Analysis

Black Sunday ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 63-84
Author(s):  
Martyn Conterio

This chapter discusses Mario Bava's debut feature film, Black Sunday, which is considered to be among the most stylish horror films ever made and won praise for its delicious look and cinematography. It illustrates Black Sunday's ravishing mise-en-scène that marries fairy tale to surrealist irrationality, as well as ingenious special-effects design. It also mentions Tom Milne, who summed up Bava's film as a chillingly beautiful and brutal horror film that is superb and a chiaroscuro symphony of dank crypts and swirling fog-grounds. The chapter recounts how Bava filmed on monochrome stock and delivered what is touted as the last great black-and-white Gothic horror picture. It talks about the clever effects and use of miniatures, matte paintings, grotesque character transformations and the painted backdrops in black-and-white that is fused together to create a magical air.

Slovo ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol To the East of Pixar :... ◽  
Author(s):  
Pascal Vimenet

International audience Новый Гулливер (1935), первый черно-белый советскиймультипликационно-игровой фильм, режиссера Александра Птушко, не былдо сих пор предметом специального исследования. Нижеследующее являетсяего контекстуальным, биографическим, равно как и кинематографическим анализом. Творческий путь Птушко (1900-1973) дается в новом освещении, особенно 1920-30 годы, на которые приходится становление его кино.Осуществив постановку Это случилось на стадионе (1928) и Властелинбыта (1932), Птушко принял руководство секцией мультипликационногофильма на студии Совкино, ставшей Москинокомбинат, затем Мосфильм.Подробно рассматривается политико-культурный контекст, в период созданияего игрового фильма, между 1927 и 1935 годами, который сводит воедино всёмногообразие советского авангарда, но и является свидетелем торжествадогмы соцреализма. Фильм Птушко оказался восприимчив к теориям бурлескаоснователей Фабрики эксцентрического актера (ФЭКС). Превращениеперсонажей фильма Птушко в кукол-марионеток, символическое обыгрываниемасштабов могло зародиться в недрах этого движения. Но как сумел «НовыйГулливер», этот «фильм-сказка» обмануть политический контекст ипротивостоять сиренам соцреализма или отклониться от известныхшаблонных кодов? Птушко избирает философскую повесть, усугубленнуюполитическим памфлетом, что дает ему законное основание привязать чудесноек политическому. Смелая экранизация Свифта, московский дорогостоящийкинофильм, с его полуторатысячей шарнирных кукол, сотнями пластилиновыхфигурок, их сочетание с игровым кино, и два десятка массовых сцен претендуетна соперничество с «Кинг Конгом». Своим остроумием и развлекательностьюфильм Птушко вызывал восхищение Чарли Чаплина. Данное исследованиепрепарирует аллегорию – держащий каркас фильма, и стремитсяидентифицировать в кинопостановке всё то, в чем отголоском дают о себе знатьсоветские времена. И когда оказывается, что гимн лиллипутов, это воспеваниеотвратительного монархизма, жутковатым образом предвосхищает ОдуСталину 1939 года, то совершенно внятно становится, что Новый Гулливерне столько выставляет на показ всепобедительность homo sovieticus, сколькоделает из истории опасный аттракцион падений и взлетов и внедряет в неёсубверсивное понятие ухронии. The New Gulliver (1935), the first black and white Soviet animatedfeature film directed by Alexander Ptusko, has not been the subject of a specific studyso far. The following is contextual, biographical, as well as filmic analysis. It offers anew light on the route of Ptusko (1900-1973), especially on the 1920-1930 whichsees emerge his cinema. After having realized It Arrived at the Stadium (1928)and The Master of Everyday Life (1932), Ptusko took the lead of the section of theanimated film of the Sovkino studios become Moskinokombinat, then Mosfilm. Thepolitico-cultural context of the emergence of his feature film, 1927 and 1935, whichbrings together all the diversity of the Soviet avant-garde but sees the triumph of thedogma of socialist realism, is examined at length. Ptusko’s film seems receptive to theburlesque theories of the founders of the FEKS. The puppetisation of the characters inPtusko’s film, the symbolic games of scale, may have originated in this movement. Buthow could The New Gulliver, this « film-tale », have imposed itself in the politicalcontext and resist the realistic socialist sirens or divert certain codes? Ptusko choosesa philosophical tale doubled by a political pamphlet that authorizes him to link themarvelous to the political. An audacious adaptation of Swift, a Muscovite spectacular,The New Gulliver aims to compete, with its 1 500 puppets articulated, hundreds ofplastic figurines, their combination to the real shot and its 20 sets, with King Kong.Ptusko’s film provokes Chaplin’s admiration for his facetiousness. The study dissects theallegory that structures the film and seeks to identify in the staging of everything thatechoes the Soviet present. And when it appears that the Lilliputian hymn, the songof the hated kingship, anticipates in an unsettling way The Ode to Stalin of 1939, itbecomes certain that The New Gulliver, more than to demonstrate the invincibility ofthe homo sovieticus, transforms the history in a roller coaster and makes penetrate theexplosive concept of uchronia. Le Nouveau Gulliver (1935), premier long métrage d’animationsoviétique noir et blanc, réalisé par Aleksandr Ptouchko, n’a pas fait l’objetd’études spécifiques jusqu’ici. Celle qui suit est contextuelle, biographique, toutautant qu’analyse filmique. Elle propose un nouvel éclairage sur l’itinéraire dePtouchko (1900-1973), particulièrement sur les années 1920-1930 qui voitémerger son cinéma. Après avoir réalisé C’est arrivé au stade (1928) et Le Maîtredu quotidien (1932), Ptouchko prend la tête de la section du film animé des studiosSovkino devenus Moskinokombinat, puis Mosfilm. Le contexte politico-cultureld’émergence de son long métrage, entre 1927 et 1935, qui met en présence toutela diversité de l’avant-garde soviétique mais voit triompher le dogme du réalismesocialiste, est longuement examiné. Le film de Ptouchko semble réceptif aux théoriesburlesques des fondateurs de la FEKS. La marionnettisation des personnages dufilm de Ptouchko, les jeux symboliques d’échelle ont peut-être pris leur sourcedans ce mouvement. Mais comment Le Nouveau Gulliver, ce « ciné-conte », a-t-ilpu s’imposer dans le contexte politique et résister aux sirènes réalistes socialistesou en détourner certains codes ? Ptouchko choisit un conte philosophiquedoublé d’un pamphlet politique qui l’autorise à lier le merveilleux au politique.Audacieuse adaptation de Swift, superproduction moscovite, Le Nouveau Gulliverambitionne de rivaliser, avec ses 1 500 marionnettes articulées, ses centaines defigurines en plastiline, leur combinaison à la prise de vue réelle et ses vingt décors,avec King-Kong. Le film de Ptouchko provoque l’admiration de Chaplin, quien apprécie l’esprit facétieux. L’étude dissèque l’allégorie qui structure le film ets’attache à repérer dans la mise en scène tout ce qui fait écho au présent soviétique.Et quand il apparaît que l’hymne lilliputien, chant de la royauté honnie, anticipede manière troublante L’Ode à Staline de 1939, il devient certain que Le NouveauGulliver, plus que de démontrer l’invincibilité de l’homo sovieticus, transformel’histoire en montagnes russes et y fait pénétrer le concept explosif de l’uchronie.


2018 ◽  
pp. 124-139
Author(s):  
Calum Waddell

This concluding chapter about exploitation-horror cinema focuses on how the form evolved in the 1970s before concluding when the advent of more ‘gruesome’ special effects wizardry prepared the wider genre from a period of change at the end of the decade. I ascertain that George Romero’s film ‘Martin’ was the prelude to this factor – with ‘Halloween’ predicting a new market for stylish productions that could compete against Hollywood’s biggest and best. As with hardcore sex films, horror films would develop into a VHS staple in the 1980s – arguably the true lineage of the gritty, confrontational horror of such classics as ‘The Last House on the Left’.


The Shining ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 17-34
Author(s):  
Laura Mee

This chapter discusses Stanley Kubrick's relationship with the horror genre. The Shining (1980) is a clear example of Kubrick's status as ‘an artist of complex and popular work’—rather than being exclusively one or the other. Many approaches to understanding the film see it as a ‘serious’ work by a master filmmaker operating without commercial imperative, or elevated above a disreputable genre. This overlooks a number of important contextual considerations, not least the fact that Kubrick had been clear in asserting that he wanted to make a supernatural film and liked a number of horror films. Moreover, Kubrick, whose films ‘repeatedly mix the grotesque and the banal, the conventions of Gothic confessional morbidity and the self-conscious involutions of modernist parody’, was ideally placed to make a horror film. If The Shining is in many ways typical of the Kubrickian style, then it surely follows that the Kubrickian style was ideal for horror. His auteurist style—the use of black comedy, his artistic approach to mise-en-scène and cinematography, an interest in the uncanny—all lend themselves to the genre.


2018 ◽  
pp. 45-64
Author(s):  
Evert Jan van Leeuwen

This chapter analyses the artistic aspects of House of Usher (1960) to reveal how Roger Corman's crew managed to successfully fuse the dark Romantic tradition to which Edgar Allan Poe belongs with a more expressionist horror film aesthetic that made the film more directly appealing to 1960s horror-movie audiences. Used in the context of low-budget horror films, expressionism should be understood as a term denoting ‘art which depends on free and obvious distortions of natural forms to convey emotional feeling’. House of Usher is not expressionistic because its frames resemble the art of Edvard Munch, but because its mise-en-scène is not naturalistic but functions as a visual vehicle for the expression of subjective states of mind and emotions. In developing House of Usher, Corman told his crew: ‘I never want to see “reality” in any of these scenes’. The décor of the Usher mansion is not designed for verisimilitude, but to give the audience a glimpse at the fear that lurks in the darkest corners of Roderick's psyche.


2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 535-545
Author(s):  
MICHAEL ERMARTH

Kevin Repp, Reformers, Critics, and the Paths of German Modernity: Anti-politics and the Search for Alternatives, 1890–1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000)Suzanne Marchand and David Lindenfeld, eds., Germany at the Fin de Siecle: Culture, Politics, and Ideas (Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University Press, 2004)As in the colorization of old black-and-white films, large swaths of modern German history have been undergoing a major makeover through full-spectrum, high-definition re-colorization. Stark black and white—and in between steely gray-on-gray—hardly suffice any longer for representing the full spectrum of the German past in its manifold formations and transformations. As compellingly set forth in the two works reviewed here, this changing retrospective view of change itself is revamping the history of the Wilhelmine Reich of 1890–1914. And just as in the colorization of old films, this shift has the uncanny parallax effect of making a bygone period-piece seem somehow closer to our sensibly “more modern” present-day world—even while the earlier period is also plainly lodged in a distant timeframe. The new history has some very interesting and unsettling special effects and nowhere do they come into play more palpably than in treating the special “German question” in relation to the larger question of Western mainstream modernity.


Author(s):  
Jessica Gildersleeve

Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now (1973) has been called “a ghost story for adults.” Certainly, in contrast to the more explicitly violent and bloodthirsty horror films of the 1970s, Don't Look Now seems of an entirely different order. Yet this supernaturally inflected tale of a child's accidental drowning, and her parents' desperate simultaneous recoil from her death and pursuit of her ghost, Don't Look Now is horrific at every turn. This book argues for it as a particular kind of horror film, one which depends utterly on the narrative of trauma—on the horror of unknowing, of seeing too late, and of the failures of paternal authority and responsibility. The book positions Don't Look Now within a discourse of midcentury anxiety narratives primarily existing in literary texts. In this context, it represents a crossover or a hinge between literature and film of the 1970s, and the ways in which the women's ghost story or uncanny story turns the horror film into a cultural commentary on the failures of the modern family.


Author(s):  
Johnny Walker

Chapter 2 contemplates why British horror was revived at the dawning of the new millennium, and also considers some of the reasons why British horror films produced in the 2000s and 2010s can be viewed as constituting a distinctive aspect of contemporary British cinema. I discuss the establishment of the UK Film Council (UKFC) in 2000 and contextualise the contemporary British horror film in the international film marketplace, drawing parallels between British horror and British film production more broadly, British horror and international horror production, and the audience demographics targeted by distributers and film production companies. This involves examining British horror’s shift from a theatrical genre to one associated primarily with the home video and online market.


Author(s):  
Andy Willis

The 21st century revival in Spanish horror film production has seen both a resurgence of interest in the genre’s Iberian past and an interest in transnational film remakes for North American audiences. This chapter will consider the cultural politics of remaking Spanish horror through two case studies - Quarantine (2008), the US remake of [REC] (2007), and Come Out and Play (2012), the Mexican remake of Who Can Kill a Child? (1976). The chapter argues that Who Can Kill a Child? might profitably be read as an engagement with the legacy of Francoist Spain, and that [REC] could be productively understood in relation to Spain’s recent tensions surrounding immigration. Through a discussion of the potential political readings of these films, the chapter argues that the North American remakes are divested of the most urgent political aspects of their Spanish counterparts in an endeavour to create globally marketable horror films.


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