Different versions of a single event. This phenomenon is not uncommon, and it arises largely because of the various perspectives different people take in order to give emphasis to certain elements in their story.

                Film, in essence, is as simple as this: telling the same stories in different ways. However, the ways by which they tell their stories are a slightly more complex concept.

 

The General and Sherlock Jr.: The Buster Keaton Way

                Buster Keaton saw the world of cinema as “a place for combat between the body and the physical things of the world” (Kolker, 1999). Given his entrancement with the way his physical body could interact with the rest of the world, he chose to film outside the studio as much as possible. In The General, the scene wherein the bridge collapses and the enemy train falls into the river below was done in one take using a real train. For many years after, that train lay untouched on the riverbed.

                An expensive film for its time, The General goes against the Classic Hollywood style’s emphasis on economy. Buster Keaton wanted authenticity, thus he used antique trains and shot on location in Oregon. Consequently, shooting on location defies the classic Hollywood philosophy that space is restricted and limited, thus “everything that can be done indoors is” (Kolker, 1999).

                However, as it defies certain elements of the Classic Hollywood style, The General –as well as Sherlock Jr., for that matter—employs the said style as it focuses more on its plot and its forward movement, and its characters. Compared to Sherlock Jr. whose plot, though linear, is slightly more erratic, the plot of The General is so linear that it feels as though the railroad tracks are a literal representation of the forward movement.

                In fact, this forward movement is an important component of the classic Hollywood style: films establish a state of equilibrium, move to a state of disequilibrium, and resolves this as it moves back to a state of equilibrium. In both Keaton films, the good guy triumphs in the end.

 

Notorious: The Hitchcock Way

                The film Notorious is like the Keaton films, following the same movement from equilibrium to disequilibrium and back. However, unlike Buster Keaton, whose way of shooting in the outdoors allows for surprises brought about by the real world, Alfred Hitchcock likes to plan everything even before he begins filming. Thus, he largely works in the studio where nothing is left to chance and everything is orchestrated. It is through this orchestration that Hitchcock chooses to tell his stories.

 

The Shot

The film Notorious employs quite a number of close-up shots to give emphasis to certain elements and concepts. Hitchcock uses the zoom shot to convey particular emotions. Upon hearing the news of her father’s death, a close-up of Alicia’s face is shown. As she says the line, “Something had happened to me and not to him,” the zoom shot further emphasizes that Alicia –and not her father—is now the pivotal figure of the film.

Hitchcock also uses the zoom shot convey an object’s importance: when he shows a close-up of the wine bottle during Alex Sebastian’s dinner party, he is telling the viewer to watch out for that wine bottle further on in the story. Earlier in the film, he also zooms in on Devlin’s forgotten champagne bottle, but this time it is to show how Devlin has forgotten about his love for Alicia and instead leaves their fate to the decisions of their superiors. Thus, Hitchcock uses the zoom shot not only to show an object’s importance to the film, but also to convey certain emotions that this object might symbolize.

Important elements in the plot are also shown using zoom shots. As the camera zooms in on Alex Sebastian’s invitation, it shows the formal name “Alexander Sebastian” crossed out and replaced instead with the informal “Alex”. As the name “Alexander Sebastian” may reflect the cold and suspicious nature, its replacement with “Alex” shows how Alex has let his guard down upon meeting Alicia, and may perhaps also signify the trust he has for Alicia. The close-up shows that Alex’s trust is an important element to the forward movement of the plot.

 

Camera Movement and Placement

The movement of the camera is also an effective way of bringing across symbolisms to the viewer. In the scene where Devlin enters Alicia’s room as she wakens from her drunkenness, the camera takes on Alicia’s perspective and turns in a circular motion until Devlin is upside down, literally showing how Devlin’s world was turned upside down upon meeting Alicia.

Aside from symbolisms, the camera becomes a medium by which the audience can grasp the characters’ emotions through their actions. In the scene where Alicia turns up unexpectedly at the headquarters, Devlin has his back turned to the camera. This symbolizes how he has turned his back on his love for Alicia, returning to it only momentarily by turning around to defend the contradictory nature of Alicia’s patriotic duty, which calls for her to not be a lady. However, he is later shown walking out of headquarters, totally abandoning that love when Alicia decides to marry Alex Sebastian. The camera is thus instrumental in depicting Devlin’s struggle with his love for Alicia, a struggle evident in the way the camera captures his movements.

Hitchcock also uses the way the camera frames a shot to tell his story. During the scene where Devlin returns to the apartment to discuss the assignment with Alicia, the camera shows both the dinner prepared outside in the balcony, and the two characters talking just inside. The fact that both elements are in the frame, and that the characters didn’t go completely into the room shows how they –or Alicia, in particular—held some hope that their love wasn’t completely lost. She resigns herself to the loss when she looks out to the balcony, saying, “We shouldn’t have had this out here. It’s all cold now,” which perhaps refers to the way they had openly declared their love, only to have it subjected to the cold world. Devlin reaffirms the loss by saying, “I had a bottle of champagne. I must have left it somewhere,” with the bottle symbolizing their love for each other, a love he had no intention to leave behind.

 

Mise-en-scene

Hitchcock has a way of arranging certain elements in a shot to convey particular meanings. For instance, in the shot of Alex and his mother at the racetrack, Alicia’s empty chair is situated between them. This shows how, even in her absence, Alicia succeeds in separating Alex from his mother, a separation which becomes evident when Alex marries Alicia despite his mother’s objections.

Foreground and background are also important elements to the film. Aside from the emphasis a foreground gives –such as the emphasis of Mrs. Sebastian’s power over her son as shown whenever she is captured in the foreground—it is also important to note the things placed in the background and why they are placed there. In the scene where Alicia and Devlin are about to be discovered near the wine cellar, they are framed by the door leading to the garden, and the audience sees Alex descending the stairs in the background, about to discover the two lovers. Placing Alex in the background shows how the couple has, for the moment, pushed aside Alicia’s status as a married woman in favor of the love they just cannot contain. But as he slowly approaches them –and consequently moves into the foreground of the shot—they slowly become aware of his presence and the power he has over their love, the power that can push them away from each other. From an unwanted presence in the background, Alex then becomes a figure of authority and power simply by stepping into the foreground.

 

The MacGuffin

                The MacGuffin in this film is the uranium ore contained in the 1934 wine bottles. This substance is obviously important to the characters in the story, but the audience does not have a clear idea as to why it is so important. The purpose of the MacGuffin, then, is to hook the audience into the story, making them pay close attention to the film in hopes of understanding the importance of this element. It leads them to think that if it is important to the characters, then this element must be important to them too, thus facilitating for a deeper immersion into the film. Despite realizing in the end that the MacGuffin doesn’t matter to the audience, the MacGuffin succeeds in immersing the audience into the story and keeping their attention.

 

Schizopolis: The Soderbergh Way

                Buster Keaton and Alfred Hitchcock both usher the viewer along in watching their respective films. Keaton uses a linear plot that is easy to follow; Hitchcock uses the camera to emphasize essential elements the viewer needs to take note of. In doing this, they assume that their viewers are familiar with certain film conventions, such as the emphasis on an object in the foreground, the menacing and threatening feel that an unusually low camera position can give, and the diminishing characteristic an unusually high camera angle can give. All these things are conventions the viewer acquires, which are consequently part of a certain ideology prevalent over film as a communication medium.

                Steven Soderbergh’s Schizopolis plays with these conventions, choosing to break them instead of adhering to them. With the mentality that art imitates life, Soderbergh chooses to imitate the aspect of life that he sees: that there is much miscommunication that happens in today’s society.

This miscommunication is highlighted by the characters talking in gibberish or in different languages for a significant part of the film. Viewers are unable to understand the characters, and are left to feel as though the movie is not communicating anything to them. This contradicts the film’s nature as a medium for communication, and prevents the viewer from immersing himself into the movie and relating to the story and its characters.

However, despite speaking in gibberish or in different languages, the characters are able to understand each other. Through this, Soderbergh examines the meaninglessness of perfunctory greetings and its irony: perfunctory greetings appear to be links between people, a means for strengthening relationships. But how can relationships be strengthened when these words hold no meanings behind them? Soderbergh thus addresses the idea that communication is not about words or language, but about the meanings ascribed to them.

A certain ideology, then, prevails over the film-viewing experience. The purpose and aim of film is to immerse the viewers in the movie-viewing experience. Through Schizopolis, Soderbergh instead magnifies the reality that the audience is detached from the film. The film communicates this idea in its finale, where Soderbergh faces an empty auditorium, ready to give answers to the audience’s questions: he gives replies even if he cannot hear our questions, so that our questions remain unanswered in reality.

As characters speak in stage directions –saying things like “Generic greeting” and “Imminent departure”—Soderbergh also highlights the fact that these are verbal templates people use all the time. This, in turn, could also give emphasis to the formulas used in making a film, to the templates by which a film’s story –and film itself—is created. In an interview the actor-director gave to David Walsh in 1996, he says that the previous films he had done –in particular, The Underneath—were “ideologically lazy.” This pushed him to depart from the conventions of film, as he says, “If this is as ambitious as I’m going to be in making films, which is to basically do a slight variation on a genre film, then I’ve either got to quit or I’ve got to do something else with my filmmaking.”

With this, he breaks a good number of conventions in Schizopolis. Doing away with the continuity that editing wishes to achieve, he chooses to jump from one scene to another without any warning of what is to come next, juxtaposing images that seem to have no relevance to one another: the shot of a man suffering a heart attack is put alongside shots of an educational film talking about the inner workings of the heart. His plot is anything but linear, confusing the viewer with the three different roles Soderbergh himself plays and with the story of Elmo Oxygen, which doesn’t seem to fit anywhere. As audiences have grown so used to adhering to the conventions needed in understanding a film, it is no wonder then that Schizopolis comes off as a very incomprehensible film, what with all the conventions it chose to break away from.

A certain line in the film says this of eventualism: “It isn’t designed to answer all the questions; it’s designed to question all the answers.” This line may also apply to what Soderbergh is trying to do with the film itself: Schizopolis does not necessarily want to be understood, it does not want to answer the questions its viewers may have. Instead, its purpose as a film is to question the conventions, to question the ready-made answers the world already has.

Thus, in contrast to Buster Keaton’s The General, Sherlock Jr., and Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious, which follow the classic Hollywood style and its conventions, Steven Soderbergh’s Schizopolis chooses to take all the rules and break them, showing that conventions are not natural and are created, just as film is a creation, an artifice.