Casablanca

SO...Casablanca, I just don't really like this movie. I mean it's alright, but it's no great masterpiece. I mean, I get it they're mysteriously in love and he decides to fight for something. It just all comes off as being so bland to me. I found myself saying over and over in my head, "Uh, I get it, and it don't care that much." There may be some interesting things in the script. The ideas of Casablanca, America, and Paris, or what drives the changes in these characters. Though, it isn't driven out in the actual film. May be I just found it too generic or I just don't like Humphrey Bogart all that much (gasp!). I just don't see what separates this film from the rest of the pack. I feel like it's more a film of ideas that are never fully realized, but are given a free pass because they are enfolded with Humphrey Bogart.

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Raging Bull pt dos

I think the best thing about the editing in Raging Bull is that it's only noticeable when it wants to be, the boxing scenes. The rest of the movie it is "invisible." At least it is as far as I can remember. So this gives the boxing matches a whole different feel. It starts as soon as you get to the stadium or whatever. Like in the title fight, The film stays with the same shot from when he's in the back til he's in the ring. This gives this fight and moment more meaning. The tension created in not changing shots builds in the viewer. Preparing them for the title shot in it's significance to both the story and character. The storyboarding necessary for the actual fights is very evident. The shots' angle, speed, length, and frame are all so precise that they needed the time and attention they must have received. The audience then feels that they are closer to the action because of these deeply detailed sequences. That is the point of these parts. The point is to make the audience feel connected to what is happening to the characters physically and emotionally. The editing helps create the pace, action, and feeling necessary to do this.

Raging Bull

Martin Scorsese is probably my favorite director of all time, and Raging Bull is the toughest of Scorsese's films to watch in my opinion. He creates a terrific narative nessesary for telling this harsh story. Jake La Motta is a tragic character from the very beginning of the film making his downward spiral even harder to bare. He's not a character that can be dismissed as a wife beating animal. His other flaws are heaped upon him and the audience over and over until the floor falls breaks beneath it all. His breakdown in the jail cell isn't justice in my mind, but a hard-hitting window into a human who has hit rock bottom. This view is rarely seen with such care and support. This type of hotheaded animal is easily labeled, but Scorsese does more than that. He shows that Jake is a human that can't be defined by a ringname.

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breathless

I thought Breathless was an interesting film that does more than its radical editing would suggest. Though it's not perfect, I thought most of the filming was pretty amateur, it's still a good film. I think what interests me the most is its line between what's created as a representation and what is made to be real much like the film Punch-Drunk Love.

To me, both the quick and contrived love between the characters and the bounty against the main character are more of a representation of love and its perils than a direct story. This is created by both in the strangeness in the story and the editing. The story is completely unbelievable. They talk like they really care about each other and love each other, but they've only known one another for a few days. There is also no way that the main character would not have been caught sooner given that his face was plastered all over Paris.

What really sells this idea of love as a representation is the editing. More than anything the editing makes you second guess what is happening over and over again. The disconnect in the story is brought out in the disconnect in the editing. I don't believe that the director just wanted to be different, but I think he was trying to use this editing to enhance his story.

This isn't to say that the whole movie is fake. That is what is great about the movie. Some of the scenes the main characters share together are very real moments. They are out of place from where the viewer sees their relationship, but they are some very truthful moments. They help make this idea of love actually believable.

I don't think Breathless is just an exercise in different editing. I think it takes this radical editing and mixes it with a complicated story to create a film representing love. It isn't something to be taken at face value like people often want. It is something that makes the viewer think about what is really happening and what is being said to them.