International Buisness Essay, Research Paper

Surrealism, Naturalism, and Expressionism

Three defining characteristics of the movies of the 60 s that we have observed are surrealism, naturalism, and expressionism. Surrealism is 20th century literary and artistic movement that attempts to express the lookings of the subconscience by fantistic imagery and incongruous juxtaposition of subject matter. Naturalism is the characters within inherited characteristics placed in an environment. History shapes the protagonists rather than being shaped by sense of doom. There is no transcendence. It may end in catastrophe. And then the poor, uneducated asses will struggle to survive. Expressionism is expression of inner experience rather than a solely realistic prtrayal, seeking to depict a non-objective reality but the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events that arouse in the artist. Characteristics include exaggeration, primitivism, fantasy, violence, and jarring. The movies that apply to surrealism are Blow Up, and Divorce-Italian Syle; for naturalism the movies represented are The Gospel According to St. Matthew, and La Dolce Vita, and for expressionism it is Breathless. 8 1/2 fell under both categories of surrealism and expressionis.

Blow Up is a representation of surrealism because the character played by David Hemmings was a guy who dos not live in reality due to the fact that he is obsessed with himself and chooses to see what he wants to through his camera. Ironically, the reality that he does see are some black and white camera shots of a man in some bushes pointing a gun at a couple. But in the end we are not sure if the black and white shots are reality or not because there are mimes playing tennis, and he seems to accept their fantasy as his reality when he throws the tennis ball back to them. He goes back and forth on the reality-fantasy issue. Which ever is the reality or fantasy, he goes back and forth between the lives of his women and photography work to the black and white photos.

Divorce-Italian Style is a representation of surrealism because Pepe is in a constant state of fantasy with his niece Angela. His wife, Rosalita, was his reality. Angela was having the same fantasies with him but reality hit her in the end when she was coming on to the sailor.

8 + is a great representation of surrealism because the character Guido is in a constant juxtaposition of reality and fantasy. He has little sense of reality. He wears sunglasses because daylight is too much for him. He see only what he wants to see because he is almost always in a fantasy and we see a lot of his dreams. People are always trying to bring Guido back to reality. We are able to see Guido s real problems through his fantasies and dreams such as not being able to talk to his father and his Oedipus complex. In the end he finally achieves happiness by coming to ends with his childhood. He is walking off with himself as a child because that is where he is trying to get throughout the movie, but this is still his fantasy.

The subject matter of Naturalism deals with those raw and unpleasant experiences which reduce characters to degrading behavior in their struggle to survive. These characters are mostly from the lower middle or lower classes-they are poor, uneducated and unsophisticated. This is especially relevant to the character Marcello Paparazzi in La Dolce Vita. The milieu is the common place and the unheroic; life is usually the dull round of daily existence. But the naturalist discovers those qualities in such characters usually associated with the heroic or adventurous acts of violence and passion leading to desperate moments and violent death. The suggestion is that life on its lowest levels is not so simple as it seems to be. Marcello has come to a life of exploiting the rich and famous for a living. He is degrading to himself because he is so jaded. He cannot be saved because he can never be satisfied. His friend Steiner saw some adventure in Marcello that he did not have and envied him for it. Steiner killed himself because he could not take the social expectations. It was the perfect example of life not being as easy as it looks. Money could not buy him everything. Marcello and Steiner may have self-destructed, but their environment had not helped them as much as they tried to make it so. Marcello was constantly trying to find himself but could not because his surroundings were most of his problems.

The movie The Gospel According to St. Matthew is a naturalist film because Jesus spends his life struggling to help others while his survival is difficult because he has so many people against him. He was from a lower class and he had a violent death. He had been born in an environment that was struggling and he was there to save them but they were the actual cause of his crucifixion. The idea behind naturalism can suggest that after the crucifixion of Jesus, the non-believers will struggle to survive because they are seen as the uneducated masses.

Breatless is an expressionism film because the two main characters are always talking about their inner thoughts