The historical question of how Blazing Saddles illustrated the style and social politics of the auteurs cinema movement is particularly relevant. In the auteurs movement, the directors were viewed as the major artistic influence behind the movie. This film is a strong example of a movie made during this movement, as Mel Brooks was highly…
Category: Short Essay
An Influenced Woman, Under pressure from What, Who, and Why?
A Woman Under the Influence causes me to think about what the woman was influenced by. Was this her obvious mental affliction, or did it allude to the abuse of her husband? I am curious how much abuse society expected women to deserve versus how much abuse men were expected to deserve. Nora Sayre of…
Wild Strawberries, wildly thought provoking
Critics often talk about the striking styles Bergman uses because they launched his films to international success. For the 1950’s, open thinking and free thought hadn’t been necessarily encouraged. Bergman’s style definitely highlights and provokes the more reflective and inner thought processes. In a non-scholarly, journalistic interview with Woody Allen, the narrator, Mark Kermode, describes…
Bonnie and Clyde – An Explosive entry into Hollywood’s New Wave
Bonnie and Clyde, 111 minutes portraying a madly in love young American couple, from the bottom middle class, in more than a movie one can enjoy for its continuous action, and excitement. Rather it is a statement piece that reshaped the future of American cinema, and introduced “The New Hollywood” into US homes towards the…
A Look Into “A Woman Under the Influence”
To say marriage is difficult and imperfect would be an understatement, especially in the case of Mabel and Nick Longhetti. John Cassavetes’ film that centers around the married couple illustrates the toxicity of unhealthy relationships, and in doing so, reveals the surfacing of mental illness that may very well be an inevitable result of such…
The Breakdown: A Woman Under the Influence
The film “A Woman Under the Influence” is an unconventional art house film. And it is also one of the first fifty films to be preserved in the U.S. National Film Registry. Showing real people and real issues may be difficult to watch, but is culturally significant. The main character is Mabel, a loving housewife…
A Woman Under the Influence
The 1974 film A Woman Under the Influence directed by John Cassavetes is about a unhappy housewife who is struggling with a mental illness in a society where mental illnesses are not often talked about. She is married to Nick, a construction worker who doesn’t understand the way she behaves. While most of the audience…
Five Easy Pieces: The Counterculture Bible
There are few films in motion picture history that define a generation. There are fewer films that have inspired a generation. And then there are films like Five Easy Pieces, which are inexplicably able to accomplish both with masterful technique. Often hailed as one the essential films to create the New Wave Era of Hollywood films, Five…
The Conversation: Are they listening?
The film “The Conversation”, directed by Francis For Coppola that brings out the concerns that many people had around the time it was filmed and about the government spying on people for “security” reasons. Everyone felt that their privacy was gone and that nothing was sacred anymore. The film is about a man named Henry…
Head
Head reveals the manner in which society impacted the making and inception of the film. The film critic Roger Ebert in his 1971 review simply titled “Head” made the statement: “I suppose it flopped in 1968 because Monkees fans were offended by it, and non-Monkees fans (i.e., anyone over 14, in either age or IQ)…
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