Leave the Pacino, Take the Duvall

   The Godfather is an excellent example of American Cinema at its best. The story focuses on the ideology of family and the mob underworld. The film is about the Corleone family during the 1940s. Based on the Mario Puzo novel of the same title, Francis Coppola allows audience to be a part of the Corleone family, and helps the audience create a relationship with characters in the film. The film has memorable lines (“Leave the gun, take the cannoli” and scenes, (the film director discovering the horse head in his bed). I would argue however, that this film has not lived up to the title of greatest film ever for three reasons: the second half of the film, Michael Corleone, and Robert Duvall.

     The Godfather part one can be broken into two parts. The beginning portion of the film is amazing to me. The story creates an atmosphere of the importance of family and the separation of family and business. I will go into more detail about how this is achieved in my next blog entry that will focus on mise-en-scene. The second part of The Godfather does not live up to the intensity of the first section. After the murders in the restaurant, the film begins to tell two stories: the home front of the Corleone family and the sub plot of Michael Corleone away from home. To me this section tends to drag on and is filled with loop holes (Does the family know anything about his Sicilian wife? Why has his jaw taken forever to heal?). But overall, I just don’t like the character of Michael Corleone.

     While I do enjoy this film, I am reluctant to one aspect of the film that ruins the movie for me: Al Pacino. I personally don’t like his acting style at all but I think that he received a lot of credit in the film industry after he portrayed this role. I must confess that I have not seen The Godfather two and three. One of the reasons why I didn’t like his performance is that the character of Michael Corleone is in the first half of the film,and thus his character should have developed more at that time. I felt that he was too much of a stranger to really care what happen to him later on in the film. I do understand the the first section of the movie is to establish an understanding of the family but I felt that Michael Corleone standing back and not joining the family’s work should have been presented more, rather than the audience just learning where he lives and his military uniform. I don’t know what order these scenes were shot in, but I feel Pacino’s understanding of the character seems stronger later on in the film. The change his character undergoes to present more through other aspects of mise-in-scene.

    I think what upsets me the most about this film is that Robert Duvall is the underdog, or unsung hero, of the film. I feel that he should receive much more credit for his role in this film because the aspects of the story that he presents makes the movie enjoyable for me. It is his performance that helps propel Marlon Brando’s character. I see Duvall’s character as the sturdy foundation that allows the others characters to change around him throughout the film. I want to type so much more but I will save that for my next blog…

The Color of Darkness *Apocalypse Now Spoiler Alert*

     Cinematography is critical to the concept of storytelling in cinema. As I watched Apocalypse Now, I found my mind in a constant daze. This film demonstrates how the audience is at the hands of the director, Francis Coppola, and cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro. The things that stood out to me while watching the film was the toning used, the representation used in the film, and what is in and out of the frame.
    Toning does not just add a shade of color to the film. In Apocalypse Now, there is an ongoing consistency of harsh yellow tones. These tones primarily give off a warm presence of the location, which is the open fields and dead land of Vietnam. One of the many scenes where this is used is when the Robert Duvall’s character is saying the famous “I love the smell of napalm in the morning”. In this example, the yellow toning does two things. The first is the time of day the scene is taking place. It is giving the audience the idea that the battle being fought is probably early afternoon. For instance, the toning would have a more red tint for dusk, dawn, or midday because the placement of the sun. Secondly, it is showing that it is warm. This feeling is pushed even further since the costume that Duvall’s character is not wearing a shirt. What is also interesting in this scene is the toning brings out the red and yellow smoke signals in the background.
      Toning can help bring out colors that may be over looked. This effect also allows the opportunity for more depth given to the shot. An example of this is when Chef and Captain Benjamin L. Wallard are in the jungle searching for mangos. This time the toning is blue to represent a cooler and night falling illusion. I really found it striking that the toning would create this depth with some of the plants in the scenery. For instance, the first shot of them in the jungle is an extreme long shot that gives off a good sense of depth. It’s all fully focus but thanks to the toning, there are certain green plants that stagger in the fore and background of the shot. Also, even though it is not essential, the blue toning makes the blue bucket that Wallard is holding stand out.
The representation that takes place in the movie is very strong. There are two specific examples that stand out to me. The first is in the very beginning of the film. This is an extreme long shot of a Vietnam jungle that is interrupted with fades and dissolves. When the scenes cut to the apartment, there is a fan with its blades spinning. With this image and the sounds of the helicopter in the background, it achieves the illusion that the fan blades are the blades on a helicopter. This is similar to the film The 39 Steps when the woman screams and the sound is a train whistle. In other words, the audience is prepared for something and the sound or image is able to represent what is supposed to occur. This is very different in the end of the film.
      When Colonel Walter E. Kurtz is stabbed to death at the conclusion of the motion picture, there is a very strong sense of representation. While the brutal killing is occurring, the tribe outside is killing a bull in a form of a ritual. This is a very strong and maybe even tasteful scene because it is able to show the gore but through the beast. Not once does the audience see the actual stabbing of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz but they do see hard slash that hacks onto the neck of the bull. Then there is also a sense of Brutus killing Caesar as this moment occurs.
      The cinematographer carries on a very difficult task of what to put and not put in the frame. This shown very strongly though this film and there is just a one out of many examples that I wish to point out (I don’t want to go to in-depth with it because some of the shots I likes were also because of the mise-en-scene). At the murder that I just mentioned is the last time Colonel Walter E. Kurtz is seen. The shot is just of his head. This is one of my favorite parts of cinema. I enjoy the idea that the audience has to image how Kurtz’s body looks without actually seeing the wounds. This concept of what the audience can’t see is actually one of my favorite things about cinema but it is starting to occur less and less because of CGI. But I will save that rant for another blog…

Hell for Two and a Half Hours

Francis Ford Coppola, the well acclaimed director of the Godfather, tells a tale that welcomes audiences to an unknown hell, the Vietnam War. The film Apocalypse Now is a journey of the human psyche. The story follows the character Captain Benjamin L. Willard, played by Martin Sheen, as he embarks on a mission to kill the Colonel Walter E. Kurtz in Cambodia for his unethical behavior and actions. Captain Willard is introduced to audience as a drunken man who has already seen war and is ready for the second round. The films starts with a very eerie feel as helicopters race by the camera and slowly fade shots of Captain Willard in his hotel room looking at a ceiling fan. He is given a letter stating he will be going on a mission to kill an exceptionally intelligent and a highly ranked individual, played by Marlon Brando. A majority of the film takes place on a boat traveling down the rivers of Vietnam. The characters throughout a majority of the film are very dynamic with personalities that grow throughout the course of the film. The movie does a very good job showing how different squadrons fight or how soldier can lose their minds in war. Even though the film may seem to drag on at points, the sections of the plot that show the psyche of the human mind make the film worth seeing. The script is very well crafted in a film noir narration that can be examined on multiple levels. Lastly, Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen give the performances of a life time with their strong grasps on their characters. Join the men who fought in this war in Apocalypse Now.

What I Saw in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (From the earlier post)

This film was pretty entertaining as well as nice presentation. There were many great concepts that took place as the film progressed in the cinematography in terms of blurriness, narration through the camera and color choices. At the opening of the film, the strong visibility of the high white balance gave a well defined presence of the lights in the hospital room and how they may have been blinding when the main character, Jean-do, opened his eye for the first time after the stroke. The fast motion and blurry images show confusion and tears that arose. 

     I loved the concept of being in the mind of the main character for a majority of the film. The fact that the filmmakers first showed this instead of the image of him outside the body was brilliant because it didn’t allow any preconceived thoughts of how I should feel about the character. For instance, there would have been a stronger urge to feel compassion for him because of what he is undergoing. It does posses the characteristic of the films The Russian Arc and Johnny Got His Gun because the narrator is able to be heard by the audience but not those who surround him. However, things shifted once we left the section of being inside his head.

Once leaving the first person thought process, it did two things for me. The first was it upset me because I actually like going through the recovery with character. It allowed an opportunity understand the fear that he was facing, such as when his right eye was being sewn shut. The idea of only being able to see only sections of his face, such as his lips were in the mirror, gave off a strong wonder of what does the rest of him look like. It seemed along the same lines of the 1920s silent version of the Phantom of the Opera because it is what the audience can’t see that is interesting. Second, the transition to the film being in third person was somewhat well done, by the flash of a frame that occurred immediately after his eye was sewn shut. But what was a good idea was when flash backs occurred, the frames were somewhat lower quality. This may have been a representation of hazy memories. To help show this taking place, the doctors scruffy beard in the beginning sequence is very well detailed and each hair is present and the flashbacks are somewhat more blurry.

The last thing that I want to touch base is color. The use of color and tone really helped push the movie along and tell the story. When the lead character was in the hospital room and felt a sense of aloneness, there was a tint of blue. When he was going through the idea of witch doctors, there was a strong septa tone of orange. Finally, I absolutely loved the red from virgin Mary statue both times it is shown (The bedroom and the store window).

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly.

What is life without a body? The Diving Bell and the Butterfly tells a captivating tale about a man,after having a stroke, is imprisoned within his own body. The semi-autobiographic film depicts what the real meaning of life is...interactions with others. Told through glimpses of first and third person narration, the film tells a story of redemption that can be found within suffer. The beginning of the film is told through the eye of Jean-do and him going through the steps that one must undergo, both physically and mentally, after being paralyzed. There is a very strong sense of humanity that is reviled as his narration takes place during the beginning of the movie but the images on the screen help tell the story in his recollection.

As the story progresses, he learns how to speak by his speech therapist through the only working body part that he possesses: his eye. Later in the film, the story takes a shift from the mind of Jean-do and can see the story from others interactions with him. To help understand the characters better, flashbacks occur from before the stoke took place. One of the two core themes are: the book that he is writing and the long process that he must undergo to achieve it and the life and relationships he used to have. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is able to demonstrate the desire one has to understanding self and what they were and what they will become.