as a result of the cinematic revolution in France. Godard contributes in revolutionizing cinemas (Watson 2003).
References
Catherine Russell, (1999). Autoethnography: Journeys of the Self, in her Experimental Ethnography: The Work of Film in the Age of Video . Duke UP: Durham
Chion , M. (1994). Introduction to Audiovisual Analysis in Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. New York, United States: Columbia UP.
Geiger, J., & Rutsky, R. L. (2005). Film analysis: A Norton reader. New York: W.W. Norton.
Graham Roberts and Heather Wallis, Citizen Kane, in Key Film Texts (NY: Oxford UP, 2002): 53-56.
Watson, P. (2003). Critical Approaches to Hollywood Cinema: authorship, genre and stars, in Jill Nelmes (ed.) An Introduction to Film Studies, 3rd ed (London: Routledge, 2003).
Smelik, A. (1998). What meets the eye: An Overview of Feminist Film Theory, from her And the Mirror Cracked: Feminist Cinema and Film Theory. New York: St Martin's Press.
