Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Grapes of Wrath: Screening Notes!

Still gotta figure out how to fix this silly blog thing.

The way film characterizes things and people is unlike what any other medium can provide.  That is chiefly do to the presence of sight and sound.  Photography, there is no sound, and books don't have anything but the author's word for it.


A great example of this can be seen in any scene involving large machinery.  The tractors are characterized as these ominous harbingers of despair, here to knock over your home and take away everything you ever had.  The tractors were overlayed with other tractor footage, eliciting a feeling of desperation and fear. 

The next scene with a tractor is the man’s flash back of his house being knocked down, where they close up in on the tractor as it crashes through the man’s fence like a monster before knocking over their flimsy house.  Film can also turn away just as it happens, in the way you would when you say “I can’t watch” when something particularly inhumane is about to happen. 

The scene is also a flashback that transitions back to the real world, giving a feel of the supernatural, even though this is a film that is too early to have crazy special effects.

Cars are also vessels of escape.  It appears that way due to the way they're filmed.  The tractors are always rolling towards you, and cars, with the exception of a few scenes, are usually riding away from the camera.

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