Lesson 1 Hitchcock
I started out on this topic after a film making class was urged to watch more contemporary films because the old masters like Hitchcock, Antonioni, Fellini, Kubrick etc are dead. At this time I was there as an observer and willing to assist the film students prepare for their very first short film. I was also in the middle of writing a publication entitled Unheard Shadows, Unseen Whispers that focused on the above mentioned directors.
Are they really dead?
Let us look at my findings for Hitchcock's 1960 film Psycho.
Psycho's use of music is dissonant. A repetition of 4 movements. This is extended to a repetition of 4 themes.
Watch Hitchcock's Pyscho and see how these musical movements and themes work.
See if you can find the following aspects within the film.
- A misleading glissando,
- a wonderland of bodiless voices,
- a whispering taxidermy,
- the unsweet unheard singing of birds,
- an interdiction against looking and hearing,
- a fantasmic body,
- a reversal of the natural order,
- a haunting stranger,
- an unfixed virginity,
- aural indecidability,
- a bath of sound,
- an impossible embodiment,
- ghost notes,
- an absence of commentary,
- suspense in nothingness,
- a discordant consonance,
- illusory or ambiguous kind of truth,
- not a place of repose,
- the camera’s screaming point,
- opaqueness.
Which of these elements are present in the scenes below?
Would these elements be relatable to your film?
Some things to reflect on.
How can your film reflect a dissonant manner of story telling?
Apart from a musical discord, what else is discordant?
Why should a film be dissonant?
Whatever, your choice, how do you make it a consistent choice?
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