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Hollywood's Illusion of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard
 

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Hollywood's Illusion of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard
 

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In Billy Wilder's Film Sunset Boulevard, focusing on the most pivotal scene when Joe Gillis, the main character, begins to back is suitcase to leave Norma Desmond’s house, is way more than the moment of narrative tension between the two characters. It is a direct examination and study of cinema exploring the blurred lines between the separation of roles and reality from the perspective of the audiences and viewers watching the film. The way Charles Brackett wrote and Billy Wilder directed the character Norma Desmond gave an insight and a direct example of how Hollywood as an industry consumes artists and puts them in a situation where their performances are exploited. Putting actors like Gloria Swanson in a trap, unable to escape the blurred line and narrative that the views have created.

Examining one of the most clear, pivotal, and illustrated moments in the film, with a deep focus on the mise-en-scène portrayal of acting techniques in Gloria Swanson's performance, creates the overarching perception of her career following the release of this film. This scene in particular gave the audience a corresponding impression of Gloria Swanson being her character since Gloria, before her role as Norma Desmond, was a very popular and highly respected silent film actress. With her overcrowded successes with relics of silent films, the transition between having to overally physicalize and perform with no audio to performing with sound and audio has a big transition for Swanson. In this scene, Joe is packing his suitcase to finally leave the loop he has been living in the past couple of months. When Norma realized that Joe is leaving her, we see the clear power imbalance between these two characters. Joe, a struggling writer who is selling himself out just for survival, and a faded star who is clinging to her past identity.

With that context in mind, the expressions through the scene Gloria brought a physicalized aspect, such as exaggerating her eyes, open and long arms, seductive and yet unsettling inflections to her voice. The performance of Joe’s character was a strong take on realism in acting. The drastic difference I clear see between these two characters. What makes Swanson's acting so unsettling is the fact that Norma can't turn off the acting. Her entire life identity is filtered through her performance. The parallel between Norma Desmond and Swanson's career is vastly similar; the dangers that come with these similarities tie into what I had mentioned earlier is the audience's blurred lines between a performance and reality. With the casting of roles that can correlate to an actor's personal identity and career in similar aspects can reinforce the same box that Hollywood builds for its artists. Once an actor delivers a role with such believability, society begins to question what the performer is and what the character is. The scene not only critiques Hollywood's abandonment of its stars but also the power to define them with a permanent perception from the public eye. Widers exposes the industry‘s ability to put people in boxes, trapping them in the roles that once started their careers all together.

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Do the Right Thing is a 1998 film directed by Spike Lee that takes on a journey of a hot summer day in Bedford Stuyvesant, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. It showcases the lives of these neighbors as they break into acts of violence that expose the fractures within their own community. The film examines how everyday acts of racism, systemic injustice, and pride can boil over into a tragedy when people refuse to listen to one another. We clearly see this shown at the climax of the movie, where Radio Raheem bursts into Sal’s pizzeria, blasting the music of “Fight the Power.”

The atmosphere feels smaller than the previous pizzeria scenes. The walls have this orange, dirty pastel color to them with a saturated hue that can mirror the audience's heat. With photographs of the Hall of Fame, with only white Italian icons. Which is donating the camera framing, as radio Raheem begins to move towards them. The two very different colliding atmospheres from Radio Raheman's radio play music to Sal’s quietness in the shop. Which, from the audience's point of view, is symbolic of the way people of color try to activate our rights and needs through our voice, the noise white white people watch and wait in the quiet for the noise to become silent. We also see the contracts between the character Sal and Radio and these friends color platelets. From their bright yellows and red and ethical style clothing to Sal's dark cactus shirt. Radio Raheem and  Buganon demand that there be people of color up on that wall of fame but Sal doesn’t care to understand and begins exhibiting and outwardly doing racist behaviors.

As Sal begins to yell at the radio over his radio we can see the camera doing frequent dutch angles, which puts the audience into their confrontation. As the camera then continues to have tight low angel and close ups of Radio Raheem and Sal’s conversations all until we reach Sal’s breaking point where he draws the and beats Radio Raheen’s radio having the camera lingering on the radio even after Sal finishes destroying it camera still pans on to the radio symbolizing more than just Sal’s rage but a clear eruption of white fragility. Foreshadowing even the fate that Radio Raheem will be facing himself. Sal striking the silence by destroying their music creates this fearful and violent silence not only to the characters in the movie but us as viewers. This force of silence echoes how black culture and expression have been repeatedly policed, erased, stolen, or deemed to be too disruptive.

Radio Raheem breaks the silence as he begins to attack Sal for breaking the radio. The camera pans to an image of Muhammad Olie being punched to the floor, while in real-time radio, Raheem and Sal are fighting and Sal is being punched to the floor, showcasing the roles being reversed in this moment.  New sounds flood of shouting, screaming, crying, and now police sirens. When the police arrive, we can see their sirens overpower the voices of the community, turning a once-disputed noise into a silencing of the sound entirely. The cuts between shots begin to be rapid, as Radio Raheem and Sal continue to try to fight until the police pull Radio Raheem away. The pace suddenly slows down as the police now choke Radio Raheem with their batons. Silencing his voice, just like his radio. The frame holds on his face, being choked with his brass knuckles that say “LOVE” and “HATE”, catching glints of the red light from the cop car. The camera has us sit there, forcing us as the audience to witness the suffocation in a literal and symbolic way. His silent echoes louder than any voice of dialogue could.

These Filmic elements helped showcase the truth to Spike Lee’s vision, that one violent moment can lead to a powerful critique of how unfair the system has been built and how they are still built in our current society. The destruction of Radio Raheem's Radio symbolizes that the silencing of black voices and the way they culturally express themselves, while the police having Radio in the chokehold shows how authority enforces silences through both physical force and institutional power. The viewers are forced to feel the weight of this oppression and question why communities erupt when their voices are being purposefully ignored and erased. Do the Right Thing does not offer a simple answer to this question, but it confronts the audience with the consequences of a world that punishes those who speak up, highlighting how resistance can come at a devastating cost.

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Constructing the truth and Memory in Memento: Confrontation Scene

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Constructing the truth and Memory in Memento: Confrontation Scene

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Memento by Christopher Nolan we dive into the story of a man named Leonard who is struggling with short-term memory loss, trying to seek revenge for his wife’s murder. As a story that is told from the perspectives of black and white to color, Nolan uses reverse chronological order to force the viewers to navigate his story through a fragmented narrative, almost reflecting the disoriented perception of Leonard’s reality. We particularly see this in the scene where Teddy is confronting Leonard with the truth of his actions. Teddy tried to make Leonard understand that he had already killed his wife's murderer, challenging Leonard's obsessive pursuit of vengeance. The two are in this abandoned gray tone run down room, with an almost grainy texture to the wall. It is sparsely furnished, and shadows filled the room from their bodies that stretched along the crackling walls. This is very symbolic to the actual state of the situation at hand. Dark lurking shadows from the past symbolizing Leonard's wife’s , the vengeance haunts him, controlling his life and the cracking from the wall symbolizing the truth being told and the realization unfolding.

We see the camera panning to Leonard's confusions a full close up, it gives the audiences this almost disorienting perspective of him. The tight handled shots that follow Leonard as he cautiously moves out this little run down room close framing him budding this sense of claustrophobia, is visually manifesting the mental states of Leonard, and that paranoia that possesses him to the point that they begin to govern his actions. The low angle shots of teddy exaggerate his dominance within this particular situation showing teddy’s stability and reality amongst his thoughts.  The high angle shots on Leonard clearly shows his vulnerability in the situation. We can now see that leonards reliance on his memory renders him powerless when faced with the truth. The rapidity of the intercuts between each close-up on Leonard's face and cutting to a memory of Leonard's wife creates uncertainty about his mental state. The merging of memory and reality symbolizes his inability to differentiate the two.

The fragments of time being told through the craft of editing beings and a deeper underlying meaning of truth, especially because of how Nolan struggled the film to move backward and forward with color to black and white.

We see clearly that the four filmic elements embody the central motif of memory, that unstable, fragitilly and unreliability of memory and espeically the grief of a love one can make you think that you are morally doing the right thing but in all actuality to have buit a system for yourself to live by and to cope with the loss of somthing that is unable to be mended, leaving the audiences whne the hunting question, How can we pursue with truth and hold other accountable when the very memories that guide us can fail us.

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In Jordan Peele's Us it follows the story of the Wilson family who is on a family vacation when their peace is interrupted by a group of mysterious doppelgangers of themselves wanting to attack them, facing them into the night of survival and self confrontation. As the truth behind these doubles unravels as the film progresses. Focusing in particular on the ballet fight scene between Adelaide and her double Red, the encounter reveals how performance, embodiment and repression shape both women’s identities. The scene begins in an abandoned underground classroom, where Red slowly begins to approach Adeline almost in this rhythmic and calculated pattern. The camera tracks Red’s movement with medium shots emphasizing the grounded and deliberate quality of her steps. We can see the overhead fluorescent light flickering, the casting shadows across the floor.

This gives us viewers a chilling sense of coldness's but then the sequent cuts to Adelaide's ballet recital being mirrored by Red performing the same choreography in the underworld, yet her movements were distorted, uncanny and almost demonic. The original piece Adelaide had chosen was meant to be a duet, but she chose to perform it alone. Close cuts of both of the girls' faces illuminating from below. Her eyes have this glimmer with both pride and pain. These tight shots emphasize Red’s body as a site of labor. Her movement never had the ability to be artistic or have any truth to her own self expression, but more as a compulsory of survival.

Peele creates this symbolic duet between Red and Adelaide because their souls are tied to each other. As the physical fight in the present day begins the editing becomes rhythmic cutting between Red’s more elegant spins of dodging to Adelaide's frantic and unchoreographed strikes. Red in this moment seems to finally have the outlet of creativity that she once lacked when her truth of her potion of soul was the one being suppressed by Adelaide's privileged life. It brings us audience members to be aware of the thin line between grace and aggression. Red does not fight so much as she is performing the act of fighting, making it clear to the viewer that her entire life underground has been like a forced dance choreographed by someone else’s privilege.

The sound of “Pas de Deux" that has been re-orchestrated on to the sound “i got 5 on it” shifts between the soft plucking of strings to almost thunderous crescendos. Mirroring that push and pull between these tethered souls. The musical's syncopation makes the violence feel like a dance, that every hit in the fight feels almost in time with the music. Peele's usage of this ballet sequence exposes to the viewers the truth of the lie of singular identity, that the other isn't a monster but fighting a version of her soul that is being suppressed.

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Hidden in Plain Sight: The Social Class Blindness and Moral Detachment in Parasite

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Hidden in Plain Sight: The Social Class Blindness and Moral Detachment in Parasite

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In Bong Joon Ho's Parasite, it follows the story of two families, one wealthy family called the Parks, and the struggling family the Kims, as their lives become dangerously intertwined through forms of deception, labor, and the illusion of opportunity. The film explores the conversation of class inequality and how two sets of families live through life. One of the quietest moments is the most telling scene where the Kim family is hiding under the Parks' living room table after the Parks had an early arrival back to their home. The Kims movements seem to replicate the movements of a mouse, moving quickly but with delicacy. The kids swing their bodies to lie completely flat beneath a coffee table, reducing themselves to look almost like silhouettes.

As the parks begin to stomp down the stairs with heavy and fast movements almost like cats scattering down the stairs. These two families seem to almost symbolize a cat and mouse chase that happens throughout the majority of the movie. The parks began to comfortably lounge on their elevated sofa with their feel up and slippers on. This is physically mapping out the class hierarchy that is being directed onto the living space. Luxury is above and labor is below. The everyday household object becomes a metaphorical weight that the coffee table becomes this hiding space and a structural barrier, representing how close the kings are to the world of wealth without ever actually belonging to it. We then cut to the Parks comment on a smell of dirty kitchen rags unknowingly speaking about the “smell’ of Ki-taek . The camera closes up to Ki-taek smelling his shirt in fear, as the camera gets closer and closer giving the audiences this tightening effect that feels visually trapping in that is mirroring the social entrapment they are in.

Ultimately, this scene is making a powerful statement that inequality persists not just because the wealthy do things to harm the poor, but because they never have to see them or truly acknowledge their existence. Although in the case of the story the Kims don't want to be seen, I think it truly symbolizes how our everyday world ignores the less than because they are so consumed with their own problems. This moment captures the truth in purest form, that people can share the same room, breathe the same air and still live in a completely separate world.