A-Level Film Studies - Daniel Kallin

Billy Wilder: Auteur or just an author? To understand if Wilder ticks off the boxes for the complicated job that is auteurship, we must define what being an auteur entails. First and foremost, auteurs tend to be characterised by their distinctive styles, being instantly recognisable by a familiar audience. This is usually achieved by a stylistic synthesis of colour, lighting, mise-en-scene for a consistent visual appearance, along with characters and themes that are similar throughout an auteur's filmography. An example of this would be Wes Anderson who's use of bright colours, symmetry and characters who don't act their age makes each of his films instantly recognisable. Recurring actors, cinematographers and composers help an auteur keep consistent. Wilder can be seen as an auteur in some ways but not others. When comparing Sunset Boulevard and Some Like It Hot - arguably his two defining films - there is a clear difference in tone, lighting and style. However, each is di...

Sunset Boulevard (Wilder, 1950) References to the star system and the Golden Age of Hollywood: Hollywood producers went for easy-to-sell, accessible stories - didn't care for quality Depend on writers but writers depend on them Transition from silent to talking pictures left many stars behind - they were great at silent acting but not dialogue Stars that aren't wanted anymore are left behind - at a young age - with wealth and prestige but nothing else Older women aren't valued in cinema Female stars don't have films and genres built around them, so                                                                                     are seen as disposable almost Norma Desmond represents both the forgotten star from the silent era but, also, th...

Some Like It Hot (Wilder, 1959)   The film reflects upon the time of the 1920s in several ways. Firstly, the use of mise-en-scene to depict certain activities which are regularly associated with the 1920s, such as bootlegging alcohol and gangs, immediately sets the time and tone of the film which is important because society had progressed a lot over thirty-to-forty years. This is further exemplified through the use of costume with typical clothing for men with suits and spats and also typical clothing for the more liberated woman - "flappers" - who would wear revealing dresses. Lighting is quite bright - even with darker themes like gangsters and prohibition - to create a light-hearted and comedic atmosphere so the more "controversial" themes of identity and sexuality would be taken comically rather than seriously - as such not violating the Hays Code. Female identity: Female identity is presented in an atypical manner for the time, having men act like women. Focus...

   Key elements of film form:    As with all film scenes, film form is the most important element to making them work, or fail. As the camera acts as the camera for the spectator, and sound and lighting create mood and atmosphere, film form is essential to engage the spectator. In Some Like It Hot, film form is used in a variety of ways to engage the viewer, many of which can be duly noted whilst watching this scene.   Starting with  cinematography,  the camera takes lots of long-shots at medium close-up to focus the spectator's attention on the dialogue and chemistry between the actors. The camera uses angles to focus on one actor in particular or stays directly centered when focused on both actors. Quite simply, the camera goes where the spectator's attention is needed. To add to this, the use of distance can act as a demonstrator of the level of comfort and intimacy between the two actors, standing back slightly in the beginning as Sugar is nervous ...

handheld camera close-up shots camera follows people as it moves uncomfortable shots of people fighting or mouths or feet natural daylight - realism diegetic sound - realism Shakespeare road - contrast red dress - makes her stand out depth of field - shows how the mum is putting the man first before her children Wasp uses cinematography to ground the film in realism and makes the spectator empathise with the characters on screen. One way it does this is through the use of a handheld camera which never stays still and rarely focuses on one thing which emulates the hyper-energy of the children as they are clearly difficult to manage. The use of close-ups alongside the handheld camera add to the discomfort of the scene, zooming in on parts of the body such as mouths and feet to create a sense of claustrophobia, similar to the lack of space the family have. Complemented by natural light and, later on, natural darkness, there is nothing artificial about the film, illustrating to the spectat...

  SOME LIKE IT OLD: A HISTORY OF HOLLYWOOD’S GOLDEN AGE After Eadweard Muybridge discovered that he could make pictures move it didn’t take long for film to evolve. Starting with minute-long, silent videos of trains and leading to the 1920s where cinema could become a commodity for the masses. Instead of a scientific gimmick, the moving picture became one of the largest industries in America. The 1920s heralded the beginning of the commercial reigns of what were known as the big five; 20 th Century Fox, Universal, Paramount, MGM and Warner. These five had, and still have, almost complete control over all mainstream films. In the 1920s, where mainstream films were just shy of being the only option, The Big Five began churning out films like clockwork, using Ford’s assembly line production methods to mass-produce films into their ‘studio system’. The studio system was a way for The Big Five to keep all their profits, vertically integrating their companies by producing, distribu...

STAR: In the silent era, both male and female stars were archetypal and easily readable. With the introduction of sound, male stars became more complex and their roles diversified, often in a way that the male star was the site around which a genre was defined (i.e. Clint Eastwood for Spaghetti Westerns). Stars are constructed by the film industry but stars have role in how their status is perceived.  Stars reach the spectator principally through their appearance and bodies. The star consists of three component parts: The real person   The 'reel' person   The star's persona The star-image has four parts:   What the industry puts out   What the media says (including critics)   What the star says or does  What we say                                       Stars could be considered as:  a deviant - controlle...