Alfred Adler

The Big Sleep is an film noir, which was pioneering in crime drama tropes and style. The film utilizes editing techniques and camera work to convey a intricate narrative. One of the most interesting scenes to me was in the opening of the film when Marlowe is talking to General Sternwood which really introduces the main character through his interactions with the old man. The scene also makes good use of the 180-degree rule, shot/reverse shot, and eyeline matching which makes the dialogue between…

The cinematography is one of the things that stands out most in the movie Vertigo. Not only is the vertigo effect (dolly zoom) fun and intriguing, but even from the beginning of the film, the shots really stand out and are very different from anything we’ve seen in Hitchcock’s earlier films. I liked watching the way the film transitioned from sepia to red and the various zooms to different parts of Madeleine’s face, then to the rotating symbols. All of this seemed very symbolic to me. The sepia…

The cinematic style of a director is his or her fingerprint. It is wholly unique to that specific director, and even the best attempts to mimic another director’s style are not entirely successful. The esteemed director Tim Burton uses his own unique style to enrich his films with meaning and complexity. However, his use of styles is not equal and balanced, for he draws heavily upon grayscale and dark imagery. He uses these colors as a polarizing agent to enhance the movement of the plot without…

Wells claimed that is only preparation for directing Citizen Kane was to watch John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) forty times. Ford’s influence on the film is pronounced, but according to David Cook’s History of Narrative Film, it is equally clear that Welles was steeped in the major European traditions, especially those of German Expressionism and the Kammerspielfilm and French poetic realism. Kane’s narrative economy owes much to “the example of Ford, its visual texture is heavily indebted to the…

"The most important parts of a film are the mysterious parts - beyond the reach of reason and language" - Stanley Kubrick Kubricks distinguished movie making was made out of experimentation. Everything is centered around re-invention. It's hard to talk about Kubricks work without overly analysing it, but that should be done because he is one of the most celebrated directors of our time. His film making techniques are striking, but the most important things within his films are exploring the…

Bob Dylan, the American folk singer has recently received the Nobel peace prize in literature, the second to receive this honor for songwriting. The Nobel peace prize is one of five Nobel prizes created by a Swedish inventor, Alfred Nobel. This award was given to Bob Dylan for having created new poetic expressions within the “great American song tradition.” Dylan was not only a musician, publishing six books of drawings and paintings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries. As a…

Horror is one of the most multifaceted genres in the entertainment industry. There are many defining characteristics that describe horror and there are people who may have a question on whether a movie is truly considered a horror. Alfred Hitchcock is a director who captivates, and confuses the audience with his movies. One of the more confusing stories in the Hitchcock universe is “The Birds”. This is because the monster does not appear for the first twenty to thirty minutes of the movie, and…

Alfred Hitchcock paints a portrait of an American family in his 1943 film Shadow of a Doubt. Set within picturesque Santa Rosa, California, the film examines the Newtons, who, on the surface, represent the archetypal middle class family living in a peaceful American town. However, Young Charlie, played by Teresa Wright, profoundly resents her “average” lifestyle, which appears to her as nothing more than an endless repletion of the same routine. Following the conventions of a Hitchcock film,…

Strangers on a Train Alfred Hitchcock is an auteur that is recognizable as a director. He is known as the master of suspense and through his artistic choices he is the author of his films. Hitchcock has his own persona and often appeared in cameos in his films. His unique style leaned away from studying films as a genre but through an auteur approach, Cashiers du Cinema written by the father of auteruirsm, Andre Bazin. Bazin stresses on mise-en-scène, the content of images, that reveals the…

Hitchcock captures a montage at a medium shot of Devlin and Alicia deliberating how they will go through more searching of both her husband and his connections. Specifically, Alicia responded that she did not receive the key to the basement filled with wine. Devlin makes a suggestion to Alicia that she should encourage Sebastian to host a party as well as announce his new wife, in which he does. After Devlin gives Alicia this request, she leaves to complete this request, and a wide shot is being…