Woody Allen's comedic style - succesful?

I personally believe that Woody Allen's style of comedy is succesful. I don't think that it is my favorite comedic style, but still very innovative and creative. There are a few techniques in particular that I believe really do a good job of making things funny.

The first technique that makes Allen's style succesful is the way that he sometimes addresses the audience directly during a scene. You don't see this often. If it is done right and the dialogue makes sense, it can be very funny. Two funny scenes come to mind with this technique; there is a scene where a man tells another man "how you got to teach anything at all is amazing" and Allen looks into the camera and says " Boy, if life were only like this". The other scene is when Annie mistakenly says the word "wife" instead of "life" and when Allen tries to correct her she swears up and down she said "life". Allen again looks at the audience for confirmation that he is not crazy.

The second technique is the side by side comparison of scenes. This scene is toward the end of the movie when Annie and Alvy are both at their analysts talking about their sex lives. They have similar stories, but different comments and feelings about them which seem to contradict what one another says. This is especially funny to me, and may be one of my favorite comedic techniques. This technique is widely used in comedy today.

Last, we have the technique where the actors can go back into their past memories with one another and seemingly interact with characters in the scenes.In this film, this technique was my least favorite but was still funny. I think that even though the scene in this film that contained this technique was not very funny (my personal opinion - everyone is different), I can see other directors taking it and making it hilarious. I think with a technique like this the possibilities are endless. It really is an innovative comedic style.

Daisies

In my opinion, this film was very confusing and hard to follow. I personally did not enjoy this film, but did enjoy the fact that I got exposure to it, because it was something new to me. There were some things in this film that were blatantly obvious to me like the cutting of sausages and abandoning men at the train station after they've been used. However, there were many ideas that I did not even think of until they were mentioned by the reading and the presentation. Even after hearing these ideas and words to back them up, I still find it hard to understand. The movie seemingly had no plot, characters who remained nameless, and various idea/setting changes instantaneously. I think that if I had more of an idea what the movie was supposed to be about, that I would have a different opinion.

Because of the fact that I admittedly don't understand very much of the movie, I've chosen to analyze the bombing/machinery scene in the beginning and end of the film. I believe that the bombing scenes were introduced into the movie to show how the world truly is. It shows people acting the very worst they can act by showing total war and chaos going on. When the film occasionally switches to the machinery shots, I think that this is showing the rest of the real world continuing on with their daily lives like clock work. 

Shortly after the opening credits, the girls are shown on screen and they say something that basically says that the rest of the world is spoiled and so they will be spoiled too. I think the word "spoiled" here has double meaning. It could mean that the rest of the world is getting things that they want, so they are going to go out and get what they want. What I really think this means is that these women know that the rest of the world (in their minds) is bad (like spoiled eggs are called "bad") and this causes them to act out as well. 

Once the girls are crushed by the falling chandelier, the chaos of the girls seems to be extended by the film itself. I believe that this is true of the film because of the way that it transitions back into the same imagery as it did in the beginning of the film. You might have thought that the death of the girls meant an end to the chaos, but then the film shows even more chaos at the end, and the rest of the real world continues on with their daily lives like clock work. This sort of imagery seems to even tell me that the world, in a way, feeds off chaos, and that it is the reason we are still running (like a machine).

Disturbing or not - transformation

Scottie's obsession with Madeleine is disturbing

In the vertigo analyisi #2, a scene is examined in which Scottie is trying to transform Esther into Madeleine. This can be seen by some to be romantic or by others to be disturbing. To me, this is disturbing for a few reasons.

First off, the setting in which this scene takes places is gloomy. It is night time, and the only thing that is illumunating the room is a small light next to scottie, and the jade light from the hotel sign outside the room window. Scottie is alone in his room with nobody but himself in the mirror. I think that this setting was meant to show a gloomy side to Esther's transformation. I think that if the transformation was truly meant to be a part of a love story, that this scene would have taken place in a well lit.

Second, as mentioned in the video, the hair is not correct and Scottie gets upset over it. He demands that she fix it for the transformation to be complete. I think this alone shows that he needs every detail to be perfect for his obsession over Madeleine. What really shows that this is a disturbing scenario is the fact that when she finally finishes the last part and the transformation is complete, she comes out of the door and jade light surrounds her. To me, this makes her appear as a ghost. Normally, when people see ghosts they are terribly frightened. However, in this case, Scottie seems to be in awe of what he sees, as if he likes it.

Detour - Hero or anti-hero

In the film "Detour", the protagonist is a middle aged male hitchhiking in order to make it from New York to LA to see his soon to be wife. Along the way, though, he encounters a few unfortunate situations that leave his standing up for debate; is this character a hero in the movie? Is he an anti-hero?

I believe that the film is portraying the character as an anti-hero. First, when Hesko dies in the car, the character sees an opportunity in the face of fear when he should have seen the event as something to be taken seriously and dealt with in a timely manner. The character decides not only to take Hesko's car, but also take his money, clothes, and driver's license to convince others that he is Hesko so that he may keep these items in his possession. The cinematography places further emphasis on the anti-hero status of the character because right when he finds out that Hesko is dead, the dreary rain turns from a drizzle to a downpour. 

The scene where Vera is strangled via the telephone in the hotel room also suggests that the character is an anti-hero rather than a hero. This is because of the fact that this time, the character actually did commit the murder. The film suggests that the character did not mean to commit the murder. However, the situation he was in (being kept "prisoner") suggests otherwise. It was a coincidence that this character accidentally killed the person keeping him prisoner by threatening to tell the police that he is a murderer. Once again, the cinematography here has some influence during the murder. Here, the character appears to be intoxicated as is suggested by the bottle of alcohol in the room, and the amount of force and anger the character put into pulling the cord of the telephone under the door seems like it shows the character desperate, and willing to do whatever it takes to prevent him from going to jail.