Self-Evaluation

First of all, I want to say I really enjoyed this class, and I learned a lot of interesting things about cinema. In respect to my postings, I completed all of them and in time, except for two or three of them. I replied one of every kind of posting and I did it respectfully. I think my postings have a good quality, especially the ones I did during the first half of the semester. I believe I would give my Film Viewing Journal an A. I hope everyone will have a great summer.

Quentin Tarantino's Use of Crime

In his movies, Quentin Tarantino presents crimes as normal events that have to be done to keep walking forward in a gangster life or work. For example, in Reservoir Dogs, at the end of the movie, in the scene where a Mexican stand-up happens, everyone aims their pistols on their partners as if it was a normal event to do such a thing. They finished killing each other. They fired each other as if it was nothing to kill a partner. After the incident with the police, Mr. Pink suggests to find the rat of the group and kill him. He says this because it is something they have to do to keep walking forward. If they know who is the rat they are going to kill him, it is just business.
Other examples are presented in Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. In Pulp Fiction, Bruce Willis kills John Travolta to keep himself alive. And Samuel Jackson and John Travolta kill many people because of business. In Jackie Brown, Samuel Jackson tries to kill everyone that could make him fall down. He does this because of business.
Tarantino also presents crimes as ways in which the people who commit them have fun. Two great examples that show this are the torture scene, in Reservoir Dogs, and the scene where Samuel Jackson is raped, in Pulp Fiction. In both scenes, the people who are committing the atrocities are having fun. In Reservoir Dogs, Mr. Blonde dances and sings during the torture. And in Pulp Fiction, we can hear the policeman saying phrases that make us know he is having fun.

Analysis of Violence in Reservoir Dogs

In their movies, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino have different approaches to violence, and present the gangster life in different ways. Scorsese's movies present the gangster life in a more realistic way. Tarantino makes the scenes where violence occurs to see not so realistic, we can’t even watch them explicitly; imagination takes an important part there; this will be explained more detailed as this posting progresses.
Tarantino always leaves violence free to the imagination. The scenes, where violent acts are committed, are arranged in a way that make the audience feel a mix of emotions while watching them. An example that represents this is the torture scene in Reservoir Dogs. In this scene, Mr. Blonde cuts the policeman's face, near the left eye, with a pocketknife or a razor, and then he tears out the policeman's right ear. At first, Mr. Blonde is dancing and singing. Then at the moment he is going to cut the policeman the camera moves out and we never see the act; we imagine it. Then the camera moves back again to the policeman and he has not his right ear.
On the other hand, Scorsese shows explicitly the violent acts in his movies. He does not leave violence free to the imagination; he makes you sense it in a more realistic way. A great example that supports this is, in Casino, the beating Joe Pesci and his brother receive at the “holes.” There, Scorsese makes us watch each hit that those two gangsters received, how they are beaten almost to death, and then how they are buried alive.

Martin Scorsese's Ideology

Scorsese presents being a gangster as a part of life. They are good or bad people, it does not matter, they are just people. He does not concentrate in this act of classification, of being gangsters, between good or bad but in how is their life and what they are searching for. Goodfellas is a movie about how a specific gangster begins this type of life and tries to rise himself up to the top. The most important thing, that a gangster needs, to accomplish this, is respect. To be respected by others gives you power. To achieve this, gangsters do whatever they can. Again, it is not about being good or bad, it is about power and how to gain it. Once a gangster gains respect he will have power to do whatever he want.
In Scorsese’s movies, Mean Streets, Goodfellas, and Casino, he also shows the other side of being a gangster. Gangsters can not make any mistake. Because if they do they will get killed by other gangsters without them thinking it twice. This is what happens to Joe Pesci in Goodfellas and in Casino. In Goodfellas, he kills a made man, a man that can not be touched because of the respect he has gained. In Casino, he also tries to jump this line of respect and gets killed. In Mean Streets, the main characters get also killed because they did not pay a debt and were disrespectful to another gangster.
This is what Scorsese tries to say about gangsters in his movies. A gangster can get power by gaining respect but he can also get killed in any moment by another gangster that is also looking for power.

Genre Analysis of Goodfellas

The movie Goodfellas fits within the genre of crime film, and more specifically within the subgenre of mafia/gangster film. Many facts support this statement. The first noticeable thing that makes this statement true is the setting of the movie. Many of the movie's scenes take place in bars. In those bars, the people are always smoking, drinking, and making jokes, as if they have no reason to be worried. In most of these scenes, the gangsters fight, and in some of them someone dies.
Other facts that makes the movie fit within this subgenre is that there is always violence and drugs involved, respect, and family-like treatment.
Respect is the word, the most important term when we are talking about mafia and its hierarchy. In Goodfellas, Paulie is the head of the mafia and everybody respects him. He doesn’t have to move a finger. Everybody do as he says, and if they don’t they get instantly killed. Respect is what every gangster looks for. In the movie we see the life of a specific guy as he passes through his gangster life. He, the protagonist, as the movie progresses, is constantly looking for respect, working for it, which is definitely power.
And finally, we can see the family-like treatment the mafia members give to each other. But when we are talking about gangsters, you can’t make any mistake. As soon as a gangster feels that you aren’t a reliable person or they doubt of your intentions you are eliminated from the equation. Goodfellas presents the gangster just like this. They treat each other as if they were a family but as soon as you make a mistake you are a dead man. This is what Robert DeNiro did with everyone that could make him go down.

Meaning in Taxi Driver

I really liked this movie. In it, we can clearly see that Kubrick’s style and Scorsese’s style are different. Taxi Driver is a very interesting movie. We can make many interpretations of the movie’s meanings.

Travis, the movie’s protagonist, was relieved of active duty, in the Marine Corps, through the method of honorable discharge; apparently, because he is mentally unstable. He lives in New York City, working as a taxi driver. In the movie, this place is all messed up. Everyone wants a big change instantly and it’s impossible to achieve, so people gives up and doesn’t do anything to improve the city. Travis gets tired of this. He goes out to make a difference. He saves a twelve-year-old girl’s life, killing her pimp and chiefs. He makes use of violence to save her, but he doesn’t think of this as a crime. It doesn’t matter if he has to use violence to achieve this purpose. Anyways, this was what the Marine Corps taught him. The Marine Corps teaches the marines, the country’s heroes, to use violence to protect their country. He is acting just as that, as a country protector.

Travis didn’t like the world in which he lived, but he didn’t do anything to change it at the beginning. What made him go out and kill those guys? I believe that even do he was mentally unstable his most strongly motivation was his love disappointment. We can interpret that Scorsese is telling us that love is a necessity and loosing it can make someone’s mind to get unstable or more unstable than it is already as in Travis’s case.

Filming the Mean Streets

First of all, I want to say I didn’t like this movie. It just didn’t impress me.

One of the most noticeable differences between Kubrick’s and Scorsese’s style of work is the use of acting.

In “Mean Streets,” the actors perform their work more freely than they do in Kubrick’s movies. Scorsese seems to leave room for improvisation in his movies. On the other hand, Kubrick doesn’t let escape any detail in his works. He has everything meticulously planned; and he makes the actors act the way he want them to do, so his plans can’t “fail.”

Scorsese uses acting in a more realistic way than Kubrick does. This is another way in which the use of acting of both directors differs. In “Mean Streets,” the fight scenes are examples that prove this criterion. In these scenes, the actors perform a bunch of drunken people fighting; and they look exactly like that, drunken people having a fight between drunken people. They just throw punches randomly and walk like drunken people do. These fights aren’t presented in the same way as they are presented traditionally in movies. In Kubrick’s movies, acting is perfectly executed, it is an art. We can’t expect anything different from Kubrick. He is a perfectionist; everything has to be perfect and everything is.

Another noticeable fact that differ the style of work in Scorsese’s “Mean Streets” and in Kubrick’s movies is the type of message they present. Through his movies, Kubrick expresses his ideas and opinions about the world’s most controversial themes, at their time of release. In “Mean Streets,” Scorsese exposes what he saw everyday in the streets of Little Italy, where he lived when he was a boy.