Schindler’s List

World War Two was a dark time in the history of the world.  During this brutal war, the Holocaust took place.   Although Schindler’s List has this historic aspect, it also holds many other film characteristics that I will be discussing in this blog post.

Schindler’s List takes place in the Holocaust and surrounds itself around one human being who saved many. There are many aspects of Schindler’s List that contributed and made it such a strong and influential movie. However, Mise en scène plays a crucial role in the film that causes it to be so powerful. The setting of the film mostly takes place in the concentration camps where countless people were tortured and murdered, creating both a sense of location and a mood that reflects a character’s emotional state of mind.  This creates a connection that between the characters and the audience.  The audience begins to really pull for the characters.  

There were many ideologies that were shown in the this film.  The ideology that seemed the most interesting to me was the ideology of which party belonged.  The film opens with the Nazi occupation of Poland and their decree forcing all Jews to relocate to the cities.  This is when we see the character, Oskar Schindler.  He was credited with saving a great number of Jews during the holocaust.  This is important for the ideology of the film for the sense of fighting back against the more powerful Nazi party.  Schindler knew that what he was doing was the right thing, and what the Nazi’s were doing was pure evil.

This film is incredibly interesting in the fact that the lighting for this film was done extraordinarily well for a black and white film.  Usually films in color can be more creative with its lighting.  This is not the case for Schindler’s List.  The lighting goes along with photography in this film.  The lighting during this film represents and instills uncertain and unwanted feelings in viewers.  It almost gives it a creepy feeling that it gives the audience.  Also, during Schindler’s List the color red played an important role in the film.  The red color filter was used in the film to highlight the little girl in the red dress. The lighting in this scene also highlights the girl’s innocence and how the Nazi’s irrepressibly steal it from her.  The color filter exhibits the contrast between Oskar Schindler and the girl as the defiant red represents the blood of war.

 

Pulp Fiction: Mise en scene

Quetin Tarantino’s film Pulp Fiction is considered by audiences, and critics to be one of the most influential and iconic films of all time.  The film contains great acting from Samuel L Jackson, Bruce Willis, and John Travolta, in depth dialogue, and stomach churning violence.  In the film there are many different examples, and scene of Mise en scene.  For this blog I will be discussing two different screenshots from scene from the film that show off examples of Mise en scene.

I chose this scene for an example of Mise en scene because of colors seen at first hand.  By this time in the film we already know that Vincent does dirty work for Marsellus Wallace.  We know that Vincent and Jules are some bad dudes after the first scene of shooting up those men who owed money.  Jules and Vincent always wear black suits.  The black suits are to represent evil and bad.  I liked this screenshot, because it shows Vincent in the black suit looking into Mia’s house which is decorated in all white.  At the time the audience is to think that Vincent is just a really bad guy and Mia is innocent just by the color scheme.  However we later find out that it is the opposite in some way.  The audience realizes that Mia and Vincent are addicted to cocaine.  This screenshot’s mise en scene colors show the good and evil or both characters.

I picked this scene because of the humor Tarantino hid for the mise en scene.  Usually in films the drug dealers are backed out and goofy.  This is the same for Pulp Fiction.  Lance the drug dealer is wearing a Speed Racer shirt.  The mise en scene of this screen shot is how crazy of a driver Vincent is being at this moment.  It was done of purpose for the audience to try and find the connection.  I find it funny that Tarantino included it in the film.

Although these two scenes are completely different, they do hold some similarities.  The screenshot with the contrasting colors shows how it can be different, and differences can lead to chaos.  This Speed Racer shirt is representing chaos in the form of Vincent driving like a mad man to save Mia.  Although the two screenshots do not directly connect to each other, there are some common grounds that can be seen with them.