Cinema Stories

After watching La Haine and Girlhood , I was interested in other portrayals of the troubled French youth. When I researched other films of that category I came across a 1994 film called Fresh by director Boaz Yakin. The main character has very different mannerisms than the rowdy characters of La Haine .  The main character Fresh does not speak very much throughout the film, but only when he thinks his words add meaning to a situation. His dad is an alcoholic and his dad is a drug dealer. The closest father figure he has in his live is a drug dealer named Esteban. Throughout the film, he plays a series of chess games to free his sister and him from the control of their father.  Overall, the main character is more like Marieme in the sense that she often remains quiet until certain situations come up and the story overall is not as exaggerated as that of Vincent.

Film critic Robbie Collin describes director Jacques Audiard as anti-Hollywood in an article by The Telegraph. They sit on a balcony with a view of The French Rivera and talk about his new movie Rust and Bone (the article was written in 2012). The film follows the romance between a single dad who is trying to become a wrestler and a whale trainer who has just lost both of her legs. The title describes all of the physical and metaphorical violence throughout the film. "Rust and bone if the flavour of being punched in the face.  The blood filling the mouth, the splintered jaw.  When someone is punched in the face, you find out what they are made of," says Audiard when Collin asks him to explain the title. The film is based on short stories by a Canadian writer Craig Davidson.  However, in the stories the two main characters never fall in love or even meet. In the book, the trainer is a man who loses one leg, but Audiard wanted to change the story.  He explains ...

     I chose to read a small section from an academic paper by Raphael Picon for this week on Bresson's L'Argent . The article explains the great influence the Lumiere brothers had on Bresson. He wants to leave details out of the film in order for the audience to make assumptions. He refused to use actors to further develop this technique.  He asks complicated questions such as "What is the invisible dimension of the visible world?" and "What is the reality that cannot be captured?" These questions are what the author categorizes as Neo-Platonic questioning.      One of the most important aspects of the film is Bresson's ability to create a neutral reality within the plot by using mechanical phrases and monotone lines. The character and image transform into a formulaic pattern that also leaves room for elements of surprise throughout his films.

For this blog post, I have found an interview excerpt entitled "ROBERT BRESSON: ‘I’M NOT A DIRECTOR. I AM A FILMMAKER.’" from Bresson on Bresson- Interviews   (1943-1983).  In this interview, with François-Régis Bastide, Bresson comments on the way in which he films (apparently barely checking his shot-list during the filming of Pickpocket--which we saw excerpts of in class), his book Notes on the Cinematographer , and his many strict convictions on filmmaking. I found Bresson's comments on the use of sound within his films interesting as this absence of music, mentioned in the quotes below, was an entity I found myself reflecting upon a lot while watching L'argent . RB: Yes. In fact, I would very much like to rectify something that I missed in the past. I said, “No music except, of course, music played by visible instruments.” And I say that “sounds must become music.” What I mean is simply: “no phantom orchestras.” Which we see in films whenever there is music...