Word: dialecticism
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Like Victorian theater and early film, Antonio das Mortes (1969) is staged exclusively in two flat planes: one straight across the frame, the other straight into it. The figure in the left of the frame is opposed to the figure in the right, and the actors in the foreground fight...
Thus the level and the nature of the dialectic evolve continuously as the terms of the dialectic change. Rocha's dialectical method is a perfect dramatic form: it moves fluidly from the personal to the collective level to the mythic, and back.
ROCHA's dialectic ranges over all levels of film reality. In one sequence the old landowner's whore Laura stands in the center of a mid-shot, leaning on a balustrade with one plant in left frame balanced by one plant in right; close in back of her a flat...
Through Antonio das Mortes the dialectic keeps balancing and leaving its crux, in center frame, to be the truth of the image and of the film at this instant. Sometimes a symbolic figure occupies the center between the cangaceiro and his opponent; sometimes there is just the space between foreground...
Korty's dialectic is readily apparent: The sailor, when confronted with repressive society, ships out to another port. Like the gangster in underworld folklore, he does not wish to change society, for it conveniently embodies all the ideals which he thrives on battling-ideals which he eventually wishes to return...