Word: focusing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...director's influence is sufficiently strong in the picture that the focus of Boys as a film is radically different from that of Boys as a play, despite the fact that the script remains virtually unchanged. On stage, the center of attention throughout was Michael, and since he is the least happy and most destructive of the group, he set the tone of evening. As a result, homosexual critics (and the Mattachine society) jumped on Crowley for playing up the self-hating homosexual at the expense of the happy, well-adjusted one. In the movie, the camera works to enlarge...
...peoples of the three continents focus their attention on Vietnam and learn their lesson. Since imperialists blackmail humanity by threatening it with war, the wise reaction is not to fear war. The general tactics of the people should be to launch a constant and firm attack on all fronts where the confrontation is taking place. . . . There are no frontiers in this life-or-death battle. We cannot remain indifferent to what is happening in the world; a victory in any country over imperialism is also our victory, and the defeat of any nation is a defeat for all. The practice...
...consistent unity which he has developed beyond that of his earlier films. One notes the familiar traits of his camerawork: shots that track across a situation rather than into characters; telephoto lenses used at certain points to achieve selective depth of field, so that he can pull focus from a character in the foreground to the background. Beyond their narrative function, these techniques turn the background from a spatially articulated field of objects into a flat surface of colors. The only place where objects are distinct from one another is in the son's bedroom. Elsewhere we see behind...
...evidenced in the documentary riot footage cut into the University confrontation. The shots are good but impersonal, so Antonioni isolates specific incidents of police brutality and throws the rest away, uninterested in building a structured sequence from purely expository material. The staged part of the confrontation differs radically, with focus shifts and architectural space creating distances (parallel layers. schematically) between conflicting groups of people: Mark-watches-militants-watching-police-watching-building. With emphasis on buildings-their function as barrier and blind as well as their pure form-the slaying of the student becomes a certainty-before-the-fact, given...
...latter sequence, initially a strong and primeval love scene, goes wrong with the addition of Open Theatre couples miming sex, a curious semiclothed series of tongue exercises and reptilian advances, sort of mutually-indulged masterbation. Tone is destroyed more than central focus and Antonioni is forced to cut quickly-Mark and Daria after fucking turned chalk-white like the desert away from his logical climactic image earth-to a more conventional wide-angle pull-back of dozens of lovers dotting the landscape. Antonioni cuts to three panoramic long shots of desert terrain. The third shows: Mark and Daria...