A Woman Under the Influence Directed by John Cassavetes Written by John Cassavetes 1974, USA “Woman is a symptom of Man” — Jacques Lacan A Woman Under the Influence (1974) tells the story of a marriage in crisis. Mabel (Gena Rowlands) is suffering from an unnamed psychological condition that is threatening to tear her family apart. Her …
The institution of marriage, and therefore divorce, in Israel is regulated exclusively religiously, with rabbinical consent needed to sanction both marriage and divorce. In Fill the Void, rabbinical authorisation is first denied, then granted to an arranged marriage, while Gett tracks a woman’s Kafkaesque divorce proceedings as the years go by. Premiering at the Venice …
The first time Karen and Henry meet in Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese’s pivotal 1990 decades-spanning Italian gangster film, it is on a forced double date that precedes a back room meeting, with the sole purpose being so Tommy can “bang this Jewish broad”. Henry is beyond rude and Karen is timid, although timidly pissed as she has every right to be. Notably, she is dressed to the nines (complete with styled hair and a set of pearls) as she will stay for the duration of the film no matter the situation. When Henry stands her up on the second date she immediately requests, nay demands, to be taken to find him in order to ream him out in front of his cohorts.
Between 1939 and 1947, the number of divorces in Britain rose from 9,970 to 24,847. In Summer of the latter year, Picturegoer magazine ran a piece on the way in which marriage was perceived in the country’s theatres at the time, refuting strong claims from figures as influential as the Archbishop of York that sensationalism on screens was partly to blame. “The …
Revolutionary Road Written by Justin Haythe and based on a novel by Richard Yates Directed by Sam Mendes USA, 2008 Marriage is a two-way street. The union of a man and woman is basically a tug of war and it is a battle fought in many arenas. One arena is the suburbs and while a …
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), as in other works of F.W. Murnau and the German Expressionist movement, is a style of emotions triggered in service of light where the relationship between Movement-Image is also the same between Image-Light. The intensity of light and its relationship to form thrust Expressionistic ideas into a new era and few films exemplified this more beautifully than Sunrise. The intensity of light is measured in proportions of black versus white and brightness versus darkness. Each frame of the film becomes a physical object, an exploration of this gradation. Each frame explores the full spectrum of the gray scale, passing from the darkest shadows to a white light, evoking a true sense of the chiaroscuro. In each frame, light, framing and blocking leans towards a tendency to split the visual image along a diagonal or dentale line (See Picture 1 and 2). This visual idea communicates an idea of a rift, a growing separation between lovers and worlds
The Lady Eve is all about the game of romance. Jean has a great monologue at the beginning of the film that really shows this game in action. While sitting at a dinner table, she narrates as various women approach Charles, in an attempt to gain his attention (“Every Jane in the room is giving him the thermometer and he feels they’re just a waste of time”). She studies Charles. What makes him tick? Is he self-conscious? What kind of woman would he like? All of this is for the purpose of conning him, which she does rather well. It also shows how love (and ultimately marriage) can be a façade.