The Coen Brothers

Joel David Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957) known together professionally as the Coen brothers, are American filmmakers. Their films include Blood Simple, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, No Country for Old Men, and True Grit.

The brothers write, direct and produce their films jointly, although until recently Joel received sole credit for directing and Ethan for producing. They often alternate top billing for their screenplays while sharing film credits for editor under the alias Roderick Jaynes.

 

Fargo is a 1996 American dark comedy–crime film produced, directed and written by brothers Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars Frances McDormand as a pregnant police chief who investigates a series of homicides, William H. Macy as a car salesman who hires two criminals to kidnap his wife, Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare as the criminals, and Harve Presnell as the salesman’s father-in-law.

The film earned seven Academy Award nominations, winning two for Best Original Screenplay for the Coens and Best Actress in a Leading Role for McDormand. It also won the BAFTA Award and the Award for Best Director for Joel Coen at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival.

In 2006 it was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and inducted into the United States National Film Registry.

In the winter of 1987, Minneapolis automobile salesman Jerry Lundegaard (Macy) is in severe financial trouble. After being introduced to criminals Carl Showalter (Buscemi) and Gaear Grimsrud (Stormare) by Native American ex-convict Shep Proudfoot (Steve Reevis), a mechanic at his dealership, Jerry travels to Fargo, North Dakota, and hires the two men to kidnap his wife Jean (Kristin Rudrüd) in exchange for a new car and half of the $80,000 ransom. However, Jerry intends to demand a much larger sum of $1 million from his wealthy but tight-fisted and antagonistic father-in-law, Wade Gustafson (Presnell), and keep most of the money for himself.

Meanwhile, GMAC has been threatening to withdraw loans against cars at the auto dealership Jerry manages after accounting irregularities. Jerry has been trying to raise money by promoting a real estate deal to Wade. Jerry tries to call off the kidnapping after Wade agrees to the investment, but he is too late. As it turns out, Wade intends to buy the property himself, leaving Jerry with only a finder’s fee, which is not enough to pay off his massive debts to GMAC and other creditors which he continues to keep a secret from his family.

Carl and Gaear kidnap Jean with little difficulty, but on their way through Brainerd to their hideout, a state trooper stops them because the car’s license plates from the dealership had not been changed. When Carl’s attempt to bribe the trooper fails, Gaear shoots and kills the trooper. Carl attempts to clear the trooper’s body off the road, but is seen by a teenage couple passing by in their car. Without hesitation, Gaear begins to chase the couple when suddenly the couple’s car swerves off the road, enabling Gaear to kill them both.

The deaths are investigated the next morning by local police chief Marge Gunderson (McDormand), who is seven months pregnant. She quickly deduces the chain of events and follows the leads that arise, interviewing two prostitutes who serviced the criminals. After being informed that the criminals telephoned Shep Proudfoot, an employee at Jerry’s dealership, she drives to Minneapolis but acquires no information in interviews with both Shep and Jerry.

Meanwhile, Jerry contacts Wade, claiming that the kidnappers insist on dealing only with Jerry. Wade accepts this arrangement at first, but later changes his mind, clearly distrustful of Jerry. When Wade meets with Carl at a parking garage, he refuses to give him the ransom money until his daughter is returned. Angered by his demands and unexpected appearance, Carl starts a shootout and kills Wade. Before he dies, Wade shoots Carl in the side of the face, disfiguring him. Carl then kills the garage attendant on his way out. Jerry arrives at the scene after Carl leaves, and opens the trunk of his car, presumably to take Wade’s body to hide the crime. On his way to the backwoods hideout on Moose Lake, Carl discovers that the bag he took from Wade contains a million dollars and buries most of the money by the side of the highway to presumably come back for the rest. At the hideout, Gaear has killed Jean, and, in a dispute over the car, he kills Carl with an axe.

After being deceived by a high school acquaintance (unrelated to the case), Marge decides to re-interview Jerry again, asking him about the car used in the Brainerd murders. Jerry is uncooperative and eventually flees the interview, and Marge phones the state police to find and arrest him. Then, following up on a tip, she drives to the lake, sees the kidnappers’ car, and arrives at the hideout just in time to see Gaear feeding the last of Carl’s body into a wood chipper. Gaear tries to flee, but Marge shoots him in the leg and arrests him.

Jerry is later arrested in a motel outside of Bismarck, North Dakota. In the final scene, Marge and her husband, Norm (John Carroll Lynch), sit in bed together discussing his artwork, which has been selected as the design for a postage stamp. The fate of the buried money remains unknown.

So what’s it actually about? The plot seems to be based on Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. Jeff Bridges is The Dude, although his real name is Lebowski, which also happens to be the name of a local millionaire, whose wife gets kidnapped, which results in the Dude being indicted into a bluff which may or may not involve German nihilists. The surrounding cast put in fantastic performances, such is the Coen brothers’ ability to condense the essence of an actor’s unique qualities into a role they were seemingly born to play. Maude Lebowski is a glacial, maniacal artist superbly played by Julianne Moore. Of all the Coen brothers performances John Goodman has given us, his turn as the frustrated and frustrating Walter Sobchak, a Vietnam veteran who carries his ex-wife’s Pomeranian around while telling Donny Kerabatsos (Steve Buscemi) to shut it, is arguably his best. The backdrop to this is a tense local bowling championship in which The Dude is being threatened by a paedophile called Jesus (John Turturro).

The Big Lebowski could so easily have descended into a checklist of absurdities for the sake of wackiness. But whimsical dialogue and surreal moments are only half of what makes the Coen brothers so remarkable as film-makers. Someone once said: “In order to be funny you have to be sad first.” The Big Lebowski, like almost everything in the Coens’ repertoire, is deadpan hilarity tinged with the morose. There is a sense, though it plays out very quietly, that The Dude is a man whose time has passed. The real Lebwoski calls him a bum, the police throw cups at his head because he is an old hippy who contributes nothing, a local pornographer drugs him because he’s a minor irritant. The film hints, but only as an aside, that money corrupts; leaving The Dude to fight a lone battle against men who “treat objects like women”.

It’s never quite clear whether it bothers The Dude that the world continues at a pace out of step with his own – mostly because he is constantly stoned. This film is one of the few times a director has truly captured the glass-eyed effects of weed without resorting to cliche. Is The Dude a self-contained stoner or delusional loner? It’s hard to tell because his exclusive concern revolves around locating a missing rug.

Still, the Dude is clearly our flawed hero. The Coen brothers never forget the redeeming power of love, and in The Big Lebowski it is the force behind perhaps one of the most brilliant dream sequences ever to appear in a film. Amid the farcical events of the film, the Dude is finding himself again; after an encounter with Maude – “Jeffrey, love me” – he will have a very real reason to grow up.

But obviously none of this is what people love about the film. The Big Lebowski is stone cold hilarious. The aggressive taxi driver who loves the Eagles. Tuturro as Jesus, all in purple. The Big Lebowski joins This Is Spinal Tap, Life of Brian and many more as a film which can be referenced in a seemingly endless rotation of one liners.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that the entire film is narrated by a deep voiced stranger who introduces The Dude and follows his ventures with fraternal affection. Sure, it’s a device. But it really holds the film together.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a 2000 comedy film directed by Joel and Ethan Coen and starring George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and Charles Durning. Set in 1937 rural Mississippi^[3] during the Great Depression, the film’s story is a modern satire loosely based on Homer’s Odyssey. The title of the film is a reference to the 1941 film Sullivan’s Travels, in which the protagonist (a director) wants to direct a film about the Great Depression called O Brother, Where Art Thou?

In 1937, Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney), Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro), and Delmar O’Donnell (Tim Blake Nelson) escape from a chain gang at Parchman Farm and set out to retrieve the $1.2 million in treasure that Everett claims to have stolen from an armored car and buried before his incarceration. They have only four days to find it before the valley in which it is hidden will be flooded to create Arkabutla Lake as part of a new hydroelectric project. Early in their escape, while still chained together, they try to jump onto a moving train with some hobos, but fall off due to Pete’s inability to get on. They then encounter a blind man (Lee Weaver) traveling on a manual railroad car. They hitch a ride, and he foretells their futures. They “seek a great fortune” and they will “find a fortune, though it will not be the one they seek”. They will also see many wonders on their journey, including a “cow on top of a cotton house”.

They walk to Pete’s cousin’s house, Wash Hogwallop (Frank Collison), who removes their chains, but, because he needs the money, he then turns them in to the police, led by Sheriff Cooley (Daniel von Bargen). The authorities set the barn they are sleeping in ablaze, but the trio quickly escapes with the help of Wash’s son. When they pass a congregation on the banks of a river, Pete and Delmar are enticed by the idea of baptism, to the immense derision of the skeptical Everett. As the journey continues, they travel briefly with a young guitarist named Tommy Johnson (Chris Thomas King). When asked why he was at a crossroad in the middle of nowhere, he reveals that he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the ability to play the guitar. Tommy describes the devil as being “White, as white as you folks … with empty eyes and a big hollow voice. He love to travel around with a mean old hound“. This description just so happens to match Sheriff Cooley, the policeman who is pursuing the trio.

The four of them come across a radio station owned by a blind man (Stephen Root), and record the song “Man of Constant Sorrow“, calling themselves the Soggy Bottom Boys. Unknown to them, the song becomes famous around the state. The trio parts ways with Tommy after their car is discovered by police, and they continue their adventures on their own. Among the many encounters they have, the most notable are a bank robbery with the famous bank robber (and livestock killer) George Nelson (Michael Badalucco), a run-in with three sirens who seduce the group and drug them with alcohol before seemingly turning Pete into a toad, and a mugging by a one-eyed Bible salesman named Big Dan Teague (John Goodman).

Everett and Delmar arrive in Everett’s home town only to find that Everett’s wife, Penny (Holly Hunter), is engaged to Vernon T. Waldrip (Ray McKinnon), campaign manager for gubernatorial candidate Homer Stokes (Wayne Duvall). She refuses to take Everett back and is so ashamed of him that she has been telling their daughters he was hit by a train and killed.

While watching a film in a cinema, Everett and Delmar discover that Pete is still alive, the sirens having turned him in to collect the bounty on his head. After Everett and Delmar rescue him from jail, Pete tells them that he gave up the location of the treasure. Everett reveals that there was never any treasure; he only mentioned it to persuade the other men to escape so he could reconcile with his wife. Pete is outraged at this news, primarily because he only had two weeks left on his original sentence, which has now been extended 50 years in light of his escape.

As Everett scuffles with Pete, the group stumbles upon a Ku Klux Klan lynch mob, who have caught Tommy and are about to hang him. The three disguise themselves as the mob’s color guard and attempt a rescue. Big Dan, one of the Klansmen, reveals their identities, and chaos ensues, in which the Grand Wizard of the gathering reveals himself as Stokes. The four flee the scene with Everett and cut the supports of a large burning cross, which falls on, crushes and incinerates some of the Klansmen (including Big Dan) causing chaos among the ranks of the lynch mob.

Everett convinces Pete, Delmar, and Tommy to help him win his wife back. They sneak into a Stokes campaign dinner that she is attending by disguising themselves as musicians. Everett tries to convince his wife that he is “bona fide“, but she brushes him off. The group begins an impromptu musical performance, during which the crowd recognizes them as the Soggy Bottom Boys and goes wild. Stokes, on the other hand, recognizes them as the group who disgraced his lynch mob and shouts for the music to stop, angering the crowd. After he reveals his white supremacist views, the crowd runs him out of town on a rail. Pappy O’Daniel (Charles Durning), the sitting state governor of Mississippi, seizes the opportunity and endorses the Soggy Bottom Boys, granting all of them a full pardon while the entire event is being recorded and played on the radio. Penny accepts Everett back, but she demands that he find her original ring if they are to be married. As they leave the diner, they run into a mob taking a jubilant George Nelson to die in the electric chair. Delmar comments, “Looks like George is right back on top again.”

The group sets out with Tommy to retrieve the ring, which is at a cabin in the valley that Everett originally claimed to have hidden the treasure in. When they arrive, the police order their arrest and hanging. Everett protests, stating that they had been pardoned on the radio, but Sheriff Cooley ignores their pleas, responding that where he comes from, “[they] don’t have a radio.”. The three begin to despair while Everett improvises a prayer to be saved. Suddenly, the valley is flooded and they are saved from their hanging. Using their coffins as flotation devices. Pete and Delmar jubilantly praise God, while Everett – over his brief moment of piety — dismisses the incident as luck. He pipes down, though, as a cow floats by on top of a submerged cotton house. Tommy finds the ring in a desk that he is floating on in the new lake, and they return to town.

The movie ends with Everett and Penny walking through town with their daughters in tow, singing. Everett presents the ring to Penny, who promptly states that it is the wrong one and demands her ring back. As Everett protests the futility of trying to find it at the bottom of the lake, the blind prophet the trio met earlier rolls by on his railway handcar, his voice joining the girls’ in song.

Terry Gilliam

Terrence Vance “Terry” Gilliam ; born 22 November 1940) is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil (1985), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), The Fisher King (1991), and 12 Monkeys (1995). The only “Python” not born in Britain, he took British citizenship in 1968.

Gilliam’s films have a distinctive look not only in mise-en-scene but even more so in photography, often recognizable from just a short clip; in order to create a surreal atmosphere of psychological unrest and a world out-of-balance, Gilliam makes frequent use of unusual camera angles, particularly low-angle shots, high-angle shots, and Dutch angles. Roger Ebert has said “his world is always hallucinatory in its richness of detail.” Most of his movies are shot almost entirely with rectilinear ultra wide angle lenses of 28 mm focal length or less in order to achieve a distinctive signature style defined by extreme perspective distortion and extremely deep focus. Gilliam’s long-time director of photography Nicola Pecorini has said, “with Terry and me, a long lens means something between a 40mm and a 65mm.” This attitude markedly differs from the common definition in photography which qualifies 40mm to 65mm as the focal length of a normal lens instead due to resembling natural human field of view, unlike Gilliam’s signature style defined by extreme perspective distortion due to his usual choice of focal length. In fact, over the years, the 14mm lens has become informally known as “The Gilliam” among film-makers due to the director’s frequent use of it since at least Brazil.

The wide-angle lenses, I think I choose them because it makes me feel like I’m in the space of the film, I’m surrounded. My prevalent vision is full of detail, and that’s what I like about it. It’s actually harder to do, it’s harder to light. The other thing I like about wide-angle lenses is that I’m not forcing the audience to look at just the one thing that is important. It’s there, but there’s other things to occupy, and some people don’t like that because I’m not pointing things out as precisely as I could if I was to use a long lens where I’d focus just on the one thing and everything else would be out of focus. […]
[M]y films, I think, are better the second and third time, frankly, because you can now relax and go with the flow that may not have been as apparent as the first time you saw it and wallow in the details of the worlds we’re creating. […] I try to clutter [my visuals] up, they’re worthy of many viewings.

—Terry Gilliam, “Gilliam’s ‘Imaginarium’: Surreal And All-Too-Real”.

 

 

 

Brazil is a 1985 British science fiction fantasy/black comedy film directed by Terry Gilliam. It was written by Gilliam, Charles McKeown, and Tom Stoppard and stars Jonathan Pryce. The film also features Robert De Niro, Kim Greist, Michael Palin, Katherine Helmond, Bob Hoskins, and Ian Holm. John Scalzi‘s Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies describes the film as a “dystopian satire“.

The film centres on Sam Lowry, a man trying to find a woman who appears in his dreams while he is working in a mind-numbing job and living a life in a small apartment, set in a dystopian world in which there is an over-reliance on poorly maintained (and rather whimsical) machines. Brazil‘s bureaucratic, totalitarian government is reminiscent of the government depicted in George Orwell‘s Nineteen Eighty-Four,^[1][2] except that it has a buffoonish, slapstick quality and lacks a Big Brother figure.

Jack Mathews, film critic and author of The Battle of Brazil (1987), described the film as “satirizing the bureaucratic, largely dysfunctional industrial world that had been driving Gilliam crazy all his life”. Though a success in Europe, the film was unsuccessful in its initial North America release. It has since become a cult film.

The film is named after the recurrent theme song, “Aquarela do Brasil“.

Set in an unidentified country, the film follows Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), a low-level government employee who has frequent daydreams of saving a beautiful maiden. One day he is assigned the task of trying to rectify an error caused by a fly getting jammed in a printer, which caused it to misprint a file, resulting in the incarceration and death during interrogation of Mr Archibald Buttle instead of the suspected “terrorist,” Archibald “Harry” Tuttle (Robert De Niro). When Sam visits Buttle’s widow, he discovers Jill Layton (Kim Greist), the upstairs neighbour of the Buttles, is the same woman as in his dreams. Jill is trying to help Mrs Buttle find out what happened to her husband, but has become sick of dealing with the bureaucracy. Unbeknownst to her, she is now considered a terrorist friend of Tuttle for attempting to report the mistake of Buttle’s arrest in Tuttle’s place to a bureaucracy that would not admit such an error. When Sam tries to approach her, she is very cautious and avoids giving Sam full details, worried the government will track her down. During this time, Sam comes in contact with the real Harry Tuttle (De Niro), a renegade air conditioning specialist who once worked for the government but left due to his dislike of paperwork. Tuttle helps Sam deal with two government workers, Spoor (Bob Hoskins) and Dowser (Derrick O’Connor), who later return to demolish Sam’s ducts and seize his apartment under the guise of fixing the air conditioning.

Sam determines the only way to learn about Jill is to transfer to “Information Retrieval” where he would have access to her classified records. He requests the help of his mother, Ida (Katherine Helmond), vainly addicted to rejuvenating plastic surgery under the care of cosmetic surgeon Dr Jaffe (Jim Broadbent), as she has connections to high ranking officers and is able to help her son get the position. Delighted that her son has finally shown ambition – he previously turned down the promotions which she had arranged – Sam’s mother arranges for Sam to be promoted into the Information Retrieval division. Sam eventually obtains Jill’s records and tracks her down before she is arrested, then falsifies her records to make her appear deceased, allowing her to escape the bureaucracy. The two share a romantic night together before Sam is apprehended by the government at gunpoint for misusing his position.

Sam is restrained to a chair in a large, empty cylindrical room (the interior of a power station cooling tower), to be tortured by his old friend, Jack Lint (Michael Palin), as he is now considered part of an assumed terrorist plot including Jill and Tuttle. However, before Jack can start, Tuttle and other members of the resistance break into the Ministry. The resistance shoots Jack, rescues Sam, and blows up the Ministry building as they flee. Sam and Tuttle run off together, but Tuttle disappears amid a mass of scraps of paper from the destroyed Ministry. Sam runs to his mother attending a funeral for a friend who died of excessive cosmetic surgery. Finding his mother now looking like Jill and fawned over by a flock of juvenile admirers, Sam falls into the open casket, falling through an empty black void. He lands in a world from his daydreams, and attempts escape up a pile of flex-ducts from the police and imaginary monsters. He finds a door at the top of the pile and, passing through it, is surprised to find himself in a trailer driven by Jill. The two drive away from the city together.

However, this “happy ending” is all a product of Sam’s delusions: Sam is still strapped to the chair and observed by Jack and Deputy Minister Mr Helpmann (Peter Vaughan). Realising that Sam has grown catatonic, with a smile on his face and humming “Brazil”, the two declare Sam a lost cause, and exit the room as the film ends…the difference between Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Gilliam’s Brazil being that Sam Lowry has successfully evaded “capture” and/or capitulation in his catatonia, as Orwell’s main character, Winston Smith did not (in Nineteen Eighty-Four).

The Fisher King is a 1991 American comedy-drama film written by Richard LaGravenese and directed by Terry Gilliam. It stars Jeff Bridges, Robin Williams, Mercedes Ruehl, Amanda Plummer and Michael Jeter. The film is about a radio shock-jock who tries to find redemption by helping a man whose life he inadvertently shattered.

Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges), a cynical, arrogant talk radio host, becomes suicidally despondent after his insensitive on-air comments about yuppies deserving to die prompt a caller to commit a mass murder at a popular Manhattan bar. Three years later, while heavily intoxicated, he wanders down to a dump by a river. Two men suddenly get out of a car, thinking Lucas is a bum; they douse him with gasoline. Before they can set him on fire, he is rescued by Parry (Robin Williams), a lonely widower who is on a mission to find the Holy Grail, and tries to convince Jack to help him. Jack is initially reluctant, but comes to feel responsible for Parry when he learns that the man’s condition is a result of witnessing his wife’s horrific murder at the hands of Jack’s psychotic caller. Parry is also continually haunted by visions of the Red Knight, who terrifies him whenever he shows any confidence.

Parry’s landlord tells Jack that Parry didn’t speak for a year following his wife’s death. When he emerged he seemed obsessed with the legend of the Fisher King, a form of which Parry recounts to Jack. The legend varies, but all iterations possess three elements: the Fisher King was charged by God with guarding the Holy Grail, but later incurred some form of incapacitating physical punishment for his sin of pride, and had to wait for someone to deliver him from his suffering. A simpleminded knight named Percival, referred to in the movie as “The Fool,” healed the king’s wounds with kindness, asking the king why he suffers and Percival gave the king a cup of water to drink. The king realizes the cup is the Grail and is baffled that Percival, the fool, found it, as demonstrated in the closing exchange: “I’ve sent my brightest and bravest men to search for the grail. How did you find it?” The Fool laughed and said “I don’t know. I only knew that you were thirsty.”

Jack seeks to redeem himself and help Parry find the Grail and find love again. Jack sets Parry up with a woman Parry has been smitten with from afar, Lydia, a shy woman who works as an accountant for a Manhattan publishing house. Jack introduces them to each other and sets up a dinner date (Jack and his strong-willed girlfriend, Anne, join them). Following dinner, Parry declares his love for Lydia but is once again haunted by the Red Knight. Parry tries to escape his hallucinatory tormentor but is attacked by the same thugs who had earlier attacked Jack. The beating is not fatal but causes Parry to become catatonic again.

Jack infiltrates the Upper West Side castle of a famous architect and retrieves the “Grail,” a simple trophy. When he brings it to Parry, the catatonia is broken and Parry regains consciousness. While he and Jack lead the patients of the mental ward in a rousing rendition of “How About You?,” Parry is reunited with Lydia. Later, Jack, who had earlier broken up with Anne, is reunited with her.

1998 saw the release of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Based on the legendary writings of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing had long been thought impossible to bring to the movie screen. The previous directorial incumbent was Alex Cox who had to be relieved of his duties and Gilliam was drafted in to replace him. What he produced was very faithful to the drug addled writings it was based on and is a cult favourite with many progressive discerning film lovers, but given the nature of the story a wholesale mainstream hit was never likely to be on the cards. It is certainly the most uncompromising of Gilliam’s work and it is hard to imagine anyone else even attempting a film of this nature, let alone achieving such amazing results.

 

Martin Scorcese

Martin Charles Scorsese; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation. He is a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema, and has won Academy Award, Emmys, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and DGA Awards.

Scorsese’s body of work addresses such themes as Italian American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption, machismo, modern crime and violence. Scorsese is hailed as one of the most significant and influential American filmmakers of all time, directing landmark films such as Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), and Goodfellas (1990)– all of which he collaborated on with actor and close friend Robert De Niro. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed (2006), having been nominated a previous five times.

Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is a lonely and depressed young man living in Manhattan. He is an honorably discharged Marine, and it is implied that he is a Vietnam veteran; he keeps a charred Viet Cong flag in his squalid apartment and has a large scar on his back.

Bickle becomes a night time taxi driver in order to cope with his chronic insomnia, working 12-hour shifts nearly every night, carrying passengers around all five boroughs of New York City. His restless days, meanwhile, are spent in seedy cinemas. He keeps a diary (excerpts from which are occasionally narrated via voice-over during the film).

Bickle develops a romantic attachment to Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a campaign volunteer for Senator Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris). Palantine is running for President on a platform of dramatic social change. After watching her from his taxi through the windows of Palantine’s campaign office interacting with fellow volunteer Tom (Albert Brooks), Bickle enters the office asking to volunteer as a pretext to talk with Betsy. Bickle convinces her to join him for coffee and pie, and she later agrees to let him take her to a movie. She says he reminds her of a line in Kris Kristofferson‘s song “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33”: “He’s a prophet and a pusher, partly truth, partly fiction—a walking contradiction.” On their date, Bickle takes her to see Language of Love, a Swedish sex education film. Offended, she leaves the movie theater and takes a taxi home alone. The next day he tries to reconcile with Betsy, phoning her and sending her flowers, to no avail. At the campaign office, before being kicked out by Tom, Travis verbally berates Betsy, saying that she is “just like the rest of them” and that she will go to hell.

Bickle’s thoughts begin to turn violent. The only person in whom he vaguely confides his new views and desires is fellow taxi driver “Wizard” (Peter Boyle), who tells Travis that he’s seen all kinds in his time driving cabs, and he believes Travis will be fine. Disgusted by the petty street crime (especially prostitution) that he witnesses while driving through the city, he now finds a focus for his frustration and begins a program of intense physical training. He buys four guns from an illegal dealer, “Easy Andy” (Steven Prince). He then constructs a sleeve gun to attach on his right arm and practices concealing and drawing his weapons. He develops an interest in Senator Palantine’s public appearances. One night, Bickle enters a run-down grocery just moments before a man attempts to rob the store. Bickle shoots the man in the neck. The grocery owner (Victor Argo) encourages Bickle to flee after he expresses worry for shooting the man with an unlicensed gun. As Bickle leaves, the store owner repeatedly clubs the near-dead man with a steel pole.

On another night, Iris (Jodie Foster), a 12-year-old child prostitute, enters Bickle’s cab, attempting to escape her pimp, “Sport” (Harvey Keitel). When Bickle fails to drive away, Sport drags Iris from the cab and throws Bickle a crumpled twenty-dollar bill. Bickle later meets Iris in the street and pays her for her time, not to have sex, but to try to persuade her to quit prostitution. They meet again the next day for breakfast, and Bickle becomes obsessed with helping Iris leave Sport and return to her parents’ home.

Bickle sends Iris several hundred dollars attached to a letter telling her he will soon be dead. After shaving his head into a mohawk haircut, he attends a public rally where he attempts to assassinate Senator Palantine. Secret Service agents notice him approaching and Bickle flees. He returns to his apartment, then drives to the East Village, where he and Sport get into a confrontation in which the two insult each other. Bickle shoots Sport in the gut, then storms into the brothel and wounds the bouncer. After the wounded Sport shoots Bickle in the neck, slightly wounding him, Bickle shoots him dead, as well as Iris’s mafioso customer. The bouncer continues to attack Bickle after killing Iris’s mafioso customer, causing Bickle to shoot him in the head, killing him. Bickle had been shot several times during the entire ordeal. Kneeling on the floor of Iris’s room, he attempts several times to fire a bullet into his own head, but all his weapons are out of ammunition, so he resigns himself to resting on a sofa until police arrive. When they do arrive, he places his index finger against his temple like a gun and pretends to shoot himself in the head several times.

While recuperating, Bickle receives a handwritten letter from Iris’s parents who thank him for saving their daughter, and the media hail him as a hero. Bickle returns to his job, and encounters Betsy as a fare. She discusses his newly found fame, but he denies being a hero. He drops her off without charging her. As he drives away, he glances anxiously at an object in his taxi’s rear view mirror and then vanishes.

Raging Bull is a 1980 American biographical sports drama film directed by Martin Scorsese, and adapted by Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin from Jake LaMotta‘s memoir Raging Bull: My Story. It stars Robert De Niro as Jake LaMotta, a middleweight boxer whose sadomasochistic rage, sexual jealousy, and animalistic appetite destroyed his relationship with his wife and family. Also featured in the film are Joe Pesci as Joey, La Motta’s well-intentioned brother and manager who tries to help Jake battle his inner demons; and Cathy Moriarty as his abused wife. The film features supporting roles from Nicholas Colasanto, Theresa Saldana, and Frank Vincent.

In 1964, an aging, overweight Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro) practices a comedy routine. A flashback to 1941 shows his first loss in a major boxing match, against Jimmy Reeves. Jake’s brother Joey LaMotta (Joe Pesci) later discusses a potential shot for the middleweight title with one of his Mafia connections, Salvy Batts (Frank Vincent). Some time thereafter, Jake spots a 15-year-old girl named Vickie (Cathy Moriarty) at an open-air swimming pool in his Bronx neighborhood. He eventually pursues a relationship with her, even though he is already married. Jake defeats Sugar Ray Robinson once in 1943 and has another win three weeks later. Despite the fact that Jake dominated Robinson during the bout, the judges surprisingly rule in favor of Robinson and Joey feels he won only because he was enlisting into the US Army the following week. Jake is married to Vickie by 1947.

As Jake’s fears grow about Vickie having feelings for other men, particularly Tony Janiro, the opponent for his forthcoming fight, he shows off his sexual jealousy when he defeats Janiro in front of the local Mob boss, Tommy Como (Nicholas Colasanto) and Vickie. As Joey discusses the victory with journalists at the Copacabana, he is distracted by seeing Vickie approach a table with Salvy and his crew. Joey speaks with Vickie, who says she is giving up on his brother. Blaming Salvy, Joey viciously attacks him in a fight that spills outside of the club. Como later orders them to apologize, and has Joey tell Jake that if he wants a chance at the championship title, which he has control over, he will have to take a dive first. In a match against Billy Fox, Jake does not even bother to put up a fight. He is suspended shortly thereafter from the board on suspicion of throwing the fight, though he realizes the error of his judgment when it is too late. Despite the suspension, he eventually wins the middleweight championship title against Marcel Cerdan in 1949.

A year later, Jake asks Joey if he fought with Salvy at the Copacabana because of Vickie. Jake then asks if Joey had an affair with her; Joey refuses to answer, insults Jake, and decides to leave. Jake directly asks Vickie about the affair and she sarcastically states that she had sex with the entire neighborhood (including his brother, Salvy, and Tommy Como) after he breaks down the bathroom door where she briefly hides from him. Jake angrily walks to Joey’s house and brutally beats him up in front of Vickie and Joey’s wife and children. After defending his championship belt in a brutal fifteen round bout against Laurent Dauthuille in 1950, he makes a call to his brother after the fight, but when Joey assumes Salvy is on the other end and starts insulting and cursing at him, Jake says nothing and hangs up. Estranged from Joey, Jake’s career begins to decline slowly and he eventually loses his title to Sugar Ray Robinson in their final encounter in 1951.

By 1956, Jake and his family have moved to Miami. After staying out all night at his new nightclub there, Vickie tells him she wants a divorce (which she has been planning since his retirement). He is later arrested for introducing under-age girls (posing as 21-year-olds) to men and serves a jail sentence in 1957 after failing to raise enough bribe money by taking the jewels out of his championship belt instead of selling the belt itself. In his jail cell, Jake pounds the walls, sorrowfully questioning his misfortune and crying in despair. Upon returning to New York City in 1958, he happens upon his estranged brother Joey, who forgives him but is elusive. Going back to the beginning sequence, Jake refers to the “I coulda’ have been a contender” scene from the 1954 movie On the Waterfront starring Marlon Brando complaining that his brother should have been there for him but is also keen enough to give himself some slack. After a stage hand informs him that the auditorium where he is about to perform is crowded, Jake starts to chant “I’m the boss” while shadowboxing.

The film ends with a Biblical quote. This quote was a reference to Martin Scorsese’s film professor, Haig Manoogian to whom the film is dedicated as he died just before it was released. Scorsese credits Manoogian with helping him “to see”.

“So, for the second time, [the Pharisees]

summoned the man who had been blind and said:

‘Speak the truth before God.

We know this fellow is a sinner.’

‘Whether or not he is a sinner, I do not know.’

the man replied.

‘All I know is this:

once I was blind and now I can see.’

John IX. 24-26

the New English Bible”

 

 

 

The King of Comedy is a 1983 American black comedy film starring Robert De Niro and Jerry Lewis, and directed by Martin Scorsese. The subject of the movie is celebrity worship and the American media culture. It was released on February 18, 1983 in the United States by 20th Century Fox.

Rupert Pupkin (De Niro), a stage-door autograph hound, is an aspiring stand-up comic whose ambition far exceeds his paltry talent. After meeting Jerry Langford (Lewis), a famous comedian and talk show host, Rupert believes his “big break” has finally come. He attempts to get a place on the show, but is continually rebuffed by Langford’s staff and, finally, by Langford himself.

Along the way, Rupert indulges in elaborate and obsessive fantasies where he and Langford are colleagues and friends. He even takes a date, Rita, to Langford’s home, uninvited, trying to impress her.

When the straight approach does not work, Rupert hatches a kidnapping plot with the help of Masha (Sandra Bernhard), a stalker who is also obsessed with Langford. As ransom, Rupert demands that he be given the opening spot on that evening’s Jerry Langford Show (guest hosted by Tony Randall), and that the show be broadcast in normal fashion. The network brass, lawyers, and the FBI agree, with the understanding that Langford will be released once the show airs. Between the taping of the show and the broadcast, Masha has her “dream date” with Langford, who is duct-taped to a chair in her parents’ Manhattan townhouse. Jerry convinces her to untie him and escapes.

Rupert’s stand-up routine is well-received. He closes by confessing to the audience that he kidnapped Jerry Langford in order to break into show business. The studio audience laughs, thinking that it is a part of his act. Rupert responds by saying, “Tomorrow you’ll know I wasn’t kidding and you’ll all think I’m crazy. But I figure it this way: better to be king for a night, than schmuck for a lifetime.”

The movie closes with a news report of Rupert’s release from prison, set to a montage of storefronts stocking his “long awaited” autobiography, King For A Night. The report informs that Rupert still considers Jerry Langford his mentor and friend, and that he and his agent are currently weighing several “attractive offers.”

The final scene shows Rupert taking the stage for an apparent TV special with a live audience and an announcer enthusiastically introducing and praising him.

Spectatorship: Popular Film and Emotional Response

 

 

This study is concerned with the ways in which popular film (whether deriving from Hollywood or elsewhere) produces powerful sensory and emotional responses in the spectator. It is possible to focus on a particular genre – such
as horror and consider shock effects – or the melodrama as ‘weepie’. Alternatively, the focus may be on spectacle, whether relating to the body of the star or to the staging/choreography of action. This topic is not concerned
specifically with either issues of representation or value judgements but rather with developing understanding about how films create the emotional responses they do. It is expected that a minimum of two feature-length films
will be studied for this topic.

In choosing a popular film designed to give pleasure to an audience, the first criterion should be – does it raise interesting questions for a study of spectatorship?
Let us take a specific film – Benigni’s Life is Beautiful. (which, by the way, is a ‘popular film’, an Oscar winner and a film clearly designed for the mainstream market in its country of orgin, and which has gone on to be a global best
seller in the dvd market.) Life is Beautiful tells an emotive story – designed to play on the cusp between comedy and tragedy. It is somewhat (!) fantastic in its premise but has a coherence within its own fictional terms. We may ask
the following questions:
– How does the film work to generate emotion, and here the emphasis may
be on relatively straight forward issues like the use of mise-en-scene,
staging and music or more complex issues of identification and spectator
alignment with particular characters?
– How far does the spectator feel consciously manipulated by the film and,
by contrast, how far does the emotional power of the film derive from a
combination of elements which are difficult to pin down?
– How far does the emotional affect of the film derive from contextual
knowledge, – in this case, our ability to respond to the film in the gap
between fictional representation and historical fact?
Studying this film alongside Schindler’s List opens up some important
broader debates about ‘good news’ Holocaust movies.
The above is a complex example – chosen to illustrate how rich and
challenging this topic can be, depending on the level of ambition.

La Haine

La Haine (French pronunciation: [la ʔɛn], ‘hatred’) is a 1995 French black-and-white film written, co-edited, and directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. It is commonly released under its French title in the English-speaking world, although its U.S. VHS release was entitled Hate. It is about three teenage friends and their struggle to live in the banlieues of Paris. The title derives from a line spoken by one of them, Hubert: “La haine attire la haine!”, “hatred breeds hatred.”

This film focuses on a single day in the lives of three friends in their early twenties, from immigrant families living in an impoverished multi-ethnic French housing project (a ZUP – zone d’urbanisation prioritaire) in the suburbs of Paris, in the aftermath of a riot. Vinz (Vincent Cassel), who is Jewish, is filled with rage. He sees himself as a gangster ready to win respect by killing a cop, and practices the role of Travis Bickle from the film Taxi Driver in the mirror. His attitude towards police, for instance, is a simplified, stylized blanket condemnation, even to individual policemen who make an effort to steer the trio clear of troublesome situations. Hubert (Hubert Koundé) is an Afro-French boxer and small time drug dealer, whose gymnasium was burned in the riots. The quietest, most thoughtful and wisest of the three, he sadly contemplates the ghetto and the hate around him. He expresses the wish to simply leave this decadent world of violence and hate behind him, but does not know how since he lacks the means to do so. Saïd – Sayid in some English subtitles – (Saïd Taghmaoui) is a Maghrebin who inhabits the middle ground between his two friends’ responses to their place in life.

A friend of theirs, Abdel Ichaha, has been brutalized by the police shortly before the riot and lies in a coma. Vinz finds a policeman’s .44 Magnum revolver, lost in the riot. He vows that if their friend dies from his injuries, he will use it to kill a cop, and when he hears of Abdel’s death he fantasizes carrying out his vengeance.

The three go through an aimless daily routine and struggle to entertain themselves, frequently finding themselves under police scrutiny. They take a train to Paris but encounter many of the same frustrations, and their responses to benign interactions with Parisians cause the situations to degenerate to gratuitous hostility. A run-in with sadistic Parisian plainclothes police, during which Saïd and Hubert are humiliated and physically abused, results in their missing the last train home and spending the night on the streets. They go to a roof-top from where they insult skinheads and policemen, before later encountering the same group of racist anti-immigrant skinheads who begin to beat Saïd and Hubert savagely, now that the balance of power has shifted. Vinz arrives and his gun allows him to break up the fight and all the skinheads flee except one (portrayed by Kassovitz himself) who Vinz is about to execute in cold blood. His dream of revenge is thwarted by his reluctance to go through with the deed, and, cleverly goaded by Hubert, he is forced to confront the fact that his true nature is not the heartless gangster he poses as, and he lets the skinhead flee.

Early in the morning, the trio return to the banlieue and split up to their separate homes, and Vinz, in a wise decision, turns the gun over to Hubert, relinquishing his destructive self-image and potentially opening the door to personal growth and a constructive future. However, Vinz and Saïd encounter a plainclothes policeman, whom Vinz had insulted earlier in the day whilst with his friends on a local rooftop. The policeman grabs and threatens Vinz, making reference to the earlier incident on the roof. Hubert rushes to their aid, but as the policeman holding Vinz taunts him with a loaded gun held to Vinz’s head, the gun accidentally goes off, killing Vinz instantly. Hubert and the policeman slowly and deliberately point their guns at each other, and as the film cuts to Saïd closing his eyes and cuts to black, a shot is heard on the soundtrack, with no indication of who fired or who may have been hit. This stand-off is underlined by a voice-over of Hubert’s slightly modified opening lines (“It’s about a society in free fall…“), underlining the fact that, as the lines say, jusqu’ici tout va bien (so far so good); i.e. all seems to be going relatively well until Vinz is killed, and from there no one knows what will happen, a microcosm of French society’s descent through hostility into pointless violence.

Bicycle Thieves

Bicycle Thieves (Italian: Ladri di biciclette), also known as The Bicycle Thief, is a 1948 Italian neorealist film directed by Vittorio De Sica. It tells the story of a poor man searching the streets of Rome for his stolen bicycle, which he needs to be able to work. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Luigi Bartolini and was adapted for the screen by Cesare Zavattini. It stars Lamberto Maggiorani as the poor man searching for his lost bicycle and Enzo Staiola as his son.

It was given an Academy Honorary Award in 1950, and, just four years after its release, was deemed the greatest film of all time by the magazine Sight & Sound‘s poll of filmmakers and critics in 1952 The film placed sixth as the greatest ever made in Sight & Sound’s latest directors’ poll, conducted in 2002 and was ranked in the top 10 of the BFI list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14.

Antonio Ricci is an unemployed man in the depressed post-World War II economy of Italy. With a wife and two children to support, he is desperate for work. He is delighted to at last get a good job pasting up posters, but he must have a bicycle. He is told unequivocally, “No bicycle, no job.” His wife Maria pawns their bedsheets in order to get money to redeem his bicycle from the pawnbroker.

On his first day of work, Antonio’s bicycle is stolen by a young thief, who snatches it when he is putting up a poster. Antonio gives chase, but to no avail. He goes to the police, but there is little they can do. The only option is for Antonio, his young son Bruno, and his friends to walk the streets of Rome themselves, looking for the bicycle. They search Rome’s largest square Piazza Vittorio, where they encounter countless bicycles and parts resembling his own. They falsely accuse a merchant of possessing the stolen bike, and their task seems futile. Subsequently, at the market at Porto Portese Antonio and Bruno believe they have found the thief trying to pawn the bike to an old man, and they chase him but he manages to get away. They then pursue the old man into a church, where they accuse him of knowing where the purported thief resides. The commotion disrupts the mass, and the old man manages to slip away.

During a rare treat of a meal in a restaurant, Antonio shares his shattered dreams with his son. Desperate, Antonio even visits the dubious fortune teller that he had earlier mocked. However, she merely doles out to him the vague and unhelpful, “you’ll find the bike quickly, or not at all.” Antonio hands over some money and leaves.

As he walks out of the clairvoyant’s house, he encounters the thief and chases him into a whorehouse. Antonio takes the thief outside and is set upon by the hostile neighbours. Bruno slips off to fetch a policeman. Meanwhile, Antonio angrily accuses the thief of stealing his bike, but the young man denies it. When the policeman arrives, the thief is lying on the ground, having or feigning a seizure. The irate neighbours blame Antonio for causing the “innocent” boy’s fit.

The policeman tells Antonio that his case is weak; he did not catch the thief red-handed, nor did he get the names of any witnesses, and the policeman is certain the neighbours will give the thief an alibi. Antonio gives up and walks away in despair, to the jeers of the crowd.

Sitting on the curb outside a packed football stadium, Antonio sees hundreds and hundreds of parked bicycles. As he cradles his head in despair, a fleet of bicycles speeds past him. After vacillating for some time, he tries to steal one outside an apartment. However, he is caught by a crowd of angry men who slap and humiliate him in front of his son. The bicycle’s owner sees how upset Bruno is and mercifully declines to press charges. Antonio and his son walk away, dejected.

Bicycle Thieves is the best known neo-realist film; a movement begun by Roberto Rossellini‘s Rome, Open City (1945), which attempted to give a new degree of realism to cinema Following the precepts of the movement, De Sica shot only on location in Rome, and instead of professional actors used nonactors with no training in performance; for example, Lamberto Maggiorani, the leading actor, was a factory worker. The picture is also in the Vatican’s Best Films List for portraying humanistic values.

City Of God

City of God (Portuguese: Cidade de Deus) is a 2002 Brazilian crime drama film directed by Fernando Meirelles and co-directed by Kátia Lund, released in its home country in 2002 and worldwide in 2003. The story was adapted by Bráulio Mantovani from the 1997 novel of the same name written by Paulo Lins, but the characters are not fictitious and the plot is based upon real events. It depicts the growth of organized crime in the Cidade de Deus suburb of Rio de Janeiro, between the end of the ’60s and the beginning of the ’80s, with the closure of the film depicting the war between the drug dealer Li’l Zé and criminal Knockout Ned. The tagline is “If you run, the beast catches; if you stay, the beast eats”, (a proverb analogous to the English “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t”).

Chickens are being prepared for a meal when a chicken escapes and an armed gang chases after it. The chicken comes to a stop between the gang and a young man named Rocket (Buscapé), who believes that the gang wants to kill him. In a creative move, the “Matrix” shot stops time and circles Rocket. Suddenly he’s a young boy playing soccer on a dirt field. It’s the 60s and this is how City of God came to be.

In the context of a military dictatorship, three impoverished thieves known as the “Tender Trio” – Shaggy, Clipper, and Goose – rob and loot business owners; Goose is Rocket’s brother. In Robin Hood fashion, they split part of the loot with the citizens of a favela called the City of God (Cidade de Deus), and are protected by them in return. Several younger boys idolise the trio and follow them around. One such hanger-on, known as Li’l Dice (Dadinho), convinces them to hold up a motel and rob its occupants. The gang agree but, resolving not to kill anyone, tell Li’l Dice that he is too young to accompany them and must serve as lookout. They give him a gun and tell him to fire a warning shot if the police arrive. Unsatisfied with this, Li’l Dice fires a warning shot mid-robbery and proceeds to gun down all the inhabitants of the motel once the gang have run off. The massacre brings on the attention of the police, forcing the Tender Trio to leave the slum. Clipper joins the church, and Shaggy is shot by the police while trying to escape with his girlfriend. Goose is shot by Li’l Dice after taking the younger boy’s money and his friend Benny (Bené), who have both been hiding out and committing crimes on their own since the motel incident.

The timeline jumps forward into the 70’s. Rocket has become a part of the “Groovies”, a group of young hippies who enjoy smoking marijuana. He develops an interest in photography by taking pictures of his friends, especially one girl that he is infatuated with, but his attempts to get close to her are ruined by a group of younger troublemakers known as “The Runts” (Caixa Baixa, “Low Gang”). Li’l Dice now calls himself “Li’l Zé” (“Zé Pequeno”), and along with his childhood friend Benny has established a drug empire by eliminating all of the competition, except for one dealer named Carrot, who is a friend of Benny’s.

A relative peace has come over the City of God under the reign of Li’l Zé, who avoids the police’s attention by having his henchmen kill one of the Runts, who had been committing petty crimes in the area. Zé plans to kill his last rival, Carrot, but is stopped by Benny. Eventually, along with the girl that he has wooed away from Rocket, Benny decides to leave the criminal life behind to live on a farm and throws a farewell party. Zé, unable to find a girl who will dance with him at the party, vents his sexual frustration by humiliating a peace-loving man named Knockout Ned. Later, Benny is gunned down by a former drug dealer, Neguinho, who was aiming for Zé. As Benny was the only man holding Li’l Zé back from taking over Carrot’s business, his death leaves Zé in danger and Carrot living in fear.

Following Benny’s death, Zé rapes Ned’s girlfriend, then kills his uncle and younger brother. Ned, looking for revenge, sides with Carrot. After Ned kills one of Li’l Zé’s men and wounds Zé himself, a war breaks out between the two rival factions that engulfs the City of God which marks the beginning of the 80’s. Both sides enlist more and more “soldiers”, with Zé providing weapons for the Runts on the condition that they will fight for him. Jealous of Ned’s notoriety in the newspapers, Zé has Rocket take photos of him and his gang. Unknown to Rocket, a female reporter named Marina decides to publish the developed prints in the daily paper. Rocket then fears for his life, mistakenly believing that Zé will want to kill him, although Zé is actually very pleased with his increased notoriety. After throwing a fit, Rocket reluctantly agrees to keep working with the newspaper and ends up sleeping with Marina.

The story has come around full circle to the start of the film. Confronted by the gang, Rocket is surprised that Zé is asking him to take a picture of the gang. Just as Rocket prepares to take the photograph, however, Carrot arrives and a gunfight ensues between the two gangs, and later the police. Ned is killed by a boy who has infiltrated his gang to avenge his father, a security guard who was killed by Ned in an earlier scene during a bank robbery. Li’l Zé and Carrot are arrested and Carrot is taken away to be paraded in front of the press. Zé is shaken down for money, humiliated, and finally released, all while being secretly photographed by Rocket. After the police officers leave, the Runts surround Zé and murder him in retribution for having killed one of their friends. Rocket takes pictures of the entire scene as well as Zé’s dead body and goes back to the newspaper.

Rocket is seen in the newspaper office looking at all of his photographs through a magnifying glass, and deciding whether or not to put the pictures of the crooked police officers in the newspaper, or the picture of Zé’s dead body. The photos of the cops would make him famous but put him in danger, while the photos of Li’l Zé would guarantee him a job at the paper. He decides to take the safe route, and the newspaper runs his picture of Zé’s bullet-ridden corpse.

The story ends with the Runts walking around the City of God, making a hit list of the dealers they plan to kill in order to take over the drug business. They mention that a Comando Vermelho (“Red Command”) is coming.

TSOTSI

Tsotsi is a 2005 film written and directed by Gavin Hood. The film is an adaptation of the novel Tsotsi, by Athol Fugard. The soundtrack features Kwaito music performed by popular South African artist Zola as well as a score by Mark Kilian and Paul Hepker featuring the voice of South African protest singer/poet Vusi Mahlasela.

Set in a Alexandra slum, near Johannesburg, South Africa, the film tells the story of Tsotsi, a young street thug who steals a car only to discover a baby in the back seat.

The film won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006.

His mother dying from a terminal disease, the young David (Benny Moshe) ran away from an abusive father and lived with other homeless children in a series of large concrete construction pipes. A few years later, David, who now goes by the name Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae), is leader of a gang including his friends Butcher (Zenzo Ngqobe), Aap (Kenneth Nkosi) and Boston (Mothusi Magano). After getting involved in a murder committed by Butcher during a mugging, Tsotsi and Boston get into a fight which leaves Boston badly injured. Later on Tsotsi shoots Pumla (Nambitha Mpumlwana), a young woman, while stealing her car, only to discover a three-month-old baby in the back seat. Tsotsi hastily strips the car of its valuables and takes the baby back to his shack. Pumla survives the attack and works with a police artist to create a composite sketch of Tsotsi’s face, which is then run in the newspapers.

Realizing that he cannot properly care for the baby on his own, Tsotsi spots Miriam (Terry Pheto), with a young child strapped to her back, collecting water from a public tap. He follows her to her shack and forces her at gunpoint to feed the kidnapped child. Meanwhile, rich gang leader Fela (Zola) begins attempting to recruit Aap, Boston and Butcher to work for him. After he takes the child to Miriam a second time, she asks Tsotsi to leave the child with her so that she can care for him on Tsotsi’s behalf, to which he agrees.Tsotsi soon becomes slightly more moral and is seen at one point giving a large sum of money to a crippled beggar he had previously agrevated.

Tsotsi decides to take care of the injured Boston, and has Aap and Butcher take Boston to his shack. Boston, who is called Teacher Boy by his friends, explains that he never took the teachers’ examination, and Tsotsi tells him that the gang will raise the money so that Boston can take the exam. To do so, they will have to commit another robbery.

Tsotsi, Butcher and Aap go to Pumla’s house; when Pumla’s husband John (Rapulana Seiphemo) returns from the hospital they follow him into the house and tie him up. Aap is assigned to watch John while Butcher ransacks the bedroom and Tsotsi collects items from the baby’s room. When Aap goes to raid the fridge, John activates the alarm. In panic, Butcher attempts to kill John with John’s pistol that he found, but Tsotsi shoots and kills Butcher with his pistol and he and Aap escape in John’s car moments before the security company arrives.

Traumatized by Tsotsi’s killing of Butcher and fearing that Tsotsi will one day harm him too, Aap decides to leave the gang and quit as Tsotsi’s friend. When Tsotsi goes back to Miriam’s house she reveals that she knows where he got the baby, and begs him to return the child to his parents.

Tsotsi sets off to return the baby. He reaches John’s house, tells John over the intercom that he will leave the child outside the gate. Meanwhile, an officer stationed at the house alerts Captain Smit (Ian Roberts), who rushes to the scene, arriving just as Tsotsi is about to walk away.

The police train their guns on Tsotsi, ordering him to return the baby. However, John urges them to lower their weapons so that he can retrieve the baby himself. Holding the baby in his arms, he is convinced by John to give up the baby. Tsotsi emotionally returns the baby to John, then is simply told to put up his hands when he turns himself in and the film ends.

FM4 : Urban Stories

So what are “Urban Stories”?
An urban story can be any film in which the city is a defining presence – in
which characters’ lives are defined by existence within the urban
environment. The words “power”, “poverty” and “conflict” all appear in the title
of this option. The films we will be studying for this unit are La Haine, Bicycle Thieves, City of God and Tsotsi. These are films with a contemporary edge which speak across national cultural boundaries – very often having in
common an exploration of youth cultures.

Here are some thematic suggestions:
– films focusing on the struggle within communites
– films focusing on the struggle between a community and the ruling power
structures
– films concerned with with ‘living with crime’ 
– films dealing with alienation produced by technology and social
organisation, including films set in the future
The films may also be linked by stylistic approach:
– films working from a neo-realist / documentary aesthetic
– films working with new wave / experimental techniques
– films based on genre cinema (for example, melodrama or comedy)

FM3 : Small Scale Research Project

This is your first piece of coursework. The challenge is to explore a particular area of film making and, using a focus film plus two additional films linked to the primary text, produce a detailed and sharply focused piece of research. The process of defining the area of investigation can be divided into
two stages:
The first is at a basic factual level, mapping out a broad potential field
of study: for example, with a particular focus on Unforgiven, how many other
Westerns has Clint Eastwood made as actor and as
director, when and under what production contexts?
Answers to these questions will lead to a tighter focus on just a small
section of the broader map: for example, the Westerns Eastwood
directed or the Westerns he acted in for Sergio Leone.
As the area of investigation becomes clearer, the second stage is
Entered where a critical framework will emerge as being especially
useful. For example, in this case an auteur study, a star study, a
genre study, an institutional study or a focus on, say, gender issues,
specifically masculinity, are all feasible.
Here are five different projects from the same starting point:
o The impact a film either starring or directed by Clint Eastwood has
had on the Western genre? (focus film: Unforgiven)
o The impact Eastwood’s performance in a Leone film has had on the
representation of western heroes subsequently? (focus film: The
Good, the Bad and the Ugly)
o The contribution of Eastwood’s star image to the ideology of films in
which he stars (focus film: The Outlaw Josey Wales)
o Influences of Leone on Eastwood as a director of Westerns? (focus
film: A Fistful of Dollars)

It cannot be emphasised too strongly that the Research Project is meant to
be small scale and focused. Students should resist any temptation toward
very generalist encyclopaedia-like surveys.
The focus on a particular film as a starting point should guarantee this. In
most cases it will be unnecessary for the student to extend beyond the
required reference to two further related films.
The other focus is on the area of investigation and on the critical framework
structuring it – which motivates and makes specific the kind of research
conducted.