Month: February 2019

Since I’m doing a more Classic Detective title sequence, analyzing a film with that same sort of genre and its title sequence would be beneficial to my own film. I thought Crooked House, directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, would be a good representation of the genre I need for my title sequence. It has elements of crime, mystery, drama, and thriller content.

Mise-en-scene

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Lighting

• lowkey lighting
• done so to create an ominous and mysterious mood
• couples with the non-diegetic sound

Props

• needle and liquid create a mysterious aura
• needle associated w/ poison

Costuming

• man in plaid shirt to show a normal person
• woman with red nails and bracelet
• contrast between the two characters

Framing

• open framing
• keeps the character’s identities hidden
• offscreen space used to keep up the mystery

Blocking

• woman standing over man
• position of power
• could show the evil ways of women

Cinematography

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Movement

• pan-tilt after woman leaves frame initially
• pull-back as woman leaves the frame

Angles

• low angle shot of house at the end
• tilt moving from a low angle to a high angle

Distance

• long shot of woman
• close-up of needle

Misc.

• establishing shot of woman (also a long shot)
• open framing
• shallow focus

Editing

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• one long take
• possible cutaway from man in the chair to the house
• superimposition of titles
• continuity with long take

Sound

Diegetic

• mysterious coughing in the back
• clicking of heels (possible femme fatal)
• slight sound of needle injecting liquid

Non-Diegetic

• low pitched soundtrack all throughout shot

Summary

All throughout the title sequence, every little thing done is meant to show a sort of mystery. The setting being dark with the lighting and the use of a needle with an unknown liquid all equates to a mysterious atmosphere. The contrasting costuming between the two characters show that the women are represented as evil or manipulative with the use of the needle and the mysterious liquid. The blocking of the woman and man showed the woman in power since she resides above him and is injecting something in him. For the use of cinematography, the establishing shot is of the woman, but in shallow focus since her identity is still a mystery. The close-up of the needle shows the importance of it within the next scene while also preserving the identity of the woman. There wasn’t anything too significant with angles, just that the house being shot from a low angle could show its superiority. The editing didn’t have too much within it, since the whole sequence was one long take rather than shorter and quicker paced editing. The scene possibly cutaway from the man in the chair to the shot of the house to show the importance or connection of the house to the woman and her antics. The titles were superimposed onto the screen just to display the titles of course. The diegetic sound added to the mystery since there was coughing coming from offscreen and the audience would have no way to tell where it might’ve come from. The clicking of heels might’ve signified the woman as classy/materialistic since heels are expensive, then might’ve symbolized a femme fatal character type. The non-diegetic sound, just the soundtrack, which is low-pitched, adds to the mystery since its suspenseful and spooky sounding.

While researching all these films and openings, you begin to see a certain pattern with certain directors and what they really like to do with their films. So, with a list of director’s and finding some of their quirks in their films I thought would be a good idea for our film and be able to take inspiration from those little things they implement to create that much more meaning to their films.

Christopher Nolan

• grand showman
• intricately layered plots
• took inspiration from neo-noir films for Following
• mostly angles, lighting, color correcting, etc.
• refers to film and celluloid a lot
• lots of handheld for kinetic feel
• emphasizes costuming
• avant garde film styles (momento)
• use of color strategically
• scrappy, shoestring style story-telling

Kenneth Branagh

• Inspiration from theatrical pieces (more specifically Shakespeare)
• Overwhelming special effects
• implements visual metaphors
• shifts in style to certain films (Shakespearean adaptations to Thor)
• more comfortable with historical, more realistic settings
• realistic fiction
• called directing Thor, “a challenge as an artist.”

George Pollock

• filmed during the time of black and white filming
• many long takes, few cuts
• central idea of murder mysteries
• consistently had a female lead
• or female victim
• old-fasion style of clothes
• focused on the plot than the style of movie
• straight to the point and no deep underlying meanings

Seeing the different techniques between these directors and how they conveyed certain genre conventions of mystery and certain meanings provided a good amount of inspiration for how our film is going to play out. Some information seemed a little difficult to dig up, but a little digging never hurt anyone.

Sources

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/shakespearean-kenneth-branagh-talks-about-the-challenge-of-directing-thor/2011/04/26/AFDr4n6E_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2923a1863e5d
https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2015/03/13/the-king-of-the-adaptation-kenneth-branaghs-directorial-career-from-henry-v
https://www.quora.com/Does-Kenneth-Branagh-have-an-identifiable-directorial-style-and-if-so-how-is-it-visible-in-Cinderella
https://indiefilmhustle.com/christopher-nolan/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Pollock_(director)
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0689659/

Through my research today on gender representation, I found that no movies exist that follow the sort of narrative I want with a female lead detective. Fun. Although, I did find a few movies within the mystery genre with aspects of thriller with a female lead, but not necessarily a detective as the main character. A good example of this is Kahaani, directed by Sujoy Ghosh. The main plot line of the movie follows a pregnant women attempting to find her husband while being pregnant at the same time. The movie portrays the main character, Vidya Bagchi, as a strong, courageous women who can conquer all of these obstacles to be able to finally find her husband. Although, this allows for Vidya to be shown as women typically are as emotional and weak/vulnerable. In multiple scenes throughout the movie, we see Vidya losing her composure and breaking down crying from the stress and hardships she encounters. This can be considered a good mix of representation for women in mystery movies as they can often be portrayed differently, as I will go into now.

Starting with the general idea of how gender is represented, according to a study conducted by the University of Southern California, women are either shown less, or given less meaningful lines in a film depending on the genre. (Ramakrishna, 1996) Looking into the “psycholinguistic normatives” (Ramakrishna, 1996) between the two genders, these representations come more easily into play.

For movies overall, the dialogue shared between females and males can be seen as unequal and more focused towards the male leads or male characters in those movies. The chart here describes it and shows that male characters have over two times more dialogue pieces than females in movies overall.

Women in Mysteries

In many mystery genre films, especially in the early 1900s when those movies were prominent, the women were portrayed as helpless, or even the victim in certain murder mysteries. In rare cases, such as Murder At the Gallop, it’ll show the women as the lead detective or helpful to the case. This stigma of women being helpless/the victim most likely stemmed from the first detective film adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, called Sherlock Holmes Baffled, in 1900-1903 directed by Arthur Marvin. This first showed the best detective as a male who was successful, so the idea of a female detective being good or the best would be compared to Sherlock, and not seen as good either.

In the 1930s, the Thin Man series came out with a woman, a “carefree wife” named Nora, was portrayed in the way earlier described. She was the wife to the detective, not even helpful to the detective himself. Throughout the series, we see Nora appear more carefree, and get less screen time than the main detective which is understandable. This could’ve set the stage for women’s appearances in mystery film for decades later until more progressive ideals could’ve come about.

In the 40s-50s, there were more cynical films, reflecting the tone and mood from the World War and the aftermaths of the Great Depression of the 30s. Detectives became more ruthless and leaned towards more crime and violent genres of mystery. Many movies were made starring all male leads. To list a few examples, Alan Ladd in The Blue Dahlia, Lloyd Nolan is Time To Kill, and Robert Montgomery in Lady In the Lake. In Lady In the Lake, the beginning of the movie starts with the wife of the main character taking advantage of him/divorcing him and marrying another man for his money. This portrays women in a negative light and simply materialistic. In Time to Kill, Heather Angel played as a “leading lady”. This meant that she simply acted as a love interest in the movie for the lead role of the detective.

Films with female detectives didn’t fair as well as others with the typical male detectives did. In 1991, V.I. Warshawski debuted in theaters and was meant to continue on as a series. The main character was Victoria Iphigenia, play by Kathleen Turner, as a private eye, solving the mystery of the murder of Boom-Boom Grafalk. It didn’t perform well at box offices, whether it was the fault of the casting or the time or the plot itself is up to interpretation.

In recent years, more TV shows have come out with female leads as detectives and show them as strong, individual women, such as Murder, She Wrote, Castle, and The Fall. Although, some of these TV shows can be considered more Standard Private Eye or even police procedural, more gender representation in a positive light for women being a lead detective and defying the odds is what we aim to achieve in our title sequence as well. By challenging the typical representation of women in mystery films, we are giving ourselves a challenge, but also painting women in a positive light.

Sources

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103184/?ref_=nv_sr_2

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025878/?ref_=nv_sr_1

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035443/?ref_=nv_sr_4

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057334/?ref_=nv_sr_1

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024625/?ref_=nv_sr_1

https://sail.usc.edu/publications/files/Anil-EMNLP234.pdf