FTVMS 101 - Notes - Week 12

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Bringing Out The Dead
(Liv Macassey)

Bringing Out The Dead, Dir. Martin Scorsese 1999.

Filmed on location in NYC

Based on a book by the same name by Joe Connelly

It is structured episodically as it follows three nights in the life of  Frank Pierce

Auteur approach to Bringing Out The Dead:

Five Thematic similarities with Scorsese’s oevre

Lonely and alienated male hero. (“God’s Lonely Man” – this is a quote from Taxi Driver that is often used to describe these characters)

Urban distopia.

Emphasis on Societal organisation.

Catholic religious themes of loss, redemption and salvation

“So for the second time [the Pharisees] summoned the man who had been blind and said 'speak the truth before God: we know this man is a sinner'. 'Whether or not he is a sinner I do not know' the man replied. 'All I know is this: once I was blind but now I can see'”

Homosocial relationships, performative masculinity and violence.

Stylistic similarities to some of his other films (notably Taxi Driver)

Specific shot types –crane, moving camera around still vehicle. Edit.

Mise en scene and setting  – attention to lights, blonde girl in white

Historical recreation with details.

Use of soundtrack to structure film and to place film.

Episodic structure.

Chronologically fits in with development of oevre

Reprises early work from an historical perspective. Over time, films gradually move away from the “here and now”.

Narrative themes. Can trace a movement from the less overt to overt social strctures in his films.

 

Themes which reflect Scorsese’s own life and concerns

Setting. Scorsese is an Italian (Sicilian) American who grew up in Little Italy on the Lower East Side.

Catholicism: Scorsese wanted to be either a priest or a gangster but he had asthma and had to watch movies a lot instead ...

Unrequited love, loss and redemption. According to Jay Cocks (another frequent screenwriter for Scorsese) Scorsese has said these themes are dear to his heart.

Interest in film form. Film Foundation and role in film preservation.

Scorsese’s role as auteur in America

Signature

Appearances

Voice in Bringing Out The Dead

His Mother and Father

 

Beyond Auteur:

Team Scorsese

Thelma Schoonmaker the editor

Dante Feretti the production designer

Paul Schrader wrote the script and that of Taxi Driver also.

Bob Richardson the cinematographer

Hasn’t used his usual actors (Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Joe Pesci, Daniel Day-Lewis or Leonardo DiCaprio)

But he has an Arquette and a Coppola ...

Intertextuality and Scorsese’s relationship with cinema history + industry.

Also, there is a certain mutability in style so that it suits each film, so in some ways it is useful to look at the films relationship to other films rather than other Scorsese films. Arguably to some extent it is a product of them.

Mean Streets breakthrough film

Last Temptation of Christ

“sell out” Cape Fear

Controversial Kundun

Gangs of New York in Cinecitta

 

Genre approach:

Social context of the film

1990 Lower East Side, Hell’s Kitchen, the location of several communities of marginalised ethnicities.

1999 the Lower East side had seen the effects of NYC Mayor Rudi Guiliani’s “zero tolerance” policy and the cleanup of Manhattan.

Amadou Diallo type killings, and social concern.

1999 and Pre-Millenial Tension. Y2K, The Phantom Menace, and Runaway Bride. End of Days, Fight Club.

Fear of breakdown of social services.

The Gangster Film

Masculinity, threat, alienation, violence, and social organisation are all structuring themes of this genre.  Like gangster films, Bringing Out The Dead pays attention to the individual’s relationship to social organisations.

Like all gangsters Frank hides a sensitive soul under a tough exterior.

He spends his time in a seedy criminal underworld in an urban location.

Lighting+ Noir styles

The rhythm of the film which uses moody pensive moments of slow cutting and then picks up the pace for explosions of violent action.

 

The Historical/Period film

Soundtrack

Narration

Stylised mise en scene

 

The Melodrama

Although it challenges this genre in that there are no clear boundaries between good and bad, the film still contains elements of melodrama:

Follows the archetype of the quest narrative.

Heteronormative romantic relationship between the hero and the love interest (daytime)

 

The Road Movie

The way the vehicle is shot and the way the shots are cut together.

Episodic structure marked by quirky events and characters

Buddy relationships

Use of music to set mood and tone

 

The Independent film

After  “Golden Years of Personal Filmmaking” but carries legacy

Thematic concerns: personal and often darker themes of the independent American movie. Bringing Out The Dead produced by Scott Rudin and Barbara Fina for Touchstone.

1977 Star Wars and the rise of the blockbuster in Hollywood

1980s Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate

 

Ethnicity, Gender and representation

Masculinity

"Hard" masculinity the impermeable body and Frank.

Violence as action. Violent action performed on other people’s bodies at the centre of the men’s vocation, much as a gangster has to whack people or a boxer has to hit them. 

 Drinking and drug taking, stamina, self destructiveness. Cy and the “pieta” of the pierced male body 

The association between male body and machine.

We also see a drama of the touch in terms of Frank’s tendency to give CPR.

 

Femininity

Woman as prize + redemption within the narrative, women as means of salvation.

Virgin/Whore Archetypes,

Rose as Spectacle, subjective camera and post production effects  - we see Frank’s hallucinations.

Women as passive and lacking in agency.

Identity and Ethnicity

The representation of US American identity: Italian Americans, Irish Americans, African Americans. The Neighbourhood as melting pot.

Immigrant experience as defining “Americanness”

New Zealand actor Cliff Curtis as Cy the ‘other’.