I have a great desire to write more about Almodóvar these days, as I loved his last film "Broken Embraces", for me it was a perfect mixture of melodrama, film noir and Pop Art. And I love every one of them. As I understood from his interviews, he is a director who repeatedly sets his stories on his memoir and souvenirs and tries to borrow from everywhere that he adores and his films are the melting pots of his own dreams, fears and interpretations.
There is always one single fact in film noir. The existence of a dangerous woman. For me, today, was "Volver" day and I don't seem to recall a better composition (see above) to describe what film noir is in any of the films that I have seen before. The breasts of the beautiful actress Penelope Cruz seem perfectly the right spot for the audience to look at but on the left side of the composition, we see Penelope's hands washing a knife. But we are not aware of it since we are stuck to these two beautiful breasts and we ignore completely the dangerous side of the character. If you have already seen the film, you will know what comes in the next scene, and will understand what I am talking about.
Douglas Sirk is considered to be the master of melodramas especially the films that he did between the years 52 to 56. Today, very few melodramas are shot but from time to time, what I would call great film directors revisit the genre. Almodóvar is one of them. Todd Haynes also explored the genre in 2002 with "Far From Heaven" heavily influenced by Sirk's "All That Heaven Allows" and of course Sidney Lumet's films can be considered to be a melodrama. I was very surprised when I found out that Lumet considered "Silence of the Lamps" one of the great melodramatic films of all time because he said there is nothing more melodramatic than a man eating human flesh. Now, that's a definition we can not find in any of the books I think!
But what makes Almodóvar's melodramas so unique is his use of vivid colors especially red heavily borrowed from Pop Art.
very well analyzed. congrats
YanıtlaSilThank you! :)
YanıtlaSili think melodramas and film noir are very interrelated genres when you regard of represantation of woman. as a theory, one of the reason of emerging figure of femme fatale is that men were away from home during second world war. in that period women are much more integrated social and business life. This created a iamge of woman economically free and sexually avaliable... this kind of view leads to this kind of dangerous women. after the end of war, social roles were reorganized again. Men were outside again, women were at home. however when you look at the melodramas of 50's you can still see the fear of "free woman" who are actually domesticated again. very clever filmmakers are fusing the femme fatale and housewifes from that time, i think:)
YanıtlaSilYes, that is great. In that sense, I was very inspired by Sam Mendes Revolutionary Road!
YanıtlaSil