Amidst all the hubbub and drudgery of obsessing over the GAMSAT, talking about studying for the GAMSAT, identifying themes in study routines from people who ace the GAMSAT,... and generally obsessing over anything written on the world-wide web ending in SAT (provided it starts with a G), one generally starts to lose grip of the things that keeps them grounded. Not this blogger. For I, in good fortune wish to imprint my personality upon my faithful followers, (that's right, all three of you! {present company excluded} ) so you don't define me as just another pathologically narcissistic guy blogging about his quest to get into Med. So here it goes, in a segment I like to derivatively call; 'Getting to Know Your Blogger'.
I love films, not movies, films. Films are a unique form of expression that succeed in the pitfalls of other art devices; in the Scientific sense, films are the Real-Time Quantitative PCR to the inferior agarose gels of the painting/music/photography consortium. Furthermore, I do not restrict my film smorgasbord to just the Australian and American delights; quite the opposite! If I was to post my top-ten films of all time right now, only a true film buff would be able to identify more than half of them. One thing that I find astonishing about film is its ability to transcend language, culture and time. If you don't believe me, watch the recently released vampire movie 'Let The Right One In' based on the Swedish novel ' Let Me In' (Hollywood later made an adaptation of the Swedish film named after the novel; shame since the Swedish film is light years ahead of its American orthologue). I watched it on DVD with a copy that didn't have any subtitles, and despite this, the perfect movement of the camera, the pitch perfect desolate tone and the superb acting showed me everything I needed to know sans translation! Here was a tragic tale of sordid loneliness, despair and isolation that reverberated within my sensibilities weeks after that initial viewing.If the tragic story of Oskar the lonely 12-year old were a psalm written in Swedish, or a song caroled in the native language, would I have been as moved by the story? Probably not as much, but then that would encourage me to take up Swedish.
I'm not going to dwell on an arthouse vampire movie that dare not mention the 'V' word. I will be presenting you with a slice of French New-Wave cinema. Watch the below clip, courtesy of youtube, taken from the seminal 1962 french gangster film 'Le Doulos'. To put this scene into context, Silien (Jean Paul Belmondo) is a thug who may or may not be a police informant and has just caught wind of a possible windfall of his recently-incarcerated-but-now released friend, Maurice. Wanting to know exactly where the deed is going down, Silien decides to pay Maurice's lady friend a visit..
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To fully understand the impact of this scene, one must put a few things into context:
- The actor in this scene, Jean Paul Belmondo, was up until this point seen as a 'good guy gone bad' thanks to his breakthrough performance in the landmark French New Wave film 'A Bout De Souffle' where he essentially played 'James Dean in Gay Paris' (no pun intended). His career up to this point consisted of playing the same character, a man who will fight to do whats right even if that action is wrong.
But, not in this film! The writer-director, Jean Pierre Melville (A GOD!), knew EXACTLY what he was doing when he cast JPBelmondo. He played the audiences expectations of his previous characters to startle and shock them when it turns out, (i) he really is a very very bad guy, and (ii) he will do bad things that were relatively unseen on the silver screen to get what he needs. To draw some kind of comparison, imagine if in the next Clint Eastwood Boston set drama saga, Hugh Jackman (yes..the Boy From Oz) played a down on his luck dole bludger who was just trying to find his buddy that owed him money. Suppose in one scene 'The Boy From Oz' slaps up his buddy's partner within an inch of their life in a brutal display. I don't think Oprah would be inviting him back anytime soon!
- Despite the actors own abjections to his supposed 'ugly' facial features, there was a time when his smooth smile and cool demeanor wooed more French skirts than a Paris express metro! Notice how in this scene JPMelville goes into close frames to show the million dollar smile in between smacks. He is manipulating the connection between our mind and our eyes; our eyes are saying 'look at those pearly whites, how could he be bad!?' whilst our mind is telling us 'HELP!'.
-Notice the flow of the camera at the beginning of the scene; as he is welcomed into the apartment, there are very abrupt and distinct cuts as the camera transitions between JPBelmondo and the poor lady. As he welcomes himself in, he walks scoping the room for 'something'. We see a 'lightbulb' moment as he resigns on a choice (which we later learn is in fact the radiator which he uses to humiliatingly restrain his victim) and the camera follows in one elegant continuous loop to him settling comfortably into a chair. I'll admit that this isn't something I picked up from an initial viewing, but after seeing this movie a few times I concur that this could be done by the director to show this 'performance' of misogyny is merely an expression of calculating, executed power to get the information he needs.
-The use of sound in this scene is second to none, only bettered by Quentin Tarantino and Brian De Palma (both masters of suspense). Notice how the tempo in the background music builds, hitting a crescendo when he finally inflict the initial brutal smack. This isn't by accident; up until now you are well aware you're in a movie, safe and relatively far from what's happening. But once that music comes off, this is the director saying; "no more passive viewing, you're in the room too." Within 2 seconds, you are instantly teleported into the far side of that room, witnessing the brutal attacks that are to come with uncomfortable immediacy. Whilst this seems tame by todays standards, back in 1962, where every scene of violence had a symphony orchestra to comfortably remind you of your distance from the exploits being shown, this would have been like torture!
All in all, this is a great film with archetypal characters that don't fulfill the archetypes they are inspired from. You might wonder, why did I spend all this time analyzing a 5 minute scene from a jurassic-age French movie starring 'that guy my nanna's European babysitter had a crush-on?'
WHY NOT!?!?
But seriously, I refuse to let the intense pressures of honours and the pressure of graduate entry medicine repress my interests. This is just one of many.
Hope All is Well!
MTC
I love films, not movies, films. Films are a unique form of expression that succeed in the pitfalls of other art devices; in the Scientific sense, films are the Real-Time Quantitative PCR to the inferior agarose gels of the painting/music/photography consortium. Furthermore, I do not restrict my film smorgasbord to just the Australian and American delights; quite the opposite! If I was to post my top-ten films of all time right now, only a true film buff would be able to identify more than half of them. One thing that I find astonishing about film is its ability to transcend language, culture and time. If you don't believe me, watch the recently released vampire movie 'Let The Right One In' based on the Swedish novel ' Let Me In' (Hollywood later made an adaptation of the Swedish film named after the novel; shame since the Swedish film is light years ahead of its American orthologue). I watched it on DVD with a copy that didn't have any subtitles, and despite this, the perfect movement of the camera, the pitch perfect desolate tone and the superb acting showed me everything I needed to know sans translation! Here was a tragic tale of sordid loneliness, despair and isolation that reverberated within my sensibilities weeks after that initial viewing.If the tragic story of Oskar the lonely 12-year old were a psalm written in Swedish, or a song caroled in the native language, would I have been as moved by the story? Probably not as much, but then that would encourage me to take up Swedish.
I'm not going to dwell on an arthouse vampire movie that dare not mention the 'V' word. I will be presenting you with a slice of French New-Wave cinema. Watch the below clip, courtesy of youtube, taken from the seminal 1962 french gangster film 'Le Doulos'. To put this scene into context, Silien (Jean Paul Belmondo) is a thug who may or may not be a police informant and has just caught wind of a possible windfall of his recently-incarcerated-but-now released friend, Maurice. Wanting to know exactly where the deed is going down, Silien decides to pay Maurice's lady friend a visit..
-|
To fully understand the impact of this scene, one must put a few things into context:
- The actor in this scene, Jean Paul Belmondo, was up until this point seen as a 'good guy gone bad' thanks to his breakthrough performance in the landmark French New Wave film 'A Bout De Souffle' where he essentially played 'James Dean in Gay Paris' (no pun intended). His career up to this point consisted of playing the same character, a man who will fight to do whats right even if that action is wrong.
But, not in this film! The writer-director, Jean Pierre Melville (A GOD!), knew EXACTLY what he was doing when he cast JPBelmondo. He played the audiences expectations of his previous characters to startle and shock them when it turns out, (i) he really is a very very bad guy, and (ii) he will do bad things that were relatively unseen on the silver screen to get what he needs. To draw some kind of comparison, imagine if in the next Clint Eastwood Boston set drama saga, Hugh Jackman (yes..the Boy From Oz) played a down on his luck dole bludger who was just trying to find his buddy that owed him money. Suppose in one scene 'The Boy From Oz' slaps up his buddy's partner within an inch of their life in a brutal display. I don't think Oprah would be inviting him back anytime soon!
- Despite the actors own abjections to his supposed 'ugly' facial features, there was a time when his smooth smile and cool demeanor wooed more French skirts than a Paris express metro! Notice how in this scene JPMelville goes into close frames to show the million dollar smile in between smacks. He is manipulating the connection between our mind and our eyes; our eyes are saying 'look at those pearly whites, how could he be bad!?' whilst our mind is telling us 'HELP!'.
-Notice the flow of the camera at the beginning of the scene; as he is welcomed into the apartment, there are very abrupt and distinct cuts as the camera transitions between JPBelmondo and the poor lady. As he welcomes himself in, he walks scoping the room for 'something'. We see a 'lightbulb' moment as he resigns on a choice (which we later learn is in fact the radiator which he uses to humiliatingly restrain his victim) and the camera follows in one elegant continuous loop to him settling comfortably into a chair. I'll admit that this isn't something I picked up from an initial viewing, but after seeing this movie a few times I concur that this could be done by the director to show this 'performance' of misogyny is merely an expression of calculating, executed power to get the information he needs.
-The use of sound in this scene is second to none, only bettered by Quentin Tarantino and Brian De Palma (both masters of suspense). Notice how the tempo in the background music builds, hitting a crescendo when he finally inflict the initial brutal smack. This isn't by accident; up until now you are well aware you're in a movie, safe and relatively far from what's happening. But once that music comes off, this is the director saying; "no more passive viewing, you're in the room too." Within 2 seconds, you are instantly teleported into the far side of that room, witnessing the brutal attacks that are to come with uncomfortable immediacy. Whilst this seems tame by todays standards, back in 1962, where every scene of violence had a symphony orchestra to comfortably remind you of your distance from the exploits being shown, this would have been like torture!
All in all, this is a great film with archetypal characters that don't fulfill the archetypes they are inspired from. You might wonder, why did I spend all this time analyzing a 5 minute scene from a jurassic-age French movie starring 'that guy my nanna's European babysitter had a crush-on?'
WHY NOT!?!?
But seriously, I refuse to let the intense pressures of honours and the pressure of graduate entry medicine repress my interests. This is just one of many.
Hope All is Well!
MTC
I’ve read many articles and books about GAMSAT, but this one is amazing! All is gathered and explained in single blog, Congratulations!
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