Film Analysis: The Graduate, Rear Window, And Singin' In The Rain

At the start of the film, The Graduate, Benjamin tells his father that he wants his life to be different. Being 20 years old and freshly out of college, Benjamin is extremely anxious and hopeless because he has no clue what life has in store for him. It doesn’t help ease his anxiety when adults celebrate and praise his accomplishments only to follow it with a question that he has no real answer to. Mrs. Robinson, Mr. Braddock’s partner’s wife, offers herself up to Ben whenever he chooses. And in an act of rebellion,

Ben decides to take her offer and thus beginning their affair. This leaves Ben in a position where he doesn’t know what he is doing with his life and to put it in his own words, he’s drifting. During their affair Ben was always trying to get something more than a physical relationship out of Mrs. Robinson but she was against it. I believe that Ben was attempting to fill a void but Mrs. Robinson was unable to fill it.

The turning point in Benjamin’s character development was when his parents forced him into a date with Mrs. Robinson’s daughter Elaine. Because Mrs. Robinson forbade Ben from dating Elaine, he attempts to ruin the date by taking her to a strip club. That clearly hurt her feelings and Ben being who he is immediately apologizes to her and explains that he was forced into the date. To make it up to her, he takes her to get burgers and they sit in the car and bond over an in-depth conversation about life. On the day of their second date, Benjamin is forced into revealing that the woman he was having an affair with was her mother. Elaine was sent back to Berkeley the next day and and Ben, in another act of rebellion, made it his mission in life to get Elaine to marry him. Ben follows her to Berkeley and gets a room under some random landlord.

He proceeds to stalk Elaine until he gets a chance to speak to her. After she shows up at his room and accuses him of raping her mother, he divulges all the details of the affair to Elaine. She eventually asks him to stay in Berkeley and tells him that she will consider his marriage proposal. After finding out about Ben’s plans, the Robinsons force Elaine into marrying Carl, the other man in her life. Oddly infatuated with Elaine, Ben crashes the wedding and intervenes. The two lovebirds, Ben and Elaine, ditch the wedding and run away on a bus. Ben is left with the same look he had at the beginning of the movie, a look of hopelessness and confusion. Yet again, Ben is thrown into a limbo that he doesn’t know how to get out of. Benjamin Braddock is an interesting character, his anxiety and uncertainty of what’s to come next in life is a feeling that many people can relate to at some point in their life.

Ben’s actions seem to revolve around differing from the societal norm and the future expected of him. Joining his father’s law firm and eventually taking over one day is most likely what people expected out of Benjamin but he didn't want to go down the expected route. I don’t believe that Ben’s decisions were his own, as Ben told his parents, he is drifting and I think that the events and actions the adults in his life made are the currents that pushed him in the direction he went. His story is one that many teenagers and young adults are going through or have gone through for decades, perhaps a new generation will come along and break societal norms like Ben’s generation did.

Camera Usage in the Rear Window

Rear Window is easily the most unique movie I have ever seen. The entire Movie is shown from the point of view of L.B Jefferies, an injured photographer trapped in his apartment with nothing to do but spy on his neighbors. The main theme of the movie is voyeurism and Alfred Hitchcock uses unique camera angles to portray it. One of the main camera angles used is directly through the eyes of Jefferies.

Giving us, the viewers, a shot from Jefferies point of view forces us into the role of voyeur. Hitchcock utilizes a slow pan when showing us the neighbors’ apartments to mimic Jefferies’ gaze into their lives. By using techniques like these, Hitchcock is able to make the viewer feel like they are a part of the story. By using different shot sizes, Hitchcock, is able to indicate importance. Important events are zoomed in upon to show Jefferies focus on the subject.

In Rear Window, Hitchcock uses close-up shots of the characters in tandem with another shot to allow us, the viewers, to understand a character’s feelings or motives. For example, when Jefferies summons Doyle to his apartment to plead his case against Thorwald. Doyle dismisses the fact that Thorwald didn’t disclose the whereabouts of his wife to his landlord and potentially murdered her by using Lisa’s unknown presence in Jefferies’ home to counter him. We can assume, by Doyle’s facial expressions earlier in the scene, that he was already sceptical of the claims. By using close-ups of the character’s facial expressions, we can get a glimpse into the character’s mindset and thoughts without the need for words.

Another shot commonly used is the midshot, it shows a scene from the waist up, allowing us to see the characters faces and their interactions with each other. We see it most used in scenes involving Jefferies and Lisa. By going with a midshot over a close-up, the viewers can see and interpret the body language of the characters.

In the climax scene, Lars Thorwals shows up to Jefferies apartment and attempts to murder him. Hitchcock uses a plethora of different shots to build suspense. The scene starts out by alternating between Thorwald and jefferies’ point of view as the two interact with each other. As Thorwald makes his was towards Jefferies, Hitchcock uses close-ups to express Thorwald’s anger or fear depending on how you look at it and Jefferies’ fear and helplessness. When Jefferies was hanging out of the window, Hitchcock used top down shots to not only show how far Jefferies was falling but to also show how far Doyle and the officers had to go to break Jefferies fall. Alfred Hitchcock is called the king of suspense and he implements several different camera angles and techniques to weave together a suspenseful climax.

Singin’ in the Rain: The Power of Sound in Storytelling

In my opinion, a soundtrack usually makes or breaks a film. If you were to take some of the best movies of all time and removed the music, you would be left with some half baked, mediocre movies. But if you add an amazing soundtrack to a mediocre movie, then the quality of the movie goes up. Singin’ in the Rain is considered to be one of the greatest movie musicals of all time and it’s no doubt that the soundtrack plays a huge roll in it’s fame. In a non-musical movie, the music only adds to the feelings you get from the acting. But in a musical, the music is the foundation, everything revolves around it.

Music in this film was frequently used to tell a story. Rather than the sole purpose of progressing the scene, the music is used to represent the emotions and details in the film. Take the iconic Singing in the rain scene, it is pieced into the film in such a natural way, following Don dropping Kathy off at home and literally singing in the rain about how he is falling in love with her. Or the scene at the beginning of the movie where Don is narrating his journey with Cosmo to the big screen, The song and dance number showed them on their travels throughout life and the path they took to get where they are. In a musical, the soundtrack plays a big part in the portrayal of the story and Singin’ in the Rain uses sound in a way that is different than the modern musicals we see today.

The film uses both diegetic and nondiegetic sounds interchangeably. The majority of the song and dance scenes are nondiegetic with the music seemingly coming out of nowhere while the dialogue and sound effects are all diegetic. There are a few exceptions that blur the lines between diegetic and nondiegetic like Kathy’s performance at the party early in the film and Cosmo’s piano playing that transitions into music during “Make em’ laugh”. The nondiegetic sounds are used to enhance the feeling of the scene, like the sound effects used for comedic relief or the background music to entice emotions. In scenes like “ Singin’ in the Rain” the diegetic sounds play the role of nondiegetic sounds, where the ambient sounds of the rainy weather helped make the musical scene more authentic. The two different types of sounds work together to set the mood and enhance the quality of the movie.

To keep the comedic tone of the film, the character’s voices and sound effects are often over dramaticized. Cosmo in particular seems to offer the most amount of comedic relief. In the scene “ Make em’ laugh” the sound effects accompanying the number were extremely loud and often times overpowered the sound of the music to denote the lighthearted tone of that scene. Cosmo’s falls and interactions with the props in the set had an extra oomph to them, they were purposefully exaggerated to add the dramatic effect needed. Where in scenes like “Make em’ laugh”, sound effects were used to increase the comedic effect, in scenes like the preview of the first talking picture, they sound effects were used to increase the realism. The sound of static and the sound of a record playing were extremely prominent to portray the authenticity of the first ever talkie back in the 1920’s. Sound effects were used to strengthen the scenes and add to their effects on the audience.