Metropolis And 1984 Comparative Essay

As examples of dystopian fiction, metropolis and 1984 share some common concerns and conventions. In a comparative essay, analyse and evaluate each text as an artistic response to the political, social and cultural climates of their respective contexts: Texts are inherently responses which represents composers concerns of their political, social and cultural climates. Both Fritz Lang’s German Expressionist Film Metropolis (1927) and George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948) portray the subjugation of the individual and the divide between social classes. Lang’s focus is on the consequences to society due to loss of values such as compassion in Weimar Germany following WWI.

The movie, The Village, and the novel 1984 provides new insight and connections on a “utopian” society. Both are very similar to each other in a way that their utopian society has many flaws. 1984 is about a rebellion against an iron-fisted totalitarian government while The Village is about an attempt to protect the innocence of people. In these societies, the leaders lie in order to try and achieve a utopian world. Both societies have different purposes to control the people through fear, but despite their attempts to create a utopian society, they were only successful to a certain extent.

It has been argued by Kaes, that the director of Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Grossstadt, successfully manages to ‘construct a text which makes this nexus become readable’. Moreover, the very first shot in Berlin is of open calm water, which Kaes argues is designed to deliver an impression of tranquillity and the natural organic state. Essentially it is a momentary position of calm before the onset of the frenetic urban environment. In other words, Ruttmann’s film is an allegorical impression of an immigrant’s journey of displacement, from the known rural world, into the pulsating unknown world of the metropolis of Berlin. We know that it is a one-way journey of deliverance because that movie does not offer a return train ride back to the familiar

“The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can convey emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle.” The written word and the moving image have always had their entwining roots deeply entrenched in similar narrative codes, both functioning at the level of implication, connotation and referentiality. But ever since the advent of cinema, they have been pitted against each other over formal and cultural peculiarities – hence engaging in a relationship deemed “overtly compatible, secretly hostile” (Bluestone 2).

INTRODUCTION “What’s it going to be then, eh?” It is hard to improve upon Anthony Burgess’ classic opening line to his masterpiece. With this bold, taunting question, A Clockwork Orange’s protagonist, 15-year old Alex, opens the door for our descent into a terrifyingly grim world where ultra-violence and apathy pervade a shocking totalitarian society. The book is partly written in a Russian-influenced argot called nadsat which serves to minimize the horror of the violence depicted. It revolves around a devastatingly simple premise; when state authorities seek to reform young criminals like Alex, Burgess asks- what’s the cost?

Dystopian texts espouse a variety of didactic messages that depend significantly upon both the context and zeitgeist of the time in which they were created. Differences can be found when comparing the techniques and perspectives the authors have chosen to represent their contextual concerns to audiences. Together both Fritz Lang’s silent black and white film ‘Metropolis’ 1927 and George Orwell’s novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ (*referred to as 1984) 1948, confront and provoke audiences to consider the impact that (abusive power + unquestionable control= insert question statement) can have not only on the characters in these two texts, but also on the cultural and political lives of the reader and viewer. By subjugating & dehumanising the lower classes, dictators are

George Orwell 's novel 1985, was adapted into a movie, directed by Michael Radford. The movie coincidentally came out in the year 1984 and starred John Hurt. The movie received a 7.2 out of 10 on IMDb, a popular movie rating site,which is a higher rating than most of today 's movies. Although the movie did do alright to the general public, the movie did have some flaws when compared to Orwell 's original writings. The movie did not include all of the same details, it went very quickly over many of the events and was difficult to get into and understand for those who haven 't read the book.

During the introduction scene of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the composition is busy and in a rush, as is the imagery of the different machines working a outputting chocolate. Another memorable scene in terms of music was in Edwards Scissorhands, when Edward is cutting the ice sculpture as Kim dances in the ‘snow’ that comes from the pieces that he cuts off. The music gives off a dream-y feeling. Tim uses music and composition to add extra feeling to an exciting scene.

"The Book Thief," a film adaptation of Markus Zusak's novel, is a powerful and emotionally charged movie that captures the hearts and minds of it’s audience. In this rhetorical analysis, I will examine the film's effectiveness in engaging its audience through a detailed exploration of its rhetorical elements, including the writer's purpose, the intended audience, the situation, and the appeals used. The "speaker" or "writer" in "The Book Thief" is director Brian Percival, who brings Markus Zusak's novel to life on the screen. The material of the media object is the film itself, which the audience experiences primarily through visual and auditory elements such as dialogue, music, and sound effects. The film can be experienced in various settings,

Furthermore, this scene reflects the timeless nature of conformity through the motif of ‘copies’, conveying that conformity will always exist as long as ‘copies’ exist through conforming to each other. The composer also makes use of the

In “Aesthetic of Astonishment” essay, Gunning argues how people first saw cinema, and how they are amazed with the moving picture for the first time, and were not only amazed by the technological aspect, but also the experience of how the introduction of movies have changed the way people perceive the reality in a completely different way. Gunning states that “The astonishment derives from a magical metamorphosis rather than a seamless reproduction of reality”(118). He uses the myth of how the sacred audience run out the theater in terror when they first saw the Lumiere Brother Arrival of the train. However, Gunning does not really care how hysterical their reaction is, even saying that he have doubts on what actually happened that day, as for him it the significance lied on the incidence--that is, the triggering of the audience’s reaction and its subsequence results, and not the actual reactions and their extent. It is this incident, due to the confusion of the audience’s cognition caused by new technology, that serves as a significant milestone in film history which triggered in the industry and the fascination with film, which to this day allows cinema to manipulate and

Directed by Fritz Lang, the silent film Metropolis (1927) served and still continues to serve as an inspiration to many successful filmmakers and aspiring filmmakers alike. The techniques and editing skills used for this film pretty much lead to the development of the skills and techniques used today. Other notable people who helped make this film a success include Lang’s wife, Thea Von Harbou as the screenwriter and author of the book, Metropolis, Karl Freund and Günther Rittau as the cinematographers, Otto Hunte, Erich Kettlehunt and Karl Volbrecht for their remarkable set design, Gottfried Huppertz for the music, and Walter Schultze- Mittendorf as the sculptor. The major characters in this film include Alfred Abel as Joh Fredersen, Gustav

Throughout the film, Welles uses unusual arrangements of music that creates suspense for the audience. The main thesis of this scene is the myth

In the united states today the government has so much power than what people may think. They have control over innocent citizens. The kind of power the government has over us has gotten to a limit where now they know where we are at and all of our private information safe on our cell phones. George Orwell’s novel 1984 gives a great example of how the government controls the people. In the novel they tell us about the government from Oceania, and how they control every single second of the citizens’ lives.

German Expressionism has influenced thousands of films and filmmakers since the art movement began in the 1920’s. It is known for its dismissal of the standard conventions of Western filmmaking for a more off-kilter style of storytelling. Some film historians consider Metropolis (1927) to be one of the most groundbreaking German Expressionist films ever made. However, there are many instances throughout Metropolis in which it deviates from the eccentric Expressionist style. There are many obvious occurrences of expressionism during Metropolis, for example the opening machine sequence, but conventional Western techniques are also common in the film.