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The Cinematography Discussion #2 (1 Viewer)

Lew Crippen

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It may not even be directed at you at all, but I am constantly discouraged how so many people don't seem to be able to see certain strengths in a film because it has, or they believe it has, weaknesses in story or something else.
Actually this could be directed at me John.

I am one who has a hard time seeing the merits of In the Bedroom. But I did follow your analysis with interest. It provided me with insight and an appreciation for what I had missed before. All to the good.

My problem is that I don’t like the film enough to be able to concentrate on the positives of the cinematography without the help of an analysis of someone like you. And there is no way that I would want the thread to become a discussion on the (other) merits of the film. So I just kept quiet.

And gathered the fruits of your work.

Would that I could have joined in—but I just had to watch this one from the cheap seats.
 

Brook K

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Certainly the film does have positives, several of the performances are strong and justifiably got awards. The cinematography which you point out in the opening and again in the shooting scene. The centerpiece parental confrontation. And maybe my favorite scene, which I don't think got mentioned here, where Fields takes time out from the story to give us a "texture" scene, the turning of the little bridge.

I think I gave it a B or B- which for me means a movie I recognize as well-crafted but was only somewhat appealing to me, or a movie I liked but that had one or more significant problems.
 

Agee Bassett

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That really sucks, Adam.
Agreed, a real shame there. If it's any consolation, the Egyptain screens Oliver Twist every year or so with Green in attendance, so a future opportunity might not be out of the question.

Based on the content of my posts in this thread re In the Bedroom, John's comments could also apply to me as well. My focus on what I felt to be a negative aspect of this film, which was probably an ill-advised idea, might have made it seem as though I couldn't see the film's virtues beyond its perceived flaws, when in fact this is not the case. In fact, I've always felt that I was rather fair at isolating particular elements of a film for study from outside the overall product. For instance, there are many films for which I hold its cinematography in high regard, while not particularly caring for the film itself, such as Black Narcissus or The Fugitive (1947). The fact that there was little I could have contributed about the film's cinematography that hadn't already been said led me to (again, probably unwisely) decide that negative commentary about the film's narrative was better than no commentary at all. Sorry if I hijacked the thread.

On the Oliver Twist front, I now have commentary for more than half of my screencaps written. The only problem is structure, which I'll have to figure out before I'm ready to post. As I'm sure my thread mates can relate, I have so much I want to say about the film's cinematography that I'm having a little bit of trouble unifying all my thoughts. Expect to see part 1 posted within the next ten days.

* - One worth pointing out, incidentally, is the shot of the desk portrait of the lawyer's family in the scene where Matt and Ruth are talking to the lawyer. I feel that this brief insert serves to humanize the lawyer in a situation where his surplus of legal opinion might serve to alienate an otherwise sympathetic audience.
 

Rob Tomlin

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For instance, there are many films for which I hold its cinematography in high regard, while not particularly caring for the film itself, such as Black Narcissus
Great example, and I completely concur!

I definitely need to give Oliver Twist another spin before we start discussing it. Unfortunately, I had to send my projector back to the manufacturer for a problem, so I hope to have it back in time to watch OT so I can discuss it semi-intelligently!
 

JohnRice

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Unfortunately, I had to send my projector back to the manufacturer for a problem, so I hope to have it back in time to watch OT so I can discuss it semi-intelligently!
And you think your projector will assure that?




Sorry. You can't possibly expect me to resist a setup like that. :p)
 

Agee Bassett

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Okay, gang, Oliver Twist is coming tonight. I just got to get home to my image upload software and saved work to make a few last minute tweaks. Hope your projector's back working, Rob. :)

As before, stay tuned.
 

Rob Tomlin

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Hope your projector's back working, Rob.
It is indeed!

And you just made my decision regarding which movie I will be viewing this afternoon (I usually have Friday afternoons off and try to watch a movie).

Man, being forced to watch a David Lean movie on a Friday afternoon...it's a tough job, but someone has to do it!

:D
 

Agee Bassett

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We are presently experiencing technical difficulties. :b Please be patient with us, we'll get this show on the road eventually.
 

Agee Bassett

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Continued from Pg 1.

Oliver Twist



Dir.: David Lean
D.P.: Guy Green
Camera Operator: Oswald Morris
Production Designer: John Bryan

Cast
Alec Guinness: Fagin
Robert Newton: Bill Sikes
Kay Walsh: Nancy
Francis L. Sullivan: Mr. Bumble, the Beadle
Mary Clare: Mrs. Corney, the Matron
Anthony Newley: The Artful Dodger
John Howard Davies: Oliver Twist


All images below are linked to larger versions. To see the larger one, just click on the image in the thread.



Quote:



“Partly as a result of Oliver Twist I became obsessed with the idea of showing thought on the screen.” EDavid Lean






Lean, with collaborators Bryan (l)
and Producer Ronald Neame (r).



Oliver Twist is both an outstanding, as well as quintessential, specimen of this peculiar brand of cinematic alchemy (indeed, it among the cinema’s most remarkable products by any measure). Filmed in 1947 in England, and debuting on that country’s screens the year following (controversy over alleged anti-Semitic caricaturing in GuinnessEportrayal of Fagin would delay the film’s release—in butchered form—in America until 1951), Oliver Twist epitomized the symbiotic culmination of not one, but four major cinematic visual talents; three of whom enjoyed their first conglomeration on the set of the team’s previous film and Dickens adaptation, Great Expectations (1946): Director, David Lean; Director of Photography, Guy Green; and Production Designer, John Bryan (the fourth, camera operator Oswald Morris, would join them on this project, on his way to a legendary career as D.P. on over a dozen important films). An object lesson in cinematic collaboration, all four contributing artists impress the production with their own creative stamp: Bryan’s imaginative storyboards and sets; Green’s dynamic chiaroscuro and handling of exposure and gamma levels; Lean and MorrisEsurgically-precise framing and set-ups [Customary to British filmmaking protocol of the day, lighting and exposure settings typically encompassed the job description of the D.P. (hence, the alternate credit “lighting cameramanE, with camera set-ups and composition delegated to collaborative arrangement between director/operator/production designer. For the sake of lucidity, the various contributions will henceforth be abbreviated into the single credit Lean.]

Based, of course, on the classic tale of institutionalized poverty and child exploitation in Victorian England by Charles Dickens, Lean’s adaptation is remarkable first and foremost by virtue of the sheer audacity of its transformation to the screen. Eschewing the sanitized, diffuse, banal trappings which debilitate a spate of other filmizations of the celebrated author’s work, Lean’s liberated vision illuminates the dark, violent overtones suffusing DickensEuniverse; while simultaneously refracting his thoroughly literary forms and devices into the spare poetry of the cinema. Resolutely fixing a sharp eye for meticulous detail upon a hyper-real recreation of the London streets Dickens observed in his time, teeming with crime, alcoholism, prostitution, pestilence, and ordure, the author’s world comes to life with a greater immediacy (and, thusly, a greater weight and urgency in its social commentary) than it would have in less candid hands; including at least one scene which must have been among the most implicitly violent yet depicted in Western film (the film earned an “AE[adults] certificate from the British Board of Censorship). Disentangling the story’s essence from the flowery, overwrought prose Victorian literary etiquette imposed on serialized writers like Dickens, Lean boldly jettisons wholesale chunks of the author’s celebrated dialogue and characters, in favor of an unrelenting series of terse, dazzlingly-sophisticated visual phrases. In other words, Lean’s thrust here is for faithful translation of the novel’s essence rather than mere transcription.

At first glance, in structure Oliver Twist resembles that of a complex, yet awesomely successful, synergism of the most mature innovations of the fundamentally-conflicting schools of Russian montage and Bazinian mise-en-scene (though, at the time of the film’s production, Lean was thoroughly unfamiliar with either Russian cinema or Bazin and his philosophies). Long, lingeringly-held shots which loiter on meticulous diegetic texture frequently alternate with dynamic montages spliced from glimpses of indistinct images of vigor and movement. In syntax, however, Oliver Twist is cunning, eloquent montage at its finest. Scenes/shots are given context and meaning by their juxtaposition with other scenes/shots. Ironic and symbolic connotations are impressed upon ostensibly-objective or subjectively recorded elements. In perfect consonance with the brilliant editing and construction (among the cleverest and most sophisticated ever showcased in a dramatic feature-length motion picture) in imbuing depth and texture to the material is the film’s stunning cinematography. [Effectually a gestalt of phantasmagorical conception, Oliver Twist’s cinematic essence is difficult to crystallize in such a limited medium as still extract. Examples were not selected necessarily because they are the best in the film; but rather due to their solubility with the format. Therefore, study of that most fundamental component of motion pictures, movement, will be largely deemphasized in the following treatise.]

At its most elemental, the cinematography in Oliver Twist at times functions to convey the more palpable attributes of physical sensation. The scene captured below is a prime example. Here, a subjective camera, shot from the perspective of a feverish Oliver, is expanded into an impressionistic device by handheld wobbling of the mechanism and racking of the focus to communicate the subject’s disoriented state.





Equally effective in conveying an impression of physical sensation is the phrase depicted below, in which a studio-manufactured flash of lightning backlighting the character, coupled with a jump cut to an image of twisted thorns (one of the film’s few blatantly symbolic images), serves to suggest the tangible throes of pain experienced by Oliver’s labor-wracked mother as she agonizingly traverses a blasted heath toward the sanctuary of the workhouse.





As yet, what I have demonstrated is an undeniably effective, yet simple bit of cinema impressionism. Where Oliver Twist really takes off as an elite specimen of cinematography is in the sophistication of its marshalling of the essential cinematographic components of image values, lighting, and composition, and the fundamental dramatic components of objective, subjective, and ironic planes into a unified, synergistic thesis; as alluded to on page one of this thread.

This recurring image, which bookends “act oneEof the film (opening to Oliver’s escape to London), is a prime illustration of this high cinematic alchemy at work.





In these two ostensibly-simple fixed shots, Lean establishes an entire spectrum of attributes and dynamics characteristic to his film environment: First, and most obviously, the physical surroundings inhabited by his characters—a blasted heath which later/earlier shots establish as part of the neighboring environment of the workhouse where Oliver is raised. More metaphorically, these correlative images serve to convey something about the overall mood and psychological tint of each scene: In the first, the dark, bleak landscape and jagged clouds embellish the despair and solitude of Oliver’s mother as she painfully negotiates the rough terrain leading up to the workhouse; in the second, the gentle morning sunlight and billowy white clouds lend a sense of hope and promise to Oliver’s escape across the heath (nature always played a significant role in Lean’s films). Moreover, the bookending of these shots add further dimensions to the proceedings—not merely as a neat example of filmic ring composition, which serves to end act one on the same visual “keyEas that of the film’s opening, it also proves to contain information about the general geography of the film’s universe and, most intricately, the correlation between the characters themselves. By having Oliver disappear over the same hill from whence his mother came, not only is their physical relationship as mother and son reinforced, but an appending title card indicating that London lies somewhere over the hill serves as a clue to his as yet enigmatic mother’s origin—a fact which plays a significant part in the story’s subsequent proceedings.

Elsewhere, Lean continually proves himself a master at “layeringEhis shots with more than mere objective recording. In the shot below, as the newly-born Oliver is carried from his dead mother’s side through the workhouse’s forbidding enclaves, Lean ironically records the signs reading “God is Love,E“God is JustEoverseeing scenes of cruel workhouse inhumanity and exploitation.





No less visually expressive is the comic subplot involving the Beadle and the Matron. Introduced to us in the scene depicted immediately below, both characters are photographed in a seemingly objective manner, sharing equal prominence in the frame. Lean underscores the flirtatious relationship they share early on by always photographing them together within the confines of the frame.





Later on, however, as marriage has made their relationship sour, the Matron and Beadle are by contrast almost always photographed in separate frames. By the scene in which she has thoroughly beaten him, she is shown from a very low angle, almost looming over the now-whipped Beadle.





Further on, we once again hear the voice of Lean’s cinematic “inner voiceEironically commenting on the action; here, as the workhouse boys sit down to eat, their bare table juxtaposed in the next shot with the bounteous one of the workhouse staff.








Oliver’s early scenes in the picture share likewise in supplying subjective and ironic commentary upon the film’s action. In the scene below, in which we are introduced to the boy Oliver, the Beadle and Matron loom over him, his tiny, frail figure in complete subjection to their sovereignty.





As in the film’s opening sequence, Lean often uses his charactersEphysical surroundings as an abstraction of their emotional and psychological state, as in the scenes below where Oliver’s impotent being is seen in terms of cold expanses of workhouse brick.

In the scene immediately below, Oliver has just drawn the short straw in the workhouse boysEpetition to demand better nourishment. The high camera angle serves to flatten his prominence from the stone workhouse tiles, while the harsh lighting casts his lonely shadow across the floor. The effect is one of desolation and feebleness.





Here, as he solicits the master for more gruel, the low camera angle (shot from “forced perspectiveE serves to underscore how desolate and enfeebled he is beneath the workhouse’s looming architecture.





The below shot, of Oliver consuming his first meal at the Sowerberry’s, is another textbook example of Lean’s ironic eye for framing. Ostensibly an objective shot, Lean imbues it with an ironic connotation by visually equating both Oliver and the dog and their respective meals in the frame, therefore stressing the inhuman treatment Oliver receives at the hands of the Sowerberry’s.





The camera continues to serve as a character in this scene of Oliver stealing stealthily out of the Sowerberry home on his way to running away to London. Lean removes and locks his camera and lights the scene in a way reminiscent of an early Atget lithograph, thus suggesting Oliver’s loneliness and slightness.





This is meant to contrast to the next scene of Oliver arriving in London, a montage of medium and close-up shots of Oliver pushing his way through the suffocating throng of pedestrians. Lean makes an ironic comment upon the impression of the pushing crowd by intercutting a shot of sheep being herded towards the camera.





Under David Lean’s vision, Dickensian London is not merely a bustling metropolis of quaint buildings, narrow alleys, and top-hatted inhabitants, but a world of nightmarish qualities. Befitting the dark, sinister confines of the workhouse and the London streets, Lean’s shadows are opaque phantoms which dominate the characters. In this shot, which shows Oliver bedding down for his first terrifying night’s sleep among the coffins at the Sowerberry’s, Lean frames and positions the single light source (Oliver’s lamp) in such a way that all but half of Oliver’s face is swallowed up in a sinister, wraith-like shadow, suggesting his terror and unease.





Elsewhere in the film, shadows and their use as an expressive device continually recur as a dominant visual motif. In the image below, as the frightened Nancy clandestinely informs the apprehensive Mr. Brownlow of Oliver’s whereabouts, their faces are cast in almost complete darkness. The furtive nature of her visit, the danger underlying the news she shares, and the general anxiety of the moment is reinforced by the rendering in silhouette.





In the scene below, the shadow of the enigmatic Monks is cast on a wall behind Fagin, lending a sense not only of his malevolent character, but also of his controlling influence looming over the proceedings.





To be continued...



Quote:



”[John Bryan] had more imagination than all of us.EEDavid Lean







P.D. John Bryan
 

Rob Tomlin

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Nice review Agee! You obviously put a lot of time into it!

Lean boldly jettisons wholesale chunks of the author’s celebrated dialogue and characters, in favor of an unrelenting series of terse, dazzlingly-sophisticated visual phrases. In other words, Lean’s thrust here is for faithful translation of the novel’s essence rather than mere transcription.
This sums it up very nicely. Much of this movie is definitely told with images, rather than dialogue.

The quality of the cinematography is obviously of paramount importance when you do this. Can the story be told without dialogue for extended periods of time and still keep your attention?

Nearly the first six minutes of Oliver Twist goes by without a single word of dialogue being spoken. But you don't notice that there is no dialogue, because you are completely involved in the images that are being shown on screen, which tell us everything we need to know at that point.

The movie is full of "expressionistic" shots, many of which Agee has alluded to. The fact that Criterion has done a great job restoring the print, giving the black and white photography an almost "luminous" quality expected in the original elements doesn't hurt!

Regarding Lean's use of composition to portray the circumstances/feeling of the characters, the shot below shows Oliver just before his escape. The framing between the banisters gives a feeling of someone who is "trapped", the banisters, to me, being analogous to prison bars:



In the shot immediately following the above, we see Oliver after he has escaped the Sowerberry home. We no longer have a feeling of being confined in small quarters, but rather of Oliver being by himself, alone in the world outside (I knew Agee would use this one! :) )




Note too that Lean apparently likes to use various objects to "frame" his characters. This can be seen in the scene above with the banisters as well as other Lean films including Doctor Zhivago and this scene from Brief Encounter:



More later! :)

P.S. I hope these file images aren't too large. If so, let me know and I will simply post a link to them instead.
 

Agee Bassett

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Good call, Rob, on the shot you posted above and the one following. Lean very often in this film brackets his wide shots with close-ups and medium shots, providing just the right amount of counterpoint so as to give the wider shots real visual impact. (If it's hard for me to neglect mention of the film's editing in the process of commenting on the cinematography it is because they work so symbiotically together in unfolding one unforgettable image after the other. Lean's strong use of jarring cuts here foretells his equally spectacular use of them in a certain later epic which you might recognize, Rob, called Lawrence of Arabia.)

Regarding the film's famous opening sequence, Lean had to say that he'd always wanted "to make a film in which there's no dialogue for at least the first quarter of an hour. I want to see the chap in the audience with a cigarette - he can't bring himself to light it because he is so gripped." Lean's image-oriented cinema would almost completely deliver on that vision in Oliver Twist with spectacular effect.
 

Rob Tomlin

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Before calling it a night, here is another shot where Lean "frames" his subjects:




This shows Oliver and other orphans gazing longingly at the fancy feast being enjoyed by their "captors".

I would also like to comment briefly on something Agee mentions in his post, which is the important element of "movement" in cinematography. Frankly, I had forgot just how important a role movement plays in the cinematography of Oliver Twist. Not only movement of the camera itself, but movement of lighting etc.

It is, indeed, difficult to capture the full splendor and sophisticated visual imagery shown in OT with screen captures!
 

Rob Tomlin

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My last post crossed with yours Agee:

Yes, editing goes hand in hand with the cinematography, and Lean, being a film editor himself, was an expert in that regard.

This really helped make the overall visual experience of his films something special. He not only had an eye for great shots, but was able to visualize exactly how he would edit and splice various shots together for the final visual results he wanted.
 

Lew Crippen

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Great review Agee. I’m tossing on my Criterion tonight and will watch with an eye to your comments (and to Rob’s also).
 

Agee Bassett

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I would also like to comment briefly on something Agee mentions in his post, which is the important element of "movement" in cinematography. Frankly, I had forgot just how important a role movement plays in the cinematography of Oliver Twist. Not only movement of the camera itself, but movement of lighting etc.
Indeed. A prime example of this component of cinematography is the shot depicted below. Viewing as we do the scene from the guilty Sikes' POV, the windblown movement of the curtain (barely suggested in the still) shadowed across the murdered Nancy's lifeless arm reinforces to his standpoint the utter finality of his crime.


[url=http://members.interfold.com/ricephoto/oliver/34.jpg] [/url]


Moreover, in this sequence transfixed by an almost merciless stillness, this isolated instance of moderate movement, as well as the dog's trembling, are made to seem by exercise in clever cinematic constrast exaggeratedly vivid and haunting--as befits Sikes' tortured POV.
 

Rob Tomlin

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Great call on that shot as an example of movement Agee (that scene is the main one I had in mind when I made my comments regarding the importance of movement in OT).

The movement of the curtain, and subsequently the shadow being cast on Nancy's lifeless arm, emphasizes the lack of movement in Nancy's body, thus confirming to us and Sikes (from his POV) that he has, indeed, murdered her.
 

Lew Crippen

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By the scene in which she has thoroughly beaten him, she is shown from a very low angle, almost looming over the now-whipped Beadle.
Another comment on the use of camera angles and shot composition. In the scene where ‘Old Sally’ comes to tell her bit of news before she dies, the matron is again shot from a low angle as she stands in front of the fire, the light from the fire providing an onomious touch, as her face is lit from below. When there is a cut to the fireplace we have a standing figure on the left of the screen where all we can make out are her impatient fingers tapping—the two old workhouse crones are huddled below her and to the rear, making them even more insignificant.

A cut back to another full shot of the matron and back to another of the three that is just enough more distant to show the matron standing full in the left foreground, the crones arranged to her left (right) and rear, seated, the fireplace lights their faces, while the marton is not lit.

I may have more later, if anyone can make any sense out of this.
 

SteveGon

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Very good discussion - I was going to watch something new today, but now I feel compelled to revisit Oliver Twist. :emoji_thumbsup:
 

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