Think about the following two excerpts from the Kael article. Choose one and explain if you agree or disagree with the quote and why. Choose a scene from the film to back up your statements and discuss the quote and the scene cinematically. Be sure to use the cinematic vocabulary you have learned thus far. Also, choose one scene and in one paragraph discuss any influence you see from any scene in The 400 Blows.
Quote #1:
"[It's]because the young French directors discovered the poetry of crime in American life (from our movies) and showed the Americans how to put it on the screen in a new, "existential" way. Melodramas and gangster movies and comedies were always more our speed than 'prestigious,' 'distinguished' pictures; the French directors who grew up on American pictures found poetry in our fast action, laconic speech, plain gestures. And because they understood that you don't express your love of life by denying the comedy or the horror of it, they brought out the poetry in our tawdry subjects. Now Arthur Penn, working with a script heavily influenced--one might almost say inspired--by Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player, unfortunately imitates Truffaut's artistry instead of going back to its tough American sources. The French may tenderize their American material, but we shouldn't. That turns into another way of making 'prestigious,' 'distinguished' pictures."
Quote #2
"Suddenly, in the last few years, our view of the world has gone beyond 'good taste.' Tasteful suggestions of violence would at this point be a more grotesque form of comedy than Bonnie and Clyde attempts. Bonnie and Clyde needs violence; violence is its meaning. When, during a comically botched-up getaway, a man is shot in the face, the image is obviously based on one of the most famous sequences in Eisenstein's Potemkin, and the startled face is used the same way it was in Potemkin--to convey in an instant how someone who just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, the irrelevant 'innocent' bystander, can get it full in the face. And at that instant the meaning of Clyde Barrow's character changes; he's still a clown, but we've become the butt of the joke.
I agree with the quote 2. The violence in Bonnie and Clyde is necessary. The violence shows the hard facts. Crime does not pay and it is no way to live. There are parts when the movie feels like a comedy, but the violence tells the audience that it is not. The scene when Clyde robs the bank without money is very comical. He goes in with his gun, looking nervous, while the banker is calm and has a humorous tone in his voice. The camera becomes handheld when it is Clyde’s POV looking at the empty bank. This represents his loss of control and he does not know what to do. Bonnie laughs when she finds this out. Also, the banjo music that accompanies the scene when they’re getting away is very comical and it becomes understandable how people could mistake this for a comedy. This is all changed with the violence though. The violence brings harsh reality to the audience. It was all fun and games until the police ambush near the end of the movie. The quick cuts during their shoot out reveal the chaos of the moment and the blood is not a pretty reminder of reality. The next shot is a closed frame of them all in the car and Clyde’s brother’s fatal injury and his wife’s wounded eye. This is very serious and represents how a life of crime can seem fun and glamorous for a while, but they will have to live up and accept the consequences eventually. The violence reveals the human side of the characters. They are not the heartless and purely evil criminal. They are ordinary people. This is revealed by the close up of C.W. crying shortly after the ambush and Clyde’s sweaty, determined face with the accompaniment of his brother’s wife’s loud, sobbing voice over her husband’s injury. Unlike the comical scenes which took place with bright lighting, these serious and violent scenes took place with low lighting. The fantasy world that Bonnie and Clyde built came crumbling down due to reality. A life of crime does not pay and it apparently ends in being excessively shot to death. This graphic death shows the seriousness of what just the event and seems to guide the audience when to laugh and when not to laugh. Their dead bodies are shot from a long shot at a high angle. They are obviously powerless due to their death, but also for trying to stay above the law.
ReplyDeleteI see influence from the 400 Blows in the final scene when Bonnie and Clyde are shot dead with an excessive amount of bullets. There are multiple quick cuts that draw attention to themselves, much like how the camera movement and editing techniques called attention to itself in the 400 Blows. The camera movement when Antoine escaped from the facility he was sent to after his parents gave up their rights to him is an example. The camera pans left to follow Antoine, then pans right to show a supervisor who noticed the escape, then another pan left to show Antoine being pursued by the supervisor. The last scene in Bonnie and Clyde, there is a few close up shots of Bonnie and Clyde exchanging looks before their deaths and this shows attention to itself.
As Kael says, “Bonnie and Clyde, by making us care about the robber lovers, has put the sting back into death”. This is what makes the violence of Bonnie and Clyde so essential, the fact that through it the viewer is jarringly drawn away from light-hearted comedy to reflect on the solemnity of death. The film followed a series of black comedies, movies like Dr.Strangelove that turned death into something to laugh at. In Bonnie and Clyde however, there is a distinct line drawn between the folksy simplicity of the criminals on the run and the gravity of their violent actions. Being an outlaw is treated as a sort of game throughout the film: after Clyde first robs a store to prove himself to Bonnie, the two of them ride off in a stolen car to the non-diegetic sound of banjo music; Clyde’s first attempt at robbing a bank is comical when it turns out that the bank has no money to steal. Not until the butcher scene is the seriousness of their criminality hinted at. Here, Clyde is stealing groceries when a man charges up behind him with a meat cleaver. The intensity heightens and the cuts become quick, rather than moving at the leisurely pace they did before. For the first time a life of crime is not treated with such levity. There’s no banjo music as Bonnie and Clyde drive away this time. Blood stains Clyde’s collar and he asks, confused, “Why’d he try to kill me? I didn’t wanna hurt him.” However, this reflection is short-lived as the banjo starts up again. Although comedy exists side by side with the reality of death, violence is never diluted by the presence of comedy as it would often be in black comedies.
ReplyDeleteOne scene in particular that reminded me of Bonnie and Clyde was Antoine’s escape from the camp. The scene is constructed from two long shots nearly a minute in length and they give the viewer a greater sense of dimension. Instead of cutting between shots, the pursued and the pursuant are brought together in one shot that follows the figure being chased. This gives us an appreciation for how far Antoine has to run and how close the others are. Ultimately it heightens the suspense in a unique way and gives us a greater appreciation for the protagonist’s position. This use of long shot, as opposed to cutting between shots, was also employed in Bonnie and Clyde as the duo escaped from bank robberies.
I disagree with the first quote given. I find it to be rather hypocritical and I do not really understand Kael's train of though. First she states "French directors discovered the poetry of crime in American life (from our movies) and showed the Americans how to put it on the screen in a new, existential way" and that the French directors "understood that you don't express your love of life by denying the comedy or the horror of it." These statements seem to paint the French New Wave's innovations in a positive light and that they should be something to be utilized by American directors. However, almost directly after these statements, she says "the French may tenderize their American material, but we shouldn't." I do not understand how after devoting most of her previous statement to describing how the French New Wave directors have brought new life to the crime genre and how we should take heed to their innovations, and then says that American directors should instead look back to their roots rather than looking at the "tenderized" French versions. I also do not understand why she uses words such as "prestigious" and "distinguished" in a negative light in the last sentence.
ReplyDeleteDigressions aside, I feel that Bonnie And Clyde would be a very different film if it had not looked to the French New Wave for inspiration and instead had just looked to earlier American films. Bonnie And Clyde's editing is one aspect that would have changed drastically -- surely the shootout at the end of the film wherein Bonnie and Clyde are killed (starting around 1:48:00) would have had less power if it had not been edited in an extremely rapid manner using jump cuts, similar to the style of the New Wave films. Additionally, if the film had not used the long takes and handheld shots, also two cinematic techniques derived from the New Wave, then the film would have felt a lot less real than it does in its current state, and more like a typical film. To say that Penn should have ignored Traffaut's artistry is missing the point of the film and seems needlessly contrarian and contradictory to me.
One scene from 400 Blows that seems like it could have been influential on Bonnie and Clyde is the scene where Antoine is in prison. The camera pans around the room in long, sweeping takes, which creates a rather hypnotic effect. Similarly, long takes would be used in Bonnie and Clyde, although to a rather different effect, because Bonnie and Clyde is a bit more fast-paced than 400 Blows is, and makes more use of quick cuts and editing that 400 Blows usually does not.
I agree with quote 2. Bonnie and Clyde is a film of extremes, with the characters reflecting general culture. Bonnie and Clyde found catharsis in violence; therefore, it is only natural that violence be the very meaning of the film. When Kael says that the audience "[becomes] the butt of the joke" , she is referring to the fact that the seemingly empathetic characters of Bonnie and Clyde manage to convince the audience of their seeming good intentions before shocking us with the magnitude of their violence. The film is essentially a reflection of the way violence has its place in American culture and how little separates the average American from the cold blooded eponymous killers of Bonnie and Clyde. The tone shifts in the film are indicative of this - the stunning shifts from comedy to violent drama stress the dichotomy between their supposed humanity and actual lack thereof.
ReplyDeleteThe aforementioned scene, in which Bonnie and Clyde rob a bank but have trouble getting away, is indicative of the tone shifts as well as the deceptive nature of their intentions. At first they are seen robbing the bank, and the shots are framed so that the bankers' faces can not be seen. This is to emphasize the "faceless" nature of the corporations Bonnie and Clyde steal from; with no humanity for the audience to relate the banks to, the eponymous duo's actions seem much less malicious. The editing is quite normal, symbolizing the audience's acceptance of Bonnie's and Clyde's actions. However, this changes when the duo tries to get away - when the bell starts ringing and C.W. drives away the bell becomes incredibly loud and the editing becomes fast. This symbolizes the actuality of what they are doing - robbing banks. As the audience is starting to be discouraged from what Bonnie and Clyde are doing, the banker presses his face to the window, and the shot is framed so that it is a close up of the banker's face. With this shot the bank has been humanized in the audience's mind. When Clyde shoots him in the face, the banker's blood splatters against the windshield. This is a disturbing and distressing reality check. Empathy with Bonnie and Clyde is temporarily eliminated. However, the very next shot is an ironic and humorous one that pulls the audience right back in, with an old film playing with humorous music with lyrics about making money.
Comparisons can be made between the banker scene in Bonnie and Clyde and the carousel scene in the 400 Blows. Both scenes attempt to capture the flights of fancy of the protagonists, and both are edited to capture that. Both scenes utilize a style of editing in which the editing of the scene starts out slow and quickens gradually to reflect the gravity of the characters' situations. Antoine has just skipped school, and goes on a spinning carousel. As the ride takes off he begins to feel overwhelmed by the velocity of the carousel, and soon the editing reaches a fever pitch, with shots switching between Antoine and his POV rapidly. Just as Bonnie and Clyde's violent nature is revealed in the editing, so is Antoine's inner apprehension.