SCENE-THESIS

➤The Value of Being There: La Strada

➤Last Dance with Life: The Godfather - Part III

➤Blade Runner: The Future We Got

➤From 00’s Eyes Only: Bond on the edge through the moving image

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THE VALUE OF BEING THERE: LA STRADA

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Night on the big screen. Before us, ocean waves arriving at a beach. We follow a man who staggers on the sand, suffocating under the effects of liquor. He is veteran touring artist, Zampanò, his suit visibly broken and his face bruised. He comes from a bar, having left a fight affirming he doesn’t need of anyone and wants to be alone. However, nearly two minutes afterwards in film time, our subject collapses in tears by the shore, with only the spectator as a witness and no one to offer him a hand. Such is the scene that closes Federico Fellini’s film, La Strada (1954). The movie follows the experiences of young Gelsomina, calm and innocent, with the temperamental Zampanò, whose final solitude reflects the absence of his partner, who has passed away. The force of this moment, channeled in the emotion with which Anthony Quinn portrays the afflicted circus actor, is effectively transmitted to us observing from the screen by the different elements of film language that, charged with meani...
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BECOMING THE MONSTER

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“Eaten or consumed by paperwork” - That is one of the representative images from “Brazil” (1985), directed by Terry Gilliam and edited by Julian Doyle. It is seen happening to fugitive Harry Tuttle, however, the edit of the shots and their resulting relationship assists the making of another victim to this fate: protagonist Sam Lowry. As both characters flee from the authorities, they come to be separated frame-wise and become reverse coverages in the point of view observing the scene.   Papers fly around the streets as we stay on Tuttle, when something holds him by the foot. The latter is revealed to be a thick piece of paper when we cut to his lower body, and his struggle is represented by cutting back and forth between these two shots. Papers continue almost paste themselves in his body. A medium shot with a figure crossing camera suggests Tuttle can be seen, but nobody stops to help him. We finally pick up on Sam escaping, and then back to Tuttle. The camera finds Sam, hiding b...
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FROM 00's EYES ONLY: BOND ON THE EDGE THROUGH THE MOVING IMAGE

“Shaken, not stirred”. The phrase could describe the fine line the creative talent behind the James Bond movies it comes from have attempted to walk during the franchise’s tenure. For all this time, artists in front and behind the camera have come, stayed and gone, imprinting their sensibilities yet working to maintain the personality of the series – the pact between filmmakers and spectators for the former to produce more stories and for the latter to attend them on the big (and small, post-theatrical) screen. With a growing history and awareness of it, each film faces the following challenges: how to manage the evolving conditions these are made in, avoid wearing repetition and not stray too far from what interested parties have come to look forward to in order to keep them engaged. The overall outcome for this is that James Bond has continued to bring about films through stories that test, but not batter down, the established formula. Ever since its inception with Terence Young’s Fr...
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