The Revival of the Musical

Whether one likes musicals or not, there is no question that the musical genre suffered a decline in popularity in the 1960s but that musicals such as Moulin Rouge (2001) and Chicago (2002) indicate a modicum revival of interest in the musical. There were still musicals during the 1960s, but the popularity of such musicals, like West Side Story (1961) didn’t increase until later generations resurfaced it.

The 1960s were a time of change of the old ways of seeing the world. People were fighting for a dramatic shift in the way life was lived and the movies reflected that need of the public. People wanted movies and characters that they could recognize with like Dustin Hoffman’s character Ben Braddock in The Graduate (1967). People were tired of beautiful actresses and hunky actors and they made a change from studs like Clark Gable to regular men like Al Pacino and Jack Nicholson. The 1960s was an age of anti-glamour where gruesome shoot out scenes were shown, uncut, to audiences like in Bonnie and Clyde (1967). The whimsical musical had no place in this time period. With their shifts in register and dream-like musical sequences, the musical didn’t fit into the gritty realism that the people of the 1960s craved so badly.
Not everyone was jumping on the revolution bandwagon, though. Movies like West Side Story, which showed the racism that Latinos suffered in America, were a slight success. Also, the 1960s was the time when Elvis Presley made his musical movies like Roustabout (1964) and Spinout (1966) which caught the young girl population of that time.

Recent movies have revived the musical slightly. Movies like Across the Universe (2007), which ironically is a musical set in the 1960s, The Nightmare before Christmas (1993), which was an innovation of the musical, and Sweeney Todd (2007) have grasped a younger audience into appreciating the meticulous work that goes into musicals. There is minimal dancing in these movies, but the audiences is captivated by the intergration of the storyline into the musical numbers, like in Across the Universe, which was on everyone’s favorite movie list for years after the release. The musical The Nightmare before Christmas is a pivotal film in cinematic history and its merchandise is still being sold quite impressively. These movies show that a modicum revival of the musical is taking place which may lead to gradual increase in the popularity of the musical.

Post-Modern Horror Films

The handout “Modern (Classical) Horror and Post-modern Horror Film” discusses many differences between the two horror genres. The many differences are listed effectively and it shows that there is a giant leap, almost polar opposition, between modern horror films and post-modern horror films. The movie Psycho is considered to be a post-modern horror film, due to it many differences from that of a modern horror film.

The first difference discussed is the prominence of good and evil, normality and abnormality, and reality and illusion. Modern horror films have the good and the evil easily distinguishable, but in post-modern, just the opposite. In Psycho, the characters all have traits and flaws that make them both good and evil. For example, Norman Bates, through out the movie, is seen to be just another victim of his mother’s brutal killings, but later we see that Norman is the brutal killer and his evil is seen. Even the first victim of the killings, Marion Crane, is not completely good. In fact, she has stolen a large amount of money. The normality of Marion is paralleled to her abnormality. She seems like a meek woman who would never commit a crime, but she is thief who becomes paranoid that she is being followed by the police. She struggles with her decision to become abnormal and wonders what it would be like to just return the money and go back to being normal, but it is too late. Her normality and abnormality is melded into a paranoid mess of a person. Norman is also struggling with his issue. In his head, he can not look at beautiful women because he feels his mother is watching. He tries to live a normal life, but is pushed to kill when his natural desires flair up. The characters also struggle with reality and illusion as Norman Bates is unaware that he is taking on the persona of his murdered mother and Marion Crane is paranoid of people’s intentions.

Another element that makes Psycho a post-modern horror film is the lack of narrative closure at the end of the movie. The psychologist does explain why Norman killed all those people, but the last scene belongs to the mother side of Norman. Her monologue gives the feeling that her tirade is not completely over and that someone will die again. The fact that Norman is psychotic comes as a complete shock to the audience which makes the movie a post-modern film. The twist in the story kills the audience’s expectations of the horror genre and leaves them in shock. Psycho fits so perfectly in the post-modern horror film genre that one is left to speculate if Alfred Hitchcock invented the new genre.

Horror Films: The Nature of the Beast

In American Film Genres (New York: Dell, 1974), Stuart M. Kaminsky has developed the “Seven Branches of the American Horror Film,” a seven-branch paradigm for analyzing the American horror film. Each branch is identified by the first of six categories for each branch—its “source of horror.”
The seven branches presented in order are:
(1) Animal drives which threaten man,
(2) Immortal parasite,
(3) Witches, corrupt humans who worship evil,
(4) Resurrected dead, or possessed beings who are figuratively dead,
(5) Unpredictable mad men,
(6) Mad scientist and created monster, and
(7) Creatures from outer space, inside the Earth, or from the Id.

The five categories for each branch are:
(1) Source of horror,
(2) psychological issues,
(3) goal of monster,
(4) reason for violence,
(5) weapons, and
(6) characters.

In addition, Kaminsky lists key films for each branch. Thus, for the movie Creepshow in “The Crate” story each category can be explained as follows for branch seven—Creatures from outer space, inside the Earth, or from the Id.

(1) Not all given horror film fulfill each category effectively of a given branch. In Creepshow’s “The Crate,” director George A. Romero, with the help of legendary special effects make up artist Tom Savini, creates a monster that exemplifies all the types of monsters named in branch seven. The “source of horror” is coming from a monster that was discovered in a lab. The audience is kept unaware of its origins and one can begin to imagine that the monster could come from outer space, inside the Earth, or even from the Id of the main character Henry Northrup.

(2) The “psychological issue” of this branch is labeled “Retention of sanity in a microcosmic, disoriented version of a community.” The college that the lab is located at is a large community of closely-nit professors, students, and even janitors. The main character, Henry Northrup, is part of this college community as he tries to escape his brutish wife, Wilma. Henry’s psychological issue stems from Wilma’s verbal abuse and her constant drinking. He wants so badly to be free of her tyranny but can not find an outlet to accomplish this. His self-confidence is so low that when his friend Professor Dexter Stanley comes to him to help with the monster in the crate, he is reluctant at first but finds an opportunity to escape his wife and be a hero at the same time.

(3) The “goal of the monster” for this branch is “attainment of suppressed urges, desires.” Quite obviously, the goal of the monster is to eat as much as possible before returning to the crate once more. When “The Crate” begins, we see that the crate that is, unknowingly at the time, carrying the monster is covered in mounds of dust, long discarded. The monster inside is understandable hungry after all the years of being locked in a crate under a flight of stairs and eats as many people as possible to qualm his hunger, including the janitor, a student, and finally Wilma. The goal of the monster is to never return to the crate again, but if the monster is from Henry’s Id, the ultimate goal is to be free of Wilma, which he is at the end of the section.

(4) The “reason for violence” for branch seven is that the monster is a savage beast. The monster has been locked in a crate for quite a long time (this can be assumed by the rusty chains and dust on the top of the crate) and he is not only hungry, but angry as well. Most monsters in horror film don’t need a reason for violence, for they are savage monsters who do not need a reason.

(5) The “weapons” for branch seven are the monster’s large claws and even larger mouth. The monster is not very large, but it has the element of surprise and sharp claws to destroy and eat its prey.

(6) Finally, “the character” for branch seven is Henry Northrup; the protagonist who is “threatened with insanity.” Henry is driven mad by his wife Wilma and is turned evil when he finds a way to get rid of her: feed her to the monster. Her constant nagging has driven him to this point and Henry finds no other way to deal with Wilma. Like a protagonist, Henry helps his friend Dexter Stanley clean up the blood and guts that the monster has left behind from the previous kills. On the surface, Henry is perceived to be a spineless yes man, but he is holding in a wild beast.

Citizen Kane: Who is Rosebud?

In Robert L. Carringer’s article “Rosebud, Dead or Alive: Narrative and Symbolic Structure in Citizen Kane,” he indicates that “Rosebud becomes the symbol of [Kane’s] youthful innocence, lost when he was adopted into a family of bankers.”
Adversely, he believes this to be a “fallacy” and I completely disagree with him. His reasoning on disproving this apparent fact is weak and ill-conceived. He is very critical of the film throughout the article and at times calls the best film ever made it “gimmicky.” He writes through his argument, quoting things that he’d never be able to write, and at times passes up the simple explanation for the elements of the movie. Citizen Kane is really that simple: Rosebud is his childhood.

Melodrama: Then and Now.

The creativity of Sunrise
In his book American Silent Film (New York: Oxford UP, 1978) William K. Everson suggests that the silent film Sunrise is “equipped with an evocative score and sound effects that are used extremely creatively” (324). The musical score and sound effects are used to not only reiterate the plot, but to reveal the varied settings of the movie.
The director of Sunrise, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, uses his score to display to the viewer that the storyline should be represented in the music to further reveal the plot and have the viewer get a sense of setting as well. When the couple go to the city, the score changes to a fast-paced tempo, showing the hustle and bustle of the city. The viewer gets a sense of being overwhelmed as the characters travel throughout the busy streets. When they go to the circus, the music is still frantic and the sound effects show a busy night of partying and fun. Murnau uses the sound effect of the pigs to show the greediness of the city people and is also used to reference the girl from the city who the male character had an affair with.
The entire cast is also showcased through the use of the music and sound effects. When the man is plotting to kill his wife, a dark tempo song is playing, but when the wife is displayed on screen, a sweet melody plays to show her innocence and purity. Murnau uses the score so effectively to show characterizations and plot that Sunrise will forever go down in history as one of the best silent films.

Body Language of Sunrise
William K. Everson, throughout his analysis of Sunrise, suggests what in fact was true of German Expressionism in silent films: that sets, incidents, props, sound effects (sic), and even the style of acting-“body language”- were used symbolically to communicate to the audience. A few important ways this occurs in Sunrise is through the use of makeup and costume and ironic events.
In Sunrise, the costume and makeup of the characters reveals a vital definition of who the character is. In the opening scene, the "femme fatale" is getting ready to see her lover. She is smoking, which is pertinent to the femme fatale archetype, and shows that she is not virtuous. Also, she is wearing mostly black and has dark hair, which furthers her seediness and foreshadows the events to come. In opposition to the femme fatale, the wife is refreshingly plain and simply clad. She is light-haired, revealing to the audience that she is pure and she also wears light clothing which also suggests her innocence and frailty. The two women are juxtaposed in the movie and cause the male character much grief. In the beginning of the movie, the male character is scruffy and poorly presented, having dark rings around his eyes to show his unhappiness. His distain for his wife is show through his garb. As the movie progresses and he falls back in love with his wife, his face is shaven and he undergoes a symbolic rebirth. The dark rings around his eyes are gone and he can finally be happy with his wife.
The director also employs special scenes solely for the purpose of revealing the characters further. When showing the wife, she is feeding some baby chicks and it is evident that she is a kind soul, unlike the man. When the couple goes for a boat ride, the man takes the dog and puts it back into its gate, which shows that he is no friend to animals and can not be trusted. Scenes like this are not the only important scenes in the movie. Ironic scenes, like the wife drowning, show how the plot and the characters have progressed throughout the course of the film. At first, the man took his wife out in a boat to drown her, but towards the end of the movie, the man is distraught because he thinks she drowned during a storm.

Melodrama Today
Reservoir Dogs by Quinton Tarantino is a contemporary film that was not discussed by Belton in Chapter 6 of American Cinema/American Culture.

Melodrama is a drama accompanied by music, but has been morphed into all types of cinema today. In Reservoir Dogs, the soundtrack is evidently just as important as all of the monologues that accompany the score. Tarantino used music, explicitly the song 'Stuck in the Middle with You' by Stealers Wheel, to built tension when the psychotic character Mr. Blonde was about to torture a police officer. The music was not vital to the plot, but helped me to appreciate the insanity of Mr. Blonde. The music created a feeling of sympathy for the police officer and utter fear for Mr. Blonde.
The opening scene also made me realize that Reservoir Dogs was a melodrama when the main characters all had their own monologues, which is an important element to the melodrama genre. Although some were comical, like the monologue given by Tarantino’s character Mr. Brown, I still got a sense of the complacency felt by all the characters as they were about to rob a bank. They were more concerned with Madonna, tipping the waitress, and an unknown person named Toby than with the nervousness that comes with committing a crime.
The next and following scenes are hard to watch as a viewer. I became particularly sympathetic to Mr. Orange, who is screaming for his life in the backseat of the car, having been shot several times. The entire purpose of the melodrama is to evoke some sort of sympathy for the characters and Tarantino uses this genre quite effectively.
Towards the end of the movie, we find that Mr. Orange is in fact an undercover police agent and the plot twists. A sudden urgency to find out the conclusion overwhelmed me and I was attached to the screen. The use of the melodrama in Reservoir Dogs enhanced my appreciation for the film and it evoked a special emotion that is synonymous with the melodrama genre.

My response to The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing
I actually found the documentary The Cutting Edge to be very informative, as I am hopefully pursuing a career in the film industry. It enhanced my appreciation of film editing and gave me a sense of history on the subject.
Before watching the documentary, I was not enlightened on the history of film editing. I learned that women mainly held the Editor title due to their intricate handling of the film. Most of the time, men directors get all the credit for the entire film and it is good to know that behind some male directors, like Quinton Tarantino, there is a talented women Editor. They were, sadly, not recognized for their art and most male directors took all the credit. I also learned that movies were put out once a week and the Editor’s hands had to be quick in order to effectively edit a good film. I had no idea how movies were edited back then and the documentary enlightened me extensively.
Also, I was not aware of the progression of technology that was used to edit films. Over the years, the film editing process has changed so that one doesn’t need small hands or good eyes to edit a basic film. With the rise of the computer, editors made the change to digital copies of the films and thusly digital editing software for the films. This knowledge greatly enhanced my appreciation for the editor of film as one of the most important jobs to have in the film industry.