Formal Film Study (Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, The Thin Red Line)

2.) Style: The three movies I watched are from a very impactful time period in the United states past, with that said, it was very important to capture every key moment in each movie. Steven Spielberg was the director for two of the movies that I watched(Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List), and I personally thought that he did a wonderful job with the cinematic styles throughout both movies. In the first scene of Saving Private Ryan, the United States storm the enemy beach and take a heavy hit. I found the camera angles were very impressive in this scene. When a bomb went off by Tom Hanks, his vision began to become blurry and the angle they were filming at perfectly portrayed Hanks distress and also showed the faces of his men under his command in complete fear. In Schindler's List, I thought it was very creative to make the entire movie in black and white. I felt that this was a message to the people viewing this as showing them the horror during the Holocaust and really brought the movie to life without having it filmed in color. The third movie I watched was The Thin Red Line, I thought that the aesthetics were very key in this film. They really captured the beautiful atmosphere of the Guadalcanal when the soldiers would wait back for any signs of enemies up ahead. There were scenes that just overlooked the land and in a stressful and fearful scene, somehow was able to portrayed peace.
Politics/History: All three movies are about an extremely important period of time during World War Two. The Holocaust is looked at as one of the biggest tragedies to ever happen in man kinds existence. Millions of people did under the wraith of Adolf Hitler. Schindler's List did not hold back on the horrible things that took place and personally had an effect on me. I caught myself becoming very emotional throughout the film, can not even imaging what it was like to be those poor innocent people during that time. At the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, it started out on the very well known day during WWII known as D-Day. This was a key battle during the war for us and helped us gain further into enemy territory.
4.) My Biggest Discovery: After watching all three movies , I found that the changing of the tempo in all three movies was very interesting. What I mean by this is that in a war film, we expect much violence and saddening and depressing scenes, which was true for all three, but I thought that the more calming scenes in the movies were brilliant. In The Thin Red Line, they had so many scenes where everyone would be peacefully gazing over the field and a ray of sunshine would reflect off of the grass perfectly, then just like that, gun shots were fired and people were dropping left and right. For a second, it almost was like I wasn't even watching a movie about war, as if it was some kind of nature documentary and I was viewing the beautiful landmarks of an island. In Schindler's List there was a scene of a party with plenty of happy people having the times of their lives, looking as they don't have a care in the world. Then it would immediately jump into the next scene of the German Soldiers torturing the poor Jews.
5.) A smaller interesting detail about the films I watched were that all three very good soundtrack. I thought that they did a great job capturing an important scene with the right kind of music. In Schindler's List when the man with one arm is taken away by the Germans to be executed, they begin to play soft music that builds up as the poor man gets closer to his death. Also in Saving Private Ryan, when Tom Hanks is left wounded on the bridge and helplessly shots at the enemy tank, the music starts to set in indicating to us that he is inching towards his last moments.
6.) http://evanerichards.com/2009/55 (Saving Private Ryan camera angles/shots)