A Clockwork Orange and The Player
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The films A Clockwork Orange and The Player reflect the interests and styles of their respective directors, Stanley Kubrick and Robert Altman. The two filmmakers are very different in their methods of filmmaking--Kubrick is a former photographer with an eye for composition and control, while Altman prefers improvisation and the power of the moment, often a moment created by the actors themselves as they interact with one another and with the material. A Clockwork Orange is very much a controlled work showing the hand of Kubrick in every frame, while The Player shows how Altman improvises and relies less on control and more on spontaneity. Both filmmakers are commenting on cultural and social values they see in the world around them, and both see the values of the past, and the values that actually have value, as being eroded by various forces in the culture itself. Kubrick's film is set at some time in the future, but its message and interests are relevant to the world in which we live, just as Altman's film satirizes elements in a particular sub-culture of that world, the sub-culture of Hollywood, while doing so in a way that says much about society at large. The openings in both films are instructive about the methods of the filmmakers and about their thematic concerns and how those concerns are to be addressed. The opening sequences of A Clockwork Orange look to the near future, extrapolating from our own time to one where many young people have become urban maraud
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singing, the dancing, the violence along with the music--carrying the proceedings to the realm of fable. This becomes important in the latter half of the film as the protagonist loses his ability to enjoy music even as he also loses his propensity for violence. The symbolic nature of the action serves well once Kubrick begins to show the importance of freedom even for social misfits like Alex.
The opening scene in The Player is in some ways uncharacteristic for Altman, and yet he pulls off what is truly a controlled and "directed" sequence in a way that only enhances the improvisational nature of other parts of the film and gives a sense of improvisation even as the director of necessity has shaped every move in order to cover the ground desired. The camera fluidly moves from person to person, window to window, around a small central area of a film studio, picking up conversations here and there, coming back to one heard before, moving in a way that connects otherwise unconnected conversations. Altman is not a director who exerts this kind of control and precision over the camera, and yet for this film about control, that is precisely what he offers in the opening scene. At the same time, there is something improvisational
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1389
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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