Thriller Genre

Anxiety; surprise; fear; adrenaline rushing; that's how the genre I have chose to write about for this project can be defined.  Thriller movies are always full of all the aspects I wrote a second ago. 

The first thriller movie was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and it was released in the United States in February 14th, 1927: The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog.

The lodger is about the hunt for a serial killer known as The Avenger. The killer murder blond women, and he is on the loose in London. When a mysterious man arrives at the Bunting's house looking for a room to rent, suspicious starts to fall on him. 


The list of directors in this genre is long, below you can see a list of 10 of the famous directors in this genre:

1. Alfred Hitchock - Psycho
2. David Fincher - Fight Clube
3. Christopher Nolan - Memento
4. David Lynch - Mulholland Drive
5. Brian De Palma - Dressed to Kill
6. Quentin Tarantino - Pulp Fiction
7. Steven Soderbergh - Out of Sight
8. Fritz Lang - Secret Beyond The Door
9. Alejandro Amenábar - The Others
10. M. Night Shyamalan - The Sixth Sense

For this project I have chosen to focus in two directors, and more specifically, in two of their movies. The directors are: Alfred Hitchcock, of course, I couldn't talk about thrillers without talk about the thrillers' father. And, for the actual director I chose: David Fincher. For the movies: the classic Psycho, and Se7en.

 
Psycho
Release date:
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Top Billed Cast: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin

Marion Crane is a office worker who is tired of the way her life is going. One Friday Marion is asked by her boss to bank $40,000, in that moment she sees a change of an escape from her mediocre life. Marion leaves town, and travels to California, where her lover lives. Caught by a storm and tired of the driving, Marion decides to stop at The Bates Motel, just to rest for one night. There she meets Norman Bates, a young quiet man, who manages the place and is dominated by his mother.

 



Se7en
Release date: September 22nd, 1995
Director: David Fincher
Top Billed Cast: Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Kevin Spacey, Gwyneth Palthow

Two homicide detectives, Sommerset and Mills, hunt for a serial killer who justifies his crimes as absolution for the world's ignorance of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Psycho and Se7en are two great thriller movies with unexpected endings. Hitchcock is a master in planting anxiety without much action. Comparing Se7en and Psycho, in my view, Psycho is way slower, not much action or adrenaline, no blood or lots of corpses piling up, like is the case in Se7en, but Hitchcock knows how to create a fearful atmosphere. The score helps a lot, of course. 

I'm a complete thriller genre lover, so I have watched a bunch of movies from this genre. In my presentation, that you can find on the link on the end of this article, I added a few slides with the Thriller Timeline - unfortunately (or fortunately) there are way too many films in this genre for me to be able to add all of them, but there you can find the most famous in its era. So, I believe that during my life I have watched, if not in the full length at least some shorts excerpt of most of the movies I cited in the Thriller Timeline found in my presentation. But below you can see 5 of my favorites (so hard to narrow down) and that I re watched during the development of this project:

1.  Fight Club, David Fincher
2. Gone Girl, David Fincher
3. Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino
4. Memento, Christopher Nolan
5. Limitless, Neil Burger 
1. 
    Learn more: 
   https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TSl881bfP5KA72HWnLxsqW0drRyM17BTSO4j-a2xb-c/pub?start=true&loop=true&delayms=3000#slide=id.g5372653ca_00
   
   
   

   References
   
   
   Fincher, David. Se7en. September 22nd, 1995.
   
   
   Hitchcock, Alfred. Psycho. February 14th, 1960.
   
   
   Schwenkstar. Directors of Twisty Thrillers. http://www.imdb.com/list/ls002258766/ 

Casablanca and The Bicycle Thief

Casablanca

In January 23rd, 1943 Casablanca was being released in the United States. Directed by Michael Curtiz, the movie won 3 Oscars em 1944 - Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, and up to date the it is well known worldwide.

One interesting fact about the cinematography in Casablanca is the attention paid when Ingrid Bergman was in camera. The cinematographer Arthur Edeson shot her from her left side - hers favorite, "often with a softening gauze filter and with catch lights to make her eyes sparkle; the whole effect was designed to make her face seem "ineffably sad and tender and nostalgic." - Wiki

Fun fact: "The difference in height between Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman changes throughout the film. This is because Bergman was actually a few inches taller than Bogart, though to create the illusion that it was vice versa, Michael Curtiz had Bogart stand on boxes and sit on pillows in some shots, or had Bergman slouch down (as evident when she sits on the couch in the "franc for your thoughts" scene)" - IMD.

A good scene to talk about diegetic sounds/music and non-diegetic sounds/music is the one Rick is at the bar, after he sees Ilsa. In the beginning of the scene Sam is playing the piano, and the song is sad, melancholic. It fits perfectly with Rick's expression, and feelings. When the scene goes into a flashback the music also changes, the music now is played by an orchestra, and has a tone more joyful. 

Bicycle Thieves

The Italian film, directed by Vittorio De Sica, was released in the United States in December 13rd, 1949, and is the Oscar winner for Honorary Award.

We can point some differences between Bicycle Thieves and classical Hollywood films, but for me one that is very interesting is the fact of a non-actor in a lead role. Lamberto Maggiorani was a factory worker by the time De Sica cast him for the movie. Following along with the "real people" real speech was used, instead of literary dialogue.  

If we go deeper in the comparison and focus on the cinematography, we can notice that in the Bicycle Thieves the shots are longer and the focus deeper than in classical Hollywood movies.

In the opening scene of Bicycle Thieves we see a crowd of frustrated workers heading to work - or heading to the factory hoping to get a job. I think the final shot can be related with the first scene because in the end we also see a frustrated crowd, but this time they are heading back home, after a day of work, or a day of searching, like is the case of the protagonist of the movie.

References:
Curtiz, Michael. Casablanca. January 23rd, 1943.

De Sica, Vittorio. Bicycle Thieves. December 13rd, 1949.

Mooney, James. The Bicycle Thieves and Italian Neorealism.

http://filmandphilosophy.com/2013/03/08/the-bicycle-thieves-and-italian-neorealism/
http://evanerichards.com/2009/447

Wikipedia. Casablanca. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casablanca_%28film%29#Cinematography

IMDb. http://imdb.org