Shadow Of A Doubt Essay - 3266 Words

Shadow of a Doubt Shadow of a Doubt is an Alfred Hitchcock film that was shot on location in the 1940s town of Santa Rosa, California. The town itself is representative of the ideal of American society. However, hidden within this picturesque community dark corruption threatens to engulf a family. The tale revolves around Uncle Charlie, a psychotic killer whose namesake niece, a teenager girl named Charlie, is emotionally thrilled by her Uncles arrival. However her opinion slowly changes as she probes into her mysterious uncle. In the film, director/producer Alfred Hitchcock blends conventions of film noir with those of a small town domestic comedy as a means of commenting on the contradictions in American values.†¦show more content†¦To allow him to continue his nap, the landlady lowers the blind before leaving and its shadow is drawn down over Charlies face. Rather than inducing sleep, the darkness causes him to sit up alertly. Charlie snuffs out his cigar, finishes his drink, rises and ang rily hurls his glass against floor. He raises the blind and observes the two visitors waiting outside for him and speaks: quot;What do you know? Youre bluffing. Youve nothing on me.quot; nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Charles leaves the room, and intentionally walks toward and past the two men as a challenge. They ignore him, but chase after their suspect (filmed from high above) in a desolate, abandoned lot, quickly losing his track and appearing astonished by his abrupt disappearance. The camera turns up and to the left, discovering the cigar-smoking character in profile on a rooftop. From a cinematography point of view this is the most Film Noir portion of the film. In a dark and dirty setting it introduces us to the good guys and the bad guy, culminating in a chase scene. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;We dissolve to see Charles in a dingy poolroom talking on a telephone. He is sending a telegram to his sister in Santa Rosa, California. He has invited himself to take sanctuary there and will arrive on Thursday. Santa Rosa, California is introduced as Charlie repeats the words quot;Santa Rosa, Californiaquot; to the operator - we are shown a beautiful,Show MoreRelated shadow of a doubt Essay699 Words   |  3 PagesCharlie-Horse nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;In Shadow of a Doubt, Hitchcock utilizes and stretches the ambiguous line between comedy and suspense by utilizing smaller characters in the film to keep the story line moving, and to help break sequence or rhythm of what the audience had been perceiving at the time. Many of the minor characters were used as â€Å"fillers†, such as the waitress in the bar when Uncle Charlie and Charlie are sitting in the bar, and makes the comment â€Å"I would die for a ringRead MoreShadow of the Doubt Last Scene1205 Words   |  5 PagesThe movie Shadow of a Doubt is an American thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1943, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing and Original Story by Thornton Wilder and Sally Benson. The movie notes the outstanding and remarkable film-making style of Hitchcock. It contains a lot of scenes in which people can empathise with the characters and perceive the feelings and messages from the director. One of the sce nes that must be mentioned is when Emmy’s guests are toasting toRead More Comparing Hitchcock’s Films, Shadow of a Doubt and Vertigo Essay491 Words   |  2 PagesComparing Hitchcock’s Films, Shadow of a Doubt and Vertigo Francois Truffaut, when referring to Hitchcock said that â€Å"he exercises such complete control over all the elements of his films and imprints his personal concepts at each step of the way, Hitchcock has a distinctive style of his own. He is undoubtedly one of the few film-makers on the horizon today whose screen signature can be identified as soon as the picture begins.† Many people have used Hitchcock as the ultimate example of an auteurRead MoreMajor General Benedict Arnold Is Without A Shadow Of A Doubt1299 Words   |  6 PagesMajor General Benedict Arnold is without a shadow of a doubt the most intriguing and infamous general in American History, perhaps remembered by most as the infamous American traitor. His bravery, superior tactical skills, greed, need for self-preservation, lust, and jealousy all contributed to him being considered by various sources to be the most heroic and villainous character in all of American History. Benedict Arnold was born on January 14, 1741 in Norwich, Connecticut. His family fortunesRead More Scene Analysis of Alfred Hitchcock’s Film Shadow of a Doubt Essay1246 Words   |  5 PagesScene Analysis of Alfred Hitchcock’s Film Shadow of a Doubt Alfred Hitchcock’s film Shadow of a Doubt is a true masterpiece. Hitchcock brings the perfect mix of horror, suspense, and drama to a small American town. One of the scenes that exemplifies his masterful style takes place in a bar between the two main characters, Charlie Newton and her uncle Charlie. Hitchcock was quoted as saying that Shadow of a Doubt, â€Å"brought murder and violence back in the home, where it rightly belongs.† ThisRead More Comparing Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy and Platos The Republic1503 Words   |  7 Pagesphilosophers, in which this paper will go into depth about are Descartes and Plato. Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy and Platos The Republic are the topics that are going to be discussed in this paper. In Meditations, Descartes brings doubt to everything he believes because it is human nature to believe that which is false. He states that most of what he believes comes from the senses and that a lot of times those senses can be deceived. His conclusion of doubting everything is basedRead MorePlatos Allegory of the Cave1093 Words   |  4 Pagesface a wall in the cave. The cave is illuminated by a fire behind the people. On the wall, there are projections of shadows created by the fire and objects that passes by fire. The prisoners dont know this, of course, because they are bound so tight that they cant turn their heads. There are people that are carrying objects to create the shadows. Not everyone is bound. The shadows represent the reality of which the prisoners see. They are chained down so they are compelled to see and accept whateverRead MoreThe Allegory Of Human Cave854 Words   |  4 Pagesdescribes human world as a cave, in which, our perception of â€Å"truth† is nothing but a shadow coming from the â€Å"sun†. Each of us has been chained so that we’re not able to look at the source behind our back. In my interpretation, Plato implies that the world in which human perceive is like a cave, we might be chained and unable to look beyond the â€Å"shadow†. Thus, what we see in the â€Å"reality† might not be the reality, but its shadow. 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That would be ironic since the themes of the film are based upon human understanding of doubt, dreams, good, evil, ignorance and knowledge. The film portrays a neat staircase that leads into the house of an all American family and a rickety set of stairs off the side of the house that

Mozart Don Giovanni Essay Example For Students

Mozart: Don Giovanni Essay As just about everyone knows by now, Peter Sellars directed radical productions of Mozarts three operas to librettos by da Ponte at the Pepsico Summerfare Festival in Purchase, N.Y. during the latter half of the 80s. Everyone knows about these productions because, by setting The Marriage of Figaro in Trump Tower, Don Giovanni on a mean street in Harlem and Cosi fan tutti in a Long Island diner, Sellars attracted a tremendous amount of attention. In the summer of 1989, after presenting the three operas cyclically for the final Summerfare season, Sellars filmed them for video in Vienna. They were broadcast on PBS-TV last year, and have, at last, come out on home video. These productions been so contentiously scrutinized and debated that their appearance on the London label in VHS videotape and laserdisc formats has been almost anticlimactic. Certainly, they stir up many of the same old complaints about the sacrilege of updating, but updating opera has been going on for so long and to such an extent especially in Europe that it is almost standard operatic practice these days. But what really makes Sellars so controversial an operatic practitioner is that he is no typical updater, and the true radicalism of his approach becomes all the more evident in his video work. Sellars claims to despise the whole notion of concept productions, and denies doing them. He believes, instead, that since Mozart came closer than any other artist to capturing and articulating the human condition, it is worthwhile to hold ourselves and our times up to the measure of Mozart to see how we stack up. Creating a New York trilogy of the Mozart/da Ponte operas was simply a device to help us recognize ourselves in these characters. It is not especially important that Don Giovanni become a drug dealer. But it is important that the Don not be funny or foreign; he is a desperate character rushing headlong into the abyss, unable to discover a way out a situation neither amusing nor unfamiliar. In the videos, Sellars has now gone one step further. Most opera video is either a document of a performance in the opera house or an opera film. What I like is that these videos look like TV, Sellars said in a recent conversation. Thats why a lot of people were stunned when PBS first broadcast the productions they were flipping channels, and they flipped to this thing that looked just like the cop show on every other channel. Then suddenly they noticed that there was music, and people were singing. Weve taken the situation and the comedy and allowed them to be as deep as Mozart happens to be. So its really nice to subvert television in that way, at the same time using the vocabulary that television has perfected, these daydream diners, these nonexistent street corners, the pathetic love life of the rich and forlorn. All standard television material. In some ways these operas find their ultimate form on TV. So subversive, in fact, are these videos that they deconstruct Sellarss own productions. Relying upon claustrophobic closeups in Don Giovanni, for instance, Sellars never allows a long shot to show the whole of George Tsypins astonishing set. The director doesnt even fear undercutting much of the stage action by showing only reaction shots. But since the Don and his sidekick, Leporello, happen to be sung by remarkable identical twin baritones, Eugene and Herbert Parry, the effect of the intimate camera is extraordinary. It is as if Don Giovanni is so self-absorbed in his own compulsion to call up death that he sees only himself reflected in the world. .u19878f99472c6d9cf8548dfca43b5346 , .u19878f99472c6d9cf8548dfca43b5346 .postImageUrl , .u19878f99472c6d9cf8548dfca43b5346 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u19878f99472c6d9cf8548dfca43b5346 , .u19878f99472c6d9cf8548dfca43b5346:hover , .u19878f99472c6d9cf8548dfca43b5346:visited , .u19878f99472c6d9cf8548dfca43b5346:active { border:0!important; } .u19878f99472c6d9cf8548dfca43b5346 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u19878f99472c6d9cf8548dfca43b5346 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u19878f99472c6d9cf8548dfca43b5346:active , .u19878f99472c6d9cf8548dfca43b5346:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u19878f99472c6d9cf8548dfca43b5346 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u19878f99472c6d9cf8548dfca43b5346 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u19878f99472c6d9cf8548dfca43b5346 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u19878f99472c6d9cf8548dfca43b5346 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u19878f99472c6d9cf8548dfca43b5346:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u19878f99472c6d9cf8548dfca43b5346 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u19878f99472c6d9cf8548dfca43b5346 .u19878f99472c6d9cf8548dfca43b5346-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u19878f99472c6d9cf8548dfca43b5346:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Gregory Boyd: a man of mode EssayWhen Herbert and Eugene start looking at each other, you know you never saw that in the theatre, Sellars says. You guessed it was there, but you never saw it. And here in a closeup you can really see it. The result is that the o sometimes seems to take place inside Don Giovannis head, which turns out to be an even more frightening place than a Harlem street. In Cosi possibly the most profound opera ever written about the relationships between men and women, as well as the most perfect of all of Sellarss opera stagings the psychological intimacy proves profoundly wrenching. The use of closeups on singers able to convey great emotion through both music and action creates opera as catharsis to a degree impossible on the stage. Even more than Don Giovanni, Cosi relies on singers to express as much through their acting as their singing, and whereas most singers look just awful in closeup mouth gaping open, brow furled in tense concentration, eyes nervously darting to the conductor for assurance singers like Susan Larson (an arresting Fiordiligi whose face seems to bring out the deepest meaning of the music) and Sanford Sylvan (a searing Don Alfonso whom you can actually see feeling what the music tells him to feel) are, like the Perry twins, all the more effective the closer you get to them. Still such an approach has its drawbacks; in Cosi, it requires that the sheer elegance of the staged production be sacrificed in the bargain. Sellarss brilliantly layered mise-en-scene had pitted a kind of refined 18th-century sensibility against the chaotic emotions of the characters, even to the point of laying out the diners dimensions to fit the proportional architectural schemes of the earlier age. And the productions elaborate roundelay of movement and gesture is lost as well. In The Marriage of Figaro, however, the video works on every level. The garish colors of the Trump Tower set translate perfectly to the video screens brightly lit two dimensions, and Sellars allows himself to have fun; the camera pulls in and out and all over the place. Figaro, especially as staged by Sellars, is the least ambiguous of the operas Cosi ends in profound disquiet; Don Giovanni concludes with the unresolved quest for salvation; but Sellarss Figaro leaves you with hope, with a sense that these people might actually work it out in the end. The videos are not without their excesses. While Sellarss fanciful synopses of the operas, which are included, are illuminating and entertaining, his slang subtitles seem too in-your-face on repeated viewing. The video work itself is sometimes a bit crude for these sophisticated productions, although Sellars likes the fact that the roughness lends the performances a live quality. The laserdisc sound has a kind of harshness that is not flattering to the singers voice, and the orchestra-a not-very-responsive Vienna Symphony, tepidly conducted by Craig Smith is too recessed. But these are quibbles, never enough to rob the performances of their irrepressible intensity or immediacy. In fact, as an indication of the sheer impact this kind of video opera can have, Sellars says that his recently filmed production Handels Giulio Cesare (which will be released on London this fall) will not, this time, be shown on PBS. Sellars updated the opera to the present-day Middle East, and the images proved just too upsetting, too highly charged for television, even though the production dates from 1985. Television cannot deal with Americans being taken hostages in the Middle East, Sellars says. And so people were panicked. It showed at the Cannes video market during the Gulf War, and people were freaking out, because it was too close. .udc5a98f7a744e28d3a72cf5806e16a81 , .udc5a98f7a744e28d3a72cf5806e16a81 .postImageUrl , .udc5a98f7a744e28d3a72cf5806e16a81 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .udc5a98f7a744e28d3a72cf5806e16a81 , .udc5a98f7a744e28d3a72cf5806e16a81:hover , .udc5a98f7a744e28d3a72cf5806e16a81:visited , .udc5a98f7a744e28d3a72cf5806e16a81:active { border:0!important; } .udc5a98f7a744e28d3a72cf5806e16a81 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .udc5a98f7a744e28d3a72cf5806e16a81 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .udc5a98f7a744e28d3a72cf5806e16a81:active , .udc5a98f7a744e28d3a72cf5806e16a81:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .udc5a98f7a744e28d3a72cf5806e16a81 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .udc5a98f7a744e28d3a72cf5806e16a81 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .udc5a98f7a744e28d3a72cf5806e16a81 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .udc5a98f7a744e28d3a72cf5806e16a81 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .udc5a98f7a744e28d3a72cf5806e16a81:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .udc5a98f7a744e28d3a72cf5806e16a81 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .udc5a98f7a744e28d3a72cf5806e16a81 .udc5a98f7a744e28d3a72cf5806e16a81-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .udc5a98f7a744e28d3a72cf5806e16a81:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: The Ancient Greeks Creation Of The Theatre EssayBut then it is just that closeness that separates Sellarss video opera from all others. Or as the director enthusiastically puts it: I think were used to videos cooling things out opera videos, in particular, are basically a cool situation. And these are so hot.