POST 8 BIS: "My" thriller: Psycho, by Alfred Hitchcock.

The trailer.

The very famous shower scene, heart of the movie and probably one of the best movie scene ever made in the history of cinema.

Psycho is a movie made by the english Alfred Hitchcock released in 1960, one of the world's best film director. Hitchcock was very known for his very good thrillers and remains today as the father of many film techniques very new for his time and which made his thrillers even more "scary". Psycho is probably the most known of his movies because of the very shocking scenes in it (for the time) and for Anthony Hopkins remarquable performance.

The story is about Marion Crane, a young secretary who works in a bank and is having an affair with a man. She needs money to get away with the man she loves and one day, after work, she steels in the bank she works in a whole lot of money. Pretending to be sick, she goes home early and runs away by car. A policeman arrests her for sleeping in the car and thinking about her weird behaviour, follows her. At night, she arrives in a very strange motel in the middle of nowhere, hidden from everything, where nobody lives except the owner, Norman Bates, and his strange mother. She checks in, and while taking a shower, a very strange silhouet comes in and kills her with a knife. This scene is typical for a thriller: there is a very nerve-racking music, a horrifying scream, blood and it is very slow but also fast at the same time. We don't see the face of the killer wich is even more scary. After that scene, a privet detective and Marion's sister arrive at the motel to look for her. During the whole movie and until the end, we don't know who the killer is even though we guess it a little bit, but the end is so horrible and shocking that it bloodcurls you because you do not except that at all.

POST 8: WITNESS AS A THRILLER

From the blog: http://bethrigby.blogspot.com.es/2011/01/section-one-thriller-genre.html

DEFINITION: These are types of films known to promote intense excitement, suspense, a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety, and nerve-wracking tension. Thriller and suspense films are virtually synonymous and interchangeable categorizations, with similar characteristics and features.

There are some Thriller sub-genres:

Legal Thriller: eg- A Few Good Men
Disaster Thriller: eg- The Day After Tomorrow 
Psychological Thriller: eg- The Talented Mr. Ripley 
Medical Thriller: eg- The Experiment
Religious Thriller: eg- The Da Vinci Code 
Crime Thriller: eg - Silence of the Lambs

Techno Thriller: eg- The Matrix  

Primary elements of  the Thriller as a genre	Witness as a thriller Illustration in the film
1.Central protagonist   The protagonist faces death, it can be his own or someone else's.	John Book faces his own death when he gets shot in the undergroud parking lot. he also faces the death of his partner, when Carter gets killed. Samuel also faces death when he is in the bathroom and then when he has become an eyewitness.
2.Force/s of antagonism ... must initially be clever and/or stronger than the protagonist.	At first the dirty cops are more powerfull because they are in a higher positions (Schaeffer is John's boss/higher up) and then John is alone and isolated in the Amish community were he is vulnerable.
3.Main storyline For the protagonist it is either a quest or the character who cannot be put down(=defeated)	John's quest consists in finding the killer and uncovering the corruption ring. He also wants to avenge Carter's death.
4.Main plotline The main plotline focuses on a mystery that must be solved.	The mistery John has to solve is obiously the motive behind the murder of the police man.
5.Narrative construction It is dominated by the protagonist's point of view.	The beginning of the film is only concerned with the Amish and their lifestyle. But then when learn about Carter's death through John's point of view, so as we see Rachel and Samuel through his eyes mostly.
6.Action and characters They must be credibly realistic/natural in their representation on screen.	The Amish way of live is very credibly depicted through, for instance, the way they are dress, the barn-raising, the cow-milking, Rachel's sponge bath, or like when Elaine describes John...
7.Major themes ... are the desire for justice and the morality of individuals.	John takes justice in his own hands in order to avenge his murdered colleage. The Amish as a whole embody the highest degree of morality.
8.Small but significant aspect ... is the presence of innocence in what is seen as an essentially corrupt world.	The whole Amish community embodyinnocence because their values are basically pure. On the other hand the corruption inside the police represents the corruption of the modern world.

                                                                                                  

                                                                                                        

                   

POST 4: The Idea of Progress in Witness, a movie released in 1985

This video is the trailer of a movie called Witness, released in 1985.

This movie is a thriller, and it tells the story of an amish family who gets involved in a murder case because a little boy was apparently a witness to this murder. In the trailer we can see the little boy and his mother who are "protected" and followed by a police officer, played by Harrison Ford. Obviously it is a movie with a lot of action, because we see in the trailer scenes were people get shot, or scream, and the family running away with the police officer. Also, I guess it is also a love story because at the end of the trailer, the amish mother and the police officer kiss, and we hear a woman saying that people are "talking about them". I think it is the typical Hollywood action movie with a little love story in it to make even more interesting and not that violent because it still is about a homicide. I also would love to see it because it is kind of an old movie (1985) and old thrillers are the best, I love to watch them with my parents. Also, I love Harrison Ford and I think he would be an excellent police officer in that kind of movie because he is well known for his roles in action movies.