Five years after the Viking village of Berk made peace with the dragons, they now live among the villagers as helpful companions. Hiccup goes on adventures with his dragon, Toothless, as they discover and map unexplored lands and territories. Having come of age, he is being pressed by his father, Stoick the Vast, to succeed him as the chief, although Hiccup remains unsure if he is ready for this responsibility.
The call to adventure When Hiccup and Astrid are exploring a new place, they find an ice cave that results to be a fort where they meet Eret, who blames them for the destruction of his fort and the dissappearance of his dragons for Drago, the conqueror. Hiccup and Astrid return to Berk in order to warn Stoick about about Drago's dragons army, so Stoick orders the villagers to prepare for battle. Stoick explains that he once met Drago at a gathering of chiefs, where he murders everyone after being mocked for offering the chiefs his services in return for their servitude and total obedience. However, Hiccup refuses to believe that war is imminent, so he wants to go and search for Drago in order to reason with him and stop the war.
Accepting the call Hiccup tells his father that he's going to find Eret so he takes him to see Drago, but Stoick refuses to let him go because it is too dangerous. Hiccup doesn't care about the risk so he flies off with Toothless in search of him.
Entering the unknown During his journey, Hiccup gets captured by Valka, a dragon rider who results to be his mother. She explains that she was unable to kill dragons, so she pretended to be dead and ran away. She has spent 20 years rescuing dragons that were captured by Drago, and bringing them to an island made of ice by the Bewilderbeast, the alpha dragon. In the island, Hiccup sees the majesty of all kinds of dragons being together and in peace, and he also discovers that baby dragons are immune to the alpha's control. Stoick tracks Hiccup to the island and discovers that his wife is alive.
Supernatural aid and helpers Valka shows Hiccup the goodness of dragons and how they can be easily manipulated by the one who's in control. When Stoick dies, Valka encourages Hiccup by saying he's the only one who can unite humans and dragons. Inspired by these words, Hiccup returns to save Berk and stop Drago. Astrid and Hiccup's friends are always supporting him too, so when the time of war comes, they engage in battle alongside him.
Tests & the supreme ordeal Drago and his army approach to Valka's sanctuary, where the battle begins. Hiccup tries to convince Drago to stop the war, but Drago orders him killed as well as Toothless and the rest of the dragons in the sanctuary. Toothless is compelled by Drago's Bewilderbeast to kill Hiccup, but Stoick pushes his son out of the way, dying instantly. After Stoick's funeral, Hiccup returns to battle in order to defeat Drago and save his village. But first, he struggles to recover control of Toothless.
Restoring the world Hiccup manages to get Toothless back. Toothless challenges the alpha and Drago's Bewilderbeast freezes him and Hiccup. However, Toothless melts the ice and reveals himself as the new alpha dragon, so he and the rest of the dragons start shooting fire at Drago and his Bewilderbeast, making them run away and dissappear in the ocean. Peace is restored between dragons and humans, Berk is safe and Hiccup is proclaimed the new chief of the village.
Rainbows often symbolize transfiguration, and behave as a bridge between earth and paradise.
The Blue Meanies represent the bad people on the world.
Color yellow represents the sun and light. The color is also related to the human mind and intellect. It is optimistic and cheerful.
The big green apples are a reference to the Apple Records music label.
The butterflies represent transformation and hope, they are also related to rebirth.
Doors represent a passage from one place to another, between different states, lightness and darkness. The act of passing over the threshold signifies that one must leave behind materialism and personality to confront inner silence and meditation. An open door means welcome and invites discovery and investigation, while a closed door represents rejection, protection, secrecy, exclusion and imprisonment.
The sea is a symbol of life. A journey across the sea can be seen as a symbolic journey across the "sea of life"
The shaking hands symbolize peace, frienship and alliance, while the blue hand represents fear and destruction.
A symbol is a thing that represents or stands for something else, especially a material object representing something abstract. For example, in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”, the black bird stands for death and loss. An absent reality is the one in which symbols take you to a different and non-conscious reality, based on the meaning you give to a certain symbol.
There are different kinds of symbols in literature, such as: ·Colors:red represents danger and passion. Green means life and hope. Yellow represents age and decay. Blue symbolizes peace. Orange represents strong spiritualism or sexual love. Purple can symbolize royalty and pain, while violet means clear mindedness. Brown represents the earth and it can also be tied to humility. White represents innocence and enlightment, and pink suggests feminity, and black is related to death and evil. ·Nature: Seasons represent the progression of human life: spring (birth), summer (maturity), fall (old age) and winter (death). The sun and gold are masculine symbols, while the moon and silver are feminine. The apple tree symbolizes temptation, the sycamore represents vanity, the oak represents strength and the chestnut, foreknowledge. · Directions: The four compass directions are seen as symbols of different things, depending on the work in question. The east is tied to birth and renewal. The west is related to decrepitude and the end of things. The north is a place of death, hostility and loneliness, while the south symbolizes comfort, strength and peace. ·Animals: the lion and the peacock are associated with pride, but the lion is also a symbol of strength, while the peacock's pride represents vanity. Owls are wise, hawks are observant and ravens are a signal of death. The salmon is also a symbol of wisdom, while the mouse represents humility and fear. Foxes and cats both symbolize trickery, but the cat is clever, while the fox is sneaky. Snakes are often a symbol of evil and temptation.
In films, almost everything can be used as a symbol. For example:
A character: In “Black Swan” Nina's mother is a symbol of sexual restrain, while Lily is a symbol of sexual freedom. The White Swan part of Nina is a symbol of childhood and control, and the Black Swan symbolizes matureness and wildness.
The plot: In “The Truman Show”, the story of a man living a fake life is just a symbol for the whole "Reality vs Dream" existential question, which comes from the times of Descartes.
Sound: Star Wars is a clear example of this maily because of the Imperial March, which is a symbol of Darth Vader. This theme has a clear military, powerful, oppressive feeling to it which matches the character it was made for.
An allegorical symbol is a figure of speech in which abstract ideas and principles are described in terms of characters, figures and events. An example of this is the movie The Wizard of Oz, in which cowardice is represented in the lion, thoughtless panic in the scarecrow, and so on.
The signifier is a form which the sign takes or something that can be touched, seen, and so on and the signified is the concept it represents. Example: a bird that symbolizes freedom; a rose that represents passion.
Carl Jung believed that symbols were a key in understanding human nature. A symbol, as defined by Jung, is the “best possible expression for something essentially unknown”. Symbolic thinking is holistic, right-brain oriented, and it is complementary to logical, left-brain thinking. An example of Jung’s symbols is the shadow, which is a representation of the personal unconscious as a whole that usually embodies the compensating values to those held by the conscious personality.
The importance of Cirlot’s work is that became aware of the ‘symbolist ethos’ of modern art, because symbolic elements are present in all art, in so far as art is subject to psychological interpretation. This is why Cirlot had this need to understand and clarify every symbol in all its aspects. “Dictionary of Symbols” is useful and important because we can use it as a tool to recognize and understand symbols that are present in every aspect that we need to analize, such as literature, paintings and even films. There are many entries on this dictionary, those on architecture, color, nature, graphics, numbers, etc. Examples of words are: ·Bell: its sound is a symbol of creative power. Since it is in a hanging position, it partakes of the mystic significance of all objects which are suspended between heaven and earth. It is related, by its shape, to the vault and, consequently, to the heavens. ·Juice: represents life-giving liquid. It is a sacrificial symbol connected with blood and also with light as the distillation of igniferous bodies, suns and stars. · Leaf: one of the eight “common emblems” of Chinese symbolism, it is an allegory of happiness. When several leaves appear together as a motif, they represent people.
Ernst Cassirer argues that man is a "symbolic animal". Whereas animals perceive their world by instincts and direct sensory perception, humans create a universe of symbolic meanings. Humanity can’t be known directly, but has to be known through the analysis of the symbolic universe that man has created historically. He is particularly interested in natural language and myth. An example of Cassirer’s interest in human language is the word “fire”, which can be used to express fear when people are in a dangerous situation.
Gille Deleuze brought film studies closer to philosophy. For Deleuze, film was superior to other arts because it combines time and movement in such a necessary fashion. More than that, cinema must be considered as a philosophy because it constructs its own “concepts.” Cinema is not an applied philosophy submitted to traditional philosophical concepts, but it develops “cinematic” concepts through different symbols presented along a movie. Symbols are there as an allusion of something that wants to be noted by the audience, and that makes films an interest subject for a philosophical study.
According to Northrop Frye, the extrinsic mystery is the mystery of the unknown or unknownable essence when art is an illustration of something else, whereas the intrinsic mystery is the revelation of something unlimited in the art, no matter how well we know it.
An archetype is a character, symbol, or behavioral pattern that is a universal template for a character that is copied throughout all forms of storytelling. Archetypes were first seen in the writings of Plato and then later Sophocles, although it was popularized by Carl Jung. In literature, the use of archetypical characters and situations gives a literary work a universal acceptance, as readers identify the characters and situations in their social and cultural context. The writers attempt to impart realism to their works, as the situations and characters are drawn from the experiences of the world. Some examples are: ·The hero (archetype of character) is a character who predominantly exhibits goodness and struggles against evil, in order to restore harmony and justice to society .For example, Hercules. ·The mentor (archetype of character), whose task is to protect the main character. It is through the wise advice and training of a mentor that the main character achieves success in the world. For example, Gandalf in “The Lords of Rings”. ·The villain (archetype of character), whose main function is to oppose the hero in order to avoid him/her to bring justice. For example, The Joker in “Batman”. ·The journey (archetype of situation), in which the main character takes a journey that may be physical or emotional to understand his/her personality and the nature of the world. Examples are Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” and Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travel”.
Symbols in arts (literature and films)
Grapes: pleasure, abundance, fulfillment, and a life free from care
Fire: anger, passion, love, pain or death. It can also mean rebirth (the phoenix)
Light: used for truth, enlightenment, safety, or it can be used as a holy image
Water (rain): depression, human tears
Sun: source of light, heat and life; masculinity
Moon: changing and returning shape, feminity
Dance: to break free
The city: wealth of culture, diversity, history, art, affluence and design.
Woman: can be related to innocence but also to temptation.
Forest: the human subconscious, the mind and thoughts
Stairs: the lessons learned in life, which bring us higher and higher in knowledge, success (if going up).
The film starts with Godard's off voice saying: "ne changer rien pour que tout soit different" (do not change anything so everything is different). History doesn't change, but you can establish a different approach on details. This means that even if we try to change the whole story, it will have the same meaning because we already have certain feelings and opinions about it. If we allow history to stay the same but we change our ways of thinking, it'll have a completely different meaning to us because it lets us analize it in a different way. Sometimes we pay attention to new particular details when we see the same film, and it depends a lot on our humor and what we're thinking on that moment, so it also helps us to give the same film a different meaning than the one we thought about the first time we saw it.
The very opening of Historie(s) du cinema embeds a literary citation, “Hoc opus, hic labor est,” the Sibyl’s warning to Aenea’s descent to and return from the underworld. This fits in the history of cinema because since early ages we’ve been challenging everybody to prove we’re superior; but as usual, there’s always a chance for failure so we need to try to be the best, taking into consideration the mistakes that have been made by others in the past so we can avoid them and have better results.
Godard responded to an exasperated critic’s bewilderment, that his films didn’t have a beginning, middle and an end, with, “they do, but not necessarily in that order”. It is hard for me to say which order does Toutes les histories follow, but it was obvious that it doesn’t follow a determined order because, in my opinion, the sequences don’t have a very strict and close correlation with the other one, so it can’t have a logical structure. What matters is that despite the order the film follows, the message you want to transmit must be understood anyways.
The very first shot of Historie(s) du Cinéma certainly begins in the middle of film history, with a shot of a man with a camera, not a movie camera, but still a camera, with a telephoto lens, held at a little distance from his eye. The shot is in slow motion so we can see his anxious eyeballs moving from side to side. It is a tight shot of Jimmy Stewart from Hitchcock’s Rear Window 1954, hooked on to a screen, so to speak; a surrogate for us, the spectators. This represents that everything in this world is changing in front of our eyes, and we start getting a little anxious to be conscious about everything that’s going on right now.
“May each eye negotiate for itself” means that everybody has a different perspective of a particular thing. While someone thinks something is beautiful, another person may think it’s ugly and disgusting.
By “Don’t show every side of things, allow yourself a margin for the indefinite”, Godard means that having those blank spaces on a story allows people to start thinking about what’s going to happen next. This helps people to be motivated and interested on something. Otherwise, if they knew everything, life would be very boring.
The word TOI (you) is very strong and powerful because it means that you are the only one who knows how you think, and that your perspective about something is unique, even though it has common aspects with someone else’s perspective.
The artist’s role in society and in cinema is depicted with references to Jean Renoir’s La Règle du jeu (1939) (The Rules of the Game) as if to an exemplary combination of formal innovation and political commitment. This means that despite everybody must follow some socially acceptable behaviors, an artist can do things different because there are no clear rules for art, so they just do what it feels right. Nicholas Ray is important for Godard because he was an influence for him. That’s why there’s a lot of references of Nicholas Ray in Godard’s works. “There was theater (Griffith), poetry (Murnau), painting (Rossellini), dance (Eisenstein), music (Renoir). Henceforth there is cinema. And the cinema is Nicholas Ray”.
“Le cinema substitute a notreregard un monde qui s’accorde a nos desires” means that movies are created in order to fulfill our interests and desires because movies are a way for us to express how we see things.
Cinema is the best way to discuss the history of cinema because it can show things in a way that other forms of art can’t.
Cinema replaces the way we see life, because we can change things that in real life would just be impossible. It is said on the movie that cinema replaces perfume.
Irving Thalberg is the last tycoon because he had an extraordinary ability to produce excellent films in every aspect, like the cast and the script.
The power of Hollywood lies anywhere a movie can be seen. It can be at a movie theater or simply at home.
“A film is a girl and a gun”. Godard says that this is all you need to make a good movie because it’s what people want to see. I agree with this because nowadays most of the movies contain this to particular things and give them a lot of importance.
Kino Pravda’s purpose is to show truth-film. In other words, it shows everyday experiences without changing anything. It relates with the idea of a “Dream factory” and the image of Lenin’s corpse, because when he was alive he had a very strict control over his country so people couldn’t express their ideas freely. When he died, his regime came down with him, allowing people to think and do what they want, and that’s how the dream factory was born.
By “Aquel que ha pasado por el cine y ha conservado la marca no puede entrar en otro lugar”, Godard means that Once you’ve been introduced to artistic means and defined the boundaries of what you consider your reality is, you can't go back to the way you were before or appreciate the things with the past simplicity. You get marked by culture, a more conscious way of thinking, because the perspective you have developed makes you see things in a more complex and intellectual way.
Howard Hughes was an American business tycoon, investor, aviator, aerospace engineer, inventor, filmmaker and philanthropist who gained prominence in Hollywood from the late 1920s, making big-budget and often controversial films like The Racket (1928), Hell's Angels (1930), Scarface (1932) and The Outlaw (1943). I’m not sure if Godard disliked him, but I think that if he did, it was because Hughes had a lot of money so he could do anything he wanted when he produced a movie, so maybe Godard was jealous of him.
There’s an allusion to witchcraft because they say that women used witchcraft to get whatever they want, like a man or material stuff.
Godard depicts Orson Welles because they both were very philosophical people who had very intelligent thoughts about films. They preferred good, meaningful movies instead of just entertaining films with no sense at all
“Humiliated and offended” refers to the movies that were never produced and stayed just in ideas, so they were lost. These films were despised and discarded so they never got the chance to cause an impact on the society because it couldn’t deliver the message they were intended to.
The point of using Hitler’s images is to show in a critic and sarcastic way how reality can be hidden sometimes to people because they show in movies (and even on the news) only what they want. We all know what Hitler did, but he refused to accept his acts and he wanted people to believe that he only wanted the best for the world.
Regarding to the German invasion of France, Godard was not happy with it, because he’s French after all.
Malraux said that “The masses love myth and cinema addresses the masses. But if myth begins with Fantomas it ends with Christ. What did the crowds hear when they listened to Saint Bernard preach? Something other than what he said? Perhaps, no doubt. But how can we ignore what we understand when that unknown plunges deep into our hearts?”. This means that masses can be difficult to convince about something, because they only hear what they want to hear, so you have to choose your words carefully so you can make them think about it and change their ways of thinking.
Godard had a very good opinion of the cinematographer’s vision because they had beautiful and unique ideas that could be turned into a very good film, and not everybody has that capability.
Godard says “isn’t life wonderful” in a way for us to think that life can be really good if we want it to be that way. We’re the ones who are constantly complaining about little details making us unhappy with life, so we must change our ways of thinking so we can live a better one.
“The final conclusion the viewer can reach is that cinema has impregnated every aspect of society”. This means that movies had changed our ways of seeing life because they capture aspects of it that mark us emotionally and intellectually speaking. We certainly are influenced by movies, and that’s why we’re used to watch them in a regular basis, because they have the power to make us feel identified with their characters, plot, etc. and we feel like our life is like a very interesting film.
Psycho is a 1960 horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock starring Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, and Janet Leigh. The film’s about a woman, Marion Crane, who stole $40,000 and ran away, ending up at the Bates Motel after she got lost in the highway because of the rain. She finds Norman Bates, who is the owner of the motel and registers to spend the night. He asks her to have dinner with him at his house and when she’s getting ready, she hears a fight between him and his mother. Norman comes back to the motel with some food for her and stays with Marion while she eats. While they were talking, Norman tells Marion that his mother is sick, and he gets furious when Marion suggests that she should be institutionalized.
Marion returns to her room to take a shower, without knowing that Norman was watching her through a hole in the wall. Then, she is stabbed to death. Norman takes her body out of the cabin and puts it in the trunk of the car, as well as all her belongings, and sinks it in a swamp to take care of the evidence of what he just did. Back in Phoenix, Marion’s sister Lila and boyfriend Sam are concerned about her sudden disappearance. Arbogast, the detective, confirms Marion stole the money from her employer, so he starts tracking her and ends up at the Bates Motel too. When he asks Norman about Marion, he notices that Norman is evasive and nervous, so he starts getting suspicious. Norman mentions that Marion met his mother, so Arbogast wants to speak to her to see if she could give him some information to find Marion, but Norman refuses. Arbogast later goes to Norman’s house looking for Mrs. Bates, but he gets killed too.
Lila starts worrying because Arbogast hasn’t called to update her, so she and Sam decide to go to the motel to find out what was going on. But first, they reach the local sheriff and explain him what was going on. In response, the sheriff tells him that Norman’s mother has been dead for ten years, along with her lover, in a murder-suicide. Meanwhile, Norman fights again with his mother and tells her that he would hide her just for a while, so he takes her to the fruit cellar. Sam and Lila rent a room at the Bates Motel and search the cabin that Marion stayed in. Lila finds a scrap of paper with "$40,000" written on it while Sam notes that the bathtub has no shower curtain, so they concluded that Norman was responsible for Marion’s disappearance and also for taking the money from her. Sam distracts Norman while Lila sneaks into Norman’s house, looking for Mrs. Bates. Norman realizes something’s wrong and chases Lila. She hides in the fruit cellar and discovers Mrs. Bates sitting in a rocking chair. She calls Mrs. Bates but gets no reply, and then she comes closer and discovers that Mrs. Bates is just a corpse. When she screams, Norman comes into the cellar, dressed as his mother and ready to kill Lila, but Sam comes in and stops him.
Norman is arrested. A psychiatrist talks to him, just to find out that Norman was excessively controlled by his mother, but when she took a lover, he became jealous because she had "replaced him", and so he killed his mother and her lover. He later developed a split personality to erase the crime from his memory. At times he is just Norman, but other times the mother personality takes over. The psychiatrist also discovers that it was actually Mrs. Bates who killed Marion and two other girls, because she was “jealous” of them as Norman was with his lover. The movie ends with Marion’s car being recovered from the swamp.
Psychological analysis of Norman Bates Norman Bates has severe personality issues. He’s a very anxious, nervous and lonely person who doesn’t trust anyone and has no self-esteem at all. Because he was very attached to his mother, he probably developed the Oedipus complex due to the lack of opportunities to explore his sexual desires with other women besides her. This is why he was jealous of her lover, so he killed them. Eventually, he starts feeling guilty and he takes his mother’s personality, “bringing” her back to life by impersonating her. When he meets Marion, he is attracted to her and treats her “nice”, as everyone would do when looking for acceptance from the other person, but then the mother personality takes over and feels jealous about Norman liking another woman, so she decides to kill her.
Parallelism with Buñuel’s "Un Chien Andalou" Freud divided the human mind into three conflicting parts: the ego, the superego and the id. The ego rests between the id and the superego and provides us with a sense of self. He also considers the moral consciousness, self-observation and the development of moral values and ideals as expressions of the superego. The superego is defined as the “heir of the Oedipus complex in terms of parental demands and prohibitions”. Freud compared the human mind to an iceberg. The tiny part of the iceberg, which appears above the water surface, represents human perception. Below the surface lies a much darker, larger part of the iceberg representing the unconscious. Like Freud, Hitchcock chose for his movies, ladies that appear cold as ice in order to reveal their oppressed thoughts and desires. There are several Freudian aspects in “Un Chien Andalou” and “Psycho” regarding to the unconscious mind, especially, about sexual desires.
“Un Chien Andalou” attempts to show the hidden or repressed dimensions of the psyche. In other words, it tries to represent the unrepresentable, the unconscious. Through the whole film, Buñuel presents several aspects that symbolize fetishism as well as the sexual repression and desires of the characters. One of these symbols is the hand from where all the ants are coming out, representing how a hand can bring pleasure (through masturbation) and pain at the same time to a person. In “Psycho”, the sexual repression is observed in Norman. Supposedly, he masturbates while he’s watching Marion through the hole on the wall, so we can assume that he liberates the sexual tension he’s having at the moment. Apart from this, the most important aspect is the Oedipus complex that Norman has. The Oedipus complex refers to the unconscious child's desire to have sexual relations with the mother and to kill the father. It is unconscious because, as the child grows, he starts to realize that incestuous behaviors are socially unacceptable, so the only thing he can do is to fantasize about the mother.
Scenes where Norman’s insanity is exposed
When Marion goes into Norman’s office and sees al the stuffed birds.
When he sees Marion through the wall while she’s taking her clothes off.
When he’s taking care of all the evidence of the murder, but he doesn’t seem to be emotionally affected at all. His face is expressionless.
The scenes where he’s discussing with his mother.
Definitely, when he appears dressed up as Norma Bates.
MacGuffin A MacGuffin is an object that all the characters are interested in and that propels the action forwards. It is normally an object, but could also be a person. In this case, the MacGuffin is the money that Marion stole. This is why everyone is looking for her, and if it wasn’t for it, Arbogast wouldn’t have found the motel, giving Lila and Sam a path to find out what happened with Marion, and also to discover the atrocities Norman did.
Different characters’ empathy There are many situations through the film that made the audience feel identified in some way with the characters’ thoughts and feelings. To begin, the scene at the hotel room with Marion and Sam would make people think different things. For example, a part of the audience would think that Marion and Sam were having an inappropriate behavior for engaging in sexual activity without being married. Other people would think that there’s nothing wrong with it, and maybe they wanted to do the same thing because “it must feel nice to be intimate with someone”. Cassidy's statement that unhappiness can be bought away with money, makes the audience excuse Marion for stealing the $40,000 and even considering to do the same thing if they were in her same situation. Also, as the film continues, we see Marion having thoughts of what she did and considering to take the money back, so it makes the audience be like “you see, she’s a good person, she’s returning the money and everything will be normal again” The audience’s empathy for Norman is the most important. Even though he’s a psychopath, the audience feels kind of sorry for him because he’s mentally ill and he’s not himself. At first they see him at first being just Norman, and he seems nice and just looking for love and support, but after he kills Marion and Arbogast and the psychiatrist discovers that he is also portraying his mother’s personality, people can also justify his actions because he was so traumatized as a kid that he did what made her mother happy and satisfied, in this case, killing every women that represented a threat to her.
Sexuality In this film, sexuality is shown as a very strong feeling for both men and women. At the beginning of the film, we see Marion and Sam at the hotel room in a very intimate and passionate moment. Hitchcock didn’t mind the fact that sexuality was an inappropriate topic to be shown or talked about in public, and he incorporated scenes that could make the audience uncomfortable, for example, Marion using underwear only when she’s with Sam at the hotel. Another example of sexuality being interpreted as a human weakness is when Norman gets aroused by watching Marion (just using underwear, again) through the hole on the wall. The film also makes women look like weak human beings. The best example of this is when she is murdered when she’s taking a shower. When Norman opens the curtain, the first thing Marion does is (besides screaming) try to cover her naked body with her arms, making us see that she was completely defenseless and couldn’t do anything to fight for her life.
The first thing that comes to my mind about the first partial is the film vocabulary. I think i learned almost every concept on the list and I can remember them when I'm seeing a movie. I also learned a Little bit of film history, especially from the silent and classical period, and also about the english language and its origins. I liked the first movies we saw because eventhough they were quite "simple", I found them pretty entertaining eventhough they are very old films. I also learned a few things from the Socrative terms, like what is esperanto and the nickelodeons.
I did find this film funny and entertaining, specially when the tramp being used to test the feeding machine. I also liked the scene where he's spraying oil over the other workers and when he's feeding the repairman when the factory reopens. In the first scene there's a flock of sheep shown on the screen, symbolizing the workers who are doing nothing but following the rest on their way to their workplace and not thinking in an individual way. In some time of this shot we can also see a black sheep that symbolizes disgrace and shame to society, in this case, the tramp is slowing and/or hindering the factory's production, making everyone upset.
I don't think it's difficult to understand what's happening even there's no conversation, because the characters' expressions, gestures and movements, and also the scenes help to explain everything very simple. When the factory closed, workers had to find a way to barely satisfy their needs. So, they looked for another job or simply began robbing food or whatever they needed. In the tramp's case we can see that he tries to stay in prison even after he was released, because "he was so happy in there". I think his happiness comes to the fact that he had his basic needs satisfied, those being food and a place to sleep. IIndustrialists and employers just want to get the maximum profit from their industries. This means that they could or could not care about their employees thoughts and just go with whatever they consider convenient. The police intervention was needed because, as it happens nowadays, people who want thinks done their way do watever it takes to achieve it, even recurring to violence.
Misery and opulence can be compared when the tramp starts imagining the house of his dreams, where he lives with the Gamin. He has fruits, a cow to get fresh milk, meat, and last but no least, good and comfortable furniture. After several scenes we see the reality, when the Gamin takes the tramp to a very humble house, where the wood falls from the ceiling, the chair sinks in the floor, they are using campbell's soup cans as glasses and so on. This show us the very big difference between the poor, who only dream to live better, and the rich, who only want to have even more stuff.
There are several police interventions affecting the main characters. One of them is when they take the tramp to prison after he blames himself of stealing the loaf of bread. When he's released, the Gamin, dressed with pretty clothes is waiting for him outside the jail. When he sees her, he's completely amazed about the way she looks and he's obviously very happy to see her. Also at the end of the film, when the Gamin an the tramp are working in the restaurant, the police comes in and wants to arrest her. This makes her desperate while the tramp is just trying to comfort her. However, they manage to escape from the police, staying together and walking down the road as the shot fades out. This shows us that anything is possible and even better when we stay together, as well as there's always someone who will make your life better, no matter their socioeconomic status, because what really counts is our way of thinking and our feelings.
I think the ending was modified because it would imply a lot of time where the tramp is not "in his best conditions", so everything that happened (his house's dream, getting a job at the store, etc.) in this version would not be seen, making it much harder to get them know eachother in their must humble situation and they would not probably end up the same way. I prefer the modified version because there's a lot more action than it would be in the other version. There would probable not be all this police interventions to get the tramp and the gamin and it could make the plot a little boring.
As the title says, this film is about 3 guys who commit a robbery in a way I found pretty funny. It begins with the thieves entering an office in the train station and taking everything they can after tying up the man that was inside. On the next scenes, we can see them getting in the train and taking control of it, killing people who gets on their way. After this, the train stops and people start getting off the train with their hands up, while the thieves take their valuable things and put them inside bags, and they also kill a man before running away into the woods. On the next few minutes we can see the police chasing the thieves and eventually killing them. This is the first film I see where the camera follows the characters and it's not a static shot, making the film more dynamic and giving us a chance to see different backgrounds as the camera moves. I like the music in this film too because it adds a lot more intensity to it and make the audience entertained and interested the whole time. I Think the audience liked this film because the plot isn't something that they were used to see on a daily basis, and also because it's funny how the characters lifted their arms when they got shot. The most remarkable shot is when a guy shoots at the audience at the very end of the film.
I chose this film because is the one that I found most interesting and entertaining. It begins with a guy who is dreaming and when he wakes up, he goes to activate the fire alarm, being this emphasized as the begining of action, as it's the only thing we see on screen. Then we can see the firemen hopping out of their beds and getting ready for action. On the next scene, the firemen are going out of the fire station, using horses as their transportation. Next scenes only show the firemen on their way to the house on fire. People this days would think that it is boring to wait two minutes for the firemen to get to the place, but this is how it was in real life before people started using cars. Next, we can see a fireman going in the house and taking out the people who were there; and then he returns with another fireman and start turning the fire off. I liked how music helps to create a dramatic atmosphere, making the audience (including me and people on 1902) feel excited and also to make them know and appreciate the heroic and important job that firemen did. I think the most remarkable shot is when the firemen jump out of their beds and get ready really fast, because it represents how compromised they were with their job of helping people from their town.
This short film shows just one scenery: a factory. It begins with the factory's doors being opened and workers coming out, mainly women and they're all wearing hats. There's also people coming out with bikes and we can see a dog too. The main purpose of this film was to show the audience how the workers' daily life is. Also, this is an important film because is the first one that was ever made.