Week 3 Blog

Pour la Suite du Monde references the first and early documentary film Nanook of the North. Even though Nanook of the North is considered the first documentary, it has been criticized for some of the staged events that occurred during filming. This brings in the idea and structure of both films and how they have both documentary and fictional aspects within the films. Nanook of the North is a documentary film with a few fictional aspects while Pour la Suite du Monde is a fictional film with a certain documentary feel.

In the opening first shots of both films, there are intertitles that give the general premise of the two films. Pour la Suite du Monde is referencing the early style of filmmaking in the silent era. Intertitles were used to provide the spectator with information that is needed to understand the film during the time where sounds in film had not been developed. Pour la Suite du Monde gives this homage to that early style of filmmaking and to Nanook of the North and its ability to present this documentary and story without the use of dialogue or narration. Right after the intertitles, Nanook of the North cuts to an extreme shot of the landscape. This establishing shot provides the setting of the entire film. It tells the spectator exactly where and when this documentary is taking place. In Pour la Suite du Monde, there is also that landscape and establishing shot. This helps to reference this type of documentary aspect and how the filmmaker is trying to provide this objective and storytelling/documentary point of view. The intertitles present a type of storytelling and almost fictional aspects to both films. This is combined with the establishing landscape shot, which provides the documentary aspect, to create this blurred documentary/fiction line within both films.

Week 2 Collective Dossier Assignment

Area of Investigation: Narrative/How the story of a foster child's life is told in Naked Childhood (and The 400 Blows)

Music/sounds:

In Naked Childhood there is the complete lack of any type of non-diegetic music. This removes any type of forced sympathetic feeling that the spectator has towards Francois. He creates all of this trouble in his life (like torturing the cat and stealing money) and the spectator can understand that it is a way for him to deal with being a foster child. Pialat does not try to use music or sounds to convey pathos towards Francois. The lack of non-diegetic music provides the film with a very documentary and realist view that strays away from a fictional story line of a foster child. Pialat tries to represent Francois’ story in a very realistic manner to try to convey the emotional hardships that a foster child has to encounter as he moves to different families. The lack of music allows the spectator to see Francois’ raw emotional journey without the outside influence of the filmmaker. This is in complete contrast to The 400 Blows where music plays a large part in the film.

In The 400 Blows, dramatic and romanticizing music is played throughout the entire film. It provides the spectator with a very sympathetic view of Antoine’s situation. The non-diegetic music focuses and presents Antoine’s situation within his family. He is rejected and downcast by his mother and father. His teacher is constantly punishing him and his behavior. Antoine eventually gets sent away because he has caused too much trouble for his parents and teacher. Throughout the film, Antoine is shown to commit pranks, steal, and even runaway; yet, with these acts, Truffaut provides the non-diegetic music to romanticize and allow the spectator to sympathize with Antoine’s situation. Antoine has been constantly rejected by the adults within the film. The music allows the spectator to feel pathos and compassion towards Antoine and his rejection as a child. The music helps to show Antoine’s emotional journey throughout the film and it provides a way for the spectator to understand the difficulties that Antoine has had to face.

http://ia331235.us.archive.org/1/items/400BlowssoundClip/400BlowsSoundClip.wav

Week 1 Blog

The film Le Chant du Styrene, by Alain Resnais, is shot in a very interesting manner. Most of the shots are still shots where the camera does not move and the shot lingers on the frame for a few seconds. When the camera does move, it does so in a very slow panning motion. This gives the film a very documentary and objective point of view. The still shots and the slow panning that is combined with the music and the voice-over allows the spectator to view the content of the film in a very objective manner. The music and the voice-over is very dramatized and sometimes romanticized. The shots of the film are shots of simple plastic objects, yet with the dramatic music that is combined with the dramatized narrative, this brings the film into a very serious view on plastic and the creation of plastic materials. Nothing about plastic and the way in which it is made seems exciting or intense, but the sounds in relation to the shots are used to help present this social critic about our society and its dependence on machines and industrialization.

The first few shots of the film, like the plastic flowers that are growing, helps to bring in the nature vs. industrial (machine-like) view of the world in which we live in. The plastic seems to be growing and it is given a type of life as they form into different objects. This gives a sort of industrial take-over of nature and the human life. There is this huge industrial dependence that our world now focuses on and it has taken over and controlled our lives and how we live as a society. Our society is so focused and dependent on machines that we almost lose our sense of being. The film contains very little human presence. There are times where hands are presented to work the machines, but these hands do not provide any type of human nature or interaction. The hands act like machines themselves. They do the same tasks over and over and they act in a very systematic and robotic way. This helps to show how the film provides a type of social commentary about the way in which people and society have become so dependent on machines and how nature is diminishing in our human way of life.