Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Lead Shoes-Sidney Peterson

There were several interesting approaches to film making in both of Peterson's films The Cage and Lead Shoes. In Lead Shoes, the use of a distorted lens, shallow space and time manipulation created a disorienting and ungrounded effect. There are relatively little spacial clues, so as we see the woman in the room and with the diver on the beach dissolving to a girl playing hopscotch and back again there is no sense of where you are. Sidney seems quite fond of reversing time and playing with that effect, both The Cage and Lead Shoes are cyclic films rather than linear. The editing created tension even if you are not sure why. In the scene where the man sees the bread, the bone, dog, bone then the man devouring the blood soaked bread, they are straight cut with no intercutting. Knowing that these films are workshop projects there strength comes from the synthesis and intertwining of ideas. The thing that stood out the most for me in Lead Shoes was the soundtrack. In this film more that any other we have seen, sound played a part in providing narrative information. I gathered that Edward was the man in the diving suit, the words spoken, although not always clear, gave me the impression that this was some sort of tragic love story, and the old blues music just seemed to fit. I believe this influenced my interpretation of the images shown.The combination of the different sounds at times was quite eerie. As a surrealist film the mise en scene, cinematography and sound played with and against each other, altering your expectations and pushing you outside of your comfort zone, forcing you to take an alternate view of reality.

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