Behind The Camera: Raging Bull

Having first peeked my interest with the excellent use of the steady cam during the (long) power point that introduced the year, I decided to view Martin Scorsese's 1980 classic, Raging Bull. Being a fan of his other films, namely Goodfellas, I went into this film expecting technically good things from it, knowing Marty's capability as a director.

Along with Robert De Niro's stunning performance as Jake La Motta, a boxer who's life is illustrated in a downward spiral that makes up the movies biographical plot, the aspect of film that really sets this movie apart and earns it it's title of a "Great Movie" is it's cinematography. Shot entirely in black and white, the film's chief Cinematographer, Michael Chapman, does a fantastic and beautiful job of evoking much more emotion than what colored film could ever say.

The range of tonalities in the film is kept to very jarring, low-key lighting, rarely setting a comforting mood in the movie. Chapman, who has done Cinematography on Scorsese's other movies, is known for his experimentation with light and what kind of effect that has on the viewer. This is analyzed to great depth in this blog post, showing some of the highlights of the lighting techniques in the movie.

Chapman truly shines in the scenes in the boxing ring, where La Motta's true emotions come out and most of the action takes place. Along with his wonderful use of lighting, combining the flashing, bright camera bulbs with the dark flying blood and spit, he also has many unique camera uses that he throws into the mix. Evoking the chaos of the inside of the ring, he uses 360 degree pans of the scene, tilted camera angles, long take steady cam shots like the one observed in the early days of class, and slow-motion, which is well illustrated in the film's opening scene shown here.

Along with the slow motion, I think that scene is great for the deep focus camera view where you can see everything in the frame, except the near rope is very clear and black while the other side of the ring is foggy and mysterious, creating a dream like sense of being for the sequence. To create sequences like this, Chapman used things such as fog and mirrors to alter the lighting in the area and make in surreal, and this is demonstrated throughout most of the film in black and white, with only one montage being in color of old home movies which in and of itself is a technical achievement.

Personally, my moment where I began to really appreciate the Cinematography of the movie is during the first fight of the movie. As La Motta fights against his opponent Jimmy Reeves, there is complete chaos as light bulbs flash, people yell, and blood flies everywhere. La Motta punches Jimmy against the edge of the ring, jumping from the view from behind his back to the view of a spectator, a photographer in the crowd, who snaps a photo negative of the image as seen in this picture.


This moment made me pause the movie and reflect, something I rarely do because of technical aspects of the movie. It is because of this and other moments like it that the Cinematography is considered to be one of the greatest aspects of the film and earns it it's place among the greatest movies of all time.

Citizen Kane : What impressed me.

Overall after viewing Citizen Kane I was very impressed by the level of detail and work that went into such an old film. Orson Welles really created something wonderful with the limits in cinematography that they had back then which is made even more impressive by the fact that it was his first movie that he had ever done and that he co wrote, produced, directed and starred in it.

One of the coolest aspects in the film I thought was the editing and how it was done so wonderfully for that day and age. Welles' use of deep focus in nearly every shot of the movie provides something that we don't usually see in movies, be them older or contemporary. Almost every shot is vivid where every detail can be seen. Where with a conventional film camera you could see for example the foreground with the background blurred out, in Citizen Kane you can see everything that is going on in the foreground, the mid ground, and the background. A great example is in the above screen cap from the beginning of the movie when Kane's parents are about to send him away.

You can clearly see Charles parent's in the foreground, his future guardian in the mid-ground, and Charles playing with his sled in the snow out the window in the back ground, nothing blurred out. According to the wikipedia article about the film, they used In-camera tricks to make the deep focus shots work. For example, they shot the foreground of the frame first, then rewound the tape and shot the mid-ground over it, then finally doing the same thing with the background to make it one consistent shot. This technique was very groundbreaking and advanced for this time, and is overall what makes the cinematography of the movie the most impressive to me.

Film Review: City of God

The movie City Of God, co-directed by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund, is a movie unlike any that I as a film viewer had seen before, and I have seen many films. The film is a harrowing journey through a decade of love, friendship, violence and betrayal that occurs all in the hellish streets of the Brazilian slum in western Rio De Janeiro known as the City Of God. The story of two boys are told through the eyes of one of them, intertwining as they go from being childhood acquaintances to eventually growing into two very different young men.

The main character and narrator, Rocket (played by Alexandre Rodrigues), is a timid and quiet boy who has dreams of becoming a photographer within the City of God. He documents the events that occur within the decade that make City of God a worthwhile view. While Rocket is an important part of the story, he pales in comparison to the films true star, Li'l Ze played magnificently by Leandro da Hora. The film centers around Li'l Ze's rise to power, as a shrimpy little kid growing up in the slums, to the most powerful drug trafficker in the area. What makes the movie so powerful in regards to character is that we follow them as they grow up, from small children looking up to the local hoodlums, into their adolescence as they discover the violent side of life, and finally when they reach their final, separate destinies at the end of the film.

The screenplay, written by Bráulio Mantovani, is one of the best in recent memory. The story is divided up into several "tales", much in the fashion of a Tarentino film, each separated by a very effective freeze frame with the title of the story, which I thought was a very cool element added by the film editors. The intertwining of Rocket and Li'l Ze's life is magical in the movie, as Rocket's life is effected greatly by Li'l Ze's actions, yet Li'l Ze doesn't even know who Rocket is.

The intro itself deserves it's own paragraph of praise, not only for being very unique, but done in such a manner that it brings the film around full circle at the end so the viewer feels content and knowing all that has transpired in the movie which is refreshing in this day in age when movies with plot holes at the end seem to be quite frequent. The opening scene shows and unknown gang chasing a chicken through alleyways, shooting at it recklessly for what seems like no reason at all. It isn't until near the end of the film that this very strange scene is explained and shown to be the most important in the movie.

The range of tonalities and overall use of color in the movie deserves to be mentioned as well, as when Rocket and Li'l Ze are kids, the City of God is shown to be in a barren desert of sorts, using alot of orange's, reds and yellows to show the landscape. As they and the slum develops and gets older, the colors change to be more monochrome, dark, and grey, perhaps showing them transition into another, darker, phase of their life.

I also feel that my favorite scene deserves a mention, as it is in my opinion one of the most fascinating and well done scenes in film ever. It shows, in fast motion, how a few people transform an old woman's house from a nice, warming place to live into what basically equates to a crack den. It is all shown in one take and has a very eerie feel to it as you see all that goes on, violent or otherwise, as the room changes into a drug dealers hideout. It reminded me of a scene from another one of my favorite movies, Requiem for a Dream, which also uses the same kind of time lapse frame to show effectively what takes place in a room over time.

Overall, City of God is perhaps one of the most real and unforgettable masterpieces released so far this century. Showing things for how they really are in drug ridden, hellish slums, it manages to encapsulate all of your senses and truly make you believe that it is not Rocket taking part in these events, but you.