Word: films
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Thus the German myth's appearance in Blue Angel makes it seem an Expressionist film. But the weight of this material, the subject of the film, should not obscure our view of Sternberg's treatment of that material, for it's his treatment that is crucial to the film's meaning, especially for Jannings and Dietrich...
...lamp, together with Sternberg's handling of depth and sets, set up a pleasant and very restricted environment out of which Jannings' character develops. But the same symbols have a deeper meaning which, through their integration into Sternberg's dramatic and visual scheme, establishes the pattern of the entire film. In this system the attraction of light is a crucial motivation of personal behavior, and Jannings' blindness to the globe behind him appears simultaneously with a restriction of depth that expresses the limitations of his moral and perceptual experience. The sudden manifestation of death (which had existed before the film...
...impingement of settings and objects on Jannings' security climaxes in a song sequence where Jannings seated in a theater box, is distracted by a ship's nude figurehead and other sexual objects. But his attention is captured by the true embodiment of these themes, namely Dietrich, and as the film proceeds her power in his perceptions transcends all else...
...high-angle, expressing the degree of freedom in even Jannings' most desperate action. Indeed, Sternberg cuts away to a doorway rather than showing Jannings being strait-jacketed. Later released, he returns to his old school desk to die the death of all Expressionist heroes. But Sternberg ends the film with shots of Dietrich, the burning Romantic figure and object, so that even in the person of the protagonists Sternberg's system triumphs over the Expressionistic scheme...
Such is the slight story of Tropici, a film about modern-day Brazil made by an Italian, Gianni Amico, for Italian television. But the content of Tropici is primarily political: the effects of foreign exploitation on a Third World nation. Amico has correctly realized that traditional narrative, no matter how portentous, is inadequate for describing a social reality that lies beneath surface story lines. Therefore he has interweaved his narrative with a conventional documentary which attempts to set Miguel's story in context, to explain in party why Miguel is unskilled, why a country so rich in resources...