Casablanca

Casablanca

Mise-en-scene

The Mise-en-scene in Casablanca is fairly Realist. the costumes, set and props are all realistic for the time in which it was set (World War II). The only formalist aspect of the mise-en-scene is the reoccurring theme of stripes, which appears in mise-en-scene (the clothes of the characters) as well as in chiaroscuro.

Lighting

The lighting is quite formalist in that is fairly chiaroscuro. There are lots of carefully placed light/shadow stripes the fall across the bodies and faces of characters during scenes.

I see this to symbolise Casablanca as a prison, because although people went to Casablanca to escape, it was also very difficult to get out of. Other than this, the lighting isn't particularly remarkable, although certain character's faces seem to get illuminated more than others, such as ilsa.

Camerawork

There isn't anything particularly formalist about the Camerawork. No fast tracks/zooms or pans or any odd angled shots. In fact the camerawork is pretty straight forward consisting of three main shots: long shot of a room or outside (e.g. the night club or the plane taking off), mid shot of a few characters talking (e.g. Laslo and Blaine doing a deal) and a close up of a character's face (e.g. Ilsa crying).

Editing

There is a fair amount of continuity editing. Although to be honest, this is a convention of Film in general and Hollywood cinema in particular, and because there isn't a particularly large amount of it, this doesn't identify Casablanca as particularly formalist, or more formalist than other Hollywood classics.

Sound

The Sound in the film isn't very formalist. There are no particular sound effects of voiceovers. However, although it is a convention of a feature film having a track of music in the background to a scene is formalist because it's not something that you get in real life. Especially not the kind of dramatic orchestral stabs that are used in Casablanca at points of tension. There isn't anything formalist about the speech in the scenes. No repetition of scenes or anything.

Last Year In Marienbad

Features:

Enigmatic - you don't know what's a dream/flashback and what's a reality, you don't know what order the scenes should be in and what's in the past or anything else. Relationships between characters is unclear.

Repetition - Scenes and dialogue/voiceovers repeated several times throughout the film so you don't know when the real event took place.

Sound & Video work against each other (e.g. slow, mysterious pans of hallways in concert with manic organ music)

Sound and video not always correlating - sound continues as video freezes and then resumes.

Influences - the Surrealist Art Movement - moving Surrealism from art to moving image.

The screenplay was written by alan Robbe-Grillet who was a leading figure in the 'Nouveau Roman' movement in french literature. This was an extremely experimental movement focussing on disregard of novel conventions like plot, narrative and characters. This is a very clear influence in the screenplay.

Hollywood Film Golden Age.

Wizard of Oz

Singing in the Rain

Casablanca

Several elements of Classic Hollywood Cinema identify it as conclusively Formalist.
The narrative is formalist in that it comes in small pieces and doesn't stay with one scene or character. This is not like 'reality' and so is seen as a formalist device. 

Use of Continuity Editing is a big factor in the formalism of classic Hollywood cinema.

Eyeline Matches (shot of a character looking at something off screen, followed by a point-of-view style shot of whatever they were looking at.)

Cross-Cutting (when there are cuts between two situations which are happening at the same time in different places but are linked in some way. This creates tension.)

Match-on-Action (when something happens, e.g. a building collapses, and there are several cameras on it, so when it comes to editing you can show the 8 seconds that it took for the building to collapse from several different angles without repeating any footage.)

Directional Continuity (when the camera angle changes, but stays within 180 degrees of the previous angle so it looks like the subject is moving in the same direction as in the previous shot.)

The unlikely happy endings to the plots of classic Hollywood cinema are also formalist because they certainly aren't like 'reality'.

Run Lola Run! I won't say it wasn't fun...

look at editing, camerawork, sound, cinematography/lighting and mis-en-scene.

to what extend is run-lola-run a formalist film?

Run Lola Run! was a formalist film in many ways.

the plot and narrative was formalist because the same series of events happened three times but with different choices and outcomes.

the camerawork is formalist. There are split scenes, which is unrealistic. There is also a part which goes into cartoon which is formalist too.

the editing was very formalist. the way some scenes were repeated exactly the same three times in the film. Also the fact that the film was three stories in one.

At certain points, the editing went into very quick slideshows showing people's future lives, this was totally unconnected to the story and quite abstract and formalist.

the cinematography was formalist in the scene in between deaths.

everything has a red filter on it and it is quite hard to make out what's happening.

the mise-en-scene is pretty naturalistic apart from the fact that alot of things seem to be red. more than would normally be... the bike, the phone, lola's hair.

it is the plot and editing though, that determine Run Lola Run! as a definitively formalist film.

=)

The Miracle of German Expressionism

What are the key features of expressionism?

• large use of symbolism
  
• surrealism used
• artistic but physically unrealistic and absurd sets (due to lack of budget)
• lighting effects achieved by paintings representing light on walls and celling of sets
• themes usually include madness, insanity betrayal and evil

Where can the influence of German Expressionism be seen in film history?

German Expressionism influenced two genres greatly: horror and film noire. But it also has effects on Sci-fi (with films like bladerunner, which has clear influence in its dark atmosphere and style) and even mainstream popular cinema (Batman Returns shows clear German Expressionism in its set – the angular cityscape design of Gotham City)