Does anyone have a theory why Ray Davies' character sings directly into the camera for the Quiet Life number? No one else does. Gives it a very music video feel, no?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
July: Hands Over the City
Film of the Month
July: Hands Over the City
About the Club
Film of the Month Club is an internet forum for watching and discussing movies. Each month a member will select a film, after which other members can watch and post their reflections and reactions. Selections will be driven by member interests and can range from the commercial to the experimental, from the signifcant to the forgotten. The idea behind this grab bag approach is to facilitate a conversation among all corners of the film blogosphere. And to watch more movies.
Basics
Posts
Blog Archive
-
▼
2008
(41)
-
▼
December
(10)
- Questions on High Concept
- Historical Time and Absolute Beginners
- Inside/Outside: Spatial Conflicts in Absolute Begi...
- Playing Watchmaker
- The "dollhouse-like/cut-out set/wide shot" study
- Quiet Life
- First Impressions of Absolute Beginners
- An (Absolute) Beginner's Guide to Framing in Cinem...
- Why Absolute Beginners? (An Overture)
- Kinship
-
▼
December
(10)
Contributors
Posts by Category
- The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On (11)
- Absolute Beginners (9)
- Bad Influence (8)
- Mabuse (7)
- ...no lies (6)
- Documentary (6)
- Milos Forman (5)
- The Firemen's Ball (5)
- The Three Caballeros (1944/5) (5)
- the Golden Chance (5)
- July Film of the Month (4)
- Sink Or Swim (4)
- Su Friedrich (4)
- hong sang-soo (4)
- Hands Over the City (3)
- Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (3)
- about the blog (3)
- gender (3)
- lighting (3)
- narration (3)
- Cecil B. DeMille (2)
- Curtis Hanson (2)
- Intruder (2)
- Lang (2)
- Mitchell W. Block (2)
- Woman is the Future of Man (2)
- chaos (2)
- guidelines (2)
- korean cinema (2)
- no lies (2)
- sexuality (2)
- style (2)
- theme (2)
- Clint Eastwood (1)
- Czech New Wave (1)
- Eisenstein (1)
- Ethics (1)
- Francisco Rosi (1)
- Julien Temple (1)
- Kazuo Hara (1)
- Michael Cimino (1)
- Morality (1)
- cinematography (1)
- class ideology (1)
- collective identity (1)
- experimental (1)
- public sphere (1)
- transnational cinema (1)
4 comments:
It's a weird moment. On the one hand, it's the most willfully artificial: we are shown the set from a side, a sort of Jerry Lewis moment with the building looking like a giant doll house--and Davies sings into the camera, which breaks with a lot of people's notions of "realism." But there's also something very intimate about it, even despite the various caricatures (perhaps the caricatures, in their earnestness, are what make it so private). It's very hermetic, very self-contained. It separates itself from the film in some way. I've never been quite sure as to whether I think it works or not...
Davies has a wonderful charm that keeps pulling us back from the weirdness of the chaos into a sort of innocent whimsy.
You're right, it does stand off from the other scenes.
If he wasn't singing to the camera (us) he would be singing to himself, which would make it sad, in a way. In this form, he is sharing with us.
I may be too much of a fan for this place. Davies is singing to the camera because he always sings in the conversational style. I mean, he's not Nick Drake all moony and broody, whose dreamy songs we "overhear"?
Well, David, you have a good point--most of the singers in the film wrote their own songs and therefore kind of dictated the style of their musical numbers. So Bowie's is a big production number and Davies' has him singing very intimately against a backdrop of ordinary activities--very Ray Daviesish.
Post a Comment