Filmmaker Jeff Desom recut the scenes from Alfred Hitchock’s Rear Window (1954) viewed out the apartment window into one video. In the original movie, L.B. “Jeff” Jefferies, played by James Stewart, is confined in a wheelchair with a broken leg and spends his time watching his neighbors through the window of his Greenwich Village apartment. Eventually, he begins to suspect that one of his neighbors murdered his wife. Jeff then convinces his girlfriend, played by Grace Kelly, to help him investigate. Did he see what he thinks he saw, or is he imagining things?
Desom’s complete 20-minute recut of the window scenes from Rear Window, entitled Rear Window Loop, is not online. But a making-of video called Rear Window Timelapse contains three minutes of what Jimmy Stewart saw outside his window in the film. Check it out.
Desom tells a little more about the process of creating the film in a recent interview. He completed the project by himself in six weeks for a Luxembourg club to show on a screen above the bar. Hopefully nobody gets so drunk they think they witnessed an actual murder.
What do you think of the Rear Window recut? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Project Nim (2011) is a fascinating documentary that follows the life of Nim, a chimpanzee who was part of an experiment in teaching chimps to communicate. Nim Chimpsky, named with a humorous nod to linguist Noam Chomsky, became famous for his ability to use sign language as part of a study by Herbert Terrace, a Columbia University behavioral psychologist. The documentary shows the ups and downs of Nim’s life where he is repeatedly removed from his environment in the name of science. The film asks questions about the role of communication and our human relationships to animals.
Although the movie shows Nim repeatedly abandoned, it also features several people who cared very much about the chimp. Ultimately, it’s the human stories in the film that make the movie compelling. While Nim’s behavior is interesting to the scientists because it tells us about chimps, the behavior of the people in Nim’s life is what makes the film interesting. Because it tells us more about us.
Bonus Review (Because why should you trust me?): Ethicist Peter Singer wrote an interesting essay about the film, the science about animals’ use of language, and the ethics of scientific experiments on primates in the New York Times Review of Books. What did you think of Project Nim? Leave your two cents in the comments.
As the summer movie blockbuster season approaches, it is a good time to look at the trailer for the movie that incorporates the biggest actors and the biggest scenes. The Movie: The Movietrailer debuted on Jimmy Kimmel Live and features stars such as Tom Hanks, Charlize Theron, Martin Scorsese, George Clooney, Gabourey Sidibe (“Once you go black Hitler you never go back Hitler”), Chewbacca, and many more too numerous to mention.
If you want more, there is also The Making of “Movie: The Movie.”
One of the most highly anticipated films of the upcoming summer is The Dark Knight Rises, the conclusion of the Dark Knight trilogy with Christian Bale that started with Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008), the latter of which starred the late Heath Ledger. The trailer for the new film makes me want to see it even more than I did. And now a new version of the trailer in Legos makes me want to see a Legos version of the film too.
Here’s the trailer that is remade in the Lego trailer scene-for-scene:
For an extra treat, press the start button on both videos, syncing the first scene, and you can watch the same scenes in both real and Legos versions at the same time. The non-Legos human version of The Dark Knight Rises comes to theaters on July 20, 2012. The film also stars Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, and Michael Caine. What movie trailer would you like to see in Legos? Leave your two cents in the comments.
In Part One of this two-part series on redemptive violence in American Westerns, we considered how the 2007 version of 3:10 to Yuma significantly changed the ending from the 1957 film. In making the change, the movie embraced the myth of redemptive violence, a concept explained by writer Walter Wink in several books.
“The Myth of Redemptive Violence” appears in the media and popular culture to teach the lesson that violence provides redemption. In these scenes of redemptive violence, the audience feels a release and joy that the hero, often in an apparent beaten state, rises up in a flurry of violence to save himself or herself, save another, or save an entire town.
It is through the act of violence that the hero and society is redeemed and saved.
{Note: This post and the previous post discuss the ending of classic Western film and thus include spoilers.}
Classic Westerns: Shane, High Noon, & The Searchers
Although redemptive violence seems more common in today’s action films like in the updated 3:10 to Yuma, it has been present throughout film history. Many classic Westerns perpetuate the myth of redemptive violence.
But the best of them add a layer of complexity and avoid the simple violence-as-redemption lesson. For example, the classic Shane (1953) fits Walter Wink’s pattern of redemptive violence with Shane beaten until he rises up to redeem himself through violence. But the movie adds something more. Shane’s acts of violence do not bring him a happy life, it was not done out of his own vengeance, and it also may have brought about his sacrificial death.
Similar underlying complex themes are present at the end of High Noon (1952). The movie at first glance ends with a typical redemptive violence shootout, where we are relieved that Gary Cooper killed the bad guys. But his redemption comes from his fulfilled duty more than the violence. Ultimately, he rejects the violence when he throws his badge on the ground at the end and rides off with his Quaker wife to be a farmer.
Similarly, Robert Altman’s beautiful McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) still offered a nod to redemptive violence with the killing of the bad guys. Yet, it also showed us the hero’s tragic death and the consequences of violence.
The Searchers (1956) bucked the redemptive violence myth further. Although the film promises violence at the end, instead we get mercy. The hero then is left with a troubled future because of his violent past.
In the scene below, we see Ethan Edwards, played by John Wayne, finally capturing his niece stolen by the Native Americans. Edwards is an angry violent man who hates the Indians so much he plans to kill his niece who was taken into their culture. But near the end of the film, his character finds redemption through a small nonviolent act.
Naked Spur (1953), starring Jimmy Stewart, features a similar ending. Stewart’s Howard Kemp is angry and seeks revenge throughout the movie, only to break at the end to find himself in something besides violence.
Modern Westerns: Unforgiven, Appaloosa, Dances with Wolves
In this new century, movie makers often create movies that fail to grapple with the complexities of violence and instead offer violence as redemption. Even in the highly regarded “anti-Western” of Unforgiven, where many critics praised its realistic treatment of violence, the movie ends with acts of redemptive violence just like other Clint Eastwood Westerns. The movie promises more, but in the end it slips back into the pattern of redemptive violence as we enjoy watching Eastwood kill the wounded and unarmed Gene Hackman.
Similarly, Appaloosa (2008) offers us a complex vision of the West. But it still settles on a final shootout so viewers are satisfied that the bad guy is killed.
Dances with Wolves (1990) attempted to get out of the cycle of redemptive violence. It does have flashes of it though, such as where the white men – whose evil is shown by the fact they kill Kevin Costner’s horse and the wolf – are killed in a battle at a river. Had the movie ended there, it would have been a redemptive violence lesson: Good guys kill bad guys.
But the film continues and the ending is something different.
After the bad white men are killed, Kevin Costner’s character remains troubled by what the future might bring. And the movie ends with him and Stands With a Fist, in effect, sacrificing their lives living with the tribe to leave on their own to protect the tribe. Thus, the movie ends with an act of sacrifice rather than an act of redemptive violence.
The ending of Dances With Wolves, though, is somewhat unsatisfying. Perhaps it is because the movie led us to believe that it would provide us with redemptive violence due to its previous acts of violence. But at the end there is no big act of violence to put an end to the bad guys and make the good guys heroes. Maybe because the good guys of the movie are the Native Americans, and we all know they do not win, the movie could not end differently. Costner and the tribe never get their redemptive violence because the Native Americans of history never did.
Conclusion
The themes of Shane, High Noon and The Searchers — with their ambiguities and troubled heroes – almost seem too complex in comparison with the modern version of 3:10 to Yuma. The modern movie says, “the bad guy is now good because he killed the bad guys.” But in these older movies, it was not enough to vanquish the bad guys. There was something troubling that lingered even after the final acts of violence.
Of course, not all old Westerns were as complex as The Searchers, so maybe it is unfair to make a comparison across time to a few classics. Still, watch for redemptive violence messages in any modern action film you watch.
Because so many films teach us that redemptive violence solves problems, we must consider what our entertainment teaches us. And we must consider how that entertainment may reflect our society today.
What do you think about the use of violence in film? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Filmmaker Jeff Desom recut the scenes from Alfred Hitchock’s Rear Window (1954) viewed out the apartment window into one video. In the original movie, L.B. “Jeff” Jefferies, played by James Stewart, is confined in a wheelchair with a broken leg and spends his time watching his neighbors through the window of his Greenwich Village apartment. Eventually, he begins to suspect that one of his neighbors murdered his wife. Jeff then convinces his girlfriend, played by Grace Kelly, to help him investigate. Did he see what he thinks he saw, or is he imagining things?
