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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 27, 2019 21:18:21 GMT
No filmmaker ever took greater advantage of the closeup and what it reveals than Ingmar Bergman - others did it certainly but not nearly as much as him or as a device for the stories he told. Prior to Bergman and even now it seemed/seems too easy, but Bergman more or less invented multiple character closeups in the frame simultaneously. Not just in things you'd think either like Persona but all across his work. He loves the human face and what it reveals - in Bergman's film everything else is background for the face and the face reveals, sorrow, joy, sadness, hope.
In this scene from Hour of the Wolf note how he positions them within the shot and how much he conveys here in a shot that should be static but is not. If you look at his whole work, he must have come up with more deceptive and sudden closeups than even seems possible - and he offsets them with shadows, light, and all sorts of atmospherics. One of the reasons that Bergman's work sticks with you long after you see it, is other directors wouldn't have had the nerve to do it film after film like he did and how precisely incorporated it too.
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Post by bob-coppola on Jun 28, 2019 14:17:08 GMT
Another thing from Bergman that usually is understated by his fans is the fascinating way in which he handles medieval and fantasy imagery in some of his work. In Hour of the Wolf, The Seventh Seal and The Virgin Spring, he uses common tropes of the fantasy genre and ideas from medieval setting in such a thoughtful, philosophical way that he always ends up going beyond it.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 28, 2019 21:10:48 GMT
I also wanted to mention some or one specifically from my beloved Joel and Ethan Coen - the ornate or sly sight gag. This device isn't even prevalent in latter day American movies even - the early Woody Allen slapstick movies have it in the way they reference Keaton and older films but the Coens integrated the sight gag into their dramas too. This isn't a sight gag per se (because you don't laugh) but they slip it in like crazy in this film - Miller's Crossing.
Here Jon Polito will use an expression "the high hat" accusing Finney of attitude - you notice the hat in the guys hands, and high on the head of his guys head - Finney and Byrne are not wearing hats, when Polito leans forward his man head and hat looms high in the background. When they leave the room a hat hangs on a rack - it's the last thing you see. Later hats and that phrase play a very big deal.
Here is an actual site gag before you hear any dialog - a famous and rather complex one that summarizes character and story and the underlying WW II story the conflicts with the Art from Barton Fink.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 2, 2019 14:12:14 GMT
When Krzysztof Kieslowski made a film series called "Three Colors" you would have been forgiven if you laughed and thought "Isn't that like Scorsese calling something "Three Guns"?
No director understood the beauty of color and its freedom and despair and its cold blandness more than a filmmaker who came of age in an oppressive Poland. This goes back to his earliest films - color and lighting - blacks and grays and shadows and shafts of light. For that man who holds the camera in Camera Buff sees it but what he captures is literally controlled by someone else.
Throughout Kieslowski's work color floods in and washed out colors dominate often in between - they are often not realistic but impressionistic. In this clip from A Short Film About Killing look how the man is surrounded by a wall of beige and grey guards - he is blond and stands out with the priest - they are light .........the others are dark and oppressive. When we see him kill - the shadows come in and out - at times masking and at times revealing.
The light and color is emotional or it's representative - other directors used color and light - some greatly - Zhang Yimou for one - but no one thought through it more and and to this extent.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 2, 2019 14:33:37 GMT
I think this video relates Sofia Coppola's style really well - her use of pastel colors (soft blues and pinks, especially), the windows, and the thoughtful and poetic way she portrays young women and girls -
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 3, 2019 18:12:27 GMT
We often talk about Woody Allen as a great writer as opposed to a director but often he directs in ways you don't see and when you can write that well - it's a huge plus. A trick of his is the directorial sleight of hand where he writes multiple key scenes and covers or unveils which line or scene will later come back - ironically, fatally, or in a stinging way. It is like a shell game that has been in the same hand all along.
In Crimes and Misdemeanors his very best directed film - he makes this more overtly clear by drawing a parallel between 3 characters (not just 2) - Landau, Waterston and Orbach - the central character is undefined by comparison to them - and in this marvelously directed scene he does things he often does but they can be easily missed too - links reality to dreams - one reveals truth (look at how the scene starts), links his Art to reality (ie when he breaks the 4th wall as in Annie Hall or Husbands & Wives) and links one characters specific predicament to another's specific happiness. We see more than the characters very often and these tricks are part of the sleight of hand.
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tobias
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Post by tobias on Jul 4, 2019 2:18:30 GMT
Argento I often say on some level is a GOAT filmmaker - not that he has that many great films (like DePalma he has more awful ones) You mean unlike DePalma. Few DePalma films are less than decent and before the 2000s he wasn't particularly inconsistent.
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tobias
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Post by tobias on Jul 4, 2019 2:26:58 GMT
Both Ruiz and DePalma love split diopter shots like few other directors. They also use it in similar fashion:
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 4, 2019 13:44:29 GMT
It's not a unique trait but Sidney Lumet - had a technique where the group is always shown as a powerful whole and the individual relative to that who is often weak or powerless (not always though) - think of the jurors in 12 Angry Men and how he shoots them to show their collective force or The Hill or the corrupt cops surrounding and then abandoning Serpico in the park.
This is a great example of it - note how the camera goes out then in and out so you see the whole group absent of personality influenced by one man imposing his personality - in the next scene then look at how infinite slow the close-up is - how it focuses in on another man testifying surrounded by the group until they disappear entirely - they reappear only when they need to confront.......the force of the group is never gone in a Lumet film, it's merely at best receding, hidden, patient.
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