Word: backgrounder
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...seem to evoke her entire life at each turn. The characters appear at the center of the frame, bordered by these objects but backed by depth. The ringmaster dominates the scene simply through his bulk and closer position to the camera, but Lola remains independent of him in the background. The ringmaster's commands ("Stop walking like that--stay still") and his speeches destroy the illusion of free action. In a terrifying kiss the ringmaster at last discards for a moment his detached domination of the scene, covers her figure entirely (we see only his back to the camera...
Cesar Chavez came to his mission from a background of poverty and prejudice that is a paradigm of that of many Chicanes. Like most Mexican...
...dreams of becoming a Navy bombardier; Chuichi, a bitter boy who has been summarily dropped out of an American Army paratroop unit. Harold, a literate older brother, irreverently sabotages the ultra-patriotic camp newspaper by inventing a comic-strip character known as "the Nippon Pimpernel." Against an otherworldly background of Screenland magazines, Baby Ruth candy bars, and zoot suiters jitterbugging to the music of "the Jive Bombers, the true Mi-kados of swing," camp life is not all camp. The prisoners are soon polarized into two groups. On the one hand are the Super Japanese, paying homage to the Emperor...
...unwilling to take any action (collective or individual) about their total situation, react violently when any single person tries to get ahead of them. The central fact is their enmity to each other, realized both in their actions and in the blaring horns that gives the situation its proper background...
...pebbles, grass) to find their meanings, is set afire after she declares "End the daily murder! Cover flowers with flames!" In this sequence--as in sequences where they ignore a figure reading Rousseau, and interrupt a beautiful rendition of a Mozart sonata--the characters are merely destroying the cultural background of their bourgeois society. The beauty of Godard's compositions and camera motions in these sequences in undermined by their violent, petty responses, which begin to pull the film apart. In Godard's other films such scenes give the characters an opportunity to express and develop their sensibilities; here they...