by Palden MacGamwell
Jean-Paul Belmondo, À bout de souffle, 1960
The text is basically theorizing and contextualizing what exactly “stars” are in cinema and what relation they have with the public with the control of the media. Ellis talks a lot about the paradox of stars in cinema, and how the public views these people as celebrities and how they become super natural people set in exotic settings, doing amazing things that could not be done in real life. Each “star” forms a “genres, recognizable from posters, reviews and gossip, if not named by a specific label”. And how this treatment turned into “one of the staple functions of the film industry to supply ‘appropriate’ material” to other media. This leads to how the “star” is used to lure mass audiences based on mistaken representations of the “star” in different media, like radio, journal reviews and TV. Ellis bring up that these stars are ordinary people when we see them on TV or hear them on the radio but how at the same time they are extraordinary. “Stars” become different kinds of icons for each film that they make pictures for and even products sometimes, all of which is used as bate to show only one part of the final show at a time to increase revenue and further drag out the money making media process. This is how he considers the star image to be incomplete and paradoxical. Then he adds how the relationship of the film performance will be more complete then the “star image” because “we” the viewer witness the cinematic experience which is sight/ light, sound and motion that makes cinema magic. Ellis brings into perspective the fact that these “stars” play a big roll in magazines as a “vehicle for discussion of sexuality, of the domain of the personal and familial”. The media in this way is able to use material that is universal and still personal, making it that much more effective and marketable. Ellis concludes how much buildup of these stars is another paradox because the “star image” has to be shown as a star in the film itself and has to animate the desire, which circulates in it. How because the Star is so built up before even seeing the movie their every move seems perfect and significant. Ellis refers to this as the stars permission to under act compared to the supporting cast. This leads us to understand that the star is behaving instead of acting.
http://www.rhul.ac.uk/media-arts/staff/ellis_pub.shtml
Sybil DelGaudio, “Dressing the part: Sternberg, Dietrich and Costume”
The text starts out with a brief introduction to Sternberg’s tradition of cross-dressing in “Blond Venus”, “The Blue Angle”, “Dishonored” and “The Scarlet Empress”. We then goes into the settings of the film Morocco (1930). The setting is Morocco the country, and the rolls of the movie are explained according to what they wear in the film. We then learn that Sternberg is a fan of German cabaret, and influences his perspective of on costume design. Then DelGaudio explains how in Morocco the film a “Sexual masquerade (i.e., cross-dressing) here becomes a kind of Otherness. Its incongruity is somewhat different from the incongruity of the Otherness of the foreigner suggested by the first two scenes, but similar in its presentation through stylization of something-that-is-what-it-is-not” The costumes of both La Bessiere and Amy Jolly in the film Morocco are vessels for Sternberg to create tension centered around impersonation and display. Amy was to wear slacks in the film to conceal her well-known legs and create a tension intended by Sternberg. The influence of wearing slacks in the film became a trend in women’s fashion and Sternberg was responsible. The text then turns into how cross-dressing was viewed politically. And how women’s identity was changing, Simone de Beauvoir comments “that the definition of woman as female and man as human being forces woman into a position of male-imitation at times when she most want to be viewed as a human being”. This was huge for the time in 19th century allowing women to evolve into a self defined human that can have equal rolls as men, unfortunately, women were still imitating men because men still dominated the move industry... The text turns into a woman’s perspective throughout the beginnings of film and how man exercise fetishistic scopophilie (voyeurism). We then continue to analyze woman’s attire in film and its effect on the film and how sexual ambiguity and reversal are recurring motifs in many of Sternberg’s films.
http://people.hofstra.edu/Sybil_A_DelGaudio/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpHVVyL6Q6c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgnEvT6xYr4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABROXMa1uG0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSt39FY0cZw&ob=av1n
http://philippevert.over-blog.com/article-31310149.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyVrH1OfVjw
http://books.google.fr/books?id=gIj-OMbCv_gC&printsec=frontcover&dq=sybil+delgaudio+%22dressing+the+part%22&hl=fr&ei=KU6iTK_HA5G7jAfpwaSPAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
Stella Bruzzi “Undressing cinema: clothes and identities in the movies”; Chapter “The instabilities of Franco-American movies”
In her chapter “The Instabilities of Franco-American movies”, Stella Bruzzi is examining the importance of clothes and fashion in the genre of gangster films. By conducting a case study about the most important American and French gangster movies of the last century, the author succeeds to show that masculinity doesn’t deny fashion. Giving examples such as “The Untouchables”, Bruzzi states that even if gangsters are “men of action, they are also men of fashion”. Therefore she breaks with the traditional view of other authors that a real man is neither vain nor narcissistic. Her point of view becomes even more clear when she describes the traditional costume of a gangster which covers an expensive suit, a silk shirt and a tie and most important a hat. This costume is on the one hand a sign of social rise and on the other hand the very costume becomes a warrior dress.
The text is basically theorizing and contextualizing what exactly “stars” are in cinema and what relation they have with the public with the control of the media. Ellis talks a lot about the paradox of stars in cinema, and how the public views the these people as celebrities and how they become super natural people set in exotic settings, doing amazing things that could not be done in real life. Each “star” forms a “genres, recognizable from posters, reviews and gossip, if not named by a specific label”. And how this treatment turned into “one of the staple functions of the film industry to supply ‘appropriate’ material” to other media. This leads to how the “star” is used to lure mass audiences based on mistaken representations of the “star” in different media, like radio, journal reviews and TV. Ellis bring up that these stars are ordinary people when we see them on TV or hear them on the radio but how at the same time they are extraordinary. “Stars” become different kinds of icons for each film that they make pictures for and even products sometimes, all of which is used as bate to show only one part of the final show at a time to increase revenue and further drag out the money making media process. This is how he considers the star image to be incomplete and paradoxical. Then he adds how the relationship of the film performance will be more complete then the “star image” because “we” the viewer witness the cinematic experience which is sight/ light, sound and motion that makes cinema magic. Ellis brings into perspective the fact that these “stars” play a big roll in magazines as a “vehicle for discussion of sexuality, of the domain of the personal and familial”. The media in this way is able to use material that is universal and still personal, making it that much more effective and marketable. Ellis concludes how much buildup of these stars is another paradox because the “star image” has to be shown as a star in the film itself and has to animate the desire, which circulates in it. How because the Star is so built up before even seeing the movie their every move seems perfect and significant. Ellis refers to this as the stars permission to under act compared to the supporting cast. This leads us to understand that the star is behaving instead of acting.
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/film/staff/bruzzi/