1
2
3
cineanalogies
discovering analogies in cinematic images
Masterthesis Interactive Media & Environments Frank Mohr Instituut Groningen Sarah JanĂ&#x;en, 2011 www.sarahjanssen.com
intro 4
still from cinematic shivers, 2010
oduction 5
Images are all around us. There is a multitude of media available nowadays and especially digital media cause that images are spread around faster than ever. But also through the comparatively old medium cinema we are exposed to a huge flood of images. We can see images as the elementary building blocks in our visual language. But how does this language work, how do we perceive an image? And how are our viewing habits influenced by the media surrounding us? These are questions I conceptually deal with in my artwork. When I am creating a work, for instance a photograph or a video, I am lead by my intuition when giving shape to the image. At a certain point, I began to question where this intuition was actually based on. With a background in photography and design, I was used to create commercial work and thus images which were made for the purpose of transporting a clear message. In contrast to that, the first moving images I made were the results of some experiments with the stop motion technique. Different to the work I was normally doing, I was not paying much attention on the content of the work; instead I was purely interested in the technique of creating motion with still images. The works I made were something more than a photograph, as they were moving. Still I was not really making a film, as the moving photograph had no beginning or end. I became interested in the relation of photography and film as well as the definition of time-based media in general. I started to look closer at cinema, a medium I did not know a lot of at that time. I was never accustomed to watch
so many movies; often it happened to me that people where commenting on my work that it reminded them of a certain director or movie, which I did not know. Nonetheless I had the impression that somehow my work was making a reflection on cinema, yet I could not really pin-point in what way. Especially in my video installation cinematic shivers (2010) I deliberately composed images which, to my mind, represented typical movie scenes. But how could I dare to claim that I was creating stereotypic cinema images without having any knowledge of the complex discipline of cinema? What fascinated me most was the assumption that there were certain similar film images recurring over and over again, in all kind of movies. If my hypothesis was true, what was the function of these images? Were they used as stylistic devices? Was cinema, known to be exaggerated, essentially based on those stereotypes? A lot of other questions arose: Why do we like certain movies? What makes a movie a masterpiece? Where did the myth around classic films come from? At a certain point, I knew only one possible solution to find answers to my questions: Start watching a lot of movies and start collecting film images that would prove my hypothesis. So this is what I did. This book gives an overview of my research by presenting my discoveries, development and achievements during the last study year.
stereotypic images 6
A person is looking through blinds - the obligatory visual element of film noir? I used this motif in my work cinematic shivers (2010) as I considered this image to be typical cinematic. On the other side a selection of blinds from the movies I analyzed.
7
8
For the research documented in this thesis, I collected similar film scenes from 70 movies and studied them, trying to find out more about stereotypical scenes in movies. Before I started watching the first movies, I already had some images in my mind, where I wanted to look for. I had watches a lot of movies by Alfred Hitchcock at that time and asked myself why he was considered as one of the most important filmmakers of his time. Some of the scenes I had in mind were in my opinion describing suspense moments, where Hitchcock was especially known for. So I decided to find out if there were proofs to find to show that Hitchcock ‚invented‘ certain archetypical images that were used by other filmmakers later on, probably even as symbols for a specific emotion or message.
28x
a door opens
63x
someone at the window
9
22x
39x
30 x
someone lights a cigarette in a car
man with hat, observing
man sitting on bed
15x
woman taking off sunglasses
20 x
person overlooking something
amount of movies out of 70, containing the described scene
stereotype scene
photography & cinema 10
stills from cinematic shivers, video installation, 2010
11
Regarding the content of the analyzed scenes, many of them have in common that they look somehow like still images, as if they were moving photographs. Some of them are a kind of portraits of the personage, for instance the men with hats or the women that take of their sunglasses. Another important congruence is that they are all scenes where ‚nothing‘ happens, at least they have no or only little function in the storytelling; some scenes even seemed as if they were only made for the sake of visual attractiveness. Most of the scenes are without any dialogue; instead the image speaks a lot for itself. Some are also similar to scenes in my own artwork. I often create images which look like daily life scenes on first sight. In these ordinary moments strange things occur, so that there is a connection to the unreal, the fictional, the story from the movies. Just as cinema is to a certain degree an imitation of the real, there is always the tendency to become too exaggerated and filigreed at a certain point. I wanted to achieve the described feeling with my video installation cinematic shivers, which I already mentioned in the introduction. It is a time-based work, but it is made up of single photographs. By animating them to short moving sequences I intended to give the idea that one is looking at fragments from a movie. The images do not tell us anything about the situations the persons are in, you cannot see what happened before or what will happen next. Therefore, the viewer starts inventing a story with the few information that is given.
painting & cinema 12
Some of the movie images I found reminded me of paintings. The scenes of men sitting on a bed radiate thoughtfulness, a theme which is also depicted in Edward Hopper‘s painting Excursion into Philosophy. The painting shows a frozen moment from a daily life scene which we can also recognize in the similar movie scenes. Although in a movie we cannot look at an image for as long as we like, because time is constantly passing, these scenes give us the sensation of looking at a still image, may it also just be for a few seconds.
a person sits on the edge of a bed in The talented Mr Ripley, Road to Perdition, and Lost in Translation
13
Der Wanderer Ăźber dem Nebelmeer by Caspar David Friedrich gives us a similar emotion as the man sitting on the bed. As it was common in romantic art Friedrich‘s painting is not only a copy of nature, but the nature elements have a meaning which can be projected on the man, who is longing for something. Several of the film stills of someone overlooking the sea or a city look like a rather literal adaption of Friedrich‘s artwork. It seems as if the visual language has not changed over the years and although cinema would consider itself a modern and revolutionary medium it is undeniable connected to painting.
a person overlooks something in The talented Mr Ripley, Road to Perdition, and Lost in Translation
iconography 14
Iconography is a branch of art history; a scientific method to identify and interpret motives (often religious symbols) in visual arts. In an iconographic analysis, images are examined on the use of certain visual elements. The visual appearance of a work is not regarded, only the symbolic meaning which is connected to it.
15
The halo, symbol in religious iconography, is used to characterize mighty or holy persons.
Modern heros. An iconographic research suggests that observants with hats are the saints of cinema.
collecting. cathegorizing. arranging. 16
In the beginning of my research, I felt a bit like a curator. Based on some ideas about what kind of images I wanted to look for, I started making a collection. After quite a while the collection had grown so far that I had the first useful results. My first approach regarding the material I had was to arrange them according to the categories I introduced before. Within these categories I then tried to find possibilities to further sort the scenes, in order to find distinctive features or peculiarities. The most obvious way of arranging the images was by looking closer at the visual content. I wanted to find out if filmmakers were designing an analogical content also in an analogical way, so I sorted similar images by similarities in the composition of scenes. A possible reason for the discovered congruencies could be of course that filmmakers were making instinctive decision, comparable for instance to the phenomenon of the golden ratio, which is sensed by humans as being very harmonious and is therefore used intuitively for finding compositions. Or were there effectively arguments suggesting that filmmakers were imitating the image of a fellow intentionally? The following methods of arranging were considered as well: -chronological order (did filmmakers obviously influence each other?) -arranging by genre to discover if certain gestures are symbolic for a certain genre - arranging by moment of appearance in the movie (I found several movies that ended with a scene in which someone sits on the edge of a bed). Is it a common practice to use a certain gesture at a certain time in a plot?
17
Studying the collected window scenes, I found almost the same amount of people looking to the left as looking to the right (see photographs below). Interesting is that seemingly it was not always the same viewing direction which was popular for filmmakers. Or why is it that on a lot of stills from black and white movies people look to the left, while there is only one image where the person looks to the right? The comparisons below were made in the beginning of the research, the percentages after analysing 70 movies are as follows: Black and white stills of persons looking ... ...to the left: 36% [16 out of 44 scenes] ...to the right: 25% [8 out of 32 scenes]
18
Direct analogies. dead body in a pool in Sunset Boulevard (1950) and No Country for old Men (2007).
19
to eavesdrop on a door in Touch of Evil (1958) and Le fabuleux destin d窶連melie Poulain (2001).
perpetuated suspense 20
I collected also similar scenes from movies, where people are moving through a building with drawn weapons, tracing their antagonist who could be hidden behind the next corner. I considered these scenes stereotypical for a lot of action movies. In all scenes a certain tension is build up while at the same time it is implemented that the suspense scene we see will suddenly be interrupted by a surprise moment. I put those chasing scenes from all kind of movies together and edited them in a way that they build a new continuity. By taking all these scenes out of their narrative context and combining them in a video installation that runs in a loop, the suspense effect of each scene is losing itself in infinity.
21
still from perpetuated suspense, video installation with found footage, 2011
cinematic opening scenes 22
23
The image of an opening door functions often as a transitional element to connect two scenes. Especially in horror films or thrillers the everyday item of the door gets a deeper meaning, as a certain symbolism is projected on it. On the other hand the door opening scenes stand out due to the shadow play character and the graphical look it achieves. It evokes the impression that the filmmaker uses these scenes mainly for an aesthetic reason. The collected scenes reminded me of the avant-garde movements in the 1920s and 30s CinĂŠma Pur and Absolute Film. By forming a contra culture to narrative cinema, their profounders intended to create purely abstract movies which can be seen as early motion-graphics animations.
door opening scenes, still from video collage, experiment
24
The collected images of opened doors not only share the same content of the door, but also have strong visual similarities. All start with a completely black screen and are distinguished by a high colour contrast. These scenes already looked very abstract and graphical by themselves. I enhanced this effect by reducing the colours and creating vector animations based on the graphical forms of the original scene. The created animations are presented in an installation set-up. All scenes are set to the same length and are shown synchronized on a row of screens.
25
opening scenes, video installation (excerpt), 2011
26
femmes fatales 27
Probably one of the most important because at the same time one of the most stereotypic requisites for the cinematic femme fatales are sunglasses. For the video the femmes fatales of cinema, I combined 8 scenes in which women take off their sunglasses, all in a surprisingly similar way.
8 femmes fatales taking off their sunglasses, video collage, 2011
28
movement analysis by tracking the position of the sunglasses, experiment
The image of the femme fatale has already been known long before the invention of film. For instance in greek mythology a definition of a seductive but dangerous woman was known, forming the base for many fictional figures in literature and art. If we only look at the similarities of the scenes presented here, one can understand why the femme fatale had become such a clichĂŠ.
29
femmes fatales 1944 & 2009, video collage, 2011
30
10 sunglasses, composition study, digital sketch
focusing 31
I wanted to continue with a deeper research on certain aspects of stereotypic movie scenes. The idea was to start an analysis which was of a scientific nature. By that I mean that I wanted the way of working to be very accurate, as I was planning to gather some reliable data to work with. I therefore decided to choose one stereotypic movie scene to focus on more precisely. The scene I chose was the one of people lighting a cigarette in a car. One of the main reasons for picking this scene was that the description was quite specific. I was not only looking for scenes where someone lights a cigarette (which seems to be very popular for filmmakers to depict), also it had to be in a car, which made an interesting limitation. Although such a scene would seem totally unnecessary for the plot, at least at first regard, I surprisingly happened to find such a scene relatively often; in 70 movies I found in total 24 scenes out of 22 different movies. This means that there is a scene of someone lighting a cigarette in a car in almost every third movie I had watched. See the collection of scenes on the following pages, which form the basis for the following projects.
Rebecca (1940)*
Smultronst채llet (1957)
*person is not sitting in the car but leaning against the door
Strangers on a Train (1951)
The wrong Man (1956)
Smultronst채llet (1957)
A bout de souffle (1960)
Alphaville (1965)
Thunderball (1965)
32
Branded to kill (1967)
Le Samouraï (1967)
Chinatown (1974)*
Paris, Texas (1984)
Blue Steel (1990)
Blue Steel (1990)
Goodfellas (1990)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Lost Highway (1997)
Festen (1998)
Am Ende kommen Touristen (2007)
Ein spätes Mädchen (2007)
Fargo (1996)**
Ne le dis à Personne (2006) *lighter does not work **scene starts after moment of lighting
***moment of lighting is not visible, can only be heard
Road to Perdition (2002)***
The curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
33
Some scenes I encountered did not exactly fulfil the requirements I had formulated beforehand. Nevertheless I am mentioning them here, not only for the sake of completeness but also because I think that they give interesting suggestions for interpreting the meaning of this kind of scenes.
The big Sleep (1946)*
Sunset Boulevard (1950)**
Mission: Impossible (1996)***
The big Lebowski (1998)****
*Person is going to light a cigarette, then it switches to a new scene --> Was it a problem to work with fire in a closed studio space or requisite car at that time? **Person would like to smoke, but then discovers that the cigarette case is empty ***Person is lighting a cigarette on a plane --> use of modern means of transportation, to refresh the classical gesture, which has already been used so often ****The whole scene takes place in a car, in the beginning the cigarette is not lit, after some countershots the camera is back on the person whose cigarette is then lit
34
cinema & smoking 35
movies without smoking scenes [4/70]
movies with smoking scenes [66/70]
smoking in movies, left side: age ratings in relation to smoking in movies, sketch. above: visualization: amount of analyzed movies with and without smoking
composition study 36
layers, draft for an interface to compare the compositions of several analogical scenes, above: sketch, right: digital drawing
37
38
three couples, composition study, digital sketch
39
two couples, composition study, digital sketch
40
layers, compositions study, digital sketch
41
42
tracking the movement of the cigarette during the lighting scene in Strangers on a Train, experiment
movement study 43
the single images of the lighting scene in Le Samoura誰 were merged to show the movements and also the constancy during the scene, experiment
44
positions of the cigarette on different levels: a) in the composition of the image b) in the set-up of the scene c) in the course of the movie position study, digital sketch
visualizing data 45
With the additional information I gathered on the collected scenes, I intended to create information graphics in order to make the information visible. By presenting the collected data in a graphical scheme, the project got a scientific character. The use of elements typical for a scientific visual language presentation causes that the presented information is taken serious; furthermore we expect an objective result of the research. In the case of my analysis of film images, this implements that we presume that in a movie nothing is shown coincidentally; everything we perceive is wanted and planned by the director (either to add something to the character or the plot, or for the sake of visual aesthetics).
46
47
smoking and cigarette lighting scenes in film noir and neo noir movies, left: sketch, above: digital illustration
48
A lot of my expactations turned out to be prejudices. For instance there was no evidence that the scene in which someone is lighting a cigarette in a car is a typical film noir motif. Also I had expected the chronological list of movies to look a bit different. I was imagining the most cigarette-lighting-in-a-car-scenes in the 1940s and 50s, the bloom of film noir. Even more surprising was that there were relatively many films made in the last decades, which contained a scene where someone lights a cigarette. The crucial change to a negative attitude towards smoking, especially in the US, did apparently not arrive in cinema until now.
the film noir clichĂŠ
49
analyzed movies in different decades, sketch
50
cigarette-lighting-in-a-car-scenes, sound analysis, sketch
51
weather conditions and time of day in cigarette-lighting-in-a-car-scenes, sketch
52
53
locations in cigarette-lighting-in-a-car-scenes, sketch
54
types of characters in cigarette-lighting-in-a-car-scenes, above: sketch, right: illustration
55
For the analysis of the lighting-a-cigarette-in-car-scenes ,I tried to develop a method to cathegorize the different character types of the smoking people. The symbols above were created to show what kind of people we normally see lighting a cigarette in a car, e. g. cops or killers, average woman or divas. However, it felt inadequate to reduce people to just one type of character. Often it was difficult to decide if a character was either good or evil, either protagonist or antagonist.
56
positions in car in cigarette-lighting-in-a-car-scenes, sketch
57
positions in car in cigarette-lighting-in-a-car-scenes, digital sketch
58
59
positions of cigarette-lighting-in-a-car-scenes on a timeline, which represents the length of each movie. left: sketch, above: digital realization
60
61
statistics showing which of the watched movies won an academy award or got any nominations, digital design
measuring fame 62
An attempt to measure the quality of the movies I analyzed. Inspired by schematic diagrams of the solar system, the movies are displayed as planets which differ in size, appearance and position in space. As clearly as it looks like in the diagram, I found it somewhat controversial though to create a measurement system for the popularity, importance, famousness, thus the quality of a movie. Also I see it a bit problematic that a lot of ‚best of ‘-lists and rating systems, especially online, were influencing each other.
cinematic solar system of fame, digital illustration
63
64
colour study 65
A subjective colour analysis of a movie. Various still images from the film le fabuleux destin d‘ Amelie Poulain were analyzed separately. For each image, the 6 commonest colours were estimated. The size of a circle changes, approximately depending on how often a colour appears. Then, the circles were put altogether to create the image on the left.
67
The commonest colours in film stills of people lighting a cigarette in a car. The original pictures were reduced to a very small size in order to be able to count the pixels of each colour. The main colours and theirpercentages are displayed in pie charts. In that way, this method is more precise than the one introduced on the previous pages, yet it is still far from being factual correct, as the colours were still roughly estimated and then subjectively reproduced.
68
How could a really objective and precise colour analysis be realised? To achieve a result that was really factual true, I decided to proceed with a digital analysing method. A year ago I had already dealt with the subject of a digital analysis of colour usage in a movie scene with my experimental video 1-bit psycho (2010). The work is a manipulation of the famous shower scene from Alfred Hitccocks Psycho; however, the visual content of this work is reduced to a minimum. First the pixels of each frame of the original movie scene were sorted according to their brightness. Depending on if a pixel was above or below a certain brightness threshold, its colour was changed to either black or white. By that the changing relation of darkness and brightness during the scene is visualized. At first I thought about working further on the concept with the pie charts which I introduced on the previous page. The idea was to develop a small software that created animated pie charts, displaying the frequency of the 5 commonest colours through a movie scene. However, what I did not like so much about working out an analysis based on the pie chart modell was that the form of the final result was strictly defined. Of course it would be interesting to see the charts constantly changing their colour. On the other hand, I felt the need to create visualizations which were more flexible, in the sense that its graphic form was not already defined because of a design decision but which seemed more unpredictable. This could be achieved by giving the different colours a position, either depending on a specific factor or because it was assigned randomly.
69
Stills from 1-bit psycho (excerpt), experimental video, 2:29 min, 2010
70
Based on the concept of representing the commonest colours of an image as circles spread on an area, I worked out a method, where the position of the circle was not chosen randomly, but depending on the colour value. In digital systems, each colour code consists of 3 values (e. g. RGB). To give each colour a unique position, I worked with a 3-dimensional coordinate system.
71
3d visualization of common colours in a film still, left: draft sketch, above: first results/experiments
72
comparison of colour usage in different stereotypic movie scenes, experiment
73
colour usage visualized in a 3-dimensional sphere modell, digital sketch
74
from a 3D model back to a 2D graphic. predominant colours in a movie still from ne le dis Ă personne
75
predominant colours in 16 cigarette-lighting-in-a-car-scenes, overview poster
76
the commonest colours during a cigarette-lighting-in-a-car-scene, experiment, animation combined with original video scene
77
commonest colours in a cigarette-lighting-in-a-car-scene, digital print
taxonomy of cigarette-lighting-in-a-car-scenes 78
Taxonomy is a method for the classification and organisation of objects Maybe the best known taxonomic practise is the system for classification in biology. Living objects are divided into different cathegories, often the different groups are presented on classification plates. Inspired by such scientific overviews I designed the following graphics, displaying 16 technicolor cigarette-lighting-in-a-car-scenes.
79
taxonomy of cigarette-lighting-in-a-car-scenes | cigarette position + angle, illustration
80
taxonomy of cigarette-lighting-in-a-car-scenes | cars, vector illustration
81
taxonomy of cigarette-lighting-in-a-car-scenes | cigarette + lighting device, vector illustration
82
taxonomy of cigarette-lighting-in-a-car-scenes | characters, vector illustration
83
movie: Thunderball (Terence Young, 1965) character: diva, antagonist car: 1965 Ford Country Sedan props: cigarette + zippo
movie: Le Samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967) character: killer, protagonist car: 1966 Citroën DS 21 props: cigarette + standard lighter
movie: Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974) character: inspector, protagonist car: 1938 Packard Twelve props: cigarette + old lighter
movie: Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984) character: average man, protagonist car: 1984 Oldsmobile Cutlass props: Marlboro cigarette* + zippo
movie: Blue Steel (Kathryn Bigelow, 1990) character: Cop / average man, protagonist car: 1983 Plymouth Gran Fury props: cigarette + zippo
movie: Blue Steel (Kathryn Bigelow, 1990) character: Cop, neutral car: 1983 Plymouth Gran Fury, (police car) props: cigarette + lighter**
movie: Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990) character: protagonist car: 1979 Cadillac Coupe de Ville Phaeton props: cigarette + zippo
movie: Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994) character: protagonist car: 1978 Checker Taxicab (taxi) props: cigarette + match
movie: Fargo (Coen Brothers, 1996) character: killer car: 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera props: cigarette + zippo
movie: Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997) character: average man, protagonist car: 1967 Plymouth Belvedere II props: cigarette + standard lighter
movie: Festen (Thomas Vinterberg, 1998) character: average woman car: 1996 Mercedes-Benz C 200 D (Taxi) props: cigarette + standard lighter
movie: Road to perdition (Sam Mendes, 2002) character: killer car: 1931 Buick Series 50 props: standard cigarette + lighter**
movie: Ne le dis à Personne (Guillaume Canet, 2006) character: Killer, antagonist car: 2000 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter props: cigarette + standard lighter
movie: Am Ende kommen Touristen (Robert Thalheim, 2007) character: average man, protagonist car: 2002 Volkswagen T4 Multivan props: cigarette + standard lighter
movie: Ein spätes Mädchen (Hendrik Handloegten, 2007) character: average woman car: 2004 Mercedes C (Taxi) props: cigarette + standard lighter
movie: The curious case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher, 2008) character: Average man car: 1953 Citroën 11 B (Taxi) props: cigarette + match
* product placement contract (60000 DM for showing Marlboro products for 45 seconds) (source: Aktuell 89, p. 229)
** unknown model of lighter
84
conclusion 85
This is a conclusion by the means of a reflection on the research I did but it should not be confused with a closing text. I can not and I do not want to regard this project as finished. I will always watch movies in a different way from now on. Maybe I have always looked at cinema in a different way than the average cinemagoer does, but this project has pointed certain things out for me. Also I think that this project has to be continued. Before I started it I was overwhelmed by the complexity of cinema. Iam convinced that now I already achieved a lot, but there is also still a lot more to discover. Reflecting on my way of working, I can say that I made an interesting development, which was not planned beforehand. What started as a collecting project, meant only as theorethical background for the study, became a huge project with many facets, all being related and connected to each other. I think the fact that the project can be seen in several different contexts, is giving an extra value to the work. While being in the middle of the process, I worked on the project by two different approaches, an experimental one and, what was a very new way of working for me: a scientific approach. The more I collected, studied and analyzed the more I started to feel like a scientist who fanatically looks for a hidden truth, seeing all the collected data as evidence that could be interpreted. At the same time I discovered my love for designing and visualizing data and creating work that would in the end also stand for itself as a work of art, freeing itself from the informational background connected to it. Altogether, an extraordinary analysis of cinema has come into existence.
List of analyzed movies 86
M......................................................................Fritz Lang 1931 Rebecca...........................................................Alfred Hitchcock 1940 Citizen Kane...................................................Orson Welles 1941 Casablanca.....................................................Michael Curtiz 1942 Shadow of a Doubt........................................Alfred Hitchcock 1943 Double Indemnity..........................................Billy Wilder 1944 The big Sleep...................................................Howard Hawks 1946 Sunset Boulevard...........................................Billy Wilder 1950 Strangers on a Train......................................Alfred Hitchcock 1951 High Noon......................................................Fred Zinnemann 1952 I confess..........................................................Alfred Hitchcock 1953 La Strada.........................................................Federico Fellini 1954 Rebel without a Cause...................................Nicholas Ray 1955 The wrong Man..............................................Alfred Hitchcock 1956 Smultronstället...............................................Ingmar Bergman 1957 Vertigo ..........................................................Alfred Hitchcock 1958 Touch of Evil...................................................Orson Welles 1958 Psycho.............................................................Alfred Hitchcock 1960 À bout de Souffle...........................................Jean-Luc Godard 1960 Dr. Strangelove (or: How I learned to...)....Stanley Kubrick 1963 Goldfinger.......................................................Guy Hamilton 1964 Alphaville........................................................Jean-Luc Godard 1965 Thunderball....................................................Terence Young 1965 The Graduate.................................................Mike Nichols 1967 Branded to kill ..........................................Seijun Suzuki 1967 Le Samouraï...................................................Jean-Pierre Melville 1967 Chinatown......................................................Roman Polanski 1974 Angst essen Seele auf....................................Rainer Werner Fassbinder 1974 One flew over the Cockoo‘s Nest.................Miloš Forman 1975 Taxi Driver.....................................................Martin Scorsese 1976 Annie Hall......................................................Woody Allen 1977 Eraserhead......................................................David Lynch 1977 Interiors..........................................................Woody Allen 1978 The Shining....................................................Stanley Kubrick 1980 Blade Runner..................................................Ridley Scott 1982 De Vierde Man...............................................Paul Verhoeven 1983 Scarface...........................................................Brian de Palma 1983 Paris, Texas.....................................................Wim Wenders 1984 Blue Velvet......................................................David Lynch 1986 Batman............................................................Tim Burton 1989 Blue Steel.........................................................Kathryn Bigelow 1990 Goodfellas.......................................................Martin Scorsese 1990
Reservoir Dogs...............................................Quentin Tarantino Chungking Express.......................................Wong Kar-Wai Pulp Fiction....................................................Quentin Tarantino Léon.................................................................Luc Bresson Se7en...............................................................David Fincher Fargo................................................................Coen Brothers Mission: Impossible.......................................Brian de Palma L.A. Confidential............................................Curtis Hanson Lost Highway..................................................David Lynch The Big Lebowski...........................................Coen Brothers Festen..............................................................Thomas Vinterberg Idioterne..........................................................Lars von Trier American Beauty............................................Sam Mendes The talented Mr Ripley..................................Anthony Minghella Le fabuleux destin d’ Amelie Poulain.........Jean-Pierre Jeunet Road to Perdition...........................................Sam Mendes Lost in Translation.........................................Sofia Coppola Ne le dis à Personne.......................................Guillaume Canet Inside Man......................................................Spike Lee Half Nelson.....................................................Ryan Fleck Babel................................................................Alejandro G. Inárritu Cronocrimenes..............................................Nacho Vigalondo Am Ende kommen Touristen......................Robert Thalheim Ein spätes Mädchen......................................Hendrik Handloegten No Country for old Men...............................Coen Brothers Auf der anderen Seite....................................Fatih Akin The curious Case of Benjamin Button........David Fincher Limits of Control...........................................Jim Jarmusch
1992 1994 1994 1994 1995 1996 1996 1997 1997 1998 1998 1998 1999 1999 2001 2002 2003 2006 2006 2006 2006 2007 2007 2007 2007 2007 2008 2009
87
picture credits: page 7: persons looking through blinds from left to right, top to bottom: Goldfinger, Blue Velvet, The Graduate, Goodfellas, American Beauty, Le Samouraï, The curious Case of Benjamin Button, Casablanca (2x), Chinatown, Touch of evil (2x) page 8: both images: Psycho page 9: from left to right, top to bottom: Alphaville, Mission: Impossible, Psycho, Interiors, Smultronstället page 12 & 13 (paintings): Excursion into Philosophy, Edward Hopper, 1959 http://ozansafak.blogspot.com/
der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, Caspar David Friedrich, 1818 http://www.philipphauer.de/galerie/caspar-david-friedrich-werke/
page 15 (iconographic paintings): from left to right:
http://www.westpenncraftguild.com/iconography/ http://www.jsharf.com/Photos/ObamaJesus/Christ-Icon.jpg http://www.iconsexplained.com/iec/byz_eiad_touma.htm
page 15: observants with hats from left to right: Batman, Vertigo, the big Sleep page 21: Blue Steel page 72: from left to right, top to bottom: Am Ende kommen Touristen, Paris,Texas, The curious Case of Benjamin Button, Lost Highway, Blue Steel, Chinatown
88
credits: page 46: list of film noir movies: german wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org page 80: information on used cars from www.imdcb.org (internet movie car database) page 70-77 used software for realizing digital colour analysis: processing, www.processing.org
_______________________
Additional to this book there is also the cineanalogies website with work that was made in the framework of this project: www.cineanalogies.com The complete collection of analogical movie images used for this research can also be viewed online: analogicalscenes.blogspot.com
Sarah JanĂ&#x;en, 2011
89
90
cineanalogies
discovering analogies in cinematic images Sarah JanĂ&#x;en, 2011