Minutes for May 2, 2005

The class started out with some administrative activities, mostly passing out papers and etc. Then we moved into the presentations. There were slated to be 7 or 8 presentations but we only got through 4.

The first presentation was on two films titled Insomnia. These films both take place in an arctic, sort of wintery region where there is no nighttime and no daytime for parts of the year. The presenter focused on the dramatic differences between the two films and how the main character was developed. In the European version (1997) the detective’s downward spiral was the main focus. It was very dramatic and focused on his mental state throughout the film. The film was more slow, and had fewer action scenes, it was a drama in the true sense of the word in that it focused on the events in the emotional lives of the characters as opposed to the American version (2002).

The American version was much more focused on the action in the film. There were more high speed chases and true Hollywood scenes. At the end of the presentation the presenter showed a clip from the Hollywood version and it was very clear that the focus of the film was on the story, the actually events of the movie. It was a very suspenseful scene where you wondered what was going to happen, and gave a good flavor of the movie.

The second presentation was given on the films Teorema and Down and Out in Beverly Hills. These films seemed to be extremely different from each other though on the same theme. A poor man comes to the home of a rich family and turns their lives upside down. The presenter focused mainly on the themes of race, class struggle, and sexual identity in the two films. The first version was an Italian film that she felt was a post war criticism of capitalism. The director was a communist who felt that a socialist system was the best system for the people of his country. In the film he portrays the problems of class struggle and even shows the father of the family deciding if he should give his business to the people.

In Down and Out in Beverly Hills, the class struggle is more obvious, but less political. Here it is a bum who is unrelated to the family who comes in to change the lives of the family he lives with.

In both films there is a correlation made between sex and religion, though the Italian version is much more focused on sexuality and sexual identity. The American version has some sex in it but is more focused on the identities of the characters in other ways. Both films also show the stranger bringing an aspect of authenticity to the fake and shallow world of the bourgeoisie. Teorema is a  much more serious political allegory, while Down and Out in Beverly Hills is essentially a Hollywood comedy.

The third presentation was on the films The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe (1972) and the American remake The Man with One Red Show (1985). Both films are about a violinist who gets unknowingly involved in an intelligence agency rivalry, and then falls in love with a female spy. Some of the common themes between the two films were that there is a lack of privacy in the lives of the characters, a sense of confinement, a lack of loyalty, and an overall sense of confusion. Differences between the two films were the way the women were portrayed, and the way everything was neatly resolved in the American version.

The presenter mainly focused on the different portrayals of women in the two films for the focus of her paper. The French version portrayed women as very subservient, and just there essentially for sex appeal. The main characters friend’s wife just wants an affair with him and doesn’t really have any other purpose. She is essentially very weak, and shallow.

The American version shows a much more liberated woman, the female spy is very intelligent, she is a main component of the overall plot, and she testifies for her agency in front of congress in the end, putting her in a position of power. The friend’s wife in this version is also more strong, but in many ways also a sex symbol.

At the end of her presentation the presenter showed two clips from the endings of both films. These clips really portrayed how the female characters in both films were treated differently. In the French version, the friend’s wife is just sickening in her weak and desperate desire for the main character. The female spy is not even shown in the end, she is being carted off in a box by the main character. In the American version, the friend’s wife is much stronger, she has decided to stay and help her husband. The female spy is shown to really take control of their relationship, she shows up in a car, and accosts Richard on his bike and kisses him. This shows that she is o.k. with taking a powerful role in a relationship, and that was a specific choice made by the American director of the film.

The fourth presentation was on the “film” La Jetee (1969) and the Hollywood movie inspired by it, 12 Monkeys (1998). The presenter had some problems at first with the equipment malfunctioning and so the presentation had to be cut short. La Jetee was a 29 minute experimental film about time travel. There is some difficulty classifying it as a film as it is made up almost entirely of still photos. There is only one motion scene in the whole film, and it is focused on the romantic theme in the film.

12 Monkeys follows a similar plot line but is not a remake, more of the completion of an original idea. The writers of the film used La Jetee as their inspiration but the director insisted on not seeing La Jetee in order to produce his film with out the influence of the La Jetee.

The films are focused on a story line about a man who has a recurring vision of a scene he experienced as a child. In it a man is killed and he realizes later that because he is able to time travel, he was actually seeing his adult self being killed when he was a child. The major themes of the film are time travel, urban decay, man destroying what he has created, and love and destiny.

12 Monkeys, though a Hollywood film, did not have a large budget and so the directors made some interesting choices about what to use for the film that really added to its value. The film is shot mostly in real rundown factories, and things that used to be great but that are now run down and destroyed. Both films use settings like these and they help give authenticity to the theme of urban decay, and the destruction that mankind has wreaked upon itself. In both films there is a man-made catastrophic event that drives mankind under the surface of the earth in order to survive.

In 12 Monkeys it is hard to know if the main character is really traveling through time, or if he is just insane. There is more of a focus on the issue of insanity than in La Jetee where this is not really a major theme. On the other hand, there is very little reference to romance in 12 Monkeys while that is a major theme in La Jetee. In both films however the main characters are haunted by their own deaths.