Vertigo
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Watch: How Alfred Hitchcock Blocks a Scene
In this video, The Nerdwriter meticulously breaks down how the blocking and staging of a key expository scene from Vertigo, showing how choreography and camera placement serve as visual language for the themes that’ll dominate the movie. If you haven’t seen Vertigo, a) what’s up with that? b) spoilers galore.
by Filmmaker Staff on Mar 28, 2016 -
Fabricated: Petzold’s Astounding Phoenix
Still bearing facial scars from vain attempts to kill her in a concentration camp, the festering infection that followed, and drastic plastic surgery to re-create her (the doctor’s term) in a hospital in her bombed-out hometown of Berlin, the once ravishing Jewish chanteuse Nelly Lenz (Nina Hoss) recklessly saunters out alone into the night to search for the Aryan pianist husband she has not seen since her arrest. Extremely self-conscious, she asks a blind street musician where to even begin looking. Pointedly, he recommends the American sector: That’s where the clubs and the action are. The film’s title is the […]
by Howard Feinstein on Jul 24, 2015 -
The Watergate Theory of Screenwriting
At the 2013 Screenwriting Research Network International Conference, Larry Gross discusses narrative, knowledge and Kurosawa’s Ikiru. I want to begin by expressing my sense of unworthiness at being offered the chance to give this keynote address, given the stature of some of those who proceeded me in performing the task, and I want to express briefly my personal admiration for three of these predecessors. Here in Madison, Wisconsin, I don’t have to explain the importance of David Bordwell as one of the world’s greatest film scholars. I only want to mention that I first became aware of his work in […]
by Larry Gross on Oct 21, 2013 -
Lady Vengeance: The Bride Wore Black Review
Loaded with recognizable tropes just begging to be tampered with, genre film is fertile spoof material, as can be evidence by obvious examples like the pointless Scary Movie franchise, or even within the same film as in those slasher film that knowingly straddle the line between terror and comedy, or B-Movies so tongue-in-cheek campy they function both as a good-humored critique of the genres the are playing against as well as a standalone narratives in their own right. Francois Truffaut’s sometimes goofy, sometimes chilling 1969 film The Bride Wore Black is genre lampoonery in the hands of a French auteur, […]
by Farihah Zaman on Nov 14, 2011 -
Things That Seem Real, Part Two: Catfish and Fantasy
Editor’s Note: Part one of this essay, “Things That Seem Real: A Three-Part Essay on Catfish and Other Movies,” appeared yesterday on the site and can be read here. These essays contain major spoilers regarding the film Catfish. Part Two: Catfish and Fantasy Over the course of an eight-month relationship that contained no physicality, Nev and Megan stayed in touch constantly. Using email, Gchat, Facebook walls, text messaging and phone calls, they pushed the boundaries of what are commonly understood to be the limits of an online-only relationship. Megan tells Nev about her family and the horses she takes care […]
by Zachary Wigon on Sep 22, 2010
