Joris Ivens' Rain is stiking for its own defamiliarization. At the most basic level, the film takes an ordinary event - a rain storm hits the city of Amsterdam, then dissipates - then compresses the cinematic time of the experience while expanding the asbtract observations of city life and the poetic resonance of the rainstorm. Take as an example a series of five shots:
The procession moves from sheer abstraction of geometric pattern to more recognizable views of the rain. The spectator is asked, made even, to look through the rain, not just at it.But if this seems like defamiliarization as montage, there are other closeups that take the surface of familiar sights of urban life and emphasize their surface quality.
Mind you, this abstraction was not alone to Rain. Other city symphony films purport a similar observational gaze, and even the montage of a documentary like The City (think of the Wall Street sequence) makes it point by resignifying familiar imagery. But Ivens' film seems especially poetic in its nonfiction mode.
13 comments:
The thing I noticed about Rain was that it had a more unified view of the city. Whereas Dead End painted a striking juxtaposition between classes, Rain draws everyone and everything together under a single common event- a rainstorm. I especially liked the overhead shots of the crowd with umbrellas. There were no faces, just masses of people trying to stay dry.
I liked how Rain showed what happened to the city when rain fell upon it. We get to see many parts of the city, from the streets down below to the high buildings, and how they are all affected by the rain. The city is seen as one large collaboration with all of its parts working together to create the full city. The rain shows how everything in the city becomes one.
I think Rain shows this statement better than The City. The City, brached off from traditional documentaries from the time and created an observer's documentary. There was a clear message given in a stylized, but mainstream way. Rain controlled the viewer through visuals alone and allowed the audience to experience rain. Though Rain was more laid back, their subtle interaction with the audience was more enticing.
I thought it was interesting in how the director chose to intercut scenes of people and places and how they dealt with the rain with the more obscure shots of the everyday objects and features of buildings, sidewalks, etc., that one might not necessarily notice when it's raining. Rain brings the less noticed things to the forefront and shows us how all are affected by this weather pattern.
I think the themes in The City and Rain oppose each other. In The City, many of the problems of society are blamed on cramped spaces caused by the city, and the solution given is to create living spaces that meet with nature and leave open spaces untouched. This is a similar theme in Dead End, as the solution posed is to tear down the buildings and reconstruct the city, and therefore reconstruct the lives of the youth.
In Rain, nature is shown as being larger than anything that man builds. Where The City tells us that we must consciously bring nature into our living space in order to live better lives; Rain tells us, in my interpretation, that nature is always brought to us in larger ways, it just might take a bit of a narrower focus to see it work.
I really enjoyed the postion of each piece - in Rain, unity under one sky, in The City, the complete opposite. Rain was incredibly poetic, a beautiful depiction of life under a canopy of rain, and how more or less everyone and everything are just pieces of a giant puzzle. The City opposed every depiction and fuzzy feeling that Rain had initially drummed up - everyone was depicted as dirty, the poor literally, the rich figurtively, and it didn't seem that any amount of rain could wash that away.
Can I say that I didn't really like either of them?
I thought rain and the city were both kind of boring and my seat was ver uncomfortable, which made the expierence even less enjoyable.
I did like Dead End though because of the gang of hooligans. I thought that it was funny, even though it probably wasn't made to be that way.
Can I suggest that we find another room, because I could only see part of the screen and once again my chair was not comfortable. Just an idea.
I found all of the films to have aspects that I liked; however I would have to say that I enjoyed Dead End the most. In the film Rain I thought that the shot choices were great when it came to the angles that were chosen, something that I wouldn't have expected from such early film making. We slowly began to see a view of the city in a unified way as the shots progressed. Clearly this was the most experimental of the three films. Where as in Dead End there is a clear divide between the rich and the poor and an obvious social idea being explored through a fictional yet historical way.
One thing that I would like to add is that the bookstore only carries 2 of the 3 books. They will not have F is for Phony. I don't know if it is to late to put in an order for it.
As most people pointed out already, the City and Rain had varying agendas, both in their intentions and their production. I tended to better understand the intentions of City clearer than Rain, but i guess that's because I'm not a huge fan of the abstract thing. As far as Dead End goes, it was pretty interesting to see how the majority of the film took place on that one set, and still remained engaging. Also, I have to agree with TJ and say that the room/seating is not ideal for viewing and by the two hour mark I couldn't fully focus on the films.
I think I may have grown spoiled when it comes to cinema and what I expect to see when watching a film. That being said, I didn't appreciate Rain as much as some other people and therefore I wasn't able to read between the lines. I think Rain was a simple piece depicting the course of nature in a populated environment. What the directors overall point was, well, that I can't tell you. Maybe some music would have helped.
However, I did really like Dead End. I don't get to see many older films and now I am going to try more often. I think a lot of people would say that the point of that movie was there needed to be a change in the living conditions in the slums. That is correct, but I think it was also saying that there needs to be a change not only with the living conditions but also with the people living in the slums. They need to be the ones to step up, take control, and be committed to change. What reflects that in the film in the hoodlum turning himself in for the crime he committed.
For the City, what can I possible say besides they were the types of films Adolf Hitler used to to brainwash millions of people. I could never classify that film as a Documentary, but rather as propaganda for the masses. I learned to look through those types of films as a one sided insult to ones vulnerability.
Whether or not rain could be considered a documentary is muddy waters. Sure it was real people walking around the city running away from the rain, but there wasn't much more than that. IT was a beautiful piece that had images and rain drop patterns that were asthetically interesting, but some of the main points in a documentary were not there. For instance, what was learned? what could the audience take from it? What was the author of the piece trying to convey? No to mention that a lot of the actions of the people were staged to begin with. Not that a lot of documentary directors don't stage things for their films (rouche, moore etc.), but there were things about the piece that were so staged that it makes it impossible for the piece to fall under the category of cinema verite in my eyes. Either way, nice art piece, documentary I'm not to sure about.
I'm gone to inform my little brother, that he should also go to see this weblog on regular basis to obtain updated from latest news.
Review my homepage: direct payday loan lenders
Hi to all, how is the whole thing, I think every one is
getting more from this website, and your views are good in support of new visitors.
Feel free to surf to my blog post - http://www.ramadahotelleitrim.com
Post a Comment