Sherlock Jr. (1924)

Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)

Reflexivity as an aspect of formalism or structuralism.

Reflexivity (PLEASE! Not self reflexive which is redundant) implies that the film is looking at itself

Problems of “What calls attention to itself in a film”

All films deviate from reality in many ways and in many ways it is simply a matter of what the audience has come to expect and accept. This is a .question about the psychology of film -a topic that has been of interest to many people. From early times, the question of persistence of vision was a psychological problem. This lead to other questions about the way in which 2 dimentional objects are seen by people in different cultures.

Films rarely have stories which run the same amount of time as the film (e.g. Rope) so that ellipsis in time are often acceptable although they clearly diverge from reality,. (flashbacks, flash forwards etc,)

el•lip•sis (¹-l¹p“s¹s) n., pl. el•lip•ses (-sz). 1.a. The omission of a word or phrase necessary for a complete syntactical construction but not necessary for understanding. b. An example of such omission. 2. A mark or series of marks ( . . . or • • • , for example) used in writing or printing to indicate an omission, especially of letters or words.

Generally the formalist tradition requires you be aware that the film is acting like a film. Yet there are conventions that film makers use which break with reality regularly. Films are 2 not three dimensions. There are gaps in time which people simply accept. In the old days iris in and out was common and acceptable, now-a-days it is far less so.

Flashbacks are acceptable until the reach the level of those in films like Memento in which they exceed the audience’s tolerance. But tolerance changes because of exposure. What is violent one year is seen as tame 10 years later.

Films which are “reflexive” (self reflexive is meaningless and redundant) also call attention to themselves. These are films which generally look at the entertainment industry (usually film, but often plays) and by “looking at themselves” remind us that we are looking at a film. This is like “Oscar Night” when film makers celebrate themselves.

Films

Sherlock Jr.

Purple Rose of Cairo

How does each film deal with the meaning of films?

Sherlock Jr.

Life and art are interwoven, film sometimes allows rethinking of ideas. Life imitates art.

In this film, the relationship between the film and the real world is one of dream state. Sherlock Jr. enters the film while sleeping. After the initial spectacular filmic problems of having shots change while Keaton continues to act, the film in which he finds himself restates what is happening in his life. Keaton’s incredible handling of the physical stunts in film earned him a broken neck (scene with the water tower) and his unbelievable riding of the motorcycle from the handlebars are hallmarks of the kind of material Keaton was able to accomplish Although the great detective of the film is not something Sherlock Jr. is able to achieve, it is, a restatement of his problems in life. It is not escapist, but in a Freudian dream like state produces events in the dream drawn from his waking experiences. Only at the end, does he watch the film and learn from it.

Aside from the tour de force special effects, real life bits are often framed as though they were on screen. We see, for example, Keaton framed by the projection window as he watches the end of the film, imitating it. Can you find other examples? There are also examples of people entering and leaving things in ways that are "unusual" (like the movies screen). Can you find other examples of this? (e.g. diving into the "woman" selling things) What might it imply?

Purple Rose of Cairo

In Purple Rose of Cairo, films are escapist. The real world may be harsh and difficult and films may offer escape, but in the end, one settles for the real world. Mia Farrow chooses Gil (the actor) over Tom Baxter (the character in the film) only to find that Gil has left her to return to Hollywood and forcing her back to her brutish husband.

Interestingly enough, the increase in technical abilities in the intervening years has little impact on Purple Rose of Cairo. The entry and exiting of people on and off the screen is not technologically complex, and other than the fact that the characters are in color when the leave the screen and black and white when they are off the screen, there is little here that couldn’t be done on a stage. Sherlock Jr., on the other hand would have been impossible to do on stage. It is “pure” film.

The settings in Purple Rose of Cairo are chosen for their fantasy like qualities – the amusement park, the bordello and so on.

In both cases the films are reflexive, although they symbolize movies in somewhat different ways.

These are examples of films calling attention to themselves, yet at the same time, the events involved are far more realistic than formal or structural.

One of the serious problems to be considered is the question of whether any particular aspect of film making which calls attention to itself at one time, will always have that effect. Audiences come to accept certain conventions, and even the most modern innovations if used frequently enough in different films are likely to be accepted as conentions which will no longer make them "innovative" and these will no longer call attention to themselves or to the film. Similarly things which fall "out of favor" may suddenly be seen as odd and innovative again. Irising in and irising out were common devices in silent films which have pretty much become ignored in modern film making. When they are currently sued they may easily call attention ot the themselves.