Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Film for Friday 21 March 2008 (the week after next Friday's film)

LOVER COME BACK
For Friday 21 March 2008

 
TOO OFTEN film textbooks single out the most dramatic features of composition, lighting, or camera movement: dark shadows in film noir, crane shots in epics, geometric shapes in composition. This is for obvious reasons: they're easy to illustrate.
    Yet the art of cinematography is more than these, just like music is more than a hummable tune. In fact, much of the work of cinematography goes unnoticed, unless it's not done well: consistent lighting across many shots that involve many setups from different angles and, for exteriors, different times of the day) and an active (mobile) camera that involves frequent reframings and often invisible camera movement, because the camera moves on action or dialogue. In the same way, editing can call attention to itself or be (as is more often the case) invisible, because the cuts are made on an action, like cutting as an actor closes a door or crosses from one part of a room to another.
    For 21 March 2008 I have purposely chosen a routine sex comedy, Lover Come Back as the subject of film analysis. Gifted cinematographers usually avoid comedies, because they don't offer much in the way of dramatic lighting, working with shadows, expressive angles, etc. Yet if there is an art to cinema, it must be visible (with effort) throughout a film, even in a less distinguished film; just like the art of literature need not be only in memorable or quotable passages ("government of the people, by the people, and for the people"), but should be visible (with effort) in almost any paragraph of a good novel or narrative.
    Lover Come Back is one of three films Rock Hudson made with Doris Day, all of them sex comedies, with supporting actor, Tony Randall. Pillow Talk (Michael Gordon, 1959) was the best of these. Lover Come Back is somewhat labored in its humor and not as cleverly worked out as Pillow Talk.
    But the main focus will be on the mostly functional camera movement in the film (that is, camera movement that has no special beauty but serves mainly to make a scene more lively in film terms). Besides viewing this film on 21 March 2008, a good exercise is to see a movie (any movie) and focus only on moments when the camera moves; by doing this, one will better appreciate the continual contribution of cinematography to the art of a film.

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