Lately, I’ve been trying to rewatch all favorite animations from my childhood. Stated with Monsters INC, went through some classics such as Dumbo and Lady and the Tramp, and finished with Mulan. Looking for something new to watch I found Anastasia – an animation I loved as a child that I have forgotten about.
Half-way through the film, I went “wait a minute, Disney never uses this type of camera movement and what’s with their faces?”. At the end of the movie, my only thought was “Okay, it was nice, it reminded me of my childhood and I love Bartok, but something was missing… there was no Disney magic”. To my surprise, I found that the animation is a product of 20th Century Fox, directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman.
Well, that explained a lot.
I am not going to focus on the story, the music or animation techniques used for the production, but rather, on these little details that I believe are the reasons I did not feel the “magic”. Thinking about Disney’s magic brought me to the comparison with the so-called “x-factor” – you can be a great performer and still lack this last bit of something that makes you a star. So, if Disney’s magic is the x-factor of animation, does Anastasia have x-factor?
I will start with the character design. I like the designs of Rasputin and Bartok – they show the personality traits of the characters and creates the classic combination of a villain, obsessed with his revenge, and the simple servant. However, we never find out why is he so passionate about killing Anastasia. His motive remains unclear, and so does his existence in the plotline. They could have had all these troubles even without him.
Anastasia (1997) 20h Century Fox Animation Studios
The character design of Anastasia and Dimitri is slightly disappointing. There is nothing special about them, no character can be found in their facial features and they remind of a generalization of all Disney princesses and princes. Even though they have the cartoon looking design, they have overly realistic expressions. As a result, these unmemorable characters have so many facial expressions that it is hard to follow their emotions. What is more, the acting of the characters was so realistic that it felt wrong at some moments. The same goes for Anastasia’s grandmother – not sure if that’s her or the evil stepmother of Cinderella that simply dyed her hair.
The second thing I noticed, while watching the animation, were the blurry backgrounds. The scene where she is walking happily around the castle, the character looks out of place as if it is a mixture of live-action and animation.
Anastasia (1997) 20h Century Fox Animation Studios
Don’t get me wrong, I think that the animation of the film is beautiful and I appreciate the effort put into the little details such as showing how nervous she is before meeting her grandmother – tearing the ballet program into pieces.
Shock, horror and confusion – these are just few of the words that can describe the cinematic collaboration between Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali. The idea behind Un Chien Andalou was born in Dali’s house in Spain, where the two surrealists went for a short vacation. There, Bunuel shared his strange dream of a cloud slicing the moon in halt that looked like a razor, cutting human’s eyeball. Captivated by the story, Dali shared his own dream of ants crowing from man’s hand. Spontaneously, as they were still discussing their dreams, Dali proposed Bunuel to create a movie together, and they started writing down their ideas. Their aim was to provoke the public, to shock and frustrate it, by showing irrational and unthinkable pictures. The result is a sixteen minutes experimental movie, with no plot where absurd situations take place, and make the movie jump from one story to another.
Un Chien Andalou (1929)
The title Un Chien Andalouitself does not make logical sense: translated to English it means An Andalusian dog. For opening scene was chosen Bunuel’s dream with the moon and the cloud. It is a shot a man who is sharpening the blade of a razor, played by Bunuel himself, who then uses it to slice the eyeball of a woman (Simone Mareuil). Then, the non-linear story line of the movie follows a parade of scenes, not connected to one another, showing irrational images like a hand crawling with ants, man (Pierre Batcheff) sexually assaulting woman (Simone Mareuil), and a man (Pierre Batcheff) whose mouth is replaced by an armpit.
Un Chien Andalouis a revolutionary short movie, presenting shocking images and making bold statements of controversial like sexuality and religion. These images serve an answer to the fake values and moral of the modern bourgeoisie society. These disturbing shots, appearing on the screen one after another, cause confusion and frustration in the audience. The absence of a plot leaves the viewer with feeling like the movie is a representation of a dream, where scenes are changing every minute and things are constantly appearing and disappearing. Thus, the film could be possibly interpreted as an attempt to recreate the process of dreaming, using the limited possibilities of the cinema. Moreover, even though Bunuel states that the aim of the movie was to make no sense at all and that no rational explanation can be created from any of the images presented, psychoanalysis can help to shed more light into the dark, twisted mind of the film.
Un Chien Andalou (1929)
Themes of sexual desire can be found in the image of the hand crawling with ants, which is a metaphor of strong sexual desires. The moon from the opening scene is a metaphor of purity and virginity. Thus, the act of cutting of the woman’s eyeball by the man’s razor implies the motif of the rape and introduces the theme of sexuality that will be reintroduced further in the following scenes. According to psychoanalysis, the scene represents an act of castration. Furthermore, from a Freudian point of view, the scene is connected with the myth of Oedipus, where he blinds himself after he founds out what he has done.
The violent act against the woman can be seen as a reference to the psychoanalytical movie Secrets of a Soul, where in the opening scene a man is shaving his beard and unconsciously cuts his wife’s neck. Both movies have the motifs of punishment, sadism, and castration. However,Secrets of a Soulfollows an organized storyline, the plot shows how the main character used psychoanalysis to undergo the process of catharsis, and the audience can draw the line between dreams and reality.
One of the flaws of Un Chien Andalouis that it cannot be accepted as an accurate representation of a dream, but as an attempt of such. The reason is that dreams happen spontaneously, and most of the times are beyond the control of the dreamer, where in cinema even without following a written script, the actions taking place in front of the camera are planned in advance and thought through. Through the juxtaposition of action, music and story, the director successfully creates an atmosphere of suspense and horror, filled with almost unbearable images for the audience. Therefore, even though the Bunuel and Dali claim that there is no rational explanation of any of the scenes, and no meaning could be derived from it, the plot without a plot is well thought out to provoke and shock the audience.
Having in mind everything stated above, it could be concluded that is Un Chien Andaloua brilliant and revolutionary movie which purpose is to scandalize the society and challenge the known standards in the cinema production. No matter if one loves it or hates, one thing is sure – it will not leave the viewer emotionless.
What I love most about animation is that it is a powerful tool for storytelling. It is a combination of visual effects, sounds and narrative that provokes all senses. While watching movies we allow ourselves to become immersed in a different universe were we are part of the character and their stories.
“That’s why there are fairy tales, that’s why people invented them. That’s why there are songs, too… to get you away from reality, so you can realize that you’re human.”
—Elin Pelin, Kosachi
For my presentation, I chose to talk about the Bulgarian animator Theodor Ushev. I decided to research his work because he is a renowned animator, and I was sure that I would find plenty of sources to base my analysis on. Not very creative of me, but it was a practical decision. The man was nominated by the Academy, after all.
However, after completing my research, I felt so humbled and inspired by this man. The true value of his work can be measured not by the numerous awards that Ushev has won, but by the strong feelings his movies provoke in the audience. I saw his last animation, Physics of Sorrow, just before I went back home for the holidays, and it left me in tears. However, that’s another topic that I will discuss in my next post.
With his masterpiece Blind Vaysha, Theodore Ushev takes us on a journey through the forth dimension to remind us something so simple, yet often forgotten – to live in the present.
Political and Social environment in Bulgaria:
In the sixties, Bulgaria was a communist country part of the “Eastern Bloc” and censorship and propaganda favoring the party dominated the social and art world of the country. The access to any foreign goods was highly limited, and the only way to buy American jeans, for example, was through the black market.
The production of the first black and white TV had just started and there was a ten-year-waiting list for buying a car. The major rule in art, during the Soviet regime, was to use the so-called “socialist realism” to serve the mission of the party in charge.
In these dark for the Bulgarian art years, where art was just a commissioned work for the party and freedom of speech and expression were non-existing, in a small city called Kyustendil one of the most successful and renown experimental animators Theodore Ushev was born. Son of the painter Asen Ushev, he studied Scenic Arts in Fine Art High-school in Plovdiv and Graduated from the National Academy of Arts with Masters of Graphic Design. Part of a strict educational system with old traditions in art, he became an illustrator.
In 1999, ten years after the fall of communism, he moved to Canada in search of a better life. There he gained the reputation of an innovative and bold animator. Under the patronage of the National Film Board of Canada, he creates experimental short-movies that have won him numerous awards. His movie Gloria Victoria was shortlisted for an Academy Award in 2013, and his latest masterpiece – The physics of Sorrow is Canada’s this year’s entry. So far, his most famous work is the eight minutes short movie The Blind Vaysha.
Narrative:
Based on a story by the contemporary Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov, the movie tells the story of a girl with an unusual condition – she could see only the past with her left eye and the future with her right eye. Longing for the comfort of the past and the hopes of the future, Vaysha was trapped in the present.
It is a simple concept of lost hopes and dreams that is universal and relatable.
The story, as Ushev states, is a parabola of the modern person, who is so concentrated on his past and so desperate to see his future, that he is just lingering on the surface of the present, without actually living in it.
He found inspiration on how to portrait the story on “one-month immersive writing residence at Frontecraud Abbey”.
Sketch by Theo Ushev made at Fontevraud Abbey. Credits: https://www.cartoonbrew.com/presented-by-the-nfb/director-theodore-ushev-bringing-blind-vaysha-life-four-dimensions-146560.html
The Medieval period, the Byzantine religious paintings and Bulgarian Rennessaince engravings, inspired him to create an animation using the so-called linocut style (originally, used to satisfy the need for more accessible religious art)
Ushev made his “Medieval fairytale” using a Cintique tablet. To recreate the original technique of engraving he never used the “undo” command on his computer while animating. He said:
“It creates a natural feeling of the unpredictable, of mistakes and the holy imperfection of the image – which is the basis of every creation”
He drew every color on a separate layer and animated them individually to create an engraving looking artwork. Some images have more than 64 layers.
Problem:
The problem of the unlived life.
We are not provided with an effective solution. After the visit of hundreds of healers and witches, the only solution for Vaysha is to “find a way to unite her vision”. Giving up on one of her “realities” would mean staying forever either in “the beginning of the book, where nothing has happened yet” or in “the black page of an already told story that has come to an end”.
Setting:
Inspired by the Abbey, Ushev incorporated the 12th-century old castle and village into the setting of the film.
‘Blind Vaysha’. National Film Board of Canada.
As for the duality of the screen, he found inspiration in contrast between the medieval city and the modern military base nearby.
Character:
Vaysha is a timeless character, she has no present, no home.
‘Blind Vaysha’. National Film Board of Canada.
“There is no unity of place and time this film. Vaysha ties to measure the time but it is not possible”
Vaysha is living in a four-dimension reality where the four dimensions are time.
Ushev says that Vaysha has “the Dorian Gray Effect’ – the same way his portrait is aging and he’s not changing in reality, Vaysha is changing her face without having her age
‘Blind Vaysha’. National Film Board of Canada.
He had to-draw her face in every scene to make it look different
Sound and Music:
The Canadian actress Caroline Dhavernas voices the film, in both English and French. Ushev did not want to influence her natural rhythm and timing by giving her visual cues, because he appreciates when artists contribute to the final artwork with their interpretation of the story.
‘Blind Vaysha’. National Film Board of Canada.
The narrator guides the guides through the movie, creating a progressive story. The two conversations happening at the same time in Vaysha’s head just add to the motif of duality in the life of the character.
“That’s one of the tragedies of her life, and also in ours, because we have these conversations in our heads: while we live in the present, we’re nostalgic about the past and afraid about what the future’s going to bring.”
Birth scene “Music for the funeral of Queen Mary” – following Gospodinov’s understanding that in the worlds there is just birth and death and nothing in between them.
‘Blind Vaysha’. National Film Board of Canada.
The rest of the movie, Ushev worked with the Bulgarian composer Nikola Gruev whose work is referred by the critics as “Balkan Psychedelic”
Performance:
The animation looks almost static.
Ushev strived for simplicity and re-did every action that seemed too complicated or complex. Theodore was afraid that by “over-animating” he would destroy the story. He was working alone to make it as personal as possible.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, I would like to say that the juxtaposition between image and sound, past and future, made the animation look like a tale of an old universal problem. The simplicity of the film makes the moral of the story accessible to everyone, without overstating it.
Reference:
Animation World Network. (2020). The Past and Future Torment the Present in Theodore Ushev’s ‘Blind Vaysha’. [online] Available at: https://www.awn.com/animationworld/past-and-future-torment-present-theodore-ushev-s-blind-vaysha [Accessed 5 Jan. 2020].
Connect, C. (2020). Director Theodore Ushev on Bringing ‘Blind Vaysha’ to Life in Four Dimensions. [online] Cartoon Brew. Available at: https://www.cartoonbrew.com/presented-by-the-nfb/director-theodore-ushev-bringing-blind-vaysha-life-four-dimensions-146560.html
Desowitz, B. (2020). ‘Blind Vaysha’: How Theodore Ushev’s Zeitgeist-Grabbing Short Taps Political Anxiety. [online] IndieWire. Available at: https://www.indiewire.com/2017/01/blind-vaysha-theodore-ushev-short-1201776201/ [Accessed 5 Jan. 2020].
Building upon Carla’s presentation about Female Representation in the film industry and “The Male Gaze” in cinema, I decided to share my research on “the gaze” found in two of the movies of one of my favorite movie directors – Alfred Hitchcock.
“Give them pleasure – the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare“
This is how Alfred Hitchcock explains his filmmaking philosophy. Widely known as the king of suspense, had a sixty years career, throughout which he explored new revolutionary cinematic techniques and helped the development of the drama and psychological thriller genre tremendously. His movies are filled with suspense and terror, created through the brilliant use of juxtaposition of characters and sound, and camera movement.
Despite being so influential in the human psyche and emotions, Hitchcock’s opinion on psychoanalysis is rather controversial. He undermined the significance of it as a scientific field but found useful the psychoanalytical concepts and approaches in his narratives, as a tool to shock and scare the audience. His work is still influential, and film critics and scholars have written thousands of analyzes on movies like Psycho and Vertigo.
One of the most notable psychoanalytical elements in a Hitchcock movie is what film critics and psychoanalysts call the look. The look“is like the cement that ties Hitchcock’s narratives together” (Walker, 177) as it is “a crucial structure feature in his films”. The change of perspective in his movies helps the audience identify with the protagonist and establishes a relationship between the spectator and the characters (Walker, 177). Clifford Manlove in her article Visual “Drive” and Cinematic Narrative: Reading Gaze Theory in Lacan, Hitchcock, and Mulvey, states that “Freud and Lacan’s theories focus on the interaction of pleasure and repetition necessary for subjectivity itself, whether masculine or feminine.” (90). In this way, Hitchcock used different cinematic techniques to “reinforce the power of looking in cinema” (90). Manlove discusses the slip between the gaze and the eye. The camera is “subjective”, and the viewers are forced to see the scenes from the point of view chosen by the director. Therefore, the spectators “gaze” is limited, and certain parts of the film are left without an answer on purpose.
Psycho is unarguably one of the best horror and suspense films of all time. In this Hitchcock classic,this subjectivity of the gaze can be found in the occurrence that the audience never sees Norman talking to his mother. It is always someone who overhears them talking, but we never see the action. This creates an image of suspense and mysticism. In the article Hitchcock: The Murderous Gaze, in Psycho, William Rothman states that “the camera itself is called upon to suffer incarnation” (260) thus creating a mystic world of the movie where reality and fantasy merge and fuse. The cinematic apparatus shows the narrative through the gaze of the mother. There is a separation between the eye and the gaze. Marion’s vision is limited, she is a passive victim of a greater gaze. Hitchcock’s camera point of view separates the viewers from the heroine, but yet “reveals close familiarity with her mind” (269). The audience sees her consumed by her thoughts in her car in one of the first scenes when she had just escaped with a large sum of money. The scene can be analyzed as a visual representation of her nightmare where her mind is filled with doubts and the fear of being caught.
Collage. Psycho (1960)
Cinematically, Hitchcock uses changes in the depth of the background of light and darkness to create an image of the parallel objective reality and the subjective mind of the protagonist. The gaze in Psychocan be analyzed through the uncanny – the Freudian concept of experiencing something familiar, yet unfamiliar that creates trouble in the mind, i.e. seeing something common in a new strange way. The uncanny is also connected to one’s desires. The main protagonists, Norman and Marion, are uncanny doubles of each other. At the end of the first scene, Marion looks straight to the camera and smiles. In the end of the movie, when Norman is caught, and the mystery is solved, he does exactly the same, which could be interpreted as a hidden symbol that both characters are in fact uncanny doppelgangers. They both have anxieties of being judged and accused of their crimes, presented by their inner voices. The mother’s gaze presses both Marion and Norman. However, while Marion is the passive object of the gaze, Norman is seen as an active viewer. At the beginning of the movie, in a scene where Marion says that she wants to have dinner with Norman in her house where the picture of her mother will be on the wall, indicates the presence of the gaze of authority. Later on in the film, we see the silhouette of Norman’s mother spying from the window. The audience never sees the mother, but her possessive and controlling gaze is present until the very end of the movie. It feels like the house itself is part of this “gaze” – the paintings on walls, the mirrors, and the stuffed animals starring at Norman and Marion as they have dinner together.
Female Representation in Psycho:
Shower scene, Psycho (1960)
The heroine is a victim of the powerful male gaze: she is paranoid and anxious because she does not understand the intentions of the spectator. Even after changing her car and escaping from the eyes of the law, Marion is still a subject of the gaze of the camera. The audience follows her as she finds a safe place where she can stay over for the night, where she becomes a victim of Norman Bates’ “gaze of desire”. The male gaze is reinforced in the scene where Norman watches Marion undress through a hole in the wall. According to Rothman “this hole-within-a-hole is changed symbolically; it is an eye, and it is an emblem of female sexuality” (296). The audience’s point of view is “the deferred view” and we are watching Marion together with Norman, but we are furthermore in possession of the authoritarian gaze of Hitchcock’s “eye” – Norman is watching through the peephole as “a subject of the camera, a creature who can be framed in its view” (296). However, the greater gaze of the viewers is also limited as it is derived from the view of the naked body of the heroine. Hitchcock used cuts to limit the vision of the audience thus creating the feeling of suspense and ambiguity (297).
The sequence in the shower is one of the most analyzed scenes in the history of cinema. In these iconic 45 seconds of Marion taking a shower, Hitchcock uses 78 camera setups and 52 cuts to create the brutal image of the murder without even showing the actual action. It is presented as a rape, an act of penetrating her intimate world, her “love scene” with the shower in the role of the partner (Rothman, 300). The point of view of the voyeuristic gaze in the scene is the shower. It is “the peephole through which our gaze penetrates the shower curtain and through which Norman’s gaze continues to possess the frame” (Rothman, 301). The shower is the “eye” through which the audience satisfies its voyeuristic desires (Rothman, 302). We are interested not in the act as a purifying from her crime ritual, but rather in “our fantasy of rape” which is “disavowal of our own desire” (304).
There are two types of gaze in the movie that present a “split between the eye and the gaze” (Manlove, 91): (1) Scottie’s gaze that kills Judi and her “failure” to be the woman from his fantasy, and (2) a greater gaze, which is the reason for Scottie’s vertigo, appearing in the opening scene of the accident on the rooftop. She describes Hitchcock’s “Vertigo shots” used to present this mental occurrence as they were “created by simultaneously tracking the camera backward while also zooming the camera lens in; an effect that is repeated in several scenes to mark the presence of the gaze” (92). In the book Hitchcock’s Motifs, Michael Walker states that “the act of watching” is a significant part of Hitchcock’s director style. Hitchcock’s ‘audience-identification techniques”, part of which is cutting, editing and repetition of the scenes, the apparatus shows the narrative from the point of view of the “voyeuristic hero”.
The female is a representation of the male fantasy and it’s doomed to die because death is the only way to satisfy one’s desires. Judi is a real woman, and Scottie is only interested in her just because she reminds him of his dead fantasy. He wants to project his dreams onto her, and thus kill the “real” her. Judie, led by her desire to be loved, suppressed her identity in order to satisfy his romantic fantasies. In the hotel scene, where Judy fully “transformed” herself into Madeline, the three hundred and sixty degree shot of the camera of Judy and Scottie kissing creates a spiral movement around them “emphasizing once again that we cannot be rid of spirals and their spectral suggestion of sexuality” (Belton, 69). The narrative of the movie follows the spiral motif of repetition. Scottie falls in love with Madeline and loses her because his vertigo takes over him and he cannot save her when she jumps from the bell tower. He finds Judy and projects his love and adoration he had for Madeline just to lose her the same way he lost Madeline, further enhancing the unbreakable cycles of human nature. Furthermore, in a shocking plot twist, Judy is revealed to be an actress hired by Gavin Elster to help him to cover up the murder of his wife. So, actually, Scottie loses the same woman twice, and they were both just a fantasy, an illusion of his own creation.
In conclusion I would say that Hitchcock fulfills his audience’s unconscious desires by giving them the active role of the one with the gaze, observing and peaking onto his subjects. The director skillfully plays with the emotion of the audience by the juxtaposition of the camera and the characters. Even without considering the “scientific validity” of psychoanalysis, Hitchcock transforms it into a useful cinematic technique to create an ambiguous world where nothing is what it seems to be.
Bread and Butter,
Salt and Peaches,
Nicole
References
Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny.” Art and Literature. Vol. 14. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
Belton, James. Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and the Hermeneutic Spiral cite. Canada: The University of British Columbia, 2017. Print.
—. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Ed. James Strachey. 1949 Paperback. Simple Books, 2011.
Lacan, Jacques. “The Split between the Eye and the Gaze.” The Four Fundamental Concepts of Pyscho-Analysis. New York: Norton & Company, 1981. 67-105. Print.
Manlove, Clifford T. “Visual ‘Drive’ and Cinematic Narrative: Reading Gaze Theory in Lacan, Hitchcock, and Mulvey.” Cinema Journal, vol. 46, no. 3, Spring 2007, pp. 83–108.
Rebello, S. Alfred Hitchcock and the Makin of Psycho. London: St. Martin’s Griffin. 1998.
Rothman, William. Hitchcock : The Murderous Gaze. Vol. 2nd edition, State University of New York Press, 2012.
Sandis, Constantine. 2009.“Hitchcock’s conscious use of Freud’s unconscious”. Europe’s journal of psychology.Oxford Brookes University, 2009:56-81.
Walker, Michael. Hitchcock’s Motifs. Amsterdam University Press, 2005.
Wexman, Virginia Wright. “The Critic as Consumer: Film Study in the University, ‘Vertigo’, and the Film Canon.” Film Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 3, 1986, pp. 32–41.
