Slow motion is the technique through which time appears slowed down. The slow motion technique regularly used in cinema is the process of “overcranking” which entails a camera capturing an image at a rate faster than it will be projected. The slow motion technique used in sports replays tends not to use this method, as it requires cameras set up to film entirely in the slow motion method. Slow motion replays tend to be regularly recorded footage replayed at a slower speed. Films use the “overcranking” method because of the clarity and superior image reproduction. The aesthetic quality of the “replay” method is much lower however much more adaptable and sensible for live television. The logistical efforts required to use the “overcranking” method make it non-viable financially however cricket has occasionally used the “overcranking” method to analyse a bowlers or batters technique in depth. This slow motion analysis has revealed the extent a bat spins in the hands of the batsman when they strike a cricket ball and has come as a great surprise to many cricket coaches. The slow motion technique has been adapted and used in many films to produce contrasting readings concerning similar ground. I noted that one distinct reading is found in Cross Of Iron (1977) ‘The hyperbole of violence, normal in all war films, is brought to the foreground… by the repeated use of slow motion’. The film’s use of slow motion ensures ‘we as viewers are not permitted to ignore the ignoble truth of every bullet’. Slow motion in Cross Of Iron is used to produce an anti-war message; slow motion is used to critique violence. The technique of slow motion however is often used for converse reasons as indicated in many action films, one such film I looked at was The Defender (1994). ‘The technique of the slow motion is used not to expose the violence as shocking but rather so that the audience can wonder and understand the fast movements and skillful attacks’. The slow motion technique in The Defender ‘produces a sense of invulnerability and brilliance in the one character who continuously dishes out punishment rather than receives it’. Slow motion is used to facilitate enjoyment and wonder at the brilliance of the central protagonist – a reading contrary to that which is intended in Cross Of Iron. The slow motion technique can be used for numerous readings. The technique highlights physical movements facilitating the audience to concentrate on such things as the underlying horror of an action or the brilliant or exceptional abilities of a character.
Tag: War Film
A Review of a Combat Scene in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now (1979)
In Apocalypse Now‘s combat scenes we are given a fragmented, disjointed view which Coppola used to communicate the true nature of the Vietnam war and every modern war. Coppola commented, in a brochure released with the first screenings, that ‘The most important thing I wanted to do in the making of Apocalypse Now was to create a film experience that would give its audience a sense of the horror, the madness, the sensuousness, and the moral dilemma of the Vietnam war. . . . I tried to illustrate as many of its different facets as possible. And yet I wanted it to go further, to the moral issues that are behind all wars.’1 In the now famous battle scene where the Air Cavalry attack a Vietcong position while playing Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries Coppola achieves that which he set out to, namely the horror, madness, sensuousness and moral dilemma of Vietnam. The choice of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries is interesting as it serves an important function in the film. The music is majestic, composed and a symbol of both heroism and riding into hell itself. The music also represents by an association with Wagner a hatred of Jews and a recent enemy of America’s Germany – the use of music associated with Germany the Americans are superimposed into the position of the traditional enemy in War films. The music basically represents both heroism and dubious moral justifications. The soldiers are heroic riding into hell, but they are here for a rather poorly justified reason. The horror of the war is indicated in the smashing of helicopter fire into the Vietcong town, the strafing of machine gun fire into the village. The madness is indicated in the personal motivation in attack; the search for a good surfing position. The insanity is also indicated by bounty for making a good shot; a large case of beer. While the helicopters are in the air, and the music remains, the editing ensures a decent level of spatial continuity is maintained, we are regularly allowed to see the helicopters in formation and every attack is shown with a corresponding target, conflict and resolution of that conflict. When the helicopters sit down we lose a sense of spatial continuity, the camera circles around a wounded victim intimating a panicked soldiers swirling terrified head filling with nerves at the sight of blood and guts. Another interesting feature in communicating the sensory confusion is when the American bombers drop napalm on a line of trees the sound waivers and drops out of existence relating the deafening madness that is modern warfare. In this battle scene we see Coppola’s aims communicated by his use of music, shot selection and composition. Marsha Kinder explains that Apocalypse Now
‘illuminates the madness and horror of the Americans who experienced it. No matter how good or how strong, everyone who was touched by that war had a change in consciousness. Not only the fighting men, but also those who experienced the war second-hand through accounts by veterans, through television coverage, and now through seeing Apocalypse Now.‘2
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness communicated a lost sense of rebirth (I will do a full side by side textual analysis of Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now later on in the year) and Coppola’s film also seems to communicate this. The change, or rebirth, of those who experienced Vietnam isn’t a heroic one that is portrayed after a tour of combat in many WWII films and even Westerns, it is a loss of self, a crisis and destruction of all things held to be honourable. Even returning home is impossible as Captain Benjamin L. Willard remarks “home… I knew it just didn’t exist any more”. Coppola, in Apocalypse Now, is explaining that every aspect of American culture has been infected by the loss of faith and loss of self because it journeyed into a heart of darkness either through the medium of television or through active combat.
1Marsha Kinder, The Power of Adaptation in “Apocalypse Now”, Film Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Winter, 1979-1980), pp. 12-20 p. 13.
2Marsha Kinder, The Power of Adaptation in “Apocalypse Now”, p. 14.
Vsevolod Pudovkin’s Soviet Montage Theory
The End of St. Petersburg (1927)
Vsevolod Pudovkin’s film The End of St. Petersburg was written for the tenth anniversary of the 1917 revolution. Pudovkin’s film adheres to the formalistic conventions of Soviet cinema, particularly the use of montage. Pudovkin’s film differs slightly by concentrating on several characters and their experiences through the years leading up to, and during, the Bolshevik revolution. In Classical Hollywood cinema the heroes tend to be individuals whose sheer force of will affects change, but in Soviet cinema, due to ideological difference, the masses are seen as the force that affects change.1 The proletariat replaces the traditional individual protagonist and the bourgeoisie replace the conventional antagonist.
The formal technique of montage is important in The End of St. Petersburg for creating politicized narrative. The film builds a narrative around the proletariat’s collective spirit, constructed through several different characters – most importantly the farmer, the factory worker and his wife. Vsevolod Pudovkin called his use of montage ‘relational editing’. Pudovkin explains, in his writing about film technique, that the form of film, and the style of editing, should be an instrument of expression.2 One instrument of expression that that Vsevolod used was what he called the technique of ‘parallelism’. In The End of St. Petersburg we are shown Russian soldiers who are running over the top of a muddy trench towards their death at the hand of a German machine gun. The shot cuts to a parallel of bourgeoisie men in suits rushing up stairs to get to a stock exchange. The bourgeoisie men, instead of encountering machine gun bullets, buy the stock from a company which produces shells for the Russian government. The edit creates a parallel between two different actions and spatial environments. The parallel montage technique therefore imbues the action of buying stock, and capitalism, with the violence and murder of the battlefield scene. Another parallel is made in the same scene; as the battlefield fills up with wounded and lifeless bodies, both Russian and German, the scene cuts to the stock exchange market rate rising along with with several bourgeoisie shaking violently – as if they were themselves manning the machine guns. The excited ecstatic movement becomes a stark somber parallel when set against the bloody stalemate of the battlefield scene, through the technique of parallelism we, the audience, are made aware of the brutality of the capitalist system which makes profit in murder and the destruction of a nation’s own people.
Where as Classic Hollywood film utilizes aesthetic similarities between shots to create a sense of reality the Soviet montage method exploits aesthetic and thematic differences to produce politically charged meaning. The images in The End of St. Petersburg are left somewhat open to the viewers’ interpretation however overall we are guided psychologically, by the technique of parallelism, into accepting the political ideology of the film.3 The method of psychological guidance means Pudovkin’s relational editing system technique is an important instrument in creating a politicized narrative.
1M, Pramaggiore and T, Wallis. (ed). Film A Critical Introduction, London: Laurence King Publishing, (2007) p. 225.
The Motley View 