Film Blog 3. Jean-Pierre Melville

Connor McShane

Film: Blog 3

October 25, 2010

     Jean-Pierre Grumbach was born on October 20, 1917, he went on to study in Paris where he was introduced to some of the early cinema of the time. Seeing these films created a great obsession for Jean-Pierre which carried into his adulthood. Pierre started making amateur films in his years as a teenager, but soon after, his beginning endeavors with film were halted by WWII. He was enlisted into the French army, and after fleeing to England Jean-Pierre joined the free French forces. After the war Jean went straight to the French technicians union to get reinserted into the film industry, but was sadly rejected; in rage Jean-Pierre went and created his own film studio.

     In 1946 Jean-Pierre Grumbach opened his film studio in Paris. It was this time that Jean-Pierre adopted the name Melville, from his favorite author, Herman Melville. Jean-Pierre Melville began making low budget films in the 1950s. These low budget films were raw and new to the era; they had boundless on site shots and natural lighting, and were considered the stepping stones for the creation of the new wave French films in the 1950s and 60s. Melville’s style of onsite shooting became the inspiration for a new era of film; it was his use of hidden cameras and or any street and building—even though he acquired no permit to shoot—but this secrecy is what became so appealing. The new age of directors would follow in Melville’s footsteps; it was his style of film that evoked filming of the raw realities of life. His use of dark intimate sets and low light close-ups became a revolution in the film industry. These aspects of Melville’s films led to him working with writer director Jean Cocteau; and later making a name for himself as the father of the French gangster film.

     Films such as Léon Morin, Le Doulos, and Le Samouraï all coined Melville as the father of the gangster film. This type of film that Pierre was creating was shot very similar to the new wave era—which was adopted from Melville. It was these films that gave Melville his claim to fame. Le Samouraï is the film that really honed Melville’s style, it is notably his most famous film, and is still to this day a French cult classic. The film concentrated his technique, and really showed his eye for detail, along with Melville’s underlying philosophy, which can be seen in all of his films, is the idea of honor before everything. If it wasn’t for Melville’s fascination of the American society, his films would not have been inspirational to the French cinema—the influence of American culture bled into the French new wave era through Melville. Because Melville is considered to be the godfather of the gangster film, his 13 films act as a piece of inspiration that the gangster film director of today will look back on. Along with inspiring the gangster genre, the film critic can somewhat attribute the new wave era of film to Jean-Pierre Melville; a classic French director whose films are seen as marvels to this day.    

Blog 2

Connor McShane

Blog Assignment Two

October 4, 2010

Alfred Hitchcock

     Alfred Hitchcock’s career in film has a vast time frame which includes numerous great and influential achievements. His career started as an artist, in the early silent films, as a set designer. He then worked his way up and became a writer and later a director. As a director, Hitchcock had a very influential career and is seen as one of the greatest directors in film.

      Starting in silent films and moving toward talkies as technology advanced, he saw the potential in the advancing age of film. Because of his start in the silent era and his exposure to the German expressionistic style and the metamorphic editing of soviet Montage, he was able to use sound to his advantage. Combining his dramatic visual styles and the combination of silence and sound he created a style of his own that shined throughout the movie industry.

     Known as the man to make sublime thrillers—it is his most famous films that came in the 60s which coined his title. Even though his most famous films were created after the golden era, his successful career started way before this time. During, before, and after the golden era Hitchcock was creating influential films that stood as marvels in every criteria of filmmaking. Beginning in the early thirties “with his creative use of sound”, and movement into a “thematic, visual, and structural unity”[1] we see this throughout his collection of films. He is a man that stands apart from the film industry throughout his entire career—“Hitchcock did not simply accommodate himself to the studio system but sought independence from it”[2].

     It is Hitchcock’s use of sound that makes his thrillers so famous, creating suspense and anxiety using silent film and joining with it a suspenseful number. Hitchcock is the man that helped make thrillers the way they are—he is the one that “provided the stepping stone for the development of new theories of film”[3]. Hitchcock truly is a man that created a genre of film that dominates the box offices today. Considered to be one of the greatest directors in film, Hitchcock definitely made a name for himself with the products of his long and spectacular career—if not for his products to which made him largely known, his image was solidified because in every film Hitchcock created he always had cameo appearances. Because of this Hitchcock’s popularity skyrocketed. Hitchcock contributed to the film industry greatly, and he truly is a marvel to this day.       

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[1] The Oxford History of World Cinema: The Definitive History of Cinema Worldwide. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

[2] ibid

[3] ibid

Blog Post 1

Connor McShane

September 16, 2010

Film: Blog One

The film industry today relies solely on sound, and speech. The common moviegoer expects to see a movie with dialogue, and the dialogue is what gets the message across—if one were to watch a movie from our era without sound it would be extremely hard to understand the message. It is the era of talking films that takes away the visual aspects of earlier film genres; complete story telling with just the visuals you see on the screen. In this huge change we lose a whole era of finely tuned techniques—In the silent era you find that these techniques are magnified, or as extreme as you can get them.

The films of today are spectacular and visually intoxicating, but they achieve this only through computer graphics and special effects. Even with these spectacular visual effects we lose a large portion of the visual aspects of the film to dialogue—close ups of actors/actresses talking start to take over. The silent era was all about the visual aspect of it, the universal language of getting a feeling or emotion across to the viewer using archetypal images that create a language known throughout the world. Films made mainly in Germany, France, and Italy during the silent era are seen as works of art. These European directors made films that didn’t just tell a story, but were creating films that were 100 percent artistic; every shot and every frame was compositionally pleasing and visually created a mood. Now, in our era, we find that some films can visually have this affect, but the majority of our films today achieve feeling and emotion through dialogue. By doing this we lose this attention to detail and we start seeing that not every shot or frame is visually pleasing. The film industry has replaced their way of getting emotion across from visual aspects to using mostly talking.

In earlier films we see a universal language throughout the silent era that was used to portray a message visually. Dramatic postures of the human form, intense lighting of the sets or figures, and symbolism that is easily seen throughout the films. This visual language is what made these silent films so artistic. This dramatic emotion that was interwoven throughout the films we see a lot in the German expressionism style of movies. It was their goal to express emotion visually. When sound was introduced to film we lose a huge portion of this dramatic language used in silent films, simpler facial expressions, dull acting, all with the motive to get the film as real as possible to life. We see film go more and more in this direction as time goes on. Only certain genres of film today tweak this new direction of film and create a movie with a visual aesthetic that is uncommon to life—it is these types of films today that intertwine the language of silent films and the techniques of today and create a film that is cultivating to watch. It is the visual aspects of the silent era that needs to stay with film today, we need to move back toward creating stories that are visually pleasing, but intertwine sound flawlessly so that there is the attention to detail in every frame.