[Cesar Chacon from El Paso TX, USA]

Schindler’s List is described as the black and white masterpiece of Steven Spielberg. It narrates one of the many stories that occurred during the holocaust in Krakow. Schindler’s List is different from other movies made about the holocaust because it has a happy ending.

The film follows the story of two ethnic groups, and strongly relates some kind of symbol to them. At first, the Jewish group is established as a very religious population with very strong roots. Candles are also related to Jews right from the start because of the menorah. The Nazis are related to wealth, weapons, military uniforms, and songs of joy. Oskar Schindler’s profile is given by very quick glances to the props related to him; which are: money, jewelry, wine, a suit, and a Nazi pin he is always wearing. In addition, the song “Gloomy Sunday” plays several times when Schindler is on frame, this is a very unusual song; also called “The Suicide Song.” It was written in 1933 by of Rezsô Seress a self-thaught pianist born in Hungary. Hundreds of suicides during the 1940’s were atributed to this song, according to police reports, they found suicide notes with the lyrics of “Gloomy Sunday” on them. There is a scene when Amon Goeth is holding a party at his Villa and two jewish musicians are playing at the party. According to the testimony of one of the musicians [Which is found ond the bonus features of the DVD], one of the soldiers asked him and his partner to play “The Suicide Song”. The played it around twelve times, then the soldier went out to the balcony and shoot himself.

At the beginning of the movie, Schindler does not say much, but the audience can appreciate what he is focusing on because of the objective view. The light that falls on his eyes makes him seem like a wolf searching for his prey. Schindler’s habits are very repetitive right from the beginning; offering brives, drinking wine, smoking cigarettes, surrounding himself with beautiful women and the burgeoisie, seem to be part of his very day life. For most of the movie Schindler appears to be very tall when he appears in the frame, but when he is in the frame with his wife, his head is always below hers, and he looks small and powerless. In addition, when they go to the same hotel where Schindler goes at the beginning of the movie, he focuses all of his attention on Ms. Schindler disregarding anything else.

The movie has a lot of close-ups to show detail. The most common close-ups made to props were the ones made to typewriters, ink bottles, official documents, and jewelry. The facial gestures of the actors are also emphazised, except for the German soldiers, their faces are not visible most of the time.

The content of the movie is shown trough a Hollywood style. For example, if the scenes were people are killed are revised chronologically, the intensity of the violence increases as the movie advances. The director did not wanted to show raw brutality right from the start, it is progressive, as well as the emotional change that the main character experiences. When Schindler is sitting at the table of the hotel in the first scene, he looks like a detective from a “femme fatale” type of movie, instead of an ambitious German. In addition, the pace of the movie is continuous. The director used on-screen text between some of the scenes narrating the historical events that led to the action that is taking place in the scene. The use of a graphic match to show the cross-cutting between Goeth’s monologue to Helen and the singer and Schindler is both compelling and dramatic. When Schindler receives a visit by a Jewish woman seeking to save his parents two frames are visible: The first is Schindler’s office and the second is the window where the interior of the fabric can be seen.

There is a very interesting character in this movie, which has become a legend and sort of a landmark. The little girl with the red coat, it is a unique character, which appears very briefly in the movie, but still is meaningful. She is the only character that appears with color when the movie is on black and white. In addition, she has her own music; the song that plays when she appears in the frame is “Oyfn Pripetshok”(On the Hearth).
“On the hearth a little fire is burning,
And it is hot in the house,
And the rebbe is teaching the little children.
The Aleph Bet.

Study, children, with great interest,
That is what I tell you;
He who’ll know his lessons first,
Will get a banner for a prize”
The song provides a very different touch to the the little girl’s character, because it resembles innonce and youth. She walks unnoticed, and people are killed on the spot right beside her, the she enters a house and hides in the the attic, for a brief shot the color of his coat dissapears. The little girl is most likely a representation of the Jewish people and their hope to survive. Schindler sees the girl but he is visibly refrained to to something to save her. Later he looks at her remains in a a pile of exhumated corpses.

The lightning is very significant trorughout the movie, in resembles the fear and the frustation expierenced by the characters, in other scenes it is used to focus the attention of the audience (i.e. When Stern enters the gates of Plaszow, the light that covers him comes right from the middle of the screen, illuminating tha graves wchich were used to build a road). Another scene when lightning higlights th dramatic essence of the movie is when the soldiers are looking for hiding Jews in the ghetto. The soldiers faces are in the dark, the flashes of the gunshots seen from outside the building provide a subjective view of what was happening inside. When Schindler is shooting water at the train cars the light seems to be coming with the water, and the Jews are in gloom.

The sound in the movie is used to represent different situations that often happen in real life. The over-lapping dialog that is suddenly shut when Schindler speaks, is an example of power. The constant ininteligible orders by the Germans, approching footsteps, dog barking, gunshots, people screaming, and women crying were constant sounds in the movie.
The movie exponds how the Nazis lied to the Jews in order to make them do as the Nazis wanted. How they tortured and treated them unhumanly. It is unbearable to see how people were disposed. It gives the audience a notion of how did the people reacted to the drastic changes made in their lives. The phrases used give clear examples of the confusion experienced by the Jewish people “this is the bottom” one of them said “the ghetto is liberty” argued another. The arbitrary murders comitted by the Nazis was one of the main events the movie denounces.

[Cesar Chacon from El Paso,TX USA]

Run Lola Run is a film by Tom Tykwer, made in 1998; it was the third feature film of this author. The techniques used in it are very interesting to analyze. I chose to write about this movie because I really enjoy movies that emphasize that the decisions that we make influence not only our destiny but others’ as well. The scene that attracted me the most was the casino scene, because it is very different from the rest of the scenes. Lola was not planning to go to the casino, and for the first time in the movie she is going to a place where she does not know anybody.
At the end of the scene before the casino, the exterior of the casino structure is shown very briefly (Approx. four seconds). Lola looks upward to see the “CASINO” sign which is written with golden letters, it is also noticeable the large columns that support the balcony in which the sign is placed. In addition, four statues are visible on the top of the building.
When Lola enters the casino, the hand rail that guides to the cashier is the first thing that draws the attention, because it makes you follow the line from left to right to where the next shots are going to be. The camera is placed at the top of the steps. The colors inside the building are mostly desaturated, brown and golden colors predominate. The roof seems to be very tall, and luxury candles hang with a yellowish glow. The other lamps placed throughout the casino have the shape of the pole with a screen opening upwards.

Starting with the cashier. All of the characters in the casino (Except Lola) are dressed formally; they are wearing golden jewelry if any. They are wearing discrete colors, and most of the customs are black and white. On the other hand, Lola seems misplaced, because she is wearing very casual clothes, and the huge rings she is wearing are silver as well as her earrings. The chips on the roulette table stand out, because of their bright colors. Most if the people that are in the casino are people over 40 with few exceptions.

Lightning in the first shot natural and artificial lightning is visible. A ray of light enters the reception from the entrance that goes left to right, and there are three lamps set on the upper part of the shot. There is low-key lightning in the first shots when Lola enters the casino and just before entering the game room. When Lola is talking to the cashier, the key light is set on the right side of Lola, the light comes from an off screen space that hasn’t been showed yet. In that same shot, no additional filling light is used on the left side of Lola, thus, a shadow is projected on her left side. Later when Lola enters the game room she seems to come from a dark room to a bright room. Using an overhead shot, the director shows the different sources of light, the key light is on the back of Lola, the redness of her hair is highlighted which gives her importance; a fill light illuminates de roulette table in front of her. In a shot where Lola is standing next to the table, in the background to the left there is a stairway, and light is coming down the stairway from an off screen source.

The scene consists in approximately 81 shots. The first shot is a dolly to the right, which focuses on Lola standing in front to the cashier. When Lola is talking to the cashier, a subjective point of view is used to show their conversation. The camera that is focusing on the cashier is at the level of her eyes; but the camera that is taking Lola is at the level of the cashier’s shoulder. When Lola starts walking to the left, the camera is focusing on her and the things in the background and foreground surrounding Lola look blurry. Later, the editing allows the viewer to see how the dealer of the roulette table interacts with the security guards without using a single word. When Lola tells the guard that she is going to spin again, the camera centers Lola in the frame and zooms in to show her gesture. There is a few close-ups of the roulette, and in some of them, slow motion is used to add suspense, in others, there is a combination of close-up and zoom in. The pace is medium throughout the scene, but it speeds dramatically when Lola screams desperately. In that moment, the camera does a combination of a dolly backward with a zoom in to Lola. After that, the next quick shots show how Lola’s scream affects several groups of people and certain props (the glasses breaking). At the end a 42 seconds long take is taken first showing Lola next to the cashier’s window an then it moves toward the stunned gamblers, it passes really close to their heads and then tilts up when it gets to the painting of the woman facing backwards, to show the clock. According to the director’s commentary it was very hard to take that long take because the camera passes really close to the actors’ heads; they had to redo the shot for several times to get it right.

The sound in this scene differs from the rest of the movie. The non-diegetic music at first coincides with the editing (when Lola gets to the cashier the music stops suddenly), but then it starts playing again to emphasize suspense. The type of music is more spiritual compared to the techno music used in the rest of the movie soundtrack. The music still has drumbeats, but the tone is significantly lower. At some point, the music sounds like a chant, similar to Gregorian music. The conversations that we hear are in a much lower voice. Lola speaks more slowly, and does not yell at all. When Lola wins the first time the sound of the chips sliding through the table is amplified, also the chips of other players bumping into each other sound. The highlight sound of this scene is Lola’s scream, it is the one that she does the largest. It sounds almost like more than one voice. According to the actress, she had to take special measures like not eating anything and talking the less possible, to achieve that ear-wrecking scream. Right after the scream a brief silence is kept by everyone in the casino giving the moment an “after the storm” feeling. For the last shot, the sound of the chips that Lola places onto the cashier’s desk is amplified, then, the mystic music starts playing again, and the beats start to speed up until it jumps into the next scene to a more techno beat.

The film style of the scene is quite different from the rest of the movie, but it follows the same pattern especially when it comes to sound. Sound and editing are the main parts of the casino scene, but that does not mean that the others are less important. In the film style of the movie, color is a very important matter, because Lola’s colors always tend to stand out where ever she goes. However, it is a very energetic movie, but unlike other movies, the character’s fatigue is not much emphasized, on he contrary she is always willing to give more of herself to achieve her goal.

I would like to conclude saying that I really enjoyed this movie. The
narrative really breaks the usual expectations. I read several negative critics to the casino scene, but they did not affect my opinion at all. I think that the scene really expressed the character’s feelings. It was encouraging to see Lola’s frustration burst. To see that she would try to change her surroundings, to break any obstacle that would stand in her way; just to save the man she loved.