Hi! I'm Nemo, a student of European Cinema. Looking forward to your comments and discussions!
The Invisible Walls and Visible Exploitation
Dogville (2003) directed by Las von Trier, is a film about a gangster's daughter Grace who believed that her father was arrogant and did not want to be his daughter anymore, so she fled to Dogville in the mountains. The people there shattered Grace's romantic imagination of the poor, and her kindness was replaced by deception, coldness, slavery, molestation and rape. The paradise she yearned for turned out to be hell. When her father finally came to rescue her, she was locked by chains around her neck with a millstone, and had been raped by every man in town. After arguing with her dad, her power over her father went from denial to affirmation. Finally, Grace burns the town to the ground and kill the selfish, insensitive and cruel hypocrites.
When a film is staged in an almost theatrical form, it is already predestined to have a double possibility of formal closure and open tension (Chen, 2018).Dogvilleis represented as a theater drama as mentioned above. The film looks like a stage show, and it is a fusion of film and theatrical expression. The American town Dogville is set up on the stage in a studio, with no exterior scenes, only minimal props and decorations, the set is virtual, with only white chalk on the floor to frame the corresponding areas and text to indicate. There are no doors, windows, walls, and even the dog that keeps barking is drawn on the floor with chalk. Combined with the context of the film, this arrangement emphasizes the invisible order and deprived privacy of Dogville. According to Bida in 2018, in this film, there is an implication of openness, and the openness is just under the artificial background, which is the invisible walls of houses and the entire set of the town. This manufactured coziness is actually a trap.
There is a shot at 1:35:40 – 1:35:44 that could demonstrate Bida’s argument.
Shot Size, Camera Framing, and Angle
This shot is in the scene that the heroine Grace was raped by one of the neighbors, Chuck, when the police come to find her the third time. Chuck realized that Grace wanted to stay in Dogville so she must obey every single requirement the villagers ask, and would never resist their opinions. This shot is a high angle shot, which combined a wide shot, full shot, and crowd shot. Firstly, it is shot from a high angle, which contains almost the whole view of Dogville and the villagers. Besides, it is a wide shot, since it positions subjects far from the camera, represents their relationship with the environment. In this shot, it introduces the geographic location of Dogville, which is beside the Rocky Mountains. Then, it explains the houses’ disposition of the villagers, indicates their houses are small, the decorations are obsolete, and it constructs the poverty of Dogville. Besides, this shot shows the relationship between each other and their tight connection with the whole town. They are talking, ostensibly forming a community of destiny, which is a sense of belonging, but it is shown by the invisible walls that their privacy is deprived in this small environment. Secondly, this shot shows the full appearance of each character, which constitutes a full shot. It represents not only their facial expressions but also their dressing, body movements and gestures. It could be implicated from their dressing and appearance that the villagers in Dogville are poor. Finally, the intention of this shot is to build up a group image of Dogville, so the technique of this shot is the pavement of a crowd shot, which aims to emphasize the image of villagers.
Sound and Camera Mobile
In addition, this shot does combine with any post sound tracks, all we can hear is just villagers of Dogville whispering with each other about Grace. However, the director did not choose to let the audience know what the villagers whispering exactly, but we can see from their facial expressions and body gestures that they are planning. Besides, the whispering lasts for a long time, even continues throughout the whole scene, and much more obvious in this shot, since the camera is zooming out, but the volume of whispering did not obviously deduced. This sound creates a suspicious and intention atmosphere, which made the audience nervous and curious about what they are planning towards Grace. Furthermore, personally, it is a crane shot since the height of the camera is very high. At the same time, the camera is at a stationary position, which should be stable. However, the speed of the zooming out is not in a uniform velocity, and the frame is shaking.
Shot Interpretation
In this shot, it is not difficult to find that the invisible walls are just virtual symbol of privacy. The town seems to be divided by countless walls; however, they are just implication of openness as Bida indicated. The police, representative of justice, are outside and seeking clues of Grace; at the same time, Chuck is raping Grace inside his house. Two opposite events are happening at the parallel time in the same place. The villagers are covering Grace’s track, and this could also be regarded as a tolerance of Chuck’s and other men’s follow-up behaviors, which is raping Grace, using her as a sex slave. The arrangements of this shot highlighted this intention even more and created a visual impact to the audience.
In conclusion, this shot shows the view, living condition of Dogville, represents two events happening at the same time, and showed most of the villagers there. From this shot, it could be experienced that the whole town is merely rotten from inside, so do the villagers; they are sharing and admitting the dirty secret of using Grace’s kindness and making profits from her. This shot constructed the invisible walls has hidden the ugliness and hypocrisy of villagers, and the coziness of the town is artificial.
In conclusion, this shot shows the view, living condition of Dogville, represents two events happening at the same time, and showed most of the villagers there. From this shot, it could be experienced that the whole town is merely rotten from inside, so do the villagers; they are sharing and admitting the dirty secret of using Grace’s kindness and making profits from her. This shot constructed the invisible walls has hidden the ugliness and hypocrisy of villagers, and the coziness of the town is artificial.
Reference list:
1. Bida, A. (2018). Welcome as House Arrest in Lars von Trier's Dogville. In Mapping Home in Contemporary Narratives (pp.133-147).doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-97967-0_9
2. Chen, C. (2018). On the Dramatic Film Style and Connotation of Dogville. SHEN ZHOU, 19, 29–31.
The Cultural Background of The Bicycle Thieves
Italian neo-realism is one of the most important periods among the history of cinema. The Bicycle Thieves directed by Vittorio De Sica in 1948 was the representative of neo-realism. The film is a story about being stolen and stealing. Ricci is a father who has been unemployed fora long time. When he finally got a job of sticking posters that requires a bicycle, his wife replaced a bicycle with bedsheets. However, Ricci’s bicycle was stolen at the first working day. Ricci and his son, Bruno, seeking for the bicycle for a long time but did not succeed. At an impasse, desperate Ricci had to stolen other’s bicycles in order to earn a living, but he was not lucky, he was caught by people in front of his son.
The plot and design of the film cannot be divorced from the social situation of the time, just as the Italian neo-realism was in relation to the social environment at that time. The Italian neo-realism was developed in the aftermath of World WarⅡ when being liberated from fascism. In the middle of the 20th century, Benito Mussolini founded Italian fascism, and it lasted until 1943 when his government collapsed. In the 1920s, Mussolini regarded the importance of film as a cultural facility and institution, rather than a tool of propaganda. Due to that, he founded the Venice Film Festival in 1932, a film school in 1935, and film studios in Rome in 1937 (Knudsen, 2016). Many of the filmmakers of the neo-realism started as films critics at first, several neo-realism directors wrote for a magazine called Cinema, which was actually run by Mussolini’s son, Vittorio Mussolini, who was also a film producer. He made the subject of politics off-limits for the critics. Eventually, their criticisms turned to a popular type of film called “Telefoni Bianchi”, which means white telephone. The reason is that in the 1930s, Italian films cloned American comedies, in which all contained a white telephone as a prop or art decoration as a reflection of the status symbol of the bourgeoisie. These films are developed into almost complete industrialization, especially in Hollywood, where interior design is standardized. This type of film presented socially conservative, promoted family values, and showed respect for the authority and class hierarchy of country life. These stances mentioned above are in the same ideology of the fascist regime.
However, the Italian neo-realism took the total opposite approach. With the collapse of Mussolini’sfascist government and the end of German occupation in 1945, the Italian Spring came (Knudsen, 2016). It is an opportunity and chance for filmmakers to smash the old convention, and using a different kind of technique to show the Italian experience from a brand new angle, which established the Italian neo-realism. At this period, the filmmakers, who were critics, were finally able to tell their stories without interference. They moved the cameras to the streets and gave the authenticity of films, which is the lack in the Italian film industry at that period. Most of the film uses nameless scenes, which are the farewell of neo-realism visual style to fascist-style advocated by Mussolini. So neo-realism opposes the promotion of heroism and landmarks and focuses on a more humane set of times and strongly reflected facts (Lu, 2017). They showed people’s life in Italy after World War Ⅱ, which is the scene of streets run down and damaged, the disarray of communities, the realities of poverty and social injustice were eventually gained public attention.
The neo-realism filmmakers hope to objectively restore the integrity of the natural environment and the time of the story so that the film can be liberated from the rigid studio and get a more realistic film space. In The Bicycle Thieves, it does not have the scene in the studio, what it used are all street scenes. There is no montage structure, let alone a compelling editing technique (Ou, 2018). The whole film seemed to be a documentary, which records real life from the perspective of an observer. Besides, the movement of the camera was following the main character Ricci in the streets, it stayed behind Ricci and his son followed them, and followed the characters eagerly (Zhen, 2018). The camera is a window, objectively records everything that should be noticed by people at that period. It was shooting from a fixed seat or merely moving slowly, which made the audience naturally observing what was happening outside the window, rather than emphasizing the feel of skills. Vittorio De Sica wants to lead the audience's attention to the theme of the film, but not concentrate on the shooting style itself (Zhen, 2018).
Also, the filmmakers are lack of foundation to make a film, one of the solutions is to invite common people as actors. InThe Bicycle Thieves, the actors were all amateurs. The actor of Ricci was an unemployed man in real life, after the shooting, he was unemployed again; the actress of Ricci’s wife was a journalist; and the boy was selected in the crowd from the street (Zhen, 2018). Use non-professional actors to perform, keep them in an a natural state, fully mobilize their creativity, and remove of performance. There is no need for heroic performance in neo-realistic films, and each character shows a real ordinary self.
Based on the cultural background of Italian neo-realism, it could be discussed that the breakthrough of The Bicycle Thieves to the traditional film is that the film does not set up the dramatic conflict deliberately in the narrative process, but only reproduces the whole story truthfully, which is much more like an actual record. The understanding of the film story needs to pay attention to the daily nature of the story, the social background of the story, and let the audience understand the causality between the events (Zhen, 2018).
Reference list:
1. Knudsen, T. (2016). How Italian Neorealism Brought the Grit of the Streets to the Big Screen[Online]. Retrieved January 11, 2020, from: http://cinematyler.com/archives/740
2. Lu, L. (2017). Brand of the Times –The Bicycle Thieves in the Context of Italian Neo-realism. Art and Literature for the Masses,15, 209.
3. Ou, L. (2018). The Revolution of Film and Television Aesthetics: An Interpretation of the Italian New Realist FilmThe Bicycle Thieves.Movie Review,24, 38–41.
4. Zhen, Q. (2018). An Analysis of the Art Characteristics of Italian Neo-realism Film -Taking "The Man Who Stole the Bicycle" as an example. Beauty & Times,6, 126–128.