Word: foregrounded
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...cling close to the earth. The scene depicts the farm bought by his father, a Barcelona goldsmith, at Montroig, a coastal village in Catalonia. For all its literalness, the painting is anything but realistic. By its microscopic stylization, it turns each detail, including the lizard and snail in the foreground, into a symbol. "I wanted," recalls Miró, "to penetrate into the spirit of objects. I realized the cubists had made a great revolution, but it was strictly a plastic revolution. I wanted to go beyond the plastic aspect, to get to the spirit of the thing...
...Savage Seven begins with a bare-chested Indian looming in the foreground, knife in hand. Another brave leaps forward and they begin to grapple to the death. Then comes an offscreen voice, "Will you guys quit screwing around?" The time is the present, and the Indians are a bunch of tribesmen trapped in a California poverty pocket. From out of the hills comes the Enemy, on wheels-and suddenly the ignoble savages find themselves in a stereotypical motorcycle picture...
...that toys with depth by distorting perspective. The two largest Braques in the collection are masterworks. The first, a "Still Life with Fruit and Mandolin," overlays lavendar and greys; its design breaks down objects into pattern and builds up pattern just enough to suggest objects. The distinctions between foreground and background are distorted, objects merge with and emerge from their surroundings, while color and pattern interact in such a way that the idea of color as attached to form breaks down...
...doors are not the only items that swing in the film's Arizona saloon. In the background, steamy Tornado Lou (Veta Fialova) belts out her numbers in between brawls; in the foreground, the archvillains, Horace and Doug Badman, discover that they are brothers when they spot moles the size of silver dollars on each other's wrists. Enter Winifred Goodman, a piquant blonde who lectures the customers on the evils of drink. She is met with a shower of catcalls and booze. But then appears Lemonade Joe, played by Karel Fiala, an actor who looks like a reincarnation...
...longer need adhere to the convention that a movie should have a beginning, middle and end. Chronological sequence is not so much a necessity as a luxury. The slow, logical flashback has given way to the abrupt shift in scene. Time can be jumbled on the screen-its foreground and background as mixed as they are in the human mind. Plot can diminish in a forest of effects and accidents; motivations can be done away with, loose ends ignored, as the audience, in effect, is invited to become the scenarist's collaborator, filling in the gaps he left...