Elevator to the Gallows- First Impression

After watching the “Elevator to the Gallows” for the first time, all I can say is that I’m very impressed by this movie and is probably the movie that I have enjoyed watching the most so far during this winter semester. I would have to say the reason for this is because this movie is similar to movies that I watch in my spare time. To me this movie seemed like an older version of a James Bond. I have never seen another French crime film from the 1950’s, but I like what Roger Ebert says about this movie, “These 1950s French noirs abandon the formality of traditional crime films, the almost ritualistic obedience to formula, and show crazy stuff happening to people who seem to be making up their lives as they go along.”

I think the age of Louis Malle and the fact that this was his first film are very important. Since we has so young he could have played it safe and done what other directors have done and wanted until he become older to do a different style. I really like Mile Davis’ improved jazz throughout the movie, I think it gave it a nice touch. The one odd thing I found while watching the movie was when Julian kills Simon in the beginning of the movie. That wasn’t the weird part, the weird part was the black cat outside walking on the railing outside the room. My first question was how did the cat get there or did the director put the cat there to symbolize that Julian’s luck has run out?  

The Bicycle Thief-First Impression

I just finished watching “The Bicycle Thief” and it was a very good movie. I can see why this movie was number one in British film magazine Sight and Sound. If Roger Ebert didn’t tell me that these actors were more less casted right off the street and were not professional actors, I would have thought the actors in “The Bicycle Thief” were professional actors. I believe by not using professional actors and using regular people off the street helped give this movie a better sense of realism. I think this because maybe people right off the street will be able to show better the struggles the man goes through than a professional. I also think that there will always be an interest in the material world because using material objects is one of the easiest ways to compare two people. We can see this during the scene in the pizzeria. We see Bruno who is very happy to get a mozzarella cheese sandwich, but we see Bruno keep looking over his shoulder at a rich boy who is getting platefuls of spaghetti. The rich boy gives Bruno a look to say that he is better than him just because he his eating spaghetti and Bruno isn’t eating spaghetti. I find it weird that when Ricci got his bike stolen the first time no one really tried to help him stop the thief, but when Ricci steals a bike the whole neighborhood tries and stops him.         

sunday blog

These past 4 films that we have watched was a very good experience. All four movies do different things, but have a lot of similarities. These movies have shown me that you do not need a lot to make a good movie. In 12 angry men, almost the whole movie was filmed entirely in one room. 12 angry men uses camera angles and having the movie happen in what felt like real time. What I mean by this is that during certain scenes in the movie the director needed to help the audience feel certain a certain way; so we used camera angles to do this. For example, the director need to the audience to feel tense, so a lot of the shots in that scene were close ups. This provided us that sense of tension because everything is a close up. Also, the movie felt like it was shot in real time. Throughout the movie the jurors gave themselves time restrictions on certain issues and the movie stuck to them; it helped give the movie a sense of realism, which was a big fad during the 50’s. Another movie that showed me a lot was the red balloon. The Red Balloon was shot entirely outdoors and had very little dialogue. In this movie this are always moving to help keep things moving. As I mentioned before there was very little dialogue, when there was it was very powerful. To help us show people’s feelings toward the kid with the red balloon, the director uses people’s actions towards the kid. We see the boy get rejected from getting on the bus and we see the other kids steal the balloon and pop it.

Out of the four movies I would recommend 12 Angry Men, The Red Balloon, and True. I think these 3 movies were the best ones that we have watched so far and have the most to learn from and have the most powerful message.