Mise-en-scène and Cinematography

2015 ◽  
pp. 21-30
Author(s):  
Emily Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Close Attention ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
Douglas Sirk ◽  
The 1950S

This chapter examines Pedro Almodóvar's mise-en-scène and cinematography. Almodóvar's mise-en-scène is rich with intertextual references, whether it be from high culture, through the pastiche of other films, or through the mise-en-scène and the symbolism of props and costume. Heavily used visual motifs, such as 'the Matador', occur frequently in Talk to Her (2002), perhaps in homage and parody of the traditional Spanish iconography encouraged under the Franco regime. Similarly, Almodóvar is renowned for drawing upon and being influenced by Hollywood directors of the 1950s, such as Alfred Hitchcock and Douglas Sirk, and one can see influences from both of these directors in the film through the performances, bright colour palettes, and themes. Like the melodrama films of the 1950s and like the cinema of Hitchcock, Almodóvar's unique and distinctive style is classified by a somewhat obsessive attention to mise-en-scène. This is most noticeable in the domestic settings. Almodóvar pays close attention to objects, colour, painting, and production design, much of which has deeper symbolism and meaning.

scholarly journals Suburbia as a Narrative Space in the Cinematic Universe of Douglas Sirk

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-132
Author(s):  
Nieves Alberola Crespo ◽  
José Javier Juan Checa
Keyword(s):  
Gender Perspective ◽  
Narrative Space ◽  
Surface Level ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Douglas Sirk ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
American Society ◽  
Unique Ability

Douglas Sirk, now fully recognized as an influential filmmaker, was considered a successful but uninteresting director in the 1950s. His melodramas were considered bland and subsequently ignored because they focused on female-centric concerns. In the following decades, he started to be considered as an auteur that not only had an impeccable and vibrant mise-en-scène, but also a unique ability to deliver movies that might seem superficial on a surface level but were able to sneak in some subtle and revolutionary criticism about American society. The aim of this paper is to analyse the most rebellious and subversive aspects of Sirk’s classic All that Heaven Allows (1955) from a gender perspective and how Todd Haynes’s tribute Far from Heaven (2002) added new challenges by touching upon thorny subjects that already existed in Sirk’s time but were deemed taboo for mass audiences.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria L. Evans
Keyword(s):  
Le Corbusier ◽  
Window Frame ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Douglas Sirk ◽  
Architecture And Design

After describing one of Peter Greenaway's recent efforts to move beyond the limits of the cinema, Evans proposes that Douglas Sirk had already begun to dissolve the boundaries the medium by assimilating elements of avant-garde art, architecture and design into his mise-en-scène. She goes on to assert that Sirk's importation of a high art aesthetic into the low genre of melodrama echoed the widespread European Modernist preoccupation with the creation of a synergistic Gesamtkunstwerk or "total art work" during the period in which he intellectually came of age. Finally, the director's tendency to create "pictures" of the external landscape that the characters (and the viewer) are obliged to contemplate through the window frame is interpreted in the light of the theories of Le Corbusier.

Hawaiian Music and Oceanizing American Studies

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (04) ◽  
pp. 1163-1172
Author(s):  
LEAH KURAGANO
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
American Studies ◽  
High Culture ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Cultural Forms ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Culture Concept

American studies has been dedicated to understanding cultural forms from its beginnings as a field. Music, as one such form, is especially centered in the field as a lens through which to seek the cultural “essence” of US America – as texts from which to glean insight into negotiations of intellectual thought, social relations, subaltern resistance, or identity formation, or as a form of labor that produces an exchangeable commodity. In particular, the featuring of folk, indigenous, and popular music directly responded to anxieties in the intellectual circles of the postwar era around America's purported lack of serious culture in comparison to Europe. According to John Gilkeson, American studies scholars in the 1950s and 1960s “vulgarized” the culture concept introduced by the Boasian school of anthropology, opening the door to serious consideration of popular culture as equal in value to high culture.1

ПИСЬМА ПРОТОИЕРЕЯ МИХАИЛА ЕЖОВА К ВАЛЕНТИНЕ АНДРЕЕВНЕ ЗВОНКОВОЙ (ЧАСТЬ 2)

2021 ◽  
pp. 117-133
Author(s):  
Валентина Андреевна Звонкова
Keyword(s):  
Young Girl ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Inner World ◽  
The 1950S

Вторую часть писем, адресованных В. А. Звонковой, мы печатаем вслед за ее воспоминаниями, чтобы еще более выпукло представить ту ситуацию в церковно-приходской жизни 1950-х – 1970-х годов, которая сложилась в эти непростые для Церкви годы. Священник, являвшийся духовником юной девушки, раскрывает перед читателем внутренний мир церковного человека в его молодые годы, полные испытаний. Также здесь публикуются письма того же священника Михаила Ежова к двум другим адресатам, сохранившиеся в архиве Звонковой. Характер писем позволяет говорить о высокой доле искренности и открытости той и другой стороны, сосредоточенности автора писем на духовно-воспитательных моментах. Поскольку здесь представлены письма к трем адресатам, мы можем сравнить подходы священника-духовника к трем разным людям, оценить его педагогические качества. Это эпистолярное наследие содержит в себе ценные материалы о духовной жизни в советские годы, позволяющие нам говорить о высокой культуре духовничества среди белого духовенства. We are publishing the Letters addressed to V. A. Zvonkova following her memoirs in order to present even more vividly the situation in the parish life of the 1950s–1970s, which their author describes. The priest, who was the confessor of a young girl, reveals to the reader the inner world of a church person in his young years, full of trials. It also publishes letters from the same priest Mikhail Yezhov to two other addressees, preserved in Zvonkova’s archive. This epistolary legacy contains valuable materials about spiritual life in the Soviet years, allowing us to talk about the high culture of clergy among the white clergy.

“It’s Like a Guy Never Lived Here!”: Reading the Gendered Domestic Spaces of Friends

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (8) ◽  
pp. 758-774 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Jade Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Domestic Space ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Space Forms ◽  
Domestic Spaces ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
Close Textual Analysis ◽  
Stable Part ◽  
And Gender

This article argues that the postfeminist gender politics of Friends (NBC, 1994–2004) are played out via a series of manipulations and reversals of space and mise-en-scène. Arguing that clearly gendered domestic space forms a stable part of the sitcom’s equilibrium, it analyses instances where the mise-en-scène boldly calls attention to men’s and women’s spaces, puts the gendering of space into flux, and highlights the burden of domestic labor. It reveals through close textual analysis how space in Friends is used to offer the playful promise of freedom from restrictive gender roles, but ultimately maintains a conservative status quo of both space and gender. It also makes a case for paying close attention to the aesthetics of the traditional sitcom to appreciate the expressivity of production design offered in such texts which, although (deliberately) unspectacular, is by no means unremarkable.

scholarly journals Cine de crítica social contra el franquismo con intervención (austro)húngara: Surcosy ¡Bienvendio, Mister Marshall!

2013 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 83-93
Author(s):  
András Lénárt
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Political System ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
The Political ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
Spanish Society ◽  
Film Producer ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
New Phenomena ◽  
Newspaper Articles

From the second half of the 1950s the Spanish society experienced some new phenomena. The inflexibility of the Franco regime started to slacken, the unsatisfied masses were not afraid to express their opinion occasionally. Besides university students, the members of the film industry finally dared to give voice to their disapproval in public. In accordance with the basic points of their doubts, anxieties and dissapointments (disseminated through newspaper articles and lectures), the most important filmmakers set out to shoot movies in order to criticize the Francoist society and the contradictions of the political system. Two gems of this cinematographic mission were Furrows (Surcos, José Antonio Nieves Conde, 1951) from a Hungarian film producer and Welcome Mr. Marshall! (¡Bienvenido, Mister Marshall!, Luis García Berlanga, 1953). In this paper I highlight those components of the two films that can be regarded as strong critiques of the Spanish dictatorship.

ПИСЬМА ПРОТОИЕРЕЯ МИХАИЛА ЕЖОВА К ВАЛЕНТИНЕ АНДРЕЕВНЕ ЗВОНКОВОЙ (ЧАСТЬ 1)

2021 ◽  
pp. 100-122
Author(s):  
Валентина Андреевна Звонкова
Keyword(s):  
Young Girl ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Inner World ◽  
The 1950S

Аннотация. Письма, адресованные В. А. Звонковой, мы печатаем вслед за ее воспоминаниями, чтобы еще более выпукло представить ту ситуацию в церковно-приходской жизни 1950–1970-х гг., которую описывает их автор. Священник, являвшийся духовником юной девушки, раскрывает перед читателем внутренний мир церковного человека в его молодые годы, полные испытаний. Также здесь публикуются письма того же священника Михаила Ежова к двум другим адресатам, сохранившиеся в архиве Звонковой. Это эпистолярное наследие содержит в себе ценные материалы о духовной жизни в советские годы, позволяющие нам говорить о высокой культуре духовничества среди белого духовенства. Abstract. We are publishing the Letters addressed to V. A. Zvonkova following her memoirs in order to present even more vividly the situation in the parish life of the 1950s–1970s, which their author describes. The priest, who was the confessor of a young girl, reveals to the reader the inner world of a church person in his young years, full of trials. It also publishes letters from the same priest Mikhail Yezhov to two other addressees, preserved in Zvonkova’s archive. This epistolary legacy contains valuable materials about spiritual life in the Soviet years, allowing us to talk about the high culture of clergy among the white clergy.

Cinema: Adapting Decadence

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Weir
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Oscar Wilde ◽  
Douglas Sirk ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This article analyzes the role of decadence in cinema, first by comparing two adaptations of plays by Oscar Wilde: Alla Nazimova’s Salomé (1922) and Ernst Lubitsch’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925). These films illustrate, respectively, two subsequent cinema aesthetics that could not be more unlike: the camp and the classic. Nazimova’s inadvertent camp leads to Ken Russell’s deliberately tasteless adaptation of Wilde in Salome’s Last Dance (1988). Questions of taste, technique, and audience become especially problematic in the relationship of John Waters to Douglas Sirk. In the 1950s, Sirk’s melodramatic films were enormously popular with mainstream audiences, but their outlandish plots and artificial style now appeal mostly to the camp sensibility. Waters’s Polyester (1981) doubles down on Sirk’s middle-class decadence: while still camp, Polyester is such an extreme instance of the style that it is better described as “trash,” Waters’s own preferred term for the tasteless fakery of his cinematic world.

Metropolitan Modernism and Its West Indian Interlocutors: 1950s London and the Emergence of Postcolonial Literature

PMLA ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 122 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Kalliney
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Postcolonial Literature ◽  
Culture Industry ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Stephen Spender ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Cultural Niche ◽  
English Culture

Using archival sources, interviews, and memoirs, this essay documents the surprisingly extensive connections between London's extant modernists and West Indian writers during the 1950s. With the support of Stephen Spender, John Lehmann, T. S. Eliot, and other luminaries, a vibrant group of Caribbean artists quickly established themselves as known literary commodities. Such forms of collaboration between metropolitan intellectuals and their colonial counterparts were structured by shared interests in high culture. London's modernists feared English culture was faced with terminal decline; West Indian writers exploited that fear by insisting that the metropolitan culture industry badly needed an infusion of colonial talent. The brevity and fragility of these bonds, however, led to the emergence of postcolonial literature as a distinct but marginal cultural niche. London's postwar identity as center of global cultural production, I suggest, was intimately connected with the recruitment and assimilation of colonial intellectuals.

Biographical context

2021 ◽  
pp. 11-25
Author(s):  
Robbie Duschinsky ◽  
Sarah Foster
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
The World ◽  
Sense Of Identity ◽  
The 1950S

Fonagy has urged acknowledgement that ‘behind the shifts in theories, techniques, and application are individuals whose sense of identity and ways of viewing the world have profoundly altered’. This chapter offers three biographical snapshots, selected for their relevance for understanding the trajectory of Fonagy’s thinking, and the shift in psychological theory represented by the introduction of the concept of mentalization. The first will be Peter Fonagy’s experiences in the Fónagy household as a child in the 1950s. The second will be his psychoanalysis as a young man with Anne Hurry in the 1970s. Finally, close attention will be paid to Fonagy’s work with one of his early patients.

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