The Godfather

The Godfather is a story of the divide between business and real life, dark and light, and high and low. Through out the great film, The Godfather, Coppola does a brilliant job at revealing and defining this divide. This divide is revealed mainly between Vito (dark) and Michael (light), but there are also a couple minor characters that support this. Just as Coppola makes known the divide, what is even more brilliant is how he shows the connection between the two and how they can come together. There are two major scenes during the movie that show this: the wedding scene, and the very last scene of the entire film. These three critical scenes define the movie and show Coppola’s inventiveness as they are not fully revealed, but are implied throughout the entire movie using different characters and different viewpoints.

The opening wedding scene shows many examples of the difference between real life and business. One example is the scene of the Corleone family picture. The first time they try to take this photo it is stopped because Michael is not present. This brief moment shows the divide and difference between Michael and the rest of the family, mainly his father, Vito. Michael even states how far he is from the rest of the family as he tells Kay about how Vito helped Johnny Fontane’s career and then Kay keeps questioning how. After Michael sees Kay’s reaction to the outcome of the story, he tells her, “That’s my family, Kay. That’s not me.” Just as the scene is coming to a close, the Corleone family gets together for a second try at the family picture and this time Michael is in it and then drags Kay into the photo. This simple scene is foreshadowing to the ending of the movie, as Michael closes the gap between the family business and the outside world while dragging Kay into it.

The final scene of The Godfather defines the entire movie, as Michael is standing in the office with a distance between Kay and him and then the door closes to end the film. The shot that shows Michael standing in the office at the end of the hall and the side close-up of Kay helps define how Michael has gone from one end of the spectrum to the other. He once described how he was not like his family and now he is the head of the family, transgressing from light to dark. Another important action in the scene is the door closing as Kay is staring into the office. This explains how closed out Kay is from Michael’s business or the difference between light and dark. Since Michael is now at the dark spectrum, Kay does not see or know what he does.

These two critical scenes define a major motif in the film. Not only does this theme happen in these two scenes, but also through out the majority of the film. Without these two prominent scenes that define this idea of business and life or dark and light, the viewer would not clearly see this. Coppola shows, mainly, through out the entire film with the, developing character, Michael whose views drastically change during the course of the movie.

Birds, Women, and Psycho

After watching Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, twice, I picked up on a motif that seems very unusual. Throughout my second viewing I tried to pay attention to the mostly visual bird motif and how it intertwined with the way women were portrayed. These two motifs, while subtle, create a sense of tension in Alfred Hitchcock’s suspenseful masterpiece.

From the beginning of the movie until the end, Psycho uses the bird motif in several ways. The opening shot shows a bird’s eye-view over the city until it slowly zooms in on a half open window. It is also important to mention that the city is Phoenix, Arizona. In the opening scene we also meet the protagonist of the film, Marion Crane. The fact that her last name is Crane, also refers to a bird.  According to Brigitte Peucker’s, The Material Image: Art And the Real in Film, “stuffed bird” is a British reference to a desirable woman, leading the audience to believe that Marion is the quintessential “stuffed bird/desirable woman.”

Marion is seen as desirable from the beginning of the film. Starting from the controversial opening scene of her in bed with her lover. One of the most iconic scenes that employ this is the infamous shower scene. Not only do the storm clouds foreshadow her early death, but also the death of Marion in the shower could be considered the most sensual yet terrifying scene in the film. Birds are used again at the end of this scene. When Norman sees the murder that happened in the bathroom, he looks in horror and knocks one of the photos of the birds off the wall. The photo hints that Norman is actually the killer in the film because of the previous representation of Marion as a little bird.

In the mind of Norman Bates, Marion is his ideal desirable woman. Norman’s strange way of thinking about women is first shown through in the relationship with his mother. The method of preservation that Norman uses for his mother is similar to his preservation of the stuffed birds we see in his office. The incidents that follow between Norman and his “mother” imply an incestuous sexual relationship with his mother. This is what explains to the audience why Norman murdered his mother when he discovered her in bed with her lover and killed them both.

Throughout the film, we see Mrs. Bates through reflections and shadows, which could be seen as foreshadowing her to be the killer. We see her shadowed silhouette in the window and as the figure that stabs Marion. The mother begins as something of a mystery: we first see her silhouetted against a window. Her image becomes that of a shadowy figure, in the house on the hill. Ultimately we see Norman carry his mother to the cellar, but we don’t see her face. Because we don’t see her face, suspense builds until the very end, when we realize that the mother is not living; she is merely a figment of Norman’s divided psyche. As the film is coming to an end, Hitchcock’s makes one final bird analogy through the mother personality of Norman, who says, “I am just as harmless as one of those stuffed birds.” Hitchcock was a twisted genius who used birds as one of his many motifs to create suspense in Psycho.

Group 2 - Link to the audio for the director's commentary for the short film, Citizen Different



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEUUOuGzpIY&feature=plcp

Group 2 Short Film- Citizen Different