Allen Scene Analysis

2. Woody Allen’s comedy is not mimetic because he not attempting to represent reality. He attempts to recollect the memories based on the way he wants to remember them. He is representing the way we actually remember things, in scattered thought, with variations thought about after the fact. He is adding more life to the memories being told in the film, by telling them in the way he would now, being that it is years passed, and he has had time to think on them and understand the situation differently.

3. While the verbal conversation is going on, the subtitles at the bottom of the screen show what the characters are thinking because they obviously aren’t going to say to each other what the subtitles say. It makes the conversation closer to what is really being communicated in this situation, and also how each of the characters are both critiquing each other and themselves during the conversation. It’s a very clever and comical way to further the conversation and juxtapose what is actually happening on screen.

Allen's Comedy Style

I find Allen’s comedy style very effective. I think the stepping out of the illusion of the film creates a better connection between viewer and creator. In a situation like Allen’s character in Annie Hall, his character is very quirky and specific about things, so to step out and explain the situation, it helps you to understand what is happening. For example, in the scene where they are reading the play he wrote, without him stepping out and commenting on the play just being a reinterpretation of his life, but with a happy ending, it seems a little pitiful. But to comment on it in that way, it becomes self-deprecating, and the viewer is able to sort of laugh with him. This style is useful in that it allows him to further his character development and ground the joke in reality as well. Most jokes are funny or relatable because of how we connect them to ourselves, and to break the boundary of the film’s illusion, it grounds the joke in reality, and in turn with the viewer.

Visual Strategy in Daisies

            Chytilova’s visual strategy throughout the film is to keep the viewer on end and to keep attention. There are color changes, scene changes, and montages that happen so suddenly that you have to stay focused to know what is happening. I think by playing with the visuals in that sense, it allows you to also connect with the playful nature of the film and it’s story. It keeps the entertainment and playful aspect continuing, similar to the girls’ actions in the film, as they are repeatedly breaking things, cutting things, and humiliating people. Chytilova takes it upon herself to really get inside of the head of the two girls, and give the film the character that they have.

Music in Vertigo

            In the scene when Madeleine disappears into the trees, the music is used to signify that something really has gone wrong and bring you into the hypnotizing feeling that Madeleine is putting on. We know that Madeleine has been going off into little trances, but as she walks away in this instance, we are shown something is very wrong when the music changes into a hypnotic tone with a higher note that hits when the shot comes back to Scottie as if to signify that he realizes something really is wrong. This sort of music changes the mod of a scene drastically because you can’t help feel uneasy when hearing that play.

            In another scene, where Scottie is putting on Judy’s necklace and realizes that he knows it because it is the one that she wore as Madeleine. The music here, along with his facial expression, is used as an indication of thought and to signify to the viewer that the necklace, though we’ve seen it before, means something. Also, with how loud the music got when he recognized the necklace, affects the significance and makes it stand out that much more. The music then switches back to the sort of calming “in love” melody as if it is in Judy’s perspective now.

Detour

            The protagonist feels like an anti-hero. From the first instance when the man dies, he becomes almost inferior, and this becomes more prominent as the woman he picks up keeps reminding us of that. He can’t find the right thing to do throughout the whole film and constantly has to defend himself to no good end. He gets stuck in this situation that seems to just get worse and worse by circumstance, but has no power to bring himself out of it correctly and by his own will. Throughout most of the film, there almost aren’t any shots that portray him as bigger than anyone else that he has more power over them to get out of this mess. He is just shown as a guy stuck in a situation. There are a few shots though inside of the hotel that picture him as a hero type when he is defending his conscience and innocence. The few shots come from a little lower and point up making him look larger and more commanding. In the film, he does have the truth, but that never gets the chance to let him go, and he never takes it.

Freaks

            I see Freaks as a melodrama. Looking up the definition of melodrama, it is described a dramatic piece appealing to the emotions, whereas horror is defined as a feeling of shock or disgust. I don’t think that he wanted people to feel disgusted or scared by the characters on screen, but rather tell of a story that catered to their abnormalities. It used the freaks as an indication of class, showing how Cleopatra felt superior to them because she felt she was better. The film didn’t play out as if it were a horror film with scares or the suspense that they involve. It more played out as a drama of a dwarf loving a woman that wouldn’t love him back, and trying to take advantage of him, that ended up having a dramatic turn of events in the conclusion.

Buster Keaton

            The core comparison is that while the mechanics developed, he went on to work more with the mechanics of making and the world around him to develop a film focusing on editing, composition, and special effects, while Chaplin focused on his acting and performance. When Gunning mentions Keaton’s modern insight, he is referring to the fact that Keaton worked with the mechanics of the present and developed his making based upon what is “now”, at that time. It is also stated, that Keaton extended the insight of man’s modern behavior into a view of the world itself as machinelike, referring to it as an alien and alienating system. So, Keaton is poking fun at the human relation to machines. Mechanization’s relevance is that Keaton’s gags depend on an encounter and interaction with physical properties. They depend his ability to occupy a mathematically precise point within a dangerous process. He relies on the alienation from the machine in a situation to create comedy through the scenario.