CIN 3110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Noam Chomsky, Committee For Accuracy In Middle East Reporting In America, Wrecking Ball
16 Jun 2018
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The History of British Cinema Class 8
Country Life
• Two films very different on many levels.
• But at the same time, the central concern is the depiction of rural life in Britain.
• Playing with expectations of the natural world that come from cinema.
• Pastoral
o depicts the loves and the lives of shepherds within a pristine and bountiful world
Sleep furiously:
• Each scene is a single take from a static, extended camera location
o Creates dynamic, different perspective seldom seen before
o Harder to film, but a cheaper budget.
Withnail and I
• Classic narrative structure.
• Ends with temporal crisis.
• “I” decides to move on and grow up.
o The dream of the 1960s can’t sustain itself, so he goes and becomes an actor,
starting his professional career.
Both of these films reflect upon different introductions of time.
Landscape as text/writing which encodes something.
Sleep furiously
• Name is taken from linguist Noam Chomsky.
o “Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.”
• Not a film that has the traditional grammar and meaning of traditional cinema.
• Associative, poetic fashion of “sleep furiously”
o inviting us to re-associate.
• STATIC CAMERA
o Focus on how objects or people are situated within the frame.
o When you stop a camera moving, it makes the audience look in a different way
• Deep-rootedness within a specific place that we get in the countryside.
• The role of copple himself as a filmmaker, insider/outsider of this world.
• He grew up there, and then he left.
• Attentive, sympathetic desire to see and to see closely, but an outsider’s perspective of
the fragility
Withnail and I
• When it was released, it flopped. Didn’t get a wide release or a huge amount of money.
• It didn’t make an impact in the cinematic terrain which was dominated by big budget
glossy cinema.
• It creates a double sense of nostalgia:
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Document Summary
Sleep furiously: each scene is a single take from a static, extended camera location, creates dynamic, different perspective seldom seen before, harder to film, but a cheaper budget. Withnail and i: classic narrative structure, ends with temporal crisis, i decides to move on and grow up, the dream of the 1960s can"t sustain itself, so he goes and becomes an actor, starting his professional career. Both of these films reflect upon different introductions of time. Withnail and i: when it was released, it flopped. Didn"t get a wide release or a huge amount of money. It didn"t make an impact in the cinematic terrain which was dominated by big budget glossy cinema. Important that we began with a wrecking ball, as they leave there"s an apocalyptic sense that london is coming to an end: the city is a site of breakdown/apocalypse, bring the antic energy of the city with them. Urban tension: their identities are shaped by urban space.
