The Power of Film Elements

The subject matter of an artwork whether abstract or concrete is usually depicted through a set of conventions of patterned connections utilized in the perception, definition, and evaluation of an artwork. There are two senses that filmmakers can make use in their movies, which include the sense of hearing and that of sight. The elements motivating these two senses are innumerous. The combination of the two leads to creation of stories and styles. Even though the different possibilities are found in one of three possible film forms. Documentary form that exposes reality, narrative form that tells stories and experimental form that looks into the medium. In terms of structure what is looked at is whether the movie is linearly structured or not and these kind of movies put forward facts in a sequential order (Hediger & Vonderau 2009). On the other hand, documentaries are scenes and moments collection that put together in a non-linear fashion. If done in the correct way the several sequences in a documentary interweave back and forth to come up with a meaningful amalgam that surveys a certain theme and makes a particular point. This paper is going to compare and contrast the different formal strategies of two films Persona (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 1996) and Scarface (Howard Hawks, USA, 1932). Formalism in general takes into consideration the synthesis (or lack of synthesis) of the many elements in film production, and the effects of intellectual and emotional of the synthesis and of the individual elements. An individual might take into consideration the synthesis of several essentials that include music, editing and shot composition (Kovács, 2007). There is a shoot-out that is a perfect illustration of how these elements do work together to produce an effect, this is depicted in the shoot-out scenario in the movie Western Dollars trilogy by Leone Spaghetti that end the movie. The shot selection goes from very wide to very close and tense; the length of shots decreases as the sequence progresses towards its end; the music builds (Faria & Sofka, 2008). There is a creation of tension by all of these elements, in combination rather than individually.

Formalism is extraordinary in that it grips both ideological and auteurist twigs of criticism. In both these cases, the shared denominator for Formalist criticism is style. Ideologies lay emphasis in the manner through which socio-economic weights come up with a certain style and auteurists on how auteurs put their own stamp on the material. The key aspect of formalism is usually on style and the way through which it lays across themes, ideas, and emotions (rather than, as critics of formalism claim, concentrating on the themes of a work itself). Thus the two instances of philosophical interpretations considered to be in relation to formalism. The classical Hollywood cinema has a very separate feel, occasionally referred to as institutional way of representation: continuity editing, three-point lighting music mood, massive coverage dissolves, all intended to make the experience as enjoyable as possible (Kerner, 2011). Persona is a 1966 psychological drama film of a Swedish origin written and directed by Ingmar Bergman that is starring Liv Ullman and Bibi Andersson. The story of the film gyrates around a fresh nurse named Alma (Andersson) and her patient Elisabet Vogler (Ullman) who suddenly stops to speak. The two at the end of the film move to a cottage, where Alma takes care of and communicates to Elizabeth on intimate secrets, and thereafter becomes incapable of distinguishing herself from Elizabeth. It deals with the themes of insanity, personal identity and insanity. It’s a film that classify as a good classical due to its image beauty and for the purposes of eventually getting to be aware of its mysteries. In addition, it is a movie that has plenty of hidden truths that can be captivating to the mind and hence a good classical that will retain its relevance over a long period (Kooijman & Pisters, 2008).

The tactic used in this movie is a literary. One of the great accomplishments of persona is how the film manages not to be pretentious in any way. Bergman depicts to the audience everyday actions and the words of normal conversations, shown in haunting images of cinematography. One of the two faces being frontal and the other one in profile which has turned out to be one of the most famous cinema images. Elizabeth (Liv Ullman) ceases to speak and will not speak again. It is the thoughts of a psychiatrist that it will be of help if Nurse Alma and Elizabeth spend the summer at an isolated house (Miller & Stam, 2007). The two women somehow merge during the time which they were held in the same box of space and time. Elizabeth utters nothing, and Alma speaks on various occasions, admitting her plans and her fears, and in the end, in a great and daring monologue, confessing an erotic episode during which she was completely happy for a moment. The two actresses look similar in a way, a similarity that is emphasized in a shot where half of one face is combined with half of the other by the film maker. Their visual merging is a suggestion of a deeper psychic attraction. Elizabeth who is the patient, apparently ill and mute, is stronger than the nurse who later on feels her soul being taken over by the other woman’s soul. (Campbell, 2017) There is a suggestion by the opening sequence of persona starting in the beginning. The break in the middle shows it going backwards and beginning again. At the end of the film runs out of the camera and the lights on the lamp dies. This shows that the film maker has returned to the first principles. In the beginning there was light while at the end the camera crew itself appears. Elizabeth views on the television images from Vietnam which included a Buddhist monk who was burning himself. Later on images of Jews being rounded from the Warsaw ghetto come up as the film lingers on the face of a small boy. The horrors of the world might have caused Elizabeth to stop speaking. She goes on to doubt everything about herself and the surrounding environment. Alma delivers a monologue about the child of Elizabeth. Elizabeth leaves the child who was born with deformity with her relatives to run to the theatre. The other monologue in the movie is about the sex story of Alma on the beach that involved herself, two other boys and her girlfriend. People can describe the imagery as if they were there because it is so powerful (Khatib, 2012).

The threat of boiling water and the cut foot are the most real objective experiences in the film, which show how every other thing is made through thought. Alma’s orgasm on the bench is the only real life experience she has ever had. Alma’s ecstasy and Elizabeth’s pain broke through their lives reveries. It is usually not the direct world experience of what we think of ourselves, but it is a mental broadcast that is made of ideas, media input, memories, jobs, fears, hope and lusts. Elizabeth is able in the end to pick who she is something that Alma is not able to do. The title is the key persona. Scarface is a 1983 American film based on crime. The film tries to narrate the story of A Cuban refugee who arrives in the state of Miami in the 1980s with nothing and climbs the ladder to become a very powerful drug load. Scarface is a movie that is prepared to take a faulty, evil man and permit him to be human. Montana is a punk from Cuba. The opening act of the movie tells us that when Cuban refugees were permitted to enter into America in 1981, Fidel Castro had his own diminutive private revenge and eviscerated out his prison cells, directing criminals alongside his masses that were weary and huddled. Audiences are shown Montana attempting to bluff his way through a grilling by federal agents of the United States, which is what he keeps on doing in the entire movie. He has no real courage and no real character even though for a short period cocaine provides him the illusion of both (Gaudreault et al, 2012).

Scarface obtains its title from a movie dating back to the year 1932 by Howard Hawks that was a source of inspiration to the acting career of Al Capone. Scarface perceives its criminal so evidently as a person with a common product to sell, working in a society that is interested in the business of purchasing. In the ancient days it was booze while for the Corleone’s, it was gambling and prostitution. In present times it's cocaine. The message for the dealer still is the same: It’s only a fool that gets hooked on his own goods. The choices seem pretty simple at first For Tony Montana. He can get himself into organized crime, become an individual that is more vicious than the people competing with him and get the big cars, the beautiful women and the boot-licking attention from nightclub doormen. The alternative option is that he can choose to work hard, be honest and make a pretty decent but minimal wage as a dishwasher (Bergan, 2011). The movie observes Montana with almost anthropological detachment as he works his way into the south Florida illegal drug trade. This is not one of those movies where the characters come with attached labels and act precisely as one imagine they would. DE Palma together with his writer Oliver Stone have come up with a specific individual’s gallery. One of the movie fascinations is that we are watching people who are criminals and not those crime-movie clichés (Giannetti, 2014). Montana is not molded as a sympathetic character, but is made into somebody we can be able to identify ourselves with, in a horrified way, if only because of his flawlessly comprehensible motivations. Being involved in the business of trafficking drugs provides the perfect opportunity of a way of life that is only imaginable to a majority of the world’s population. For example, being wealthy and powerful, living in mansions, having sex partners who are highly desirable, being attended to whenever necessary and not being required to do chores) but it also involves selling ones soul. Montana is able to get it all and he loses it all which is predictable. The captivating thing about this movie is the emphasis it lays on how little Montana enjoys the richness in his possession while he has it. Two scenes are a true disaster in a way that in one of the scenes, he is seated in a nightclub with his faithful sidekick together with the blond mistress. The emotions that he can be able to feel at this point are boredom and impatience due to being highly intoxicated with cocaine. In the other scene he desperately tries out the transfusion of energy in that he puts his face into a mass of cocaine inhaling the drug in a manner that one could think that he was in a large water mass gasping for breath as he drowned. (Ford, 2012)

Scarface is able to bring out this criminal personality well enough, with its links between grandiosity and low self-esteem, laziness and ruthlessness, pipe dreams and a long-lasting incapability to be content. It also is an exhilarating crime picture, in the tradition of the 1932 movie. Just like the Godfather movies, it is a gallery of brilliant secondary performances. For example, as a woman whose necessity for drugs leads her from one mistaken lover to another while Steven Bauer is considered as a sidekick. Robert Loggia is considered as a mob boss who is not somewhat vicious enough. Lastly, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio who plays as Pacino's little sister who desires the right to self-destruct in a way that according to her is the most suitable. These are the individuals, Tony Montana deserves in his life, and "Scarface" is an amazing depiction of a real louse (Kovacs, 2007). The above discussion is a classical representation on the comparisons and the contrasts of how the formal styles have been deployed in the two movies by their authors and what motives they had in producing them and showing them to the entire public

References

Campbell, T. C. (2017). The techne of giving: Cinema and the generous form of life. US: Fordham University Press

Faria, P., & Sofka, W. (2008). Formal and strategic appropriability strategies of multuinational films: A cross country comparison. Mannheim: ZEW, Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung.

Ford, H. (2012). Post-war modernist cinema and philosophy: Confronting negativity and time. Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kerner, A. (2011). Film and the Holocaust: New perspectives on dramas, documentaries, and experimental films

Kooijman, J., & Pisters, P. (2008). Mind the screen: Media concepts according to Thomas Elsaesser. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press

Kovács, A. B. (2007). Screening modernism: European art cinema, 1950-1980. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Miller, T., & Stam, R. (2007). A companion to film theory. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publications