Film Noir

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.

Ellipsis

I experienced something very interesting yesterday. It reminded me ellipsis, transformation, time and change. I had to do a shooting for a project and I needed special liquid for the paint. Therefore, I went to see a painter friend of mine and took some liquid from him. We put it in a plastic glass and I left it in my room. It was early in the morning and he was just recently woke up.
I didn't know anything about the characteristics of the liquid and I thought I didn't have to. He just told me how to apply it to the paint and I didn't ask anymore questions about it.
After leaving the liquid in my room, I thought I might have lunch and I could hopefully do my shootings afterward.
After I came back, I realized that, the liquid melted the glass and was all over the place. The plastic had a strange look. It wasn't solid anymore but became much more into something more organic.
Because I didn't know anything about the liquid, I didn't realize the cause and effect. It reminded me that while I was somewhere else, something occurred in my room without my control but because of me. And this was a strange feeling.
One of the things that I immediately thought was the picture above. It is taken from the book "The Story of Film" written by Mark Cousins. Here, he mentions three filmmakers from different periods, who influenced themselves and changed and manipulated the same shot within the history of Cinema.

How directors learn from each other: Carol Reed has a visual idea, Jean - Luc Godard adapts it and Martin Scorsese modifies it still further.

At the same time, I thought about something completely different. Storytelling and Dramatic Irony.



Dramatic irony is described by Mackendrick as follows:

A situation where one or more of the characters on the screen is ignorant of the circumstances known to us in the audience.
Most stories with a strong plot are built on the tension of cause and effect. Each incident is like a domino that topples forward to collide with the next in a sequence which holds the audience in a grip of anticipation. "So, what happens next?" Each scene presents a small crisis that as it plays out produces a new uncertainty.
And this is a description given by Hitchcock about the relation between dramatic irony and suspense:
Let us suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, "Boom!" There is an explosion. .The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequences. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it... In these conditions this same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen:"You shouldn't be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb underneath you and it is about to explode!"

The American Heritage dictionary defines irony as "The use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning."

In my case, if I am the hero in my story and the spectator is following me throughout the whole story therefore their range of knowledge is equal to what I have, than what I experience and feel is the same that the audience has.(We expect the average audience not to have any knowledge about the characteristic of the liquid.) And that creates a certain identification between the reader, audience or spectator and the character.
Because I left the liquid in a plastic glass, it melted. Therefore I had to revisit my painter friend to get another one. And that was the main effect in the story. That I had to visit him again.
What I realized after I went to his studio is that he already started working. I didn't really realize the time has passed and I hadn't done any work until that moment. So, I was stressed. Something also was changed during that time. That he wasn't still hangover like I saw him the last time, but he started working during the time that I experienced all of this.