The Red Shoes in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

The Red Shoes tells the dramatic story of a young ballerina, Victoria Page, who is torn between two opposing forces: the composer who loves her and the impresario determined to fashion her into a great dancer. The sequence of shots that I have chosen portrays the young Victoria Page dancing for a small, crowded audience at the Mercury Theatre before her claim to fame. The great ballet impresario, Boris Lermontov sits amongst the crowd, watching Victoria’s every dance step with critical intensity as she dances in a production/reproduction of Swan Lake. This moment is significant to the rest of the movie in two ways—1. It marks the first time Boris acknowledges Victoria, and takes her under his wing, and 2. It marks the last time we see the audience in the ballet performances. This sequence of shots not only reveals the suture of the audience into the performance, but also Michael Powell’s critique of mechanical reproduction and the loss of what Walter Benjamin refers to as the auratic experience.



Shot 1 is a slow zoom in on a poster outside the Mercury Theatre advertising a limited performance of Swan Lake given by Victoria Page. The shot shows two poster images pasted on top of the other. The poster on top reads: “Reappearance of Victoria Page in Lac des Cygnes, for one performance only by special permission of “The Ballet Lermontov.” The shot zooms into the center of the shot in which the words “Royal Philharmonic Orchestra” are daintily placed. The diegetic sound of rain slowly fades into the background as the music of Swan Lake fades in.





Shot 2 is a close up of a record player in which the musical record is spinning in a continuously circular motion. Shot 3 shows a ceiling fan spinning similarly in a circular way and displays a large loudspeaker placed next to the ceiling fan.

These first three shots are extremely significant in showing Walter Benjamin’s idea of Mechanical Reproduction. Shot one uses a zoom—a function that the camera, a piece of mechanical equipment can perform easily, but one that our human eye cannot easily imitate. The zoom conditions our eye to a certain place on the screen, it forces our human eye to look where the camera wants us to look, and forces us to see in the same manner that it sees. And just what is it that Powell would like us to see? Our vision is pulled towards the zooming point, or the shot’s center of gravity—in this case, the words on the poster that come to our attention are: “Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.” As the sounds of the rain fade out and the music of the orchestra fade in, we, the audience, are temporarily tricked into thinking that we are hearing the music played by an orchestra. The words on the poster mislead us. Instead, the immediate transition to shot 2 reveals that we are actually hearing the music from a record, a mechanical reproduction of the original live piece of music. The presence of music and the immediate transition to the source of the music is an interesting play on the shot reverse shot. In this case, instead of being a shot reverse shot, it is a bit like a sound reverse shot where the source of the music is revealed by replacing the absent one (the music during shot 1) with the signifier (the record player in shot two) .

However, these first two shots are not only critiquing the mechanical reproduction of music, but they are also highlighting ad reproduction. In shot one, the focus of the shot is of an advertisement for the show. Advertising in itself is a media that is for the public masses. Throughout most of history, art has been a product for the elite—only the high patrons, the few including kings, queens, prominent statesmen, and religious leaders had access to art. It is only with the increasing infiltration of Marxist ideals that art has been changed into a product for the masses. But several Marxists warn of consequences in industrializing art. Clement Greenberg, a prominent Marxian disciple, talks of the disparity between two forms of art—the avant-garde which he refers to as high art, and the “kitsch”, a lower decorative art of sorts—the kind of art made available through mass production. He writes in his essay that it is through “kitsch” that totalitarian regimes can seize political control through the arts (as in Triumph of the Will). In the film The Red Shoes, Boris Lermontov is just that fascist figure. He alone chooses which ballets to portray, which dancers shall dance, which musicians shall compose—he has sole control over the product that he produces and I will even go as far to say that he has complete control over his audience. This is made obvious in the first few scenes of the film in which the audience is shown to be completely reverent of Lermontov, and the fact that all of his ballets have been successful simply because they have been productions of the “Lermontov Ballet.” Simply with his name, Boris can sway thousands to his ballet performances. Though his product is for the masses, Boris also seems to maintain a high quality control over his “kitsch” product. Michael Powell, in essence, seems to compare the quality of Boris’s ballets to his own filmmaking. Both productions (film and theater) are for the mass audiences; however, they also seem to maintain their semblance of Walter Benjamin’s aura in their respective products. Victoria shines in her final repertoires with the Lermontov Ballet, and The Red Shoes shines as a film full of auratic characters and cathartic experiences. Both Lermontov and Powell also therefore seem to deny their own political power as mass media. Boris repents Victoria’s death in the end—he regrets his own ownership over his dancer, his product, and with the conclusion of the film, Powell allows the audience to retreat back into our realities.

The incredible auratic, and surrealistic dance sequence can be seen if you click HERE.

Similar to Greenberg, the early 20th century English art critic Roger Fry addresses this problem in that he concluded “Mass production was likely to have negative effects, because of the discouragement to spontaneity and the high costs of design changes that put designers out of work. The one compensating benefit from industrialization for artists that he could discern came from their employment in the creation of advertising materials (Goodwin, 3).” Fry is saying that mass production reduces the quality, the aura of the final art product, and advertising is no different. Advertising in itself therefore, is a Marxist industry. Shot one in the movie makes the allusion to mechanized labor, industrious art labor behind the advertisement. The words on the sheet of drenched paper are printed neatly in different fonts, presumably by art laborers in the new age of mechanized factories. Though the advertisement makes reference to the labor that has gone into the product, there is a lack of humanness in that final product. Walter Benjamin would say that there is an increased distance from the original aura of the product. Yet ironically, shot one zooms into the advertisement, closing the distance between the audience and the object—it allows us to examine that object closely and create new meaning from it. The film therefore creates a new aura from the “kitsch” object through the language and form of film. Advertisement as an artistic form can be considered “kitsch” art—it not only serves as a created piece of low end art, but also has a useful purpose in that it sways certain public opinions or actions. Greenberg writes, “If kitsch is the official tendency of culture in Germany, Italy, and Russia, it is not because their respective governments are controlled by philistines, but because kitsch is the culture of the masses in these countries, as it is everywhere else. The encouragement of kitsch is merely another of the inexpensive ways in which totalitarian regimes seek to ingratiate themselves with their subjects. (Harrison, 548)” In the context of the times, “kitsch”, when fused with politics becomes dangerous—just as advertisement when fused with political agenda becomes powerful propaganda. Here, the seemingly innocent advertisement in shot one is not only a reference to industrious art labor, but also serves as commentary upon the times of this film’s making—it raises the question of the control that media, that “kitsch” art has over the public people.

The environment in which the advertisement is placed also exemplifies this point. The ad is placed on a plain wall outside the theatre—it is placed in a public domain and it was created in order to sway the public demand towards the “high arts.” The advertisement is “kitsch” that is made by the common people for the common people—in its function to sway then, the advertisement serves as a kind of “soft propaganda.” But while characters inside the film can look at this advertisement and choose whether to go inside the Mercury Theatre to watch the performance, we, the viewers of this film have no such option. The irony is that the film itself allows us to read the advertisement for the public performance upon a wall, but does not allow us to make the decision of accepting or rejecting the subsequent viewing of the performance. The form of film itself directs what we see and what we hear—it controls our perception, even if only for the length of the movie. Does not this then imply the fascism of film itself?

Shot three further emphasizes the mechanical reproduction with the spinning fan and centered shot of the loudspeaker. The repetitive motion of the record player indicates mechanical motion in shot 2, and this motion is echoed in shot three with the spinning fan. The centered shot of the loudspeaker reveals again where the sound is coming from—a machine. With these first three shots, Powell reveals the increasing industrialization of society, and the result of increasing art productions and reproductions. Walter Benjamin talks of reproductions and their depreciating value from the original, “One might subsume the eliminated element in the term “aura” and go on to say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art…One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition.(668)” In a later part of the same scene, Powell dedicates a segment in which the record player conspicuously skips a beat. The mistake is caused by increasingly new technology, and this mistake emphasizes Benjamin’s point of loss in the aura of an art piece with its reproductions.

Powell is highly aware of auratic loss through reproduction. In fact, a main premise of the fictional storyline emphasizes the tension between “good art” and “great art” or between what Greenberg would classify as “kitsch” and the “avant-garde.” Fraser addresses this point when he writes, “The fundamental narrative tension in The Red Shoes is at root the tension of good art versus great art. Both Victoria Page and Julian Craster learn in the early scenes of the movie that greatness is not achieved by degrees, but rather by dimensions…the impossibility of integrating great art and good art is equated in the narrative with the impossibility of mixing romance with artistic commitment. (Fraser, 48-49)” Here the film is then self-reflexive in that it addresses this gulf between good and great art not only through the storyline of the film but also as a new media for the masses. The Red Shoes ends with Victoria’s suicide in which she could not choose between her love for Julian and her love for dance—she could not choose between compromising the “high art” (love for dance) for a lower imitation of it. The tragedy of the storyline brings out our own reaction in that we believe there must be a compromise that would prevent this tragedy—and on a greater sphere we also believe that there must be a compromise between the kitsch and the avant-garde. Powell brings out this idea therefore that though film is a product for the masses, it is not simply a low art. Film in itself can create new auratic experiences that all masses can therefore take part in—it is a media that is both widespread and powerful.



Shot 4 is a centered wide shot of an audience looking towards the camera. The room is dimly lit and the theatre feels small, rustic, and slightly claustrophobic with its dingy blue walls and worn out rugs. The audience consists of men, women, children, with various expressions on their faces as they observe the spectacle in front of them.

The fullness of the image—the fact that it is a wide shot filled to the brim with a diverse amount of people, emphasizes machinery and art as a product of the proletariat. Benjamin writes, “By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listening in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind. Both processes are intimately connected with the contemporary mass movements. (668)” Throughout history, art has been only enjoyed by the elite few, yet art reproduction has brought its product to the common crowd, the masses—men, women, children, rich and poor sit in the Mercury theatre awaiting the art spectacle in shot 4. Powell is commenting that though there is auratic loss in art reproduction, there is also increasing equality in bringing art to the masses.
Shot 5 is a wide shot of the stage following the solo performance of Victoria Page on stage through a series of unobvious pans. The painted backdrop is of a blue moonlit lake at night, as Victoria dances light and gracefully onto the stage in a white swan costume.

The immediate cut from the crowd to Victoria’s solo entrance on stage indicates what the audience is watching. The careful framing keeps Victoria at the center throughout the entire shot. The contrast of the blue backdrop to her glowing white costume creates an aura about her—she is the object of beauty in our gaze (which is really the camera’s gaze). This nonetheless, supports the idea that Victoria alone is the art signifier. Benjamin argues that it is this creation of aura in the star of the movie that retains the auratic experience in art. Perhaps Powell is indicating to us that Victoria is a packaged art product meant to be shared with the masses, and that film is one way of effectively “packaging” aura. This idea that Victoria is merely an art product is also hinted at in shot 1 when the poster announces, “Reappearance of Victoria Page in Lac des Cygnes, for one performance only by special permission of “The Ballet Lermontov.” The production company, The Ballet Lermontov is the obvious patron of art—it owns Victoria as an art product—it has power over what she performs and who she performs for. Shot 5 is extremely significant not only in that Victoria is seen as the art product, but also the fact that we, the audience of the film, are forced to reflect on our own viewing of Victoria through the art product of film, a media of the masses. We realize that we are watching an audience watching Victoria—in other words, we are watching a reproduction of Swan Lake through a mechanical reproduction of film. It allows us to question, have we experienced doubly the auratic loss?



Shot five is significant in that we are viewing a reproduction of several different art forms. Peter Fraser writes in his Musical Mode: Putting on “The Red Shoes”, “Each mode demands a unique integration of intellectual and aesthetic sensibilities on the part of the viewer/listener. In her or his participations with a musical, the spectator participates on two entirely separate planes of metaphoric reality—the fictional and the lyrical. (Fraser, 45)” I agree that in this sequence of shots, we are experiencing multiple planes of “metaphoric reality”, but must add that in addition to story and music (as Fraser has mentioned), we are also experiencing visual reality of dance and the theatrical story of Swan Lake. With all these layers of superimposed reproductions, have we lost Walter Benjamin’s idea of aura in the process? I argue that in fact, we have gained a new kind of auratic experience through film. Though we are watching Victoria’s dances through a second media, this second media of film actually creates new aura from her performances. In the premiere of the Red Shoes ballet, the technology of film adds to the aura of Victoria as a dancer, so that her performance supercedes the stage and creates visual and auratic impact as film. The camera’s ability to capture each miniscule movement, the surrealistic shifts in landscape and imagery, filmic transitions, and transformative special effects does not merely makes a cheap copy a performance but extends and raises it into another dimension in our eyes. Similarly in shot 5, everything within the performance is constructed for film and not for the stage. Aura is created around Victoria in her costume, in the design of the set, and in the soft lighting of the shot, so that she literally glows. In addition, the shot is a continuous pan, following her every move, as if her performance was magnetic. These are auratic experiences created by film, and not solely the performance. Film enhances the viewership of a performance and therefore creates its own aura from its making.





Shot 6 is a medium shot of Victoria pirouetting across the stage as the music becomes increasingly sharp and dramatic.

Shot 7 is a reverse shot of what Victoria sees as she spins across the stage. The shot consists of several fast pans that imitate the spinning motion of the pirouettes while showing glimpses of the crowd observing.

These two shots function together as a shot reverse shot sequence. We instantly connect the idea that the fast pans are from Victoria’s perspective. We, the audience of the film are then sutured into the dancer’s mind, the dancer’s world—we see what they see, we experience what they experience. The end of this scene signifies the last time that we ever see the audience as a mass. From here on out, we see the story on the production side of things. We see everything from their training, to love lives, set design, music to choreography; we become sutured into their worlds. The absence of the audience in the final dramatic performances hints at the fact that we have replaced that imaginary audience in their role as spectators, that we are those missing masses—that we are the new proletariat. The significance of the audience’s suture into the production side serves to portray the economic problem in sustaining the high arts. From what we have seen with the change in technology, access to kitsch art is no longer a large problem. However, it is the sustainability of the “quality” of the “aura” in this art that is being addressed. Powell seems especially aware of this idea when he sutures the audience into the production. It is his way of showing us the difficulties of maintaining quality in “great art.” He shows us through the ultimate tragic ending that there is sacrifice involved in maintaining this high art, and that perhaps there is a compromise that must be made between quality of product, and equality of viewership.

The composition, mise-en-scene, movement, and cutting of this series of shots reflect on Walter Benjamin’s idea of the increasing mechanization of art as well as the suture of the audience into the production.

















Works Cited
Benjamin, Walter. "The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov." Web. 4 Dec. 2009. .

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Film Theory and Criticism. 7th ed. Vol. 1. New York: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.

Fraser, Peter. "The Musical Mode: Putting on "The Red Shoes"" JSTOR. Web. 4 Dec. 2009. .

Goodwin, Craufurd D. "Roger Fry: Art and Commerce." Journal of Cultural Economics 22.1 (1998). SpringerLink, 02 Nov. 2004. Web. 4 Dec. 2009. .

Greenberg, Clement. Avant-Garde and Kitsch. Art in theory, 1900-2000: an anthology of changing ideas. Google. Web. 4 Dec. 2009. .

The Red Shoes and the Mechanical Production of Art

The Red Shoes tells the dramatic story of a young ballerina, Victoria Page, who is torn between two opposing forces: the composer who loves her and the impresario determined to fashion her into a great dancer. The sequence of shots that I have chosen portrays the young Victoria Page dancing for a small, crowded audience at the Mercury Theatre before her claim to fame. The great ballet impresario, Boris Lermontov sits amongst the crowd, watching Victoria’s every dance step with critical intensity as she dances in a production/reproduction of Swan Lake. This moment is significant to the rest of the movie in two ways—1. It marks the first time Boris acknowledges Victoria, and takes her under his wing, and 2. It marks the last time we see the audience in the ballet performances. This sequence of shots not only reveals the suture of the audience into the performance, but also Michael Powell’s critique of mechanical reproduction and the loss of what Walter Benjamin refers to as the auratic experience.



Shot 1 is a slow zoom in on a poster outside the Mercury Theatre advertising a limited performance of Swan Lake given by Victoria Page. The shot shows two poster images pasted on top of the other. The poster on top reads: “Reappearance of Victoria Page in Lac des Cygnes, for one performance only by special permission of “The Ballet Lermontov.” The shot zooms into the center of the shot in which the words “Royal Philharmonic Orchestra” are daintily placed. The diegetic sound of rain slowly fades into the background as the music of Swan Lake fades in.





Shot 2 is a close up of a record player in which the musical record is spinning in a continuously circular motion. Shot 3 shows a ceiling fan spinning similarly in a circular way and displays a large loudspeaker placed next to the ceiling fan.

These first three shots are extremely significant in showing Walter Benjamin’s idea of Mechanical Reproduction. Shot one uses a zoom—a function that the camera, a piece of mechanical equipment can perform easily, but one that our human eye cannot easily imitate. The zoom conditions our eye to a certain place on the screen, it forces our human eye to look where the camera wants us to look, and forces us to see in the same manner that it sees. And just what is it that Powell would like us to see? Our vision is pulled towards the zooming point, or the shot’s center of gravity—in this case, the words on the poster that come to our attention are: “Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.” As the sounds of the rain fade out and the music of the orchestra fade in, we, the audience, are temporarily tricked into thinking that we are hearing the music played by an orchestra. The words on the poster mislead us. Instead, the immediate transition to shot 2 reveals that we are actually hearing the music from a record, a mechanical reproduction of the original live piece of music. The presence of music and the immediate transition to the source of the music is an interesting play on the shot reverse shot. In this case, instead of being a shot reverse shot, it is a bit like a sound reverse shot where the source of the music is revealed by replacing the absent one (the music during shot 1) with the signifier (the record player in shot two) .

Shot three further emphasizes the mechanical reproduction with the spinning fan and centered shot of the loudspeaker. The repetitive motion of the record player indicates mechanical motion in shot 2, and this motion is echoed in shot three with the spinning fan. The centered shot of the loudspeaker reveals again where the sound is coming from—a machine. With these first three shots, Powell reveals the increasing industrialization of society, and the result of increasing art productions and reproductions. Walter Benjamin talks of reproductions and their depreciating value from the original, “One might subsume the eliminated element in the term “aura” and go on to say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art…One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition.(668)” In a later part of the same scene, Powell dedicates a segment in which the record player conspicuously skips a beat. The mistake is caused by increasingly new technology, and the increasing mechanization of art. This mistake brings to our attention to the production aspect of the performance, and emphasizes Benjamin’s point of loss in the aura of an art piece with its reproductions. Powell hits home, that the reproduction of music will never be as good as the original live performance.



Shot 4 is a centered wide shot of an audience looking towards the camera. The room is dimly lit and the theatre feels small, rustic, and slightly claustrophobic with its dingy blue walls and worn out rugs. The audience consists of men, women, children, with various expressions on their faces as they observe the spectacle in front of them.

The fullness of the image—the fact that it is a wide shot filled to the brim with a diverse amount of people, emphasizes machinery and art as a product of the proletariat. Benjamin writes, “By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listening in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind. Both processes are intimately connected with the contemporary mass movements. (668)” Throughout history, art has been only enjoyed by the elite few, yet art reproduction has bought its product to the common crowd, the masses—men, women, children, rich and poor sit in the Mercury theatre awaiting the art spectacle in shot 4. Powell is commenting that though there is auratic loss in art reproduction, there is also increasing equality in bringing art to the masses.



Shot 5 is a wide shot of the stage following the solo performance of Victoria Page on stage through a series of unobvious pans. The painted backdrop is of a blue moonlit lake at night, as Victoria dances light and gracefully onto the stage in a white swan costume.

The immediate cut from the crowd to Victoria’s solo entrance on stage indicates what the audience is watching. The careful framing keeps Victoria at the center throughout the entire shot. The contrast of the blue backdrop to her glowing white costume creates an aura about her—she is the object of beauty in our gaze (which is really the camera’s gaze). She is the art signifier. This idea that Victoria is merely an art product is hinted at in shot 1 when the poster announces, “Reappearance of Victoria Page in Lac des Cygnes, for one performance only by special permission of “The Ballet Lermontov.” The production company, The Ballet Lermontov is the obvious patron of art—it owns Victoria as an art product—it has power over what she performs and who she performs for. Shot 5 is extremely significant not only in that Victoria is seen as the art product, but also the fact that we, the audience of the film, are forced to reflect on our own viewing of Victoria through the art product of film, a media of the masses. We realize that we are watching an audience watching Victoria—in other words, we are watching a reproduction of Swan Lake through a mechanical reproduction of film. It allows us to question, have we experienced doubly the auratic loss?






Shot 6 is a medium shot of Victoria pirouetting across the stage as the music becomes increasingly sharp and dramatic.
Shot 7 is a reverse shot of what Victoria sees as she spins across the stage. The shot consists of several fast pans that imitate the spinning motion of the pirouettes while showing glimpses of the crowd observing.

These two shots function together as a shot reverse shot sequence. We instantly connect the idea that the fast pans are from Victoria’s perspective. We, the audience of the film are then sutured into the dancer’s mind, the dancer’s world—we see what they see, we experience what they experience. The end of this scene signifies the last time that we ever see the audience as a mass. From here on out, we see the story on the production side of things. We see everything from their training, to love lives, set design, music to choreography; we become sutured into their worlds. The absence of the audience in the final dramatic performances hints at the fact that we have replaced that imaginary audience in their role as spectators, that we are those missing masses—that we are the new proletariat.

The composition, mise-en-scene, movement, and cutting of this series of shots reflect on Walter Benjamin’s idea of the increasing mechanization of art as well as the suture of the audience into the production.

Kiss with a Bang: An Embrace of Film Noir and a Murder of Hollywood FIlm

Author's Note: Please excuse the poor excuse of a title.



Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a clear subversion of the Noir genre with its twisted detective story, mysterious female characters, and an unconventionally heroic protagonist. The twists and turns of this movie however, not only subvert the noir genre, but as I will also argue, serve the greater purpose of subverting the generic Hollywood film. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang makes as much fun of the typical detective story as the institution that made and produced it.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang certainly has the basic qualities of a film noir. Stylistically, the film is filled with noir iconography—the sensuous blond haired woman with rouge lips, the smokiness of darkened bars, men in trench-coats, and most of all, the presence of chiascuro, or the high contrast between light and dark. Like Chinatown, Bang also departs from the semantics of noir in that it includes color. But while Chinatown for the most part keeps its colors muted, Bang actually exaggerates them, coloring interiors with vibrant limes and reds, indicating a subversion of the generic text.



Cawelti writes that the Noir film story “begins when the hard-boiled hero is given a mission by a client. (500)” This is also the case to a certain extent in Bang. Harry’s first assignment is given to him by “Gay Perry”, his so-called agent who forces Harry to stake out outside Allison Ames’s house in order to train him for his acting role as a private investigator. Cawelti continues to dissect the noir genre saying that, “It is typical that this initial mission is a deceptive one. Either the client is lying…or the client has himself been deceived and does not understand what is really at stake when he gives the detective his case.” In Bang, the initial mission is deceptive for both reasons. Perry, the client in this case, is deceiving Harry in that he says that the mission is a part of his training in order to get him in character for his role of a Private Investigator, but Perry himself is also being deceived in that he has no idea of the bigger picture of what he was hired for. The presence of this double crossing, and other confusing twists plotlines seems to mock the noir genre. Again, Bang exaggerates a trait of the Noir genre and in essence subverts it with satirical humor.

Cawelti also mentions as a trait of the noir film that the protagonist is always “the individual of integrity who exists on the margins of society can solve the crime and bring about a true justice.” Harry does indeed exist “on the margins of society” but unlike his generic counterparts, he is taken even a step further. Not only is he on the margins of society, but he is actually the antithesis of it. The film begins showing him robbing a toy store for Christmas—he is set up as a criminal—an anti-hero of sorts who openly rejects the society he is in.




The way he escapes capture is by jumping into an audition for a Hollywood film. Harry slams into the audition room to escape from the reality of his criminal activity and consequences—here, he is both figuratively and literally jumping into a movie. Similarly, this is the moment that we the audience is also at a genre crossroads—to decide whether or not we can suspend our disbelief and our reality, in order to engage with the genre experience. The presentation of Harry as a criminal escaping his reality through film also seems to be a self-reflexive commentary that watching a film on the part of the speculator may also be considered a criminal act (similar to the case in Peeping Tom). This moment is also the point in the film in which the movie begins to play with its own productive process. Throughout Bang, we can see the whole Hollywood production process unfold before our eyes.



The very first step in producing a Hollywood movie, is securing the written material. This is shown in the presence of the Johnny Gossamer novels which Harmony has been obsessed with since childhood. The story of the movie follows the plotlines of these novels. At one point, Harry, in his narration, comments about “planting”, the process of planting objects and things in the script that have significance later on in the movie. This also mocks the typical Hollywood script. The next step in the production process is packaging the right stars to play in the movie. We know both how Harry and Harmony “got to the party”, or how they were “discovered” as stars of the movie. The movie itself mocks this process through the wild ways that both characters got there—Harry through a criminal act, while Harmony appears on the nightly news by hitting a robot with a bat. Editing is addressed when Harry goes on a tangent, and he attempts to correct himself but screws up the movie screen instead. This occurs in the video HERE at 9:55. Lastly, Harry mocks the happy ending by bringing back Perry, and to hit the point home, all of the other characters and criminals back from the dead. Every aspect in the production process is made fun of.





Kiss Kiss Bang Bang subverts the genre and through that in essence also makes fun of itself as a Hollywood product.

Vertigo

Vertigo is the perfect example of patriarchal cinema as defined by Laura Mulvey.

Firstly, it is a highly scopophilic movie in that the audience, the spectators derive immense pleasure from the act of watching. When Scottie is hired as the detective to watch over Madeleine, so begins our embrace of his identity. Soon we follow Madeleine everywhere, her figure and face is constantly at the center of our frame, the constant object that we watch intently. The camera cuts up her body—displaying each part with objective flatness—the flowers she holds, her platinum hair put into a bun, the back of her gray suit, her face displayed in perfected beauty. In essence, we allow ourselves to become perverted stalkers (not too different from Peeping Tom), seeing her as only parts of a whole—a physical being without personality traits that define her.



After Scottie meets Judy, he attempts to put these cut up pieces of Madeleine together again. He buys Judy Madeleine’s gray suit, forces her to dye her hair platinum blond, then tells her to put it up into Madeleine’s bun, assembling Madeleine together as if she were a doll or puppet or puzzle. Even when Judy tries to resist Scottie’s nagging, she is helpless to his influence. Therefore, allowing a woman to be looked at here, serves another purpose: it renders her helpless to the male gaze—Madeleine is literally constructed under the male gaze.

Vertigo is also a movie about castration, in that one of the dual plotlines is Scottie’s recovery from his feminine, helpless state. Mulvey argues in her article that the Policeman is a symbolic representation of all that is masculine. Therefore, the fact that the first scene shows the Policeman tumbling off the building and Scottie’s reaction of fear and acute sense of vertigo, establishes the psychological fear and trauma not of heights, but of castration.


Throughout the film, Scottie regains his manhood by stalking Madeleine—by submitting her to the male gaze. As Scottie discovers that Judy is actually Madeleine, he violently rebels against her—he rebels against the representation of the castrated man. In the scene in which Scottie is pushing Judy further and further up the stairs, Scottie is also conquering his fear of castration simultaneously with his fear of heights. It seems as if the more violent and vicious he is towards Judy, he gets further up the stairs, and he is closer to redeeming his manhood. The last scene in which Judy plummets off the building to her death is then symbolic of Scottie’s full redemption in that Judy, the image of the castrated man is banished forever.



Midge is the other image of the castrated man, a supposed Oedipal “mother figure” of the story. She serves an alternate purpose as a contrasting woman in the film. While Midge is always around Scottie, she is never subjected to his gaze (no matter how much she wants to be). In fact, his male gaze constantly ignores her.



In one scene, Midge shows Scottie a painting of herself as “Carlotta Valdes” from the art museum. This scene is extremely crucial in that Midge frames herself as Scottie’s object of desire—she attempts to force her gaze unto him! A painting, just like a film or a looking glass brings us out of one frame (the male gaze of the film) and into another alternate frame (the female gaze of the painting) and for this one scene, Midge has control over the gaze of the movie. Hitchcock almost seems to be making a joke when forcing us to look at the satirical painting and subjecting us temporarily to the female gaze, before Scottie turns away in disgust, suggesting that the female gaze ultimately fails.

Vertigo also functions as a text for the Film Noir genre. Both the film's syntax and semantics follow the genre traditionally. The contrasting shadows of the cinematography especially present in the scene in which Scottie and Madeleine walk into the forest, the dangerous beauty of Madeleine, and the darkened atmosphere that blends dream with reality are structural characteristics of Film Noir. In addition, Judy is treated as a woman who has the wrong morals--her beauty and significance as an object of desire brings about both Judy's and Scottie's downfall. In order to preserve the good, Judy dies in the end, preserving the "moral" man in Scottie. Film Noir in itself is a genre that is incredibly male--it regards beauty and women as something that will bring about the male down downfall--referring to the original downfall of man in which Eve "seduces" Adam in eating the fruit of knowledge, expelling them to earth.

Hitchcock uses the scopophilic male gaze, the rejection of the female gaze, the Freudian fear of castration, and the syntax and semantics of Film Noir to create a film that exploits the male fantasy.

Ponyo and the Sea

Stunning visuals and imaginative narrative make Ponyo and the Sea a must-see.

Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo and the Sea is a beautiful retelling of The Little Mermaid, following Ponyo, an adorable yet rebellious fish-girl who undermines her wizard-father’s authority and swims ashore in order to explore the world above. Ponyo quite accidentally gets caught in a glass bottle at sea and gets carried to a shore near the cliff where Sosuke lives. Sosuke finds Ponyo (in the form of a goldfish) and puts her in a bucket, and the two children spend a day together before Fujimoto, Ponyo’s father, forces Ponyo to go back to the sea. But Ponyo wants to see Sosuke again, and so she fantastically escapes from his father’s lair, visually bursting out of her marine home.

When Ponyo and Sosuke reunite this time, Ponyo has grown legs, and turned into an exuberant little girl. The two characters come to share their mutual experiences, and grow to love one another. Unbeknownst to the pair however, Ponyo’s escape from her father’s lair triggers an imbalance in the ecosystem, causing a gigantic tsunami to hit Sosuke’s town. In the final act, the purity of their love is tested, and it is up to them to find Sosuke’s mother, and restore the balance of the ecosystem together.

Miyazaki’s animation is as impressive as ever, though perhaps in a sparser style than his past films—having a child-like quality and simple brilliance to them. His bright colors, and the constant ebb and flow of natural forces (wind and water) give wonderful imagery to the film. In Ponyo, waves upon waves of fantastical giant fish splash into the frame, vibrant and pastel sea creatures swim through the sea, and godlike spirits illuminate the screen in gold. The expressions of each character are so vivid—joy, sadness, tenderness, and love all come across these characters. Every detail—from the furrow of their brows, or puffing of cheeks, or swelling in their bodies—contributes to the audience sense of heightened emotion in the visual language. The buoyant movements of jellyfish to the lurking movements of the Fujimoto’s sea monsters all add to Miyazaki’s imaginative visuals. There is movement in every fiber of the film.

Miyazaki’s film successfully brings out the theme of the power of a child’s innocence, and highlights the greater societal problems of environmental preservation. His children are courageous, pure of heart, and worthy of admiration. Ponyo and Sosuke venture out into the flood using their toy boat; they work together and neither ever leaves the other one behind. In the end, their bond, their love, prevents Ponyo from being turned into sea foam. Their love is tested, and deemed worthy.

Environmental preservation is a consistent theme throughout the movie. Fujimoto, a human sorcerer is deemed the preserver of the sea—an interesting metaphor, that a human’s responsibility is to his environment and keeping the “balance” of it. Ponyo makes her first dire appearance stuck in a glass jar that had been tossed carelessly into the sea. The power of nature also comes to a crescendo at the end in the terrific storm.

If the visuals and story aren’t enough, the characters of this film are just so darn cute and adorable! You can’t help but feel the insane urge to pinch and squeeze them. Just seeing the animated reactions of the children in the film is entertaining in itself, but Miyazaki takes it to a whole other level in that he really makes us see the beauty of the world through the eyes of a child. We find ourselves delighting in the simple pleasures and facing the tests of life with an innocent, optimistic courage. Miyazaki’s magical Ponyo and the Sea engages the audience in a film that is bursting through the seams with stunning visuals.

Sleepless in Seattle Movie Blog

The romance in Sleepless in Seattle was brought out through the various camera techniques—editing, music, mood—employed in the film. The unification between content and form helped to exploit the central romantic theme. As seen from the re-cut trailer, Sleepless in Seattle, can very easily be seen as a stalker-oriented horror film. However, in the actual film, even though neither character meet the other until the very end, their chemistry and romance is instantly believable to the audience. Why is this the case?



In the beginning our two protagonists are separated by distance, so how do we get the sense that Annie and Sam are intimate with one another? This is accomplished throughout the film in several ways. The first is through the visuals of the film. They are constantly put into parallel spaces. When Sam is in his house talking on the radio, Annie is sitting in her home listening to him. When Annie is coming out of a door, Sam is coming out of another door. When Sam is walking by the sea, Annie is also walking alone somewhere and gazing at the stars. Not only do the their eye-lines and colors of these parallel shots match, but so too does the mood of each separate scene. Even though the two are separated by a long physical distance from Seattle to Baltimore, they are enclosed by the same emotional space. The parallelism in their setting seems to defy the physical space that separates them.



Sound is also extremely effective in portraying the intimacy between our two protagonists. The overarching romantic music theme sets a mood that transcends two different spaces, in order to create the same mood from both. Also the first “meeting” between Annie and Sam is through sound—they are connected through the radio. The scene displays Sam talking into the phone while Annie drives in her car listening to the radio. What is interesting about this scene is that there is a lack of ambient sound—the only things we hear in this section are the words spoken by Sam, and Annie’s reaction to them. The super close ups that are utilized in this section create emotional connection and intimacy between the two—as if Sam were directly talking to Annie. There is only a break in reverie when a sound of a car interrupts the scene.
The success of Annie and Sam’s meeting is also set up through the presence of a movie. There is this constant allusion to An Affair to Remember, and the people around them are always emotionally impacted by this movie. Everyone from Annie’s best friend, Sam’s sister, and even the bell hopper in the concluding scene is aware of the movie. The film seems to play with the classic vs. modern idea of a love story-paralleling the two stories yet contrasting them.



Sleepless in Seattle is not quite your average classic Hollywood film in several ways. The first is that there is no dual storyline (a trait common to classics according to Bordwell)—the entire film focuses on the romance between Annie and Sam—there is no introduction of a greater meaning in the movie, there is no quest that either character goes through aside from finding each other. Arguably however, it is possible that Sam’s quest is to recover from family tragedy, or raising his son, Jonah. However, in the movie, Jonah seems to be much more of an adult in the family, guiding his father through trauma rather than the other way around.
In addition, the visual effects employed in the film don’t quite follow traditional conventions. Spatial continuity is broken frequently in order to convey closeness between our two protagonists. The progression of the storyline does not adhere to the classical Hollywood film either. While most films start with a “cute meet” between two characters who then develop intimacy after a number of obstacles or misfortunes, Sleepless in Seattle ENDS with the first meeting. We, as the audience, however are conditioned to think that they have the perfect ending, when it is really the beginning.

Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and AMELIE

In “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Walter Benjamin argues that technology in the mechanical age can manipulate the eye, and therefore also manipulate the mind. In essence, I agree that the camera is a powerful tool to make people see, but it is dependent on the viewer for its power. An ignorant viewer will buy exactly what is seen on the screen, whereas a knowledgeable viewer will see the media as a whole and determine on his or her own volition whether to buy into it or not. Film technology only promotes narrative as criminal when the viewer cannot disengage from the material and look at it with a distance before deciding to engage within the film’s realm.

In Amelie, the camera works to pull us into the dimensions of the film. It attempts to create a truth through the imitation of reality. As an audience, we have the privilege of being somewhat omniscient—we are spectators that watch the story unfold. We are able to engage extremely intimately with Amelie in our spectatorship through the camera. We are able to see things the way that Amelie perceives them (her goldfish and imaginary friends), and therefore we can also emotionally engage with Amelie’s feelings—we share her biases, her interests, her disinterests—we are manipulated into feeling how she feels.

Her distaste for the manager of the vegetable stand, her penchant for matchmaking, her love for Nino and her personal habits become our rituals. The camera allows us to see Amelie’s past through Aaradine’s last moments, or Amelie’s internal reflections (in the form of movies that play on the T.V. screen), or even experience her own sexual arousal (in which she ventures into the haunted house and is stroked carefully by Nino). We are able to put the events of her life under scrutinizing dissection. Through these vicarious experiences, we come to see the world the way Amelie has always seen it.

The narrative may be considered criminal in this aspect, as film is the only art form that can take place in real time. The time it takes for Amelie to free a goldfish, break the shell on a crème brulee or hold a conversation with a friend, is the same as the time that is deprived from our own rituals of life. It seems criminal that movies can steal away your life experience in order to experience someone else’s.

Furthermore, film is powerful in that it can manipulate you to believe in an alternate reality. Though Amelie was a beautifully crafted narrative, its basis could be seen as extremely unrealistic. In another light, she can easily be seen as a severe vandal, a keen stalker, or malevolent gossip. However, the camera works to manipulate our sympathies. With our own morals ingrained within us, we enter the movie theater to judge its politics against our own. We can choose to accept its perspective or we can choose to reject it. When we cannot disassociate from the media in order to make that judgment however, we are trapped within the criminal felony that has been committed against us.