CLOSING!

Cinematography of closing B&C?

Wide shot of rural landscapes natural light

• mythic pastoral ideal of the American dream

• Tranquil visual frame sets up an ironic contrast with violence

• Highlights how film dismantles idealised narratives

Fragmented close ups of faces

• Subtle shared glance and faint smile using shallow focus

• Isolated emotionally and visually from wider world

• Transformation from criminals into tragic romantic figures

• Foregrounds humanity before state violence dehumanises them

Sound of closing B&C?

Absence of non diegetic sound

• eerily quiet soundscape that builds tension and realise

Gunshots are sharp

• Ambush erupts, relentless, mechanical

• Unscored and unglamorous - denies audience of romanticism of their deaths

Silence and diegetic violence

• Directly challenges the classical Hollywood tendency to manipulate emotion, aligning with NH commitment to raw unsentimental realism and implicating the spectator in brutality of the spectacle

Editing of closing B&C?

Disorientating montage of 50 shots, slow-mo, rapid fire shots

• Deceleration of time during their deaths forces audience to linger on their violence

Rhythmic distortion

• Inspired by FNW

• Distrusts continuity editing and places spectator in a fragmented state

• Violence feels prolonged, not thrilling or redemptive

Mise-en-scene of closing B&C?

Natural sunlight VS industrial brutality

• highlighting the irony of their deaths Silence under the open sky

Costume - soft fabrics in earthy tones

• Strip away myth of the outlaw and reposition themselves as ordinary, vulnerable

Lack of props

• Strips the scene of heroism - no guns, no final act of rebellion

• Stillness and sudden annihilation

• Ideological stripping of spectacle reframes sequence as political narrative execution rather than a narrative climax

Performance of closing B&C?

Understated but emotionally loaded

• Dunaways expression softens into a quiet renowning smile

• Mutual awareness of death is players with tragic stillness

No panic / resistance

• Denies audience of the satisfaction of catharsis

• Passive presence renders them as victims rather than perpetrators

• Encourages ideological reflection on the states use of violence and narrative of justice

Soviet montage editing

• Political context- show society the discriminate treatment of the lower class

• Showcased brutality and violence inflicted on vulnerable people by those in authority

Institutional and production context

• FNW influence on New Hollywood and violence

• Pioneering of new techniques, meg handheld cameras, editing, on location shooting, silence, filming speeds

Death scene - Allen = editor

• Pioneer of jump cuts

• Style of FNW

• Disorientating feeling creating through end scene