Explore some of the ways in which you have gained fresh insights into your chosen film as a result of

applying one or more specific critical approaches.

Explore some of the ways in which you have gained fresh insights into your chosen film as a result of applying one or more specific critical approaches.

What I want to cover:

• Detailed analysis of key scenes – cinematic technique/theme.

• Critical theory: feminist, psychoanalysis & auteur

• I could pick one, two or all three of these for this question

What key scenes can I cover?

Some of many examples:

• Scottie and Midge discuss the accident

• Scottie first sees Madeleine

• Scottie follows Madeleine from her home to the hotel

• Scottie’s dream

• Judy’s flashback

• ‘Madeleine’s resurrection and the 360⁰ kiss

Explore some of the ways in which you have gained fresh insights into your chosen film as a result of applying one or more specific critical approaches.

Pick two or three key sequences

Link appropriate critical approaches to each

Theme is important but you’ll also gain marks by linking critical approach to micro features

Explore some of the ways in which you have gained fresh insights into your chosen film as a result of applying one or more specific critical approaches.

Key Scene

Colour codingThe gaze – perception/seeing/scopophilia/etcActive camera

Positioning of character‘To-be-looked-at-ness’Spectator/camera relationship

• Presentation of ideal/fantasy• Artificiality• Mirrors/frames

• Performance• Controlling the gaze• Masochism

• Profile shot – repetition, etc

• Guilt• Deception• Misconception• Silent form of cinema

• More artificiality• ‘Bait’• Colour coding• Mirrors

Scottie first sees Madeleine

Feminist film criticism:

Laura Mulvey – Madeleine is coded with ‘to be looked at-ness’ the framing, costume, setting, cinematography, performance, etc

Tania Modleski – the artificiality of the construction of Madeleine, links to Scottie’s need to reconstruct his own identity, etc

Scottie first sees Madeleine

Psychoanalytic film criticism:

• Donald Spoto - sequence shows Scottie experiencing misogyny, voyeuristic tendencies, guilt, anxiety, etc. This reflects Hitchcock’s own psychological profile

• J. L. Baudry – Hitchcock is manipulating the audience, steering a dream: "film offers an artificial psychosis without offering the dreamer the possibility of exercising any kind of immediate control.“

• Jaques Lacan – Mirrors and mis-recognition of a self-image

Scottie first sees Madeleine

Auteur theory:

Truffaut, Sarris, etc: focus on the act of looking, close consideration of mise-en-scene, cinematography, music, etc as typical of the Hitchcock style (‘pure cinema’)

Now choose another scene

Examples:

• Scottie and Midge discuss the accident

• Scottie follows Madeleine from her home to the hotel

• Scottie’s dream

• Judy’s flashback

• The 360⁰ kiss

Explore some of the ways in which you have gained fresh insights into your chosen film as a result of applying one or more specific critical approaches.