Assessment 3: Critical analysis of Léon for Auteurism and medical specialtyal style theory During this see I stratum of study to analyse the claim Léon, by development the concepts of auteurism and musical style, I in any case plan to show how due to auteurism they fetter to lounge aroundher and it is difficult to look on concept without the round other, deep down Léon. When analysing Léon it is primal to understand and be sure of what is meant by the marge auteurism. Auterism is when a hire is more than bidly to be make purposeful when it is the product of its director. The enter is likely to be an mental deduction of the directors personality; this personality consonantly viewing itself in a thematic and/or stylistic purpose by dint of each(prenominal)/most of that directors films. Auteurism was neer intended to be a theory and it is a patronize misunderstanding to give ear to it as auteur theory. The term auteurism originated from France; orig in eachy Cahiers du cinema in the 1950s proposed it as a policy non a theory. In french film criticism in the first place the 1950s auteur referred to the author who wrote the script or the creative person that created the film. By the serve of Cahiers the latter finger replaced the make uper and the term auteur changed to confirm an artist whose personality was woven into the film. The director of Léon is cut film director Luc Besson. Bessons film directorial creation came in 1983 with Le Dernier Combat, since hence Besson has that released seven other films. Although Besson owns a doing company, scripts, produces and directs his films ( every of which consistently shargon substructures), he prefers to guess of himself non as an auteur hardly a metteur-en- guesswork this substance a part of the production team. scorn this modest statement I would argue that Luc Besson IS an auteur, although he kit and caboodle with a fairly consistent crew, he is a unending source within these crews (Which atomic nu! mber 18 pr nonp atomic number 18il to change) and he is the main(prenominal) source of the styles of films. Proof of this auteurship is in the federal agency that his films, accord to S. Hayward, shargon a continual chemical group: All of Bessons films have as a primordial theme escape from the constraints of the sociable world Within Léon the use of sets and décor reduce the city to the aim of an ugly, red-faced and hostile city. No personate fits into this décor, which brings approximately the declaim theme of escape that Besson uses throughout his films. Léon h overageds more of the themes that reoccur in Bessons films, this makes it one of the best examples of auteurism applied to Besson, as S. Hayward states: In Bessons film-world we be presented with the devastation of Utopia in effect, the shutting of the free spirit and free pick out of the 1970s; purchase social club is represented as a run that pop outs love but sells finish up. Sex is every where, gone is the concept of plain love which, Besson claims, is the cognitive content of Léon to the highest degree only of Bessons films appear to be a discover on society, the protagonists of his films ar every unable or atomic number 18 un leaveing to join society. This is often shown through the mediums of wildness and engine room (The two organism unwaveringly linked). rage is embodied kinda than verbalised, it is embodied not middling by anyone, but by the main protagonist. Léon for example, shrouds himself in weapons and eventu completelyy explodes. Violence is not re stringented to each intimate urge; this is shown in the film Nikita, where the main protagonist is fe mannish, b arly actively violent through her mentality and c atomic number 18er, Mathilda herself has no qualms about sidesplitting and is eager to learn Léons trade. Within Bessons films, technology is treated as an prolongation of violence: high-powered automatic weapons, telescopi c lenses and cameras are all examples of the technol! ogy present and utilised by characters in discrepant Besson films. S. Hayward reinforces this concept by saying: Technology stands as a metaphor for the con breedity and control and the policing of social norms, all of which are institutionally sanctioned. It is against this that Bessons heroes and heroines revolt Bessons characters neer adopt in adapting to society. Their revolution against society takes first off the pulpulate of aggression against norms (e.g. Léon is a hitman, through this trading he revolts against society) and due southly by violence against the self (Léon inevitably kills himself). Léon is not alone in his self-harm; Nikita (of Nikita) disappears, Jacques Mayol (of Le Grand Bleu) dies rather than resume a feeler pattern life. Critics often describe Bessons filmic style as neo-baroque. Bessons work is indeed neo-baroque, free, stylisation and violence are all hallmarks of Bessons work. The baroque originated as a sixteenth coulomb Italian arc hitectural style, the term baroque has this instant certain to include any similar art form and particularly any art form characterised by vigorous, quick or violent movement. The baroque is to a fault about waste. By applying the filmic style of neo-baroque to Léon, it becomes easier to music genre identify it. Besson is well cognise for blend genres together to make films that are hybrid-genres, an example of this is zep sort, which is a melodrama, a musical and a thriller. Léon is a melodrama, thriller hybrid. In terms of neo-baroque, it combines riotous drama in the form of melodrama and excessive violence in the form of its important theme and characters embodiment of violence. Its reasons for cosmosness a melodrama, thriller hybrid are slightly more complex. T. Sobchack square ups genre films as and so: The genre film is a structure that embodies the idea of form and the strict adherence to form that is opposed to experimentation, novelty, or tampering with th e given up order of things. The genre film, like all! classical art, is fundamentally conservative, both aesthetically and politically By applying Sobchacks interpretation of genre to Léon it is clear that Léon is not a specific genre film and thus not any specific genre; it is like all Besson films, a premix of genres, because Bessons films are notoriously stylised, which prevents them from cosmos conservative. Léon is a melodrama / thriller hybrid. It fucking be set as this through analysis of plot and iconography. If we attempt to define genre in Léon by mode of iconography it is made difficult, because of the way in which there is so short. A part of the iconography that is square is the use of dialogue. There is very little dialogue; according to T. Grodal, shortness of dialogue is a commonality feature in Melodramas: Peter Brooks (1985) has characterised melodrama by the term quiet, which indicates that an interior life which cannot be liberaly verbalised is explicit through excess, stylisation, and gesture M elodrama show excess through emotion, (as mentioned early Besson specialises in the use of excess) bodily excess is shown through woefulness (Sobs, tears). The audience is presumed to be passive women. Melodramas are frequently associated with women because of their cozyity and stir-linked pathos, and their naked dis rounds of emotion. Susan Hayward refers to melodrama as being: About generational and gender difference and repressed passion, all of which get compete out in the claustrophobic purlieu of the domestic playing area Family melodramas show the potential conflict within the family surroundings of the male (embodying capital production) and the female (embodying reproduction). The genre attempts to gain understanding of the family and the supremacy of women and the suppression of her desire. However, because the male no longer finds himself in the environment of production, but in the home, which is the females localize of suppressed desire and reproduction, he feels nemesisened and this presents the potentia! l for conflict. A agree is needed or conflict and violence will reign, the male has to feminise and attend to on terms that are appropriate within the home, charm the female must(prenominal) repress sexual desire. As a result, in order to protect the family desire is repressed: sexual desire for the female, while the male fears expurgation through his forbearance to feminisation. Thrillers unless, are a masculine henpecked genre that play with the concepts of paranoia and unlike melodramas they arent found so frequently in the domestic sphere, but in the city streets. Léon except has a brawny absence of family within it (Mathildas family is removed at the graduation exercise of the film). There is no continuum of a domestic environment; lots of the mise en scene of the film takes place on the streets of clean York and in various apartments, except at the beginning of the film, in the scenes with Mathildas family. In the scenes we are shown of Mathildas family, we see t hat they are a impaired family and that conflicts and clashes are a constant. This is because no compromise has been made amid the male and female, thus repressed violence and desire are unleashed. The repressed violence and desire takes the shape of Mathilda witnessing her parents having sex. The witnessing of sex betwixt parents by a child is to witness sex as a form of violence used by the non positive(p) upon the dumbfound. The display of sex is a metaphor for the simulate impairment conflicts through violence. Mathilda feels alienated from her family and displaces her feelings of alienation in two main ways. The first is by turning her alienation in on herself and causing self-harm, she smokes (physically hurting herself) and truants from school, which inevitably results in the matter tart phoning the home to find out why she has absconded from school. Mathilda then announces her close over the phone, which is a verbalisation of a appetency fulfilment. The second di splacement of her alienation is through substitution,! she becomes the surrogate scram to her brother, this is her way of attempting to cover gaps in the dysfunction around her. Mathilda can never be her brothers mother and is doomed to fail, this is because the short letter of mother is not rightfully hers (and she does fail her brother dies). As I mentioned earlier, the family ineluctably to repress desire and violence in order to survive, and because Mathildas family has not reached a compromise, the family is destroyed in an plosion of violence provoked by Mathildas mystify. The brutal death of Mathildas son results in her claim to family being removed, because her share as mother has been taken away, Mathilda reacts in two ways. first she seeks avenge for her loss, and secondly she suffers a mix-up of her ideologies and her gender persona. Signs of her confusion of gender role take the form of her view of Léon, to Mathilda Léon becomes the father she never had, the brother she scattered and the fan she desires. To Là ©on, Mathilda becomes his daughter, mother and chaste lover.
Mathildas role however is contradictory, because she occupies both sides of the gender divide. As daughter to Léon she obeys him in his teachings and accepts his disciplines. However, she orders him to teach her and has the means and capital to constitute and to contract him in the same way that Tony (Léons maffia boss does), this capital and ability to command Léon is typically a male trait. Mathilda is restored to a position of muliebrity by adopting a position of mother to Léon, she nurtures him (She buys him, supplies him with milk) and teaches him to tra nslate and write (Léons illiteracy infantises him). ! When Mathilda considers herself ready, she attempts to kill Stansfield, however she fails through inexperience and is held captive. Léon is restored to being her father figure, by firstly reading a short letter she has remaining for him ( qualification him no longer infantile) and then by truly rescuing her and killing her captives. Léon is lover to Mathilda in terzetto ways, firstly by being her substitute brother, in doing so Mathilda misrecognises him as the heading of her desire. Secondly through psychodynamics and the Oedipus complex, by engaging him as a substitute father she is misrecognising her father as the object of her desire and caught doubly desiring him. Besson intended for Mathilda and Léon to be chaste lovers in a pure guts, Léon actually being twelve years old (This being shown through his need for nurturing, his awkward child like rig sense, illiteracy, he is simple minded, naïve, lacks a strong cop of language and he is asexual). By making Léon a twelve-year-old within a forty-year-old body, Besson thought warrant the love relationship between Léon and Mathilda: I chose to chew up about two twelve-year-olds, even though one is actually 40 Léon does not take up his place as lover until it is to late, since the social order of things does not allow for Léon and Mathilda to be lovers, he must be punished and thus dies, he sacrifices his material body for the love they cannot have. The very etymology of melodrama is drama plus music. Throughout Léon there are references and the front line of music. There is the constant melancholic presence of Eric Serras music score, at one point in the film Mathilda pretends she is tuition the violin and that Léon as well as being her father is a music conductor. Stansfield has an obsession with forefront Beethoven, when he murders Mathildas family he tells her father he did it in a style reflecting that of Beethovens music. Because of the constant threat of conflict between the fo rces of production and reproduction, there is a sense! of paranoia in melodramas. This sense of paranoia is ever present in the thriller. The thriller spirit of Léon, not only relates to melodrama through paranoia, but also acts as a means of escape from the home of the melodrama to the streets of the thriller. Léon and Mathilda spend a great deal of conviction outside of the home, especially afterward the death of Mathildas family. The thriller also embeds a strong sense of tension into the atmosphere of Léon. Léon stands as one of the best examples of a combination of Bessons ideologies; these ideologies and the singularity of them to Besson, not only decide the theme and story of Léon, but as this essay reveals, the style and genre of the film too. Bibliography: Books: 1. Caughie, J., Auterism: Introduction, in Caughie, J. Ed. Theories of committal to writing (Routledge: London, 1981) pp 9 16. 2. Hayward, S., Luc Besson, (Manchester: Manchester university press, 1998). 3. Grodal, T., Moving Pictures: A new theory of film genres, feelings and cognition (Oxford: Claredon Press) page 259 4. Sobchack, T., literary genre learn: A Classical experience, in Grant, B K. Eds. Film genre lector 2 (Austin: University of Texas press 1997) pp 106 107 5. Carroll, N., The lesson Ecology of Melodrama, Interpreting the touching image (Cambridge: Cambridge University press) pp 166 178 6. Hayward, S., Directors and Stars: Luc Besson, in Hill, J. and church G, H. Eds. The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (Oxford: Oxford University press, 1998) pp 494 496 7. Branston, G. and Stafford, R., Making Films Outside the Mainstream, The Media Students Book, Second Edition (London: Routledge) pp372 377 8. Leach, J., spousal relationship of Pittsburgh: Genre and National movie theater from a Canadian Perspective, in Grant, B K. Eds. Film Genre Reader 2 (Austin: University of Texas press, 1997) pp 487 488 9. Austin, G., Contemporary French acculturation (Manchester: Manchester University press). Film sources : 10. Léon, Gaumont / les films du dauphin, 1994, L! uc Besson 11. Nikita, les films du loup / Gaumont / Gaumont production / Cecchi Gori Group / Tiger Cinematografica, 1990, Luc Besson net profit sources: 12. Characters and Themes in Luc Bessons Subway, The Big Blue, Nikita and Leon, hypertext transfer protocol://www.geocities.com/stuartfernie/besson.htm, 20 / 11 / 02 13. Léon (1994) (aka the professional), http://www.film.u-net.com/movies.reviews/Leon.html, 10 / 11 / 02 14. Neo-baroque?, http://www.transference.org.uk/neo-baroque.htm, 21 / 11 / 02 If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website:
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