Pat Collins may perhaps be better known for his engaging documentaries but this year sees the release of his debut feature film in the UK. Silence is a stunning debut film, full of philosophy, poetry and visual beauty. The film shows a confidence within the new form as well as an expert use of layering different emotions and textures upon one another. A full analysis … Continue reading Interview with Pat Collins (Silence, 2012).
Nostalgia can manifest in many forms at the cinema. Sometimes it can be overt, sometimes it can be unconscious but film is most definitely the medium to explore its inner workings. A number of films have recently used sound, not just in an interesting way, but as a major part of the narrative and character focus whilst touching upon nostalgia. These range from the superb … Continue reading Silence (Pat Collins, 2012) – Landscape and Nostalgia.
It’s an oft repeated dictum that British director, Humphrey Jennings, had a gradual decline of quality within his work towards the end of the Second World War. It’s repeated several times in the booklet of this excellent BFI release but, like many of the others who start with this statement, there is a “but”. That “but” is that Jennings’ weaker work is in fact not … Continue reading The Complete Humphrey Jennings Volume 3 (A Diary for Timothy) – BFI
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Home Viewing of Blue and New Reception Possibilities. “Say you were struck down tomorrow, what would your monument be?” – Dr Mathew Herbert. “Oh nothing, because film disappears, thank God.” – Derek Jarman (1993, p.117) There is an unstated irony within this essay in the fact that this writer has never been able to experience Blue in … Continue reading The Problematic Reception of Derek Jarman’s Blue – Part 5 (Home Viewings and Conclusions)
This article contains spoilers. Though drenched in visual complexities and sharp, hap-hazard editing, Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966) is film that is aurally interesting as it is exhilarating to view. Its opening segment of film footage from all corners of cinematic life, spliced together to form a montage of passing thoughts and nightmares, is actually a beautifully put together piece of sound editing as well. This … Continue reading Persona (1966) – Consequences of a Silent World (Ingmar Bergman)
This article contains spoilers. Cinema was built for dreams. It’s almost cliché now, adding dreams, dream sequences, dream-scapes; endless tumbling ambiguity to add depth and distance to a film. Nicolas Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives (2013) is not a dream in the sense of Inception (2010) or Spellbound (1945) but more in the sense of a light day-dream inciting calm before a violent storm. On … Continue reading Only God Forgives (Nicolas Winding Refn) – Violent Sonatas and Dreaming in Colour.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Working Class Pasts – Nostalgia and Past Hardship Through Sound and Music. “Since the 1970s especially, the tendency has grown for directors to indulge their own musical tastes in scoring a film” (Gorbman, 2006, p.17). Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) – Differences in Time. Terence Davies’ autobiographical second feature is the last film to be examined. Unlike … Continue reading Distant Voices, Still Lives – Nostalgia and Hardship Through Sound & Music (Part 1).
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 The Reception of Blue in New Technological Forms and Contexts. “The degree to which the spectator identifies with the diegesis as his/her own hallucination fluctuates from spectator to spectator, from narrative moment to moment, from genre to genre.” (Gorbman, 1987, p.45). It is very hard to experience Blue today in the intended format that Jarman produced it in. This … Continue reading The Problematic Reception of Derek Jarman’s Blue – Part 4 (New Technological Contexts).
Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville (1965) was one of the first pieces of non-Anglo American cinema that I watched. It may have been diving in toward the deep end in some regards but something became very striking about the film as its running time trickled by. It said more than other dystopias, noirs or sci-fi but this “more” wasn’t to do with anything that could be described … Continue reading Alphaville (1965) and the Absurdities of Cinema – Jean-Luc Godard.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. The Metaphorical Use of Diegetic Sound and Music. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner has several different uses of sound; two of which aren’t musical. The title perhaps gives a hint that the sound of running feet on a hard ground will play a vital role in the film. This rhythmic, … Continue reading The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner – Use of Music and Sound In British Working Class Film (Part 4).
Celluloid Wicker Man 