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Monday 12 November 2018

The most interesting shots in Jack Clayton’s The Innocents

The Innocents is a masterpiece and it is great in many ways, but the thing that interests me the most is the framing—blocking, framing, and the use of space. 
In the previous post, you could see what could be done with deep focus, in Citizen Kane. Here is the combination of deep focus and CinemaScope. It is terrific. 














































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Some personal opinions: 
1/ I like deep focus, combined with B&W. 
2/ I prefer B&W to colour. The ultimate B&W films for me are: 
- Persona 
- Citizen Kane 
- 8 ½ 
- Ivan’s Childhood 
- The Earrings of Madame de… 
- The Innocents 
3/ Whatever people say, I still prefer continuity editing and smooth cuts to French New Wave-style jump cuts. And prefer (complicated) long takes to lots of cutting. 
4/ The Innocents is probably the best film to learn from when it comes to blocking and placing multiple actors in the frame. An observation: it seems to be easier to frame when the actors are not looking at each other. I’m also thinking of the juxtaposed faces in Ingmar Bergman’s films.

1 comment:

  1. Has ever a ghost story looked quite so ghostly? Creeps me out just looking at some of those images.

    ReplyDelete

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