Style
Point Blank combines elements of film noir with stylistic touches of the European nouvelle vague. The film features a fractured time-line, disconcerting narrative rhythms (long slow passages contrasted with sudden outbursts of violence) and a carefully calculated use of film space (stylized compositions of concrete riverbeds, sweeping bridges, empty prison cells). Boorman credits Marvin with coming up with a lot of the visual metaphors in the film. Boorman said that as the film progressed, scenes in the film would be filmed monochromatically around one particular color (the chilly blues and grays of Acker's apartment, Dickinson's butter yellow bathrobe, the startling red wall in Vernon's penthouse) to give the proceedings a "sort of unreality".
To establish Walker's mythic stature, Soderbergh noted in the commentary that the film cuts from a shot of Walker swimming from Alcatraz to a shot of him on a ferry overlooking the same island while a woman on the loudspeaker describes the impossibility of leaving the island. Soderbergh said that this contrast of the character's ease of escape with the loudspeaker's monologue makes the Walker character "mythic immediately."
Read more about this topic: Point Blank (1967 Film)
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“Style is the dress of thoughts; and let them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and vulgar, they will appear to as much disadvantage, and be as ill received, as your person, though ever so well-proportioned, would if dressed in rags, dirt, and tatters.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was nursed by the closest attention to colloquial speech.”
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975)
“One who has given up any hope of winning a fight or has clearly lost it wants his style in fighting to be admired all the more.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)