Author: Caragh Hargreaves
-
The Birds. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Universal Pictures. 1963.
The Birds (1963) is undoubtedly a horror film because it contains a deep sense of the uncanny, a term Freud coins as something that is terrifying because it is familiar.[i] The Birds contains many pockets of fear and gruesome imagery throughout the film. Hitchcock’s use of human bodies being pecked at by birds are an example of the…
-
The Artist. Dir. Michel Hazanavicius. Warner Brothers. 2011.
Jean Dujardin as George Valentin, Bérénice Bejo as Peppy Miller and Uggie the dog in The Artist The Artist (2011) is a remarkable modern day silent film that explores the transformation of silent movies into talking pictures in 1920s Hollywood. This change in cinema style affects the lives of both the famous silent movie actor George Valentin…
-
The Wrong Trousers. Dir. Nick Pick. BBC. 1993.
Hapless Wallace and his faithful dog Gromit appear again on screen for a dramatic adventure in The Wrong Trousers (1993). The inventors’ worldsget thrown upside down by Gromit’s birthday present: a pair of mechanical trousers. These were intended to self-walk Gromit, but when Wallace’s debts lead him to letting out a room to a penguin, the trousers…
-
Shrek. Dir. Andrew Adamson & Vicky Jenson. DreamWorks Pictures. 2001.
Shrek (2001) is a film that invests in the fairytale tropes found in literature to create humour. Characters are typecast and stereotypes are flung at the audience in the beginning scenes of the movie. This is important for establishing the roles of animals in the film, because most of them, being objects of fairytale discourse, are…