Comparative Analysis of the Color Purple and Schindler's List Essay

Steven Spielberg is a director, scriptwriter, and producer of American cinema, he studied film at the California State University, in Long Beach. In 1969, the Atlanta Film Festival screened his short "Amblin", with a duration of 22 minutes, which earned him a contract with Universal.

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"Schindler's List" is a much more serious film, with a moving theme, which tries to reflect some events that happened in the history of humanity. The Nazi army is portrayed, the soldiers act with extreme cruelty and show the Jewish holocaust. Spielberg shot with the camera in hand, it's a black and white film with moments in color. A dramatic moment is in an image that appears a girl with a red jacket, jacket that will later appear thrown. Build a replica of a concentration camp. With this film, Spielberg renounced any economic rights and donated them to associations dedicated to the victims of the Nazi holocaust.

"The color purple", based on a novel by Alice Walker. It is a more intimate film and a more mature perspective. Nominated 11 times to the Oscars, although finally won none. Tells the life of a woman who blacks suffered abuses as a child by her stepfather, with whom she has 2 children, the result of these violations, has a passive attitude, resigned, submissive, faith in God, embodied by the actress Whoopi Goldberg, that is made known with this movie. As a theme, it deals with religion, racism, gender violence, loss of childhood, death as an escape, slavery. The name of the movie is associated with suffering, pain, the blows women receive, divinity, wisdom, this movie made a difference with respect to their previous films, but the academy did not recognize her as the best director. It shows environments of natural landscapes that contrast with the violence carried out by different characters. We see close-ups of the mailbox relevant to the plot of the story. Appear singing ceremonies, typical of black culture.

Schindler's List talks about the political situation in Europe and the ethnic mistreatment of the Nazi Regime towards Jews, showing the best and the worst a person can give of himself. Oscar Schindler seemed to be one of the "bad guys" of the movie, but as time goes by, one can observe his interest in the Jews. The filmmaker made the decision, incontrovertible, to shoot in black and white (except his prologue and his epilogue), a decision that can be seen by his image, is very accurate, although many feared that the director could be accused of pretentiousness for it. But it is unimaginable this film filmed in color, although it had been applied to some kind of bleached, or had decided to use a cold and sinister light. Black and white were forced, and in his first collaboration with his now habitual operator Janusz Kaminsky (who here signs, by far, the best job of his life), he gets a total creative fusion, for a really sublime image.

The theme of this story, against the background of the Nazi genocide, is, of course, Schindler's journey from the boundless cynicism of a relentless and cunning businessman, to the absolute compassion experienced as catharsis and final transformation. And this long journey is understood by Spielberg as a vicissitude of redemption through brutal pain, with little hope. The horror often saw from the front, with the clean look of a child amazed by the capacity for destruction and cruelty of the human being. And how do you present this anti-hero? It is interesting to note that we first see his hands, as he did with Indiana Jones, and then put together a magnificent sequence in which we realize the power of persuasion of this unscrupulous careerist.

In this long sequence, filmed with mastery, describes with what skill Oskar befriends the main Nazi commandos to achieve what is proposed: to go out of ruin and to cover itself with war. The blue eyes of Neeson are the living image of ambition, and in his relationship with Jewish businessmen (a community that Spielberg does not resist criticizing for his profit motive and the cowardice of some of them), he begins to gestate his future destiny. After three films from which extract stylistic features is a headache, perhaps because they did not exist, 'Schindler's list' offers plenty of material to write on. Without extending too much, so as not to make this chapter too long, first: to say that the great self-demand that Spielberg demonstrates throughout the film is evident. And second: that this story is, undeniably, a true "garden". That is to say, that the director plays it, and in what way, carrying out this project. 'Schindler's list' is, in my point of view, below wonders like 'Shoah' or 'The pianist'. For the simple reason that the path that traces itself, Spielberg is not able to follow it throughout the film. Influenced or inspired directly by the images of the time and by films such as 'Germany, year zero' (Roberto Rossellini, 1948), which is much superior to this one, the director navigates both the waters of historical melodrama and those of the drama realistic, and sometimes their ship capsizes, although it never gets shipwrecked.

Visually it brilliantly alternates a narration close to the period documentary (reinforced by a superb use of the camera in hand), with a more classical staging, albeit equally fluid, with a great sense of atmosphere and a rhythm that does not decay Never. And the pulse does not tremble, narrating with an unusual conviction this progression of atrocities. However, as the story progresses, stylistically suffers inconsistencies and his eyes suffer from it. To understand us: this story brings us closer to the lives of Schindler and his Jewish employees, punctuated by moments of horror, but not always Spielberg is at the moral and aesthetic level of what he tells.

An example: a man of advanced age is executed by the Nazis, and shortly after that, Spielberg returns to the corpse, still with the open eyes, and its camera moves away along with the blood. It is unnecessary, tendentious, and extremely manipulative, making that decision. However, very soon after, Goeth ordered the execution of the Jewish foreman who warned of the bad foundations of a future building. There Spielberg is cold and ruthless, there is no contemplative or speculative plane, but the pure truth, a ruthless bullet that gives us goosebumps.

A great movie, that rubs with the fingers many times the mastery, but that does not catch it with hands full. Spielberg recovers the lost, or watery, the talent of his previous accomplishments, and films, along with 'Tiburon', 'E.T.', and 'La ultima crusade', one of his most complete and moving films. It is missing, however, a greater stylistic cohesion.

"The Purple Color" is a human drama that describes the hardships lived by both Celie and the people around her. And there is no character in the plot that does not suffer. The outburst of innocence, the dominant power of man over woman and redemption go hand in hand in this intense drama. Steven Spielberg, helped by the excellent and colorful photography of Allen Daviau that astonishes the colors in an amazing way getting a precious film, makes a drama in the purest classic style conjugating torn drama with exquisite subtlety and drops of tension that make up one of his films more round.

The theme of the film is the liberation of a slavery, in this case between people of color, which makes the lives of some people dependent on others. The owner is the husband. The slaves are the woman and her entire family, including her younger sister. As in Father Padrone, the dependency also covers education and learning to read. The liberation of the protagonist woman is taking step by step throughout the film, thanks to his eagerness to read, especially the cartoons of his sister, who lives in Africa, which takes him to other places, to other countries, that It makes you feel with a power, that of knowledge, that the husband, the abuser, does not have.

The story focuses on the life of Celie, a young girl of color, at the beginning of the century. Celie is 14 years old and is pregnant with her own father. It continues its difficult existence for 30 more years. But Celie has an obsession: learning to read. She does not give up his effort and she succeeds. Although the husband, the lord, forbids her, hides the letters, beats her, she manages to learn to read, improve her reading and through reading, especially of her sister's letters, discover something of the world and goes gradually achieving a small place in society. Five women of color, in different ways, are freed from slavery, by communication between them, by knowledge, by their independence.

The universe that Spielberg portrays is exclusively African-American, with very little presence of white characters. It is a world marked by hard work, spirituality, and freedom recently conquered. The concepts of racially pure family, sin, and respect for the ancestors dominate the relationships and decisions to be made.

The director shoots sequences of extreme drama at certain times, but especially cited the separation of the two sisters at the hands of Albert. The screams, the sweat, the hugs between them in front of the brute force of Albert interposing makes them stand on end. The sequence ends with Nettie and Celie playing their palmitates separated by distance while Nettie swears to the four winds that "Only if he dies will he stop writing" in a moment that recalls "Gone with the Wind" in the promise that Scarlett does heaven.

In the color purple, several relations of unequal power come into play, depending on race, economic position, and gender. In some scenes (for example, when Nettie arrives at her newly married sister's house) the camera is placed in oblique angulation of the camera to emphasize the position of superiority of the character it focuses on; Sometimes it is the other way around (chopped to mark inferiority). Music is, in the history of the United States, intimately linked to the African-American people. There are styles of their own (soul, jazz, blues ...) that were later adopted by whites, but that have roots in the peculiar situation of blacks and blacks in America. In this film, full of spirituality, gospel occupies a fundamental place in the narrative. The songs that are sung in the church, and even those that Shug plays in the tavern, have a very meaningful content for Celie. For example, when Albert's lover calls her "sister" in the song she dedicates to him, the bond of sisterhood between them becomes public. And when Celie has experienced her particular catharsis and the sinners Albert and Shug have redeemed themselves, the temple and the tavern become one by singing God wants to tell you something.

The tension is chewed in two identical sequences that have a razor as the protagonist. I mean the moment when Celie is going to shave Albert with her sister in the thought and the damage that her husband has done to them by separating them. The first takes place just as Nettie has left and our protagonist shows a desire to kill Albert, but the threat of him makes Celie alert, shaving him carefully. The excellent use of the assembly in that the sound of the blade, the flies, and the carriage of the approaching mail gives the sequence an enormous tension, as great as that contained in the second sequence, practically twin to it. It happens when Albert hits Celie by surprising her by reading a letter from his sister. The woman after discovering that he hid the letters decides to perform the act that should have carried out at the time. The game is the same, only that the blade never touches the face of Albert, but to sharpen well and approach his face to the rhythm of the drums of Africa and the exasperated career of Shug to prevent it.

Conclusion

But nevertheless, and so "The Color Purple" deserves all mentions is for its excellent subtlety through out-of-the...