The Cinephile Fix

 
     Whenever people utter the word ‘movie’, the first thing that pops into the listener’s mind is a narrative fictional movie, be it horror, thriller, crime, romance, comedy, or so on. However, there’s an entire genre dedicated to art movies, and the reason why they aren’t as popular is because they are targeted to a limited audience, rather than the typical mass audience. Most people go watch a movie, to kill time or escape the harsh reality yet in order to fully understand an art film one should keep an eye on the highly symbolic content within the movie, and try to makes sense out of the movie, even though it might seem impossible to do so. The Golden Age for art films was the sixties, for it was when rebellious European movies broke most of the rules of the traditional classical cinema established by Hollywood. Movies suddenly appeared without having a satisfying ending, in addition to that, the characters within the European art films would often go through a serious of events that they have no control over, and unlike in narrative fictional movies, they have no choice. In the midst of that age, a director by the name of Luis Bunuel reached his peak, and at the age of 60 through 70, he directed probably the greatest surreal European art films of all time, for he is to art films what Hitchcock is to suspense movies. 

In 1962, Bunuel directed probably his most analyzed and controversial movie, “The Exterminating Angel”. The plot revolves around a dinner party that takes place in a mansion. At the beginning of the party the servants escape for no apparent reason leaving only the head servant to serve the guests. Later on the guests arrive and even though they have finished eating knowing it is time to leave, they cannot get themselves to leave the salon. Bunuel does not use a score for the movie; for he doesn’t need it in this particular movie because it would not serve any purpose. As for mise-en-scene, the only aspect that seems consistant throughout the movie is the surreal environment. There isn’t just one true explanation or meaning to the movie, for each and everyone will most probably interpret it differently. The following argument is not fact or truth behind the movie; for it is simply a series of interpretations, that one viewer (me) went through during and after watching the movie a few times.

The first reaction was that the entire movie was part of a dream; however, this could not possibly be true because even though the surreal aspects in the movie convey the feeling of experiencing a dream, it could not possibly be one since it isn’t told through the perspective of one character. It’s more like a presentation of surrealistic events taking place within a salon. The second affect it may have on a viewer is from a religious point of view. The title of the movie, refers to the exterminating angel who killed the first born child of Egypt, and so in order to make some sense of the movie, one could consider the fact that same angel may be punishing those high class guests. The exterminating angel does so by trapping them in an environment that forces them to deal with reality. Therefore, they snap out of their trapped world of mannerism. The angel punishes two lovers for having sexual intercourse in a small room with angel pictures displayed on the wallpapers by forcing them to commit suicide. At the same time, he forces the guests outside of the room to go through barbaric like behavior to show them the harsh reality of our human nature. After they escape, the guests end up trapped once again in a church, which implies that the angel now wants them to break free of their religious habits now that he succeded at breaking hem free of their high class manners.  In both, the salon and church traps, the angel sends them sheep so they could eat and survive. Both location are perfect for the angel’s tasks. Luis Bunuel was probably attacking both the high class of society and religion. The first viewing of, “The Exterminating Angel” is a very challenging one, and it is almost impossible for the viewer to understand the full meaning, still by concentrating on the details within the movie, one can at least interpret a meaning to the movie, even though it might not necessarily make sense.

    
Luis Bunuel movies are timeless in the sense that they force the average movie goer to think for a change. Instead of feeding the audience a basic story, Bunuel allows us as the audience to figure it out on our own leaving an impression that may last for hours after the movie’s credits have rolled. With “The Exterminating Angel”, the viewers are lucky enough to receive a statement by the director at the beginning of the movie. Therefore using that statement as a guide to make sense of the movie would be a very wise choice. The statement reads as follows “The best explanation of this film is that, from the standpoint of pure reason, there is no explanation.” He also warns that the some might find the movie “disturbing”, and that it may not make sense at all. Besides the obvious message of Bunuel, that there shouldn’t be a reason for anything happening and his obvious destruction of casuality where cause and effect is not a feature in his movie, Bunuel might have given the viewer a hint to understanding the movie through his opening statement. He mentions that the movie might not make sense, that viewers may find it “disturbing”, and that “from the standpoint of pure reason, there is no explanation”. Maybe Bunuel was trying to show that through picture and sound he expressed the strange and unexplainable aspects of life, the very things that we find “disturbing” and have “no explanation” for. There are two scenes where the dinner guests arrive, so they basically arrive twice in the movie, which might be considered a presentation of deja-vu by Bunuel better yet maybe he was touching on the whole history repeats itself concept. Either way, both fit into the categories of “disturbing” and are also one of the aspects of life that we have “no explanation” for. The movie is full of such material that made me think Bunuel’s movie may be symbolizing life; for life is like a salon, there is no escaping it.

Within that salon all kinds of disturbing and unexplainable incidents occur. One unexplainable behavior of our human nature is why people commit suicide, presented to us through the two lovers who commit suicide in a small room. The concept of dreaming is another thing that has no logic explanation, and Bunuel again touches upon it through the scene where a girl dreams and stabs a young woman’s hand while sleepwalking. In the repeated scenes where all the guests go to sleep, Bunuel might have also tried to express that at the end of the day, we all just go to sleep and accept the day as it was. Another unexplainable question is why people often choose to solve their problems using violence whether it’s war between two countries or a duel between two characters. The attraction humans tend to have towards violence is also evident  in the scene where the guests gather around the two dead lovers as a crowd trying to get a peak at what happened. The fact that at a time of crisis human beings tend to forget about manners and turn against each other is shown in the scene involving water  desperatley accessed through one of the pipes in a wall. These scenes all fit under the category of the unexplainable aspects of life and human behavior.

     The movie is definitely a study of human behavior in the sense that it includes a variety of characters with different characteristics, the judging ones, the perverted guy who tries to sexually abuse a woman in her sleep, a whiny childish man who still can’t let go of his mother, the two men who are addicted to gossip and talk about a girl who they assume is a virgin, the dying woman who looks forward to death, the list goes on and on.  Through those characters, Bunuel displays the negative aspects that are present in almost every society. In less than two hours, Luis Bunuel managed to touch all those various unexplainable and disturbing aspects of life, human behavior, and society. Throughout the duration and stay within the salon, a sense of a lifetime is conveyed, for just like by the end of most people’s lives, by the end of the guest’s stay inside the salon, the people are looking forward to death, one of them even yells “Doctor, why don’t you kill me already!” As the guests are finally able to leave the salon or “life”, a light appears at the outside of the building, just like “the light that we are supposed to see before death”, and the guests are back to reality. In the streets, soldiers are hitting rebels and the crowd, which was another subliminal message in the movie. Spain was probably under strict military rule and a closed society during that time, and the people were controlled by the military just like the guests were controlled by the salon being unable to leave. The entire movie is filled with unexpected events taking place, just like in reality, life is full of events that occur out of nowhere. We don’t know why they happen, they just do for no apparent reason. There’s only one cause and effect in the movie, the plot or material displayed on screen and the effect it has on the viewer. Luis Bunuel created a work of art with his masterpiece, “The Exterminating Angel”. It shouldn’t only be regarded as one of the greatest foreign movies or art films of all time, but one of the greatest movies period. Each viewing might cause an entirely different interpretation from the previous viewing, which is why the movie stand the test of time as a timeless masterpiece that demands to be viewed repeatedly.

When one thinks back to the turning points of film history, the first few events that come to mind are the first edited fiction film, ‘Jazz Singer’ and the transition to sound or the first feature film in color. Some even mention the extensive use of deep focus in ‘Citizen Kane’ and while all these events are clearly revolutionary in terms of the development of film as a medium, the use of lighting creatively is often overlooked. Exploiting light and shadow inventively to express meaning and establish a desired atmosphere made Orson Welles’ ‘Citizen Kane’ a significant historical event that impacted both audiences and film genre in many ways. In order to clearly understand this statement and acknowledge Orson Welles with changing the face of film history once and for all, one has to go back in time to the first use of light in the medium. It all started with the inventor Thomas Edison and his invention of the electric light. Edison understood the importance of light but failed to see the potential of how light can be used to affect the quality of films. In 1893, Edison’s first step towards focusing on film as his future can be seen with the creation of the first film studio, ‘The Black Maria’; the studio was built to rotate with an open roof in order to emit natural light when shooting films. (Wanamaker, 12) The key word here is “natural” light for this proves that Edison used light as a requirement rather than a tool to express. As films grew in numbers, they had one aspect in common; they were very well lit in order to show the audience what was filmed rather than what they want them to see. It wasn’t till ‘Citizen Kane’ was released that audiences began to see how light and shadow can impact the meaning of certain scenes.

            Orson Welles used light and shadow not as a necessity but to give scenes a certain meaning and atmosphere. He used lighting expressively to inject viewers with desired emotions. Prior to that moment movies and their messages were transmitted from the screen to the audience through the content of the film rather than the way it was shot. (Alton, 87) In other words, ‘Citizen Kane’ can be seen as the first time ever for a filmmaker to use the technicality of filmmaking in conjunction with the content to deliver to the audience what the filmmaker what trying to communicate. A perfect example of a scene where the use of lighting to convey meaning can be seen is at the beginning of ‘Citizen Kane’. After witnessing a news reel about the death of the fictional character Charles Foster Kane, the camera suddenly moves to the people behind that newsreel. They discuss how the newsreel has no originality and has nothing new to offer to the curious public. A scene like this can be shot in numerous ways and still have the same meaning but Welles chose to use light and shadow to specifically tell the audience what to focus on. (Mulvey, 52) By using a very strong backlight, Welles put these characters in shadow. All we could see was their silhouettes and the outline of the hands moving. Painting with light helped Welles tell the audience not  to focus on these reporters and who they are. The focus here did not change from Charles Foster Kane to the reporters with the end of the newsreel but stayed on Kane. (Anton, 112) It was as if Orson Welles was keeping the audience interested in the main character by putting the rest in shadow, it was like saying that who these characters are is not important, it’s what they seek that matters.

            Another similar key scene in ‘Citizen Kane’ that is visually striking the same way is after his wife performs terribly in the opera. Kane then stands up and claps his hands. Again the use of shadow is very significant. At first he claps his hands like everyone else out of respect to the performer but when he stands up and continues clapping, he’s alone and lurking in a shadow and all we see is his silhouette. The use of shadow here is very expressive in that it shows that Kane’s standing ovation does not matter for he is alone when it comes to his opinion. Welles saw the potential of what could be achieved with light and how light can affect the viewers take on what he or she just witnessed. (Mulvey, 101) exploiting light and shadow this way was revolutionary at that time and people were confused rather than impressed. It wasn’t till years later that people looked back, appreciated, and used lighting to affect viewers the same way ‘Citizen Kane’ did. Robin Wood, a well known journalist and film critic, recognized this influence and wrote about the influence of the movie on filmmakers to come from Capra to Hitchcock. In one of his essays he explains a similar use of light and shadow to have a different impact on viewers in Frank Capra’s ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’. Capra displayed all the scenes in Bedford Falls are displayed in broad daylight and all the scenes in Pottersville are displayed at night to have an atmospheric effect on the viewer as in good vs. evil. (Wood, 292) The influence and impact of lighting in ‘Citizen Kane’ is not limited to expressive use of shadows and light, one can even argue that ‘Citizen Kane’ is the movie that set the conventions of every film noir movie that followed.

Film noir is one of the most discussed genres within the medium for it combines many elements from various genres yet has a very precise style and mise-en-scene (Hirsch, 7). Careful lighting to establish a certain mood and atmosphere can be traced back to early German expressionistic movies of the 20’s and 30’s. Most of these movies were horror movies like ‘Nosferatu’, ‘M’, and ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligary’ (Worland, 16). While these movies predated ‘Citizen Kane’ in terms of using shadows to have a certain atmospheric effect on the viewers, Citizen Kane was the first to use mise-en-scene in the same expressionistic way in a movie that has nothing to do with creatures, murderers or movie monsters (Naremore, 32). The fact that Orson Welles adapted this style and enhanced into a genre movie helped in it becoming one of the most original and influential movies ever made. It had a particular effective influence on film noir and can be credited with setting the basic conventions of future film noirs. Most film historians consider ‘Strangers on the Third Floor’ to be the first film noir; however, it wasn’t till a year later that RKO released ‘Citizen Kane’ which created conventions that are now present in almost every film noir movie in the classic period (Altman, 103). In order to see the similarities between ‘Citizen Kane’ and every film noir movie that followed one has to rediscover the basic conventions found within the genre.

By applying these conventions on ‘Citizen Kane’ viewers will clearly see that Orson Welles created a genre movie that triggered a decade of film noir pictures. Most film noir plots revolve around an investigation of sorts, in this case the investigators are reporters and instead of investigating a murder or missing treasure, they investigate Kane’s last word, “Rosebud”. Another convention in terms of plot is that of narration. Again, the opening news reel featured in ‘Citizen Kane’ serves as that narration to the story that is about to be exposed. Film noir movies also tend to have specific characters like a flawed hero, a housewife of sorts, and the dangerous female that will break the main character’s heart (Hirsch, 32). All these are present in ‘Citizen Kane’ from Charles Foster Kane as the flawed hero, to Emily Kane as the typical American housewife, and of course Suzan Alexander as the woman who breaks his heart. In terms of visual style ‘Citizen Kane’ features probably every element seen in film noirs of the 40’s and 50’s (Altman, 71). The constant use of mirrors, low-key lighting, reflections and strange camera angles are all intentionally present in Welles’ movie to establish his desired atmosphere, an atmosphere that would be dominant within the genre. Other conventions such as urban setting and corruption within a city can be found in ‘Citizen Kane’ as well. It wasn’t till 1946 that the term “film noir” was coined by French movie critic, Nino Frank, yet Orson Welles’ influence on filmmakers and detective movies from the 40’s and 50’s particularly Humphrey Bogart movies came five years before the genre became an official one (Cohen, 13). So while ‘Citizen Kane’ and both its meaningful and atmospheric lighting is often overlooked, one can see how the movies’ status grew due to Welles’ recognition of what light or rather the absence of light can do to affect the overall appearance of a movie, key scenes and their meaning and an entire genre now known as film noir.

The historical significance of the use of light and shadow creatively in Citizen Kane opened the eyes of filmmakers to the potential of lighting, and various ways to use cinematography to help the content of the picture. Prior to that transition from using light as a necessity to using it expressively to convey meaning and establish atmosphere should be given as much recognition in terms of the process of developing film both as an industry and an art form. ‘Citizen Kane’ clearly helped in doing so and the reason for that being is because Orson Welles was given complete creative control over the movie by RKO studios (Altman, 7). This helped him take motion pictures to the next level by opening the doors to possibilities. In the late nineteenth century Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, and in 1941, Orson Welles used this artificial light combined with natural light to explore what light could do to enhance the medium that took much advancement to reach its current status. These advancements include editing shots to form a narrative, using synchronized sound, transferring to color are just a few major steps that helped develop film as medium. However, there are other elements that are overlooked, yet deserve as much recognition since the sudden progress in lighting that was achieved in ‘Citizen Kane’ helped make film an original medium distinct from theater and many other arts.

Work Cited:

Altman, Rick. Film/Genre. 3rd. United Kingdom: British Film Institute, (87,12). 1999. Print.

Alton, John (1995). Painting with Light. Los Angeles, California: University of California Press; (112) 4th Edition.

Cohen , Marshall. Film Theory and Criticism. Seventh. Los Angeles, California: Oxford

University Press, USA, 2009. Print.

Hirsch, Foster (2008). The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir. Los Angeles, California: Da Capo Press; 2nd Edition.

Josephson , Matthew (1992). Edison: A Biography. New Jersey: Wiley; 1 Edition.

Mulvey, Laura (2008). Citizen Kane. (52-53) London: BFI Classics.

Naremore, James. Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane: A Casebook. 2nd. New York: Oxford

University Press, 2004. Print.

Wanamaker, Mark. “The Film Studios.” Silent Majority: On-Line Journal of Silent Film 1, (12-13). Web.20 Jul 2009. <http://web.archive.org/web/20030223012726/http://www.silentsmajority.com/Bison/article1.htm>

Wood, Robin. Hitchcock Films Revisited. 4th. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989. Print.

Worland, Rick. The Horror Film: An Introduction. 1st. New York: Wiley-Blackwell , 2006. Print.