that Black and White movie....

Image via Wikipedia

Coming into class, the first day when Donna showed us clips of old movies, they were in black and white, so the concept of watching a movie with no color no longer scared me by the time we got to the third class and watched: Sunset Boulevard. Learning about the transitions, and editing, special effects, and basically everything else that goes on behind the scenes of a movie made me concentrate on that than on the color, in fact I don't think that I even realized that it was black and white until emphasized.

When surfing the channels, I distinctly remember that whenever I would see the flash of just black and white, I would wait to see if I could recognize the face, feel disinterested and change the channel. I would feel that because the movie is in black and white, there is a distance between me and the movie, for example, I wouldn't get the familiarity feeling, or the feeling to relate to the movie, only because I could not see the color of anything in the movie. But I can't lie, some of my favorite movies are actually in black and white, but they are Indian of course. But the concept is the same in both genres of films.

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Sunset Boulevard itself was a film noir. And for this genre of movie, they are always in black and white. Also these kind of movies usually do not have a happy ending, all of the characters have a flaw, the story in general is depressing. The movie is also shot in dim light and/or with shadows. This movie specifically was in flashback, where you already know the ending, but they are telling you how it all got to that ending.

The characters in this film were quite interesting and flawed of course. More than the character, this film had two dimensions of the world. One in which there was Norma and Max who lived in the giant mansion with luxury, but still everything seemed gloomy and depressing in there. The other world was more realistic for the audience and a relief at times when Joe would go to that world, for example when he went to the New Years' Eve party filled with people, compared to the party at Norma's house, where he was the only guest.

A lot of transitions were used, but what I thought was the most fascinating thing was the idea of how the credits and movie title was brought into the movie, and how beautifully the setting didn't even have to change, and the movie had started. I also found it interesting that whenever they would show a scene of a person driving the car, the background was fake. I have seen this done before, and especially in old Indian movies, and I always thought that it was a flaw in their movie, but I now realize that this was also a common way to show a car scene here also. Little things like this, makes the process of film-making so universal. The sound effects were also interesting. I noticed that there was never a moment in the film of silence, through out the whole movie, orchestral music was playing in the background. And also, this movie had a narrator, and it was Joe himself who was telling the story. I noticed that they used narration in parts of the movie where the dialogue would not have been able to do justice to the scene. And other times, simply the music in the background did the magic for the scene. The acting was also a little different from movies that I've seen; in general was very dramatic. But I think it was needed to add to the effect of each character and how they effected the other characters.

All in all, I really did enjoy the movie, although some parts I did think Norma was creepy, and that Joe should've made some better decisions when it came to love, and that Max all in all was a creepy character but he was loyal, and that made him stand out. The only thing missing I think is that there were some stories left unfinished, like wouldn't the audience want to know if Betty came back to see Joe dead, if she gets married to Artie or not, what happens with the obvious murder which occurred. But other than those questions, I really did like the movie, I know I was giggling most of the time, it was full of entertainment! This movie is definitely worth your time to watch.