As usual I will posting my academic papers on film which are far deeper than reviews for they seek to question why film is the way it is, the first up is an informal paper written about Goddard's Weekend and Scorsese's Mean Street which I actually won an award for in a Film Festival and then what I feel is a weaker albeit expanded version of it that includes Mike Figgis' Time Code is attached to this post should you feel the need to read an even longer version:
THE GIBBERISH OF FILM
Mean Streets (1973) directed by Martin Scorsese and Weekend (1967) directed by Jean-Luc Goddard are not considered part of the punk aesthetic, yet both movies created a foundation for the punk cinema movement. Both the punk cinema movement and Godard’s Weekend are often received with puzzlement and bewilderment by mainstream audiences. On a superficial level, it could be postulated that it is the avant-garde cinematic techniques that these films employ such as jump cuts, natural lighting, long takes, diegetic sound, etc that cause the disconnect but this would be a superficial reasoning. On a deeper level, Weekend rejects the language of film that mainstream audiences know so well and creates its own. This paper juxtaposes Weekend and Mean Streets since both films have similar aesthetics yet the mainstream can accept Mean Streets. Mean Streets proves this thesis that it has less to do with the actual techniques but how they are presented. This paper seeks to understand the significance of the aesthetic in relation to the audience through two films, Weekend and Mean Streets.
Gibson and Hill’s book, Film Studies, Critical Approach, offers two insights as to the audience role in relation to film. The first theory being that a set of images portrayed on screen could alter the mindset of the viewer. The second theory, “meaning is not inherent in the filmic signs or texts themselves but is constructed by spectators in accordance with certain context-dependent conventions.” (201) Goddard’s and Scorsese films are coming out more than half a century after the creation of film which is significant because by this time a language of cinema has been established. The simple act of the cut for example holds meaning only because of the context that the audience attaches to it. By 1963, there are rules now set in the audience mind and Godard is completely aware of that when he makes film. Goddard seeks to liberate his audience from being controlled by creating a new “language” which is what makes the audience feel uncomfortable.
Weekend’s aesthetic is made of natural lighting, jump cuts, diegetic sound, long takes, and tracking shots. The term “natural lighting”, at least in terms of this essay, refers to a shift from the highly stylized or dramatic lighting of Hollywood film to a stable lighting scheme. A stable lighting scheme is a disruption to the language of cinema because the lighting no longer serves to inform the audience of the plot. The audience’s context of lighting in cinema has become so sophisticated that an audience member can distill who a character is by the choice in lighting schemes. The most recognizable of which would be the classic three key lighting on the female lead who is the damsel in distress. The lighting’s only purpose in Weekend is to be lit properly so the audience can clearly see the action going on in the frame. Weekend’s use of “natural lighting” thus is a technique that forces the audience to think for they have to come to their own conclusion. This goes hand in hand with the narrative of the film which also does not inform the audience how they should feel. The audience’s knowledge of the language of cinema has been rendered completely useless. Similar arguments can be made for Goddard’s use of diegetic and nondiegetic sound, jump cuts, and long takes.
The stuck in traffic scene in Weekend illustrates perfectly the idea that Goddard is terrorizing the audience by playing with the language of cinema. The scene incorporates natural lighting, an inordinate amount of diegetic sound, and is a severely long take, seven minutes to be exact. The camera tracks along as it follow the two protagonists stuck in traffic. The choice of the long take is highly pragmatic to an audience member as it does not provide a focus for the audience. The significance of this is that it is giving complete control to the audience member to choose what they focus on. It is important to note that the VCR would not catch on for more than a decade later. Audience members were at the complete mercy of the director since they could not pause, rewind, or fast-forward as they were most likely watching the film in a theatre. Goddard’s complete control over the audience is masterful for he has complete control of his frame. Every frame of this scene is carefully constructed and littered with various elements whether it is a traveling zoo or two people passing a beach ball. With so many elements going on the tracking makes it akin to that of a slideshow.
The slideshow is a reflection of the various facets of humanity. Throughout the entire tracking shot various actions are taking place. Each element becomes a slide and each slide is a quick look into humanity. This is hard for the mainstream audience to understand since their context informs them that any character introduced needs to be developed further in the plot. However these aren’t characters that the audiences are witnessing but regular people and the audience has no idea how to respond. The various “slides” are all things that happen every day in life from people fixing cars or to horrible accidents on the side of the road. The audience has now become a member of the car, more effectively than any traditional Hollywood filmmaking could ever produce. The audience is “stuck in traffic” in a metaphorical sense for their context informs them that the movie should be moving along but it isn’t. The two protagonists are completely apathetic to the world around them in much the same way the audience has become. Goddard’s use of camera techniques is playing with the audience’s own context of film and thus completely recreates the experience that Goddard’s is trying to connect with the audience.
The second scene this essay shall focus on is when the two protagonists stop on the side of the road and the female protagonist is raped in a ditch. The scene is set up in a very similar fashion to the other scene analyzed for it relies on the very same film techniques. This scene is so perfectly set up, e.g. cars moving and stopping in exactly the right place within the frame that it flaunts its knowledge that the audience exists. It completely changes the value the audience attaches to “rape” in the context of the scene. The camera never focuses on the rape and the only evidence of it is diegetic sound. The audience usually relies on camera angles to tell them that this is a sad or tragic scene to reinforce the cultural values they have brought to be validated. Goddard’s techniques do not create a “realistic” setting, it creates a setting in which he forces the viewer to create his/her own meaning. The importance of this scene is the frightening notion that the audience can not feel sympathy unless told to feel sympathy and perhaps this is what makes Godard’s film so unsettling to audiences.
Mean Streets (1973) adapts the idea of natural lighting but conforms it to the mean streets of New York during the seventies. This creates a vastly different aesthetic thus creating an interesting quagmire to the idea of natural light. Even with natural light the director still has control over how his film will look from the type of film stock he uses to the actual location. One scene in particular that illustrates this is early on in the film and takes place in a bar. The over-all picture is marked by a red tint which is a product of the setting however it serves to underscore the seediness of the location. The film is similar to the style Goddard employs in Weekend however nowhere near as drastic. Scorsese employs similar long takes and tracking shots however gives the audience a chance to breathe with a healthy amount of cuts in between. The beginning of the scene begins with a tracking shot of the bar providing a similar snap shot of humanity to weekend’s tracking shots. It works here for mainstream audiences because the characters fit nicely into the language of cinema they know so well. The techniques Godard used to buck the system are now being use to reinforce the cultural values of the audience hence why it works so well. The importance is that the very techniques Goddard had created to defy the language of cinema have been, within less than a decade, assimilated into the lexicon of cinema audiences.
The second scene that’ll be analyzed is between the protagonist and his secret lover. It utilizes a sequence of jump cuts with the main purpose of truncating time. It begins with the protagonist watching his secret lover undress from his room then it cuts directly to them lying in bed. The scene is different from the previous because instead of long takes it is filled with a barrage of jump cuts and creates the effect of montage. The sequence is made up of a variety of shots that alternate between extreme close up, close up, medium shot, and long shot. Again this is not disorienting to the mainstream audience because it easily followed by the fact that its reinforcing classical archetypes that the audience can identify with. Mean Streets represents the bridge between obscure and mainstream.
Individual scenes can be picked apart from Mean Streets however it’s the whole of the narrative that this paper is interested in. For as the individual scenes have demonstrated Mean Streets uses many of the “avante-garde” techniques that Goddard used yet is far more accessible to film audiences. The reason for this is that that narrative is relatively standard to that of movie goers with a tinge of ambiguity. There is a protagonist, antagonists, and various obstacles that the protagonist must over-come. The techniques that Goddard had used to break the language of cinema are being used by Scorsese to reinforce. Not only does Mean Streets have a narrative structure familiar to that of the audience but it represents many mainstream audience’s core values, Western-Christian.
These details do not make Mean Streets a bad film however it proves the mainstream audience’s need for structure and character. It proves that it is not the style of Goddard that’s putting people off but something far deeper set in his movies. The mainstream is willing to accept jump cuts, long takes, natural lighting, etc as long as it provides some type of outlet for them to validate their own moral values and context they bring. The juxtaposition of Weekend and Mean Streets shows that these techniques, no matter how far out, can be used as long as it can be placed in some type context by the audience.
I'm not a huge James Cameron fan to be honest. Alien > Aliens for me. True Lies has some great action set pieces but is bogged down by its self-indulgence/tongue in cheek as well as miss casting of Arnold. Terminator 2 is great and all but 1 is better. And Titanic, need I say more?
