The Prestige - What is the significance of this film and its relationship to others?

The Prestige - What is the significance of this film and its relationship to others?

The Prestige is an unusual movie because its plot directly ties into the film itself. There aren't many films that do this. The quote from Cutler, which is said even in the theatrical trailer, is: Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"."

All of the acts Cutler talks about that go along with magic tricks are the same with this film. At first, we are shown things that seem ordinary - magic tricks that we've seen before, the two men friendly to eachother - everything seems normal. Then we soon see that this isn't how the movie is going to be. The men start to turn on eachother and try to ruin eachothers' acts, and the magic tricks become more and more difficult and confusing. You start to think what you're guessing about the plot's ending isn't quite true. Then at the end, we find out what has really been going on, which is shocking. We see that the concept wasn't even that far-fetched, and there we were given several hints along the way. But like magic tricks, we chose to not really see what was going on. It is almost like the director is showing us what film should be - magical. Not with technology or CGI effects, but with the story.

There are many movies that are successful in tricking us until the end, but The Prestige is one that uses magic to show us that the movie is going to do the same thing. And we are still surprised at the ending. It shows us what movies can be capable of, and what they should do.

Blog assignment #4 - essay outline

1) Main argument: The formalist approach is the most effective method of studying film because it allows for a greater interpretation of films. It takes into account creativity of the filmmaker and why those techniques were used to make the audience feel or think a certain way. The ideological approach considers the overall messages and tones while the formalist approach covers how the film flows and works in general. I will use Psycho as an example of this approach.

2) The formalist approach is better for Psycho because the film is highly stylistic. The director uses so many unique techniques to make the audience feel the way the director wants. He guides us along and tricks us several times, and everything he does in the film is for a specific reason. (Examples: Marion dying early, suspenseful music, etc.)

3) Support: Psycho, V.F. Perkins Film as Film & Robin Wood "Psycho")

4) Why the Ideological approach is flawed - directors at times do not have a huge role in the making of the film

5) Support: Article in class

6) Other specific moments in film that the formalist theory allows us to see what the director was trying to get across - the scene where Norman watches Marion through a peephole, the fact that the shower scene was intense but still not graphic, how the movie makes the audience always feel watched and paranoid, and how Hitchcock does this so effectively.

7) Support: Psycho, articles quotes

Is the best way to go about this to make all of my claims about specific Psycho scenes and then relate them to the formalist theory? Also, this is a really rough outline and I plan to use quotes from the articles for the essay.

Blog Assignment #3: To betray, or not to betray, that is the question."

(1) Pick one moment from the film adaptation and describe how it either departs from or remains faithful to Steinbeck's novel. Is this moment "cinematic," and, if so, does it make Ford & Toland auteurs?

I have not read Grapes of Wrath, but from what we discussed in class, it's apparent that the ending largely differs from the film's ending. From things i've read online, the film is very similar to the book in the first half but strays away in the second. Ford & Toland made a conscious decision to leave several scenes out that were in the book. All of these scenes, one in particular, gave the overall meaning to the story a more dreary effect. Like we discussed in class, the scene where the woman gives a dying man her breast milk was not included. According to Truffaut, he believed cinema should stay true to the literature and not change the spirit of the original work. I don't think the spirit of the story was changed too much by the movie, but it definitely made things seem a little easier than things were for the characters in the original story. The film's ending was simpler and gave a more positive message overall. The fact that Ford & Toland decided to do this definitely makes them auteurs because they made their own version of the story. However, because the movie was made in 1940, keeping these darker scenes might have been nearly impossible in that time in cinema because audiences were not acclimated to seeing that yet. I am not sure if Ford & Toland would have kept the scenes out in a later period or not. The ending is cinematic because it held back from showing things which were too much for film in that time period but that could still be told in literature.

(2) Most critics today dismiss auteur theory for various reasons. Do you believe it is a valid area of study in film studies? Why or why not?

I do believe auteur theory is a valid area of study in film, but I can also understand why some would dismiss it. I think film studies should include a lot of different types of theories, and auteur should be one of them, but definitely not the only one. Looking at a director's work specifically is a great way to get a better understanding of the director and how they work, and what they are trying to get across in later films. But I also think films should mostly be watched without even knowing the director so that your conclusions on the film won't be biased. I agree that not all films by a good director are necessarily good, and films by a new or not-so-good director can turn out great.

Blog Assignment #1: Godard on Film

A moment that stood out for me in Jean-Luc Godard's Masculin feminin was toward the end when the film showed people walking in the streets of Paris. The people shown weren't actors that were a part of the movie, they were real people being filmed. Some of them don't look at the camera, but a lot do, obviously unknowing what the camera is even there for. The street shots of people walking was not only shown for a solid couple of minutes near the end of the film, but also a few more times in earlier scenes as characters spoke in the background. Most of the time when films show cities, it is either scenic far away shots, or if it is a shot of the street, the people in it know they are in a movie and they are there on purpose. Godard's use of real people going about their daily lives gives the movie more of a sense of reality. This style of filming shows how interested Godard was in the documentary style of filmmaking and how blurred the line between documentary and fiction this particular film really is, as we discussed in class.

Not only the street shots hinted at the documentary style, but also the improvised dialogue and interview-style conversations as the camera focused on one person for long periods of time.

Godard uses several film techniques that stray away from the usual rules filmmakers live by, so it is safe to say Godard believes film should be unique, without rules or guidelines. In this case, the documentary style he uses throughout the film shows that he believes film should be more real and lifelike than just fiction. He once said, "Every film is a documentary of its actors." He also said, "All great fiction films tend towards documentary, just as all great documentaries tend toward fiction… each word implies a part of the other. And he who opts wholeheartedly for one, necessarily finds the other at the end of his journey."

Godard believes every film is a documentary in a sense, and every film should try to be somewhat of a documentary, if it wants to be any good. He definitely does that with this film.