“The Classic Hollywood” in Amelie, Fight Club and Cinema Paradiso

Movies are changing all the time, whether it is the acting, special effects, or storylines. However, they still seem to maintain at least some of those old-school principles of vintage Hollywood. In Classical Hollywood Cinema, David Bordwell analyzes narration, fabula, causality, syuzhet, and also more detailed aspects of “classical” film. Bordwell states the classical syuzhet usually offers two plot lines (heterosexual romance and a quest). Interestingly, he admits that classical film style has become “excessive.” After studying Amelie, Fight Club, and Cinema Paradiso one can find some “classical” flavor in each.

The first film we watched, Amelie, maybe the most simple and cliché Hollywood film. The main character, Amelie, is a very shy and lonely young girl who enjoys simple pleasures in life (e.g. hands in grain, skipping stones on water). One day she discovers a simple memorabilia and is then determined to return it to its owner. While attempting to return the item, Amelie falls in love with the stranger, and then puts him through a series of unconvential schemes.

Without the need for a PHD, one can guess how the story will end. Amelie follows the standard fubula and plot. I see the movie unfold through “act” narrative. The syuzhet follows Bordwell’s track. Bordwell’s dual plot line is more distinct; Amelie intertwines the two plot lines. Following “Classical Spectatorship,” “Schemata” allows a viewer to project presumable hypotheses.

David Fincher’s 1999 hit, Fight Club, is a story about a man living a troubled life and soon goes through life changing events by meeting Tyler Durden. Due to violence, and a dreary setting, Fight Club may seem to stray from the stereotypical Hollywood classic, but it does boast some similarities.

Fight Club fulfills two major components Bordwell lays out. In the end the protagonist gets the girl and overcomes his inner-conflict. So really the result is classical, but its approach getting there was not. The causality can often be complex, but in the end it comes full circle. The film offers a traditional climax, in which the narrator’s strife is overcome. Bordwell hits on the value of an epilogue and in my eyes Fight Club has a very simple, but yet appropriate end comment (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUNSTAf2Vho 29-35).

Fincher’s film still has oppositional cinema features. Fight Club’s plot format is contrasting to Bordwell’s plot formula (undisturbed stage, the disturbance, the struggle, and the elimination of the disturbance). To me the film is in a constant disturbance and struggle stage until the very end. The fact the movie is intended for older audiences plus the gore and language can hinder its true “classical” feel. The narrative can be labeled as all three of Bordwell’s narrative categories: representation, structure, and an act. Different viewers can argue the film to be any three of the narrative styles. The thrill of the movie is the difficulty for viewers to form hypotheses.

Eleven years prior to Fight Club, Giuseppe Tornatore released Cinemo Paradiso. The movie is about a trouble making young boy (Toto) who loves film. Under the guidance of his father figure Alfred, Toto works local theaters and falls in love while doing so. After many years of absence and change, he returns to his hometown as a successful movie producer to attend Alfred’s funeral and witness his old theater be destroyed.

The movie offers the widely seen Hollywood mechanism of flashbacks. I portrayed two kinds of love in the film: romance with another person, and having a passion for something. The causality is effective through the use of flashback. The narrative is much looser than the other two movies; to me it is an example of Bordwell’s “representation” narrative. The peculiar part of Cinema Paradiso is the end. Toto watches a montage of love clips in his theater while crying. I was predicting his former teenage flame would return to him at some point, but I was wrong.

“Classic Hollywood” may always be like those sneakers that never go out of style. Even as the content and production of film alters, there will usually be ties to the customary components that made America fall in love with film.