Hi Friends,
How are you doing? Trust all's well at your end? And I do hope you are enjoying reading my blog posts on "The Language of Hollywood:Storytelling, Sound and Color". If you've been intently following this thread, you'd know that this month's post is the last of this five part series. And for those who've missed out so far, fret not! :) Here are the links to Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV of this ongoing series. So, let's not waste any time and get started right away! :)
So far, we have traversed a journey from the era of silent to sound and from black and white to color. During these transitional phases of cinema we observed how newer technologies only went on to enhance story-telling where film makers creatively adapted to this change by evolving creative ways towards film grammar and story structure.
In this month's concluding post you'd be watching two films (obviously in color!), the first is Douglas Sirk's "All That Heaven Allows" (1955) starring Rock Hudson and Jane Wyner, a domestic melodrama where Sirk's shows you how to 'cry in color', in Prof. Scott Higgins words. The second is P.T. Anderson's "Punch-Drunk Love", one of his lesser known films which you obviously won't forget for two good reasons! Firstly you're going to see Adam Sandler in an unusually different role and no laughs for sure! And the next is because I've asked you to watch it! ;) Anyway jokes aside, this film is as unusual as it's title, it's a love story and has a color geometry running through the film that you can't help but make note of.
So, let's then start first with Douglas Sirk's romantic melodrama, "All That Heaven Allows" and here are a few trivia's and notes related to the film and to that period of cinema.
1) Douglas Sirk started his career with German modern theatre where he worked with renowned poet and playwright, Bertolt Brecht. With the rise of Fascism in Germany, he moved to Hollywood and struck gold with a spate of successes like Magnificent Obsession (1954), Written on the Wind (1956), Imitation of Life (1959) and of course All that Heaven Allows (1955).
2) Douglas Sirk films were generally domestic melodramas that focused on women's desires, feelings and sufferings; he was a brilliant film-maker in this genre.
3) Domestic melodramas peaked in the 1950's where films were 'commodities for women' which was used to promote and advertise products.
4) In 1953, Eastman Kodak introduced Eastman Color which was a kind of film stock that could load into any camera and All that Heaven Allows was shot on Eastman Color but printed in Technicolor.
5) Douglas Sirk was more like Frank Borzage; he gave the audience a more coiffed and carefully coordinated world than the real.
6) There's a "color symbolism" that runs through Sirk's film which works in an abstract way. For e.g. red means passion, green means jealousy, white means innocence.
7) Colors collect nebulous associations and residences in the film - All That Heaven Allows. Observe the following instances in the film which Prof. Higgins points out on how color subtly tells a story-
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| The rain tree is a beacon of Cary's desire |
e.g. 1 - The rain tree motif which Ron gives Cary at the beginning of the film -It connects him to nature and it also connects Cary to him and becomes a conductor of her attraction to him. And when she brings that rain tree motif to her room in the dark setting, it radiates - it becomes a beacon of her desire. Her world is cold and blue and that rain tree in that scene connects it all to Ron.
e.g. 2- Sarah (Cary's friend) wears strong colors that don't gel with her surroundings and contrast that to Ron Kirby who wears colors that are more neutral, more rustic, more reds and they blend much better with the outside world. In fact, Ron is in a different color universe with the rest of the suburbia.
e.g. 3 - In the country club scene - the people especially the ladies are dressed in monochromatic colors like a dress would be completely red,completely blue or completely black -it's sort of stiff and formal, but the figures are never comfortable in their surroundings. This is contrasted with the Anderson's (friends of Ron) who wear mixed colors -red and green dress, more earth tones. And it is these costumes that they wear that differentiate the two worlds.
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| Observe the rustic warm reds of Ron's world in Cary's life |
e.g. 4 - When Cary falls in love, compared to her bright red outfit dress in the beginning of the film in which she is totally out of place, her costume becomes rustic warm reds of Ron Kirby's world.
e.g. 5 - Bright red doesn't leave Cary. Her daughter wears red (when she comes meeting her mother telling her that she's going to get married), it's Christmas (red again), red poinsettia flowers in the background - so that color of passion and romance (red) doesn't leave her and what more she is sandwiched because she is wearing black! So, red works in a symbolic way in different scenes be it at the beginning when Cary is wearing the red dress or in this scene with her daughter wearing red.
e.g. 6 - The television set is the sign of empty widowhood. There's an interesting shot in the film where Cary's de-saturated reflection in the TV set with a red bow and a Christmas card makes a complex statement against the commodification of popular culture.
8) In this film you'll observe how color creates emotional motifs. Another new concept All that Heaven Allows us to see is "color temperature" which affects our emotions; which means you have cool and warm set of colors - yellows and oranges are perceived as warm whereas blue and purples are cold.
Here are a few more examples from the film:
a) Lamp lights are warm, moonlights are cold.
b) Cary's world is cold, blue and all emptiness at the beginning of the film
c) Rain tree bark (orange) in her vase stands out in her cold environment depicted in blue (supposedly the moonlight color). That burst of warmth (orange rain tree bark) gets lost in the blue when she meets her children which shows her isolation.
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| Observe two backdrop color palettes in one scene |
d) Before Ron's accident, the clock tower is blue unlike the opening scene
e) Ron declares his love for Cary in front of the bon-fire, but she is not comfortable and she stands near the window against the frosty white backdrop palette. Interestingly, you'll notice that it is the same set but two different color spaces.
And here's my analysis of the film - All That Heaven Allows:
I quite enjoyed watching "All that Heaven Allows" - it was a simple yet powerful story of how a widowed woman's choices (in this film it's Cary) on the subject of love and marriage are dictated by her family and the society she
lives in. The film also speaks from the point of view of a man because it conveys that in a match for matrimony, the man (which is Ron in this case) has to be an equal to the woman in terms of material richness (while overlooking his inner richness of being a fine human being. A stark contrast to this is Howard, who may be rich but is more of infatuated with Cary rather than in love with her. Another interesting character is the middle-aged Harvey, who offers companionship and affections in his offer for marriage to Cary but not romance which he presumes she is not looking for in a relationship. It also establishes the mind-set of men towards widowed women then). Hence, I felt that this becomes an ideal melodrama targeted to both men and women when you have two fine actors of their time like Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson.
Now coming to the "color temperature" (as Prof. Higgins rightly describes) establishes the mood of given situations in the film. I also liked how the director has distinguished between harmony and tension through the use of lighting in several instances of the film.
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| The warm hues of orange/yellows & the cold blues! |
1)When Cary rejects Ron, the lighting is dim - they both are as dark shadows against the white misty window. When the drama peaks in that situation - you observe that the frame is half dark in which Ron is in while Cary is in the light (It implies that he was in the dark all this while about her feelings for him)
2)Some of the tense scenes have a bluish saturated hue and are in dark shadows.
3)I quite like the effect on how Cary's life had literally become a 'family drama' when you see her image reflected on the TV screen; the director conveys it so visually that it becomes apparent (especially with the sudden turn of events on her children's decision)
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| The deer connects with Ron; a symbol of hope |
4)I like the treatment of how the deer connects with Ron's character in the film. Even towards the end of the film when Ron is hurt and does not turn up to feed the deer, the deer looks on through the window and anticipates in hope! And this is a subtle message for the audience to hope too because Ron is going to be fine as the deer is waiting for him and has not gone, so it is implied that Ron will get up and eventually feed the deer.
5)There are three emotional motifs that further connect the audience to the film and get us involved with the characters and the story line -
a)When Ron clips the rain tree and gives it to Cary - the motif of the rain tree (orange) in the vase besides her dressing table, illuminates her cold world, as Prof. Higgins rightly observed and pointed out in his lecture as well. Furthermore, when Cary is getting ready, it is the audience's reference point that each time she sees the rain tree, we know that she is thinking about Ron.
b)The second motif was the Wedgwood that Cary sees for the first time in the old mill and expresses her love for these items. The missing piece of the Wedgwood, helps us to see something missing in Ron's life too (of not having a home, which of course Cary re-iterates when she tells him that sooner he would need a place when he found that someone special in his life). And now, the next time she comes, the missing piece is fixed to the Wedgwood artifact as well as the mill is fixed, it has now become livable-so it is a subtle way of Ron telling Cary that she is that someone special (when he makes a home of that mill) the person whom he loves (especially when he fixes that Wedgwood which she loves the first time she sets eyes on it at the old mill).
Few moments later, again when the Wedgwood breaks into pieces - it signifies the end of something, which is seen in the form of cracks appearing in their relationship.
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| "TV effect" - Cary's life had become like a daily drama |
c)The television set is yet another motif attributed to widowhood that comes to haunt Cary each time. Two instances that come to my mind in the film is when Sara insists that she get herself a television set to keep her distracted to kill time. The second, is when you see her life become a drama as her image is reflected on the television screen which her son gifts her on Christmas now that she was no longer involved with Ron and had no interest in marrying Harvey either.
Overall, it was lovely film and does make you cry!
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Now coming up next is P.T. Anderson's, Punch-Drunk Love starring Adam Sandler and Emily Watson.
Here are a few things you'd like to know about the film and the film-maker -
1)In this film, you're going to observe a self-conscious style of film form where P.T. Anderson has used a palette of red, white, blue and some green (he is not going back to studio era of film-making but to Jean Luc Godard's color films of the 1950's and 1960's, particularly from the film "A Woman is a Woman").
2)A typical trademark you'd observe in P.T. Anderson's films are -
a)He has a preference for long takes - which means he uses a steady cam and he will always have one shot that
steadily follows the characters.
b)He likes to present very strong compositions that have a strict geometry and cutting, so editing gets hard sometimes with contrasting compositions.
3)As Prof. Higgins analyzed "Punch-Drunk Love", he explained to the class that colors are reduced to symbols
where it roughens your perception, draws your attention to perception of color.
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| P.T. Anderson uses lens flare & color interstitials |
a)Anderson uses color interstitials in Punch-Drunk Love - He cuts to these digital artworks by artist Jeremy Blake and Robert Elswit, the cinematographer he uses lens flare across the movie.
b)Lens flare is seen when you aim a camera directly at a light source and the light bounces around in the lens housing the camera and creates these streaks on the film.
c)He uses widescreen anamorphic - curved lens
d)There's a coordination between the costume and the set -red, blue, white and green are the predominant colors that run through the film.
e)Blue and White are the colors that define Barry's world i.e. strict and controlled. Lena brings the color red into his world. In their date sequence, the director creates a color palette with red,blue,white and green.
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| Abstract images complement the red-green-blue color band |
f)We see a graphic and color motif in the Hawaiian moment when Barry and Lena meet one another. Lena is dressed in white and not in red for a change; there's a banding of colors where this time the color is not on the character as they are in shadows but the outdoor Hawaii settings that are punctuated with red, blue and green - it's an emotional punctuation (transcendent emotion).
And here are my notes on the film Punch-Drunk Love -
The first few things when you watch Punch-Drunk Love is that you can't help but notice the fixed palette of colors namely - red, blue, white and green which the director has beautifully used to establish a color aesthetic in the film. He then goes on to define the protagonist, Barry's (Adam Sandler) world in a unique way with the help of colors like blue and white. You can't miss out on watching out for those colors in the film to associate them with Barry.
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| Observe Barry's world through the prism of blues & whites |
For example - his office space is predominantly in blue and white horizontal stripes, blue blazer and white shirt (only the color of his tie changes from blue, yellow to red) is his costume color in the whole film. I was just wondering whether these two colors had only something to do with his comfort zone or possibly a state of mind reflected through these colors.
Interestingly, Lena brings the color red into the palette. I'd like to interpret red as love; she's the one who's going to fill Barry's life with her unconditional love for him. (With the exception of one instance when she is wearing purple is when she is formally introduced to Barry for the first time by his sister).
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| Lena brings the color red in Barry's life...love actually? |
It was a different film with an old world charm in terms of how color tells us a story; rather here it was characters telling their story through colors. Another good reason to watch this film is for Adam Sandler for sure (sans the laughs)!
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So, now we come to the close of this five posts series on "The Language of Hollywood:Storytelling, Sound and Color". Hope you enjoyed reading them all and enriched your knowledge on how story-telling evolved with time and technology. Well, it was definitely a wonderful experience for me to have learnt it first from Prof. Scott Higgins and then re-visit it once again on Sonyaa Random Musings!
And now, I eagerly look forward to your feedback and comments! :)
Love,
Sonyaa
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