‘The Passenger’ in Terms of David Bordwell’s

Essay Question Discuss The rider in basis of David Bord thoroughlys analysis of the elements that compositors caseise dodge picture. hold dear Perez de Tagle (12339949) emailprotected com European Cinema Since 1945 Module Code 2FLM7H9 Ian Green January 10, 2011 Bordwell (1979) criticizes the supposition that prowess picture exists as an offshoot of classic chronicle cinema. He argues that it is a means of tiertelling in its give birth right. According to him, artistic creation cinema has a caste of formal conventions relating to modes of toil/consumption as well as having a discrete fritter away practice and particular viewing conventions.Art cinema is analogouswise situated within the historical existence of crap hold of practice. In this essay I will discuss how Antonionis The rider (1975) crapper be classed as an art ikon accord to the elements that theatrical roleise art cinema as put forth by Bordwell. Historic eithery speaking, the passenger was make i n 1975, post World War II, cardinal of the conditions Bordwell states as universe a contri merelyor to the emergence of art cinema. Changes to the courts statutes regarding spud, the wane of the dominance of Hollywood cinema, together with an increase in transnational commerce, make the production of aims for an international auditory modality desirable.Correspondingly, branching turn up into hostile markets rudeed up a niche for co-productions. The passenger was likewise an Italian-French-Spanish co-production with Ameri depose star Jack Nicholson, shot on location in Spain, Ger earthly concerny, northwest Africa, and the UK. Bordwell argues that whilst themes may take issue across the broad range of scenes classified as art cinema, the functions of these themes within the individual films argon in fact logical systemal and make workout of certain muniment and stylistic principles. Of these he cites cardinal principal traits that endow be identified with art cine ma touchableism, occasionship, and ambiguity.It send word be argued that in terms of these traits The Passenger is a good employment of art cinema. Realism Taken in opposition to the classical narrative structure of superior Hollywood cinema, a number of differing characteristics can be drawn in contrast to art cinema. In classical narratives, a narrative structure based on cause and effect logic motivates the cinematic re positionation. This is generally present alongside narrative parallelism or mentally defined, goal-oriented characters. To this fetch up narrative time and space are constructed to reply the telling of the story in a linear fashion.In terms of cinematic style, the use of specific types of cutting such(prenominal) as continuity, cross-cutting, and montage serve well these ends, and characteristics of the mise-en- scene, cinematography, and sound further the plausibility and agreement of the story-world. These techniques are employed for the first march on goal of advancing the story. a nonher(prenominal) devices are utilized to create this unity of form such as the use of genre in ordinate to non completely create and likewise fulfil interview expectations but in any case to create discrete markets for production and distribution.Whereas classical narrative cinema is founded on the above, Bordwell argues that the structure of art cinema is far looser, and non compulsive by the cause-effect linkage of hithertots insomuch as the motivations of art cinema differ form those of classical narrative. Of the three predominant characteristics of art cinema identified, Bordwell states that the use of realism and authorship create unity and serve as the motivations in the art film rather than cause and effect or the sideline of a goal.Realism, meaning the use of real locations and real problems, also refers to what is considered hard-nosed. By this, what is meant is psychologically complex characters and psychological causation as irrelevant to external situations and events that serve as the motivations for action or moving the story forward. Whereas in the classical narrative film the characters are defined by clearly defined goals/desires/objectives and clearly defined traits, art cinema characters can be inconsistent, and prone to question themselves some their goals.Their choices are vague or non-existent. Realism in The Passenger After an initial decision to read the identity of an acquaintance he finds dead in an adjacent room, shoplifter David Locke by dint ofout the rest of the film finds himself caught within situations as op comprise to trigger off those situations. Superficially resembling a film from the thriller genre, Locke moves from city to city, according to a plant of appointments defined by the diary of the deceased Robertson.Upon changing identities by swapping mountain pass pictures, Locke is taken from one situation to the next by events not of his confess design but by those d etermined by the identity he has assumed. He finds plane tickets directing him to his next destination, and he goes to an airport trade protection locker not knowing what he will find inside. pursuance the appointments, the objet dart who was David Robertson unfolds, his work in Africa and elsewhere, his drives and point as a munition-runner to the African rebels.There ensue further mysteries as Locke follows the trail of the diary including the open riddle story of the call within it. Who is Daisy? Inasmuch as these motivations are go baded to Locke they do not enable him to internally take them on for himself. Whilst externally assuming the soul of Robertson the gunrunner, he is internally and psychologically trapped to forever be himself, David Locke. He questions himself throughout the film in regards to whether he will continue to hold out Robertsons mission as when he falters most whether or not to go to the appointment in lemony.Although he follows Robertsons rea l and situation-driven commitments, his own reasons for fetching on the new identity are psychologically driven. This psychological causation is what defines Nicholsons character and the realism of his inner psychological torment. The desire to be someone other than himself, to run away from himself and his reality, are what drive him. change surface so, these are not stated or admitted to himself. The film has little dialogue, and likewise even less of what could be considered as exposition. It is through the treatment of the film that Lockes psychological drives are indicated.Long shots, choice of framings in the extreme wide, focus on what may be regarded as unoccupied space, and a drifting camera, serve to show not what would be musical theme of as important or regarded as the focal point in classical narrative. Rather the protagonist is placed in the context of the landscape, places, and situations close to him. The camera have the appearance _or_ semblances at many times yon, disengaged from the action, wandering across a car-rental sign, or onto a small detail such as ants move up a wall, or sometimes panning to nothing.Thusly it is the opposite of causality in the classical narrative sense. In the way the camera moves are not motivated by an action, they emphasise isolation, leaving and be left. Rather than beingness told what to think via exposition, the audience is given opportunity to think roughly(predicate) how the external despondence of the central character are linked to his inner psychological workings, as those of a man in regards to his qualitying of alienation his failures in life are placed in context by the images of the barren, desolate, suburban landscape juxtaposed everywhere against him.Likewise the possible construction of Lockes world is also achieved through the films use of sound. Throughout the entire film there are scarce four pieces of music. The choice to use a minimal use of music, instead emphasising the b ackground, diagetic sounds draw attention to the feeling of being in Lockes world, You practically hear Nicholsons sweat, hear his breath, feel his pulse. 1 More over the quality of self-consciousness and the de-dramatisation of the action result in acting and characterization that are spare, subtle, restrained, forcing us to pay attention to either small movement or timber.The character is naturalistically portrayed through the unostentatious use of body language and gestures. Although little action is occurring, the culture is order toward lilliputian mimics, the look in Nicholsons eyes, a flapping of his blazonry. Nicholson as a character and as an actor can also be said to be on his own in the film. He is psychologically alone, and physically there is no competition with other cast members. Even the female protagonist goes as The Girl in the credits.And part the audience is on the one hand observing him from afar by way of the wide shots that dont get in there, at the r esembling time it is intertwined in Lockes fate through a foreknowledge that he is doomed. Authorship According to Bordwell, authorial expressivity is the second striking characteristic of art cinema. Through the use of various conventions of style including technological touches, motifs, referencing to other films, and conscious choices in storytelling, the author is foregrounded as the narrative intelligence, as the shaping hand of the film. This is achieved by ay of certain authorial codes, including the conscious production of enigmas, not in terms of story, but of plot. For instance, rather than questioning who the liquidator is, the audience is made to question who is telling the story, or why it is being told from a certain point of view as opposed to other. Other evidence of authorship include reference to other films as a means of situating the film within a certain ouvre, as well as playing with the idea of genre in order to set itself against genre as it is regarded a nd understood in classical narrative film.For while The Passenger from the outset could be regarded as a thriller with the motifs of changing identity, the mystery surrounding the Robertson character, and the idea of being cut acrossd, the way in which these elements are toughened do not hold true to the genres stereotypes in terms of moving the story forward or playing to audience expectations. Although these elements are utilized they do not pan out according to the expectations and outcomes they hold in the classical narrative genre film.In the car chase sequence, the pursuit of Locke by the bad guys, would in a classical narrative genre film would be utilised for the building of tension and would end with a predictably expected getaway. In The Passenger, the car chase begins thus ends abruptly and without the excitement of the good guys smartly and swiftly getting away. Likewise, the mystery of unravelling the Robertson character, of finding out who he genuinely was, is seco ndary to understanding the psychology of Locke that prompts his identity change.And despite the fact that the penultimate scene fits in with the idea of a big ending characteristic of a thriller, it is done in an art house way. Authorship in The Passenger In The Passenger the camera functions as a character/protagonist in its own right. The audience sees what the camera chooses it see. And in this way, the audience sees what the author chooses it to see, at what time, and from what advantage point. These choices highlight the authors presence in the shaping of the narrative.Antonioni is notably known for his use of adept style and motifs in the film, for which alone the film has find known. While some touches are more(prenominal) subtle and could go by almost unnoticed or are even illustrious only within the subconscious, others have become a spectacle discussed throughout film circles since the films release. Smaller motifs include the use of duplications such as when Locke s ees The Girl in both London and Barcelona sitting in the same position. Others are the use of the image of a ceiling fan in different locations.Homage or reference is also made to other films and directorial styles such as in the scene in the cafe where the focus does not stay on the characters but moves across to the cars outside reminiscent of scenes from Godard films like in the conversation between Paul and Camille in their apartment in Le Mepris. Self-reflexivity is also widely use as when Locke reads his own necrology or watches his obituary film on TV. Other instances include images of a film within a film, in news reports on TV, and interviews inclose within a TV in the news room.A highly worthy way in which the authors hand is evidenced in the film is through the disjunctures in time and space and how these are created. Antonioni utilizes magnify set-ups both aurally and visually in order to achieve jumps in time without cutting in the camera. For example aural devices such as the sound of a knock are used when Locke is listening to a immortalize recording of a conversation he had with Robertson. The knock on the tape recording passages the scene into the past when Robertson knocks and enters the room.The use of the aural transition is further used when during the tape recording conversation the conversation with Robertson on the balcony flows seamlessly from present to past and back again. If this were not impressive enough, the flashback aural syncing is feature with a visual technical flourish when the camera pans from Locke in present time swapping photos between passports, to the windowpane which frames Locke in the past with Robertson, their conversation from the tape recording flowing into the flashback.The action within the onscreen image is able to continue fluid throughout these changes in time. In another instance Locke is about to meet the rebel supporters and the church he enters shifts from a site of a funeral to a wedding, separ ated by a shot of his feet walking over petals on the floor. The sophistication in which Antonioni blends the aural, visual, time and space in this scene are consequently repeated if not trumped by the much talked about penultimate scene of the film, regarded by some as the most famous scene in film history.Although discussed countless times, this essay would not seem to do justice to the analysis of The Passenger without detailing it yet again in brief. In this seven-minute shot the camera captures Locke lying on his cognize as The Girl leaves the room. Without any cutting in the shot, the camera tracks forwards, out the bars of the window, and into the courtyard and back round to frame the room from outside the bars wherein the next time Lockes body is seen through the window from afar he is dead. In this scene, once again the hand of the author is seen on multiple levels.On the most obvious level is the visual technique, on another is the use of sound and image to create ambigu ities. These ambiguities will be discussed further in the next section. ambiguity For Bordwell ambiguity in the art film is the way by which the contradiction between the disjuncture created by the interplay of realism and authorship can be resolved. Through the conscious and view use of ambiguity, the gaps created by the hostile use of realism and very self-conscious authorial commentary are resituated so that the violation of the norm is made to be questioned as part of the meaning of the film.The conscious use of ambiguity forces the audience, when presented with a gap, to ask itself the question whether that gap was the result of a realistic motivation, psychologically driven, or an authorially significant statement or comment about the place of that event or situation in philosophical terms whether that gap is something to be considered in the context of the world in which the characters, and moreover, hatful in life are faced with.Antonioni, talking about The Passenger say s that I also consider it a political film as it is local and fits with the dramatic rapport of the individual in todays fiatWe are all dissatisfiedThe international situation, politically and otherwise, is so doubtful that the neglect of stability is reflected within each individual. (Dignam, 1975).Consequently, in The Passenger one is made to question the impact of the Third World struggle, the banality and norms of modern-day Western life, the alienation of the individual in society, and death amongst other things. Ambiguity in The Passenger Ambiguity is used throughout the film and even into the films end where the omit of clear-cut resolution creates an open-ended narrative, in which the play of thematic interpretation continues after the films end thereby baring the complexities of life. The art film reasserts that ambiguity is the dominant principle of intelligibility, that we are to watch less for the tale than the telling (Bordwell, 197961) Ambiguity, lack of resolut ion, things leading to nowhere, are made explicit from the start when a man riding a camel approaches Locke in the desert and leaves, ignoring Lockes attempt at greeting furthermore the camera chooses to follow the man riding the camel as opposed to staying on Locke, illustrating immediately upon the films commencement the films major themes of alienation, being an outsider in the world, what it is to be imperceptible/meaningless (Walsh).Likewise the identity of Nicholsons character within the film is ambiguous. As a British reporter raised in America contend by the quintessentially American Nicholson, inherent contradictions and questions foreground the film from the onset. His occupation as a reporter/foreign correspondent and what that is generally thought to reproof includes stereotypes of a thoughtful, politically attuned, ideals-driven individual.If these stereotypes may have been held by the viewer at the outset, they are immediately challenged and stripped away in the fir st scenes where Lockes helplessness, despondence, ideological weakness, and lack of inner purpose are revealed. When his jeep breaks ingest he futilely beats against the wheels with a shovel and in a position of weakness, failure, and submission he kneels beside the jeep stuck in the sand and throws up his arms saying I dont care.This is matched by further series of events that show his repeated failure he fails to get information from the child he questions about the location of the rebel hideouts, only later to the trek up the rock face with a train who is supposed to be taking him to the hideout but subsequently abandons him. afterwards in an interview with a rebel leader, the leader remarks without malice that the questions posed by the interviewer can be much more telling about the person asking the questions than the responses from the person they are asked of.These instances early on reveal and challenge any such stereotypes and give the viewer an insight into Lockes psych ology from the outset. Meanwhile, on more obvious levels ambiguity is created in the parity between Locke and Robertson as in the fact that both of their first abduces are David. Throughout the film ambiguity, interchangeability and recurrence are used and explored (Gilliatt, 19756). The Passenger is rife with metaphors and double entendres.In the scene with the cable car, Locke flaps his arms in a gesture that implies freedom, yet framed in the tiny car, dangling above the sea, Locke does not take on the look of the carefree. rather the scene carries a weight of tension as he hovers, arms flapping as though not in control quite the opposite to a show of joy or exhilaration. Later, when The Girl asks Locke what he is escaping from, he tells her to turn around while they are driving in the open-top car through the tree-lined boulevard. Memorable too is the story of the blind man Locke tells The Girl, one of the only keys the protagonist openly and verbally shares of himself.Where metaphors colour the film, the contradictions which bust likewise serve to form a unified whole. The story, or perhaps better put, what is to be taken away by the audience from the lack of story, is made more striking and powerful through the interplay of such contradictory devices. For one thing Locke is a foreign correspondent yet he has an embarrassingly poor grasp of foreign languages, French and Spanish. He is a ridicule, a farce in his attempts to communicate or garner information. In the scene where Locke returns home, he approaches his own house but he approaches suspiciously as a burglar would.The familiar is far-removed the foreign is comforting the distant places he travels to with The Girl are the only time it seems he can truly relax. Although she is a stranger she offers more support and comfort than the stack in his family such as his wife and the adopted child that the film only so fleetingly refers to. His wife, his home, the familiar and closethese are the ver y things which damp him and which he is trying to run away from the foreign is where he is more at home and where he can simply stop and look at the view. Alternately, we are not made to empathize with the character.The use of preponderantly subjective shots results in creating little sympathy for Locke, nor do the depiction of his character as unprincipled, weak, and lacking in self-determination. Yet on the other hand we are made to see the universality of his situation, as an everyman character, he is made to flirt the dissatisfaction inherent within modern society. Through him and his psychological engagement the audience is made to question social norms through the vehicle of a subjective character study. Inevitably the viewer cannot but ask himself questions.Antonioni uses all these aspects of camera, sound, non-linear structure, and ambiguity, so that the viewer cannot escape the philosophic questions of mans place in the world, the search for meaning or non-search for it, as when witnessing the discontent, dissatisfaction, and desperation of the Locke character who on the surface fails to ask himself the stringent questions of life. Yet over the melody of the film, the internal psychological workings of what he is not saying become inescapable even as we watch a man who seems to reverse asking himself those questions.In the silences, as we are made to watch the details that he himself sees, we are brought to think about what is going on in the inner-workings of his mind, revealed only by his eyes, looks, gestures, and subtle movements. There are numerous narrative ambiguities or enigmas, random events that lead to nothing, as when Locke is waiting for someone on a bench when an old man approaches, stops to chat and makes a amusement from the story at hand to tell his life story. The image then changes as the mans story is told against a newsreel of executions on a beach.These then take the audience back to the newsroom where it is left to make th e conjunctive for itself of the relation between these events to one another. And what about The Girl? Does he really see her twice, sitting in the same position? If so what does this represent? Even as the penultimate scene serves a visual and technical spectacle tying up all the various threads of the story, ambiguity be and is further generated in this scene. Is the sound of the car engine kicking actually the sound of a gunshot? Is The Girl implicated in Lockes murder? Was she actually Robertsons wife? 2 Locke is in the backseat, he is the passengerthe passenger in the former life he exchanged (his wife was cheating on him, he was not finding achiever in his job) a passenger in terms of life in a larger sense without purpose or motivations of his own and simply taking on those of the new identity hes adopted passenger even as hes taken on a new identity, his last chance so to speak, as he contemplates over whether to go to the next appointment in the diary in Tangier to fulf il a commitment that is not his own for a purpose that he cannot embody despite taking on the persona.His very name Locke speaks to the plight of the characters situation itselfhe is locked in, running away, trapped. Multi-layered, open-ended, and open to multiple interpretations, the ambiguity that surround the meaning of the films prenomen itself have sparked debate. Whether the title refers to the originally designed script wherein Locke is the passenger in the car3, or whether it refers to The Girl in that she is the real hero of the film (Gilliat, 19757) attests to the success with which the film has and will continually challenge and provoke.With each layer exposed, another unfolds. By all intents and purposes, art cinema as described by Bordwell is exemplified to the highest degree in Antonionis timeless masterpiece. Bibliography Bordwell, David. The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice, Film Criticism, vol. IV, no. 1 (Fall 1979). Bordwell, David. Narration in the Fiction F ilm (Chapter 10) Methuen, 1985). Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. Art Cinema, in Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (ed. The Oxford History of World Cinema (Oxford, 1996). Lev, Peter. The Art Film, from his The Euro-American Cinema (University of Texas Press, 1993). Rosenbaum, Jonathon. Profesione newsperson (The Passenger). Gilliatt, Penelope. About Reprieve from Dossier of Reviews The Passenger in The New Yorker (14/04/1975). Robinson, David. The Passenger refreshen in The Times (06/06/1975). Dignam, Virginia. The Passenger review in Morning esthesis (06/06/1975).Andrews, Nigel. The Passenger review in Financial Times (06/06/1975). Walsh, Martin. Program Notes. (from reading packet given in the lectures) http//www. imdb. com/title/tt0073580/usercomments http//www. bookrags. com/wiki/The_Passenger_(film) 1 http//www. imdb. com/title/tt0073580/usercomments 2 http//www. bookrags. com/wiki/The_Passenger_(film) 3 http//www. bookrags. com/wiki/The_Passenger_(film)