The Ultimate Cinema Experiences

Films are part of human day-to-day activities. Most films are related to the issues that affect human life. This paper will consider three films, which are narrated relating to the common life of Americans. These three films are Vertigo, Citizen Kane, and Battleship Potemkin. These films have been the most popular among the American community. This paper seeks to explain why these films are most watched.

Vertigo is a psychological thriller whose director was Alfred Hitchcock. Samuel A. and Taylor Alec Coppel are the authors of this script. John Ferguson, referred as Scottie, is a retired detective cop in San Francisco. He is suffering from acrophobia, and the lady Madeleine is the one who heads him to high positions. Scottie has gone to early retirement because of incapacities experienced in the line of duty. A former college friend of Scottie, who is a rich shipbuilder, requests him to be a private examiner and go along with his beautiful wife. He worries that his wife is insane, anticipating suicide; since she thinks a dead ancestor has obsessed her. Scottie is doubtful but approves after seeing the gorgeous lady. Vertigo is intensely unique and multiplex story full of suspense and a charming study in psychosomatic tension. Hitchcock uses a difficult story, copious filmic details, fascinating actors, meditative pacing and a very good musical record to create a secretive, practically conducive atmosphere. According to Boileau, there are great acting presentations in the film, and Scottie is exceptional in his part and different from who he really is. This allows the observers to pity with him at his actions and decisions. Vertigo does things amazingly well as Scottie reveals his true colors. The film is beautifully composed and well as shot with countless Scottie’s visual references that push the observer into his anguished head space. A love story between Madeleine and Scottie is depicted in the film. The world breaking love and changes in life between Scottie and Madeleine is unavoidable. This film revolves around tension, suspense, and love that helps the viewer enjoy the plot more and gives them the desire to know what happens at the end of the film. Boileau argues that the tension hardly lets up, and this abstracts the observer’s tension completely in it and sometimes at a state of uneasiness. The film pays cautious attention, because every part is full of important points, and thus this factor makes the film one of the best in all times (Boileau 136).

Citizen Kane demonstrates two most interesting themes in the film. The first one deals with the debasement of the secretive personality of a public figure, the other theme concerns with the severe mass of materialism. When combined, these themes display the bitter irony of a successful story in America that ends in loneliness, futile nostalgia and death. The personal theme is developed via characters, while the materialistic one is displayed visually, by building a distinctive technical counter-point. The theme is told in many perspectives and by several characters, and is understood as provoking. This story shows how a rich newspaperman, who makes his status as the guardian of the disadvantaged, becomes ruined by power, immorality and envy for money. Kane has no ability to have real emotions for people, which leads to misfortune. He is a materialistic character who neither gives anything away nor provides for those around him. The first and final clash of sanity and expressionism proposes the theme of Citizen Kane in an indirect way. He becomes a convict of his assets, the garnish of his furnishings and the economic tool of his gatherings. The position of the camera is a vital factor in psychological and artistic choice; through his worldly possessions, Kane is truly full; hence the audience fells inferior. He is greedy, selfish, and his deeds have deformed his life and appearance. The film is a pictorial masterpiece of courageous turns and breathtaking images. It uses sound mixtures with flashback vistas to symbolize the time for them. Sound montage is used to strengthen the unusual tension of the characters and bringing in joyless determination. The methods used in Citizen Kane are a mirror image and projection of the heartless quality of the character. In the way, the methods are used to enlarge and distort the characters in the film. In Citizen Kane, Kael presents a powerful concept of American life where materialistic components are partial and magnified at the expenditure of people’s capabilities. Kane’s behavior is thematically endless with ethical climate of his atmosphere. The film explains much of day–to-day lifestyles, and the results educate us on how to amend our ways therefore making it one of the best movies in all times (Kael 69).      

Most of the ideas of Battleship Potemkin reflect such problems as class struggle, revolution, politics and other favorite themes of Soviet directors of this era. Eisenstein felt that the shot was mostly the main raw material of the film. According to Pet, most single frames and single shots are strikingly meaningful and constructed by themselves; for example, when we see the sailors lying in the hammocks. This shows how deep in focus the spirit of solidarity is. Contrast also occurs when the revolt begins and the sailors are shot standing in line. They remain united, retaining unity of the previous image, but at last, they do not rest; they are engaged (Pet 40). The expression of sadness and agony in the film is as powerful as the conflicts between the black and white worker mariners and captains. The sea of white boaters mixing is noticed later when the crowd surrounds the murdered Vakulinchuk. Intermixing through checking of single images makes Eisenstein most famous and many of his opinions are involved. Mechanics of the impersonality of this craft are at once insulated as automatic and repetitive, yet through its sensual associations, we observe the human side; this illustration of dualism of the movie is generally used in both collective and conflicting terms, which can create the art organism or the art machine. In this film, we get a huge class of flashbacks when the doctor is slung overboard and Eistenstein implants the shot of worms on the meat and then a shot of glasses floating. Through two easy pellets of mariners and their guns, Eisenstein communicates so much when the gunfire squad is about to shoot the unruly seadogs. Vakunlinchuk begs them, but we get shooting of their guns, and then there is calmness as the gunfire ceases and comes down. Pet argues that the sense of completion and solidarity is established in explicit. The cinema revolves around politics, struggle and class. There are those sailors of the high class and the lower class where the mutual struggle leads to the achievement of their goal (Pet 16).

In conclusion, these films have one thing in common. They are all famous and popular in that they have a great number of viewers. The reason behind their popularity is that all of them are pertinent to the common people. The themes of these films relate to what is happening to most people and thus they are very relevant.