Month: March 2020

Flashbacks in films: The Lives of Others (2006)

Contains spoilers

The only permissible manipulation of story order is the flashback.(Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson, 2002)

Flashback …”any shot or scene that breaks into present-time action to show us something that happened in the past”.(Bordwell, 2009)

The Lives of Others (2006) a film by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. The opening sequence is a flashback to 1984 and to the interrogation of prisoner 227 who is suspected of being complicit in the escape of his neighbour from East Berlin to the West. As the film opens with this sequence the spectator is not initially aware that they are watching an event from the past, a memory of Heuptmann Gerd Wiesler, (HGW) played by Ulrich Mühe. As Bordwell says “You can begin the film at a climactic moment; once the viewers are hooked, they will wait for you to move back to set things up. You can create mystery about an event that the plot has skipped over, then answer the question through a flashback.” (Bordwell, 2009) In the flashback we see the interrogation of prisoner 227 from the start, meeting HGW for the first time.

The flashback ends with a jump cut to a close up of a period design, reel to reel tape recorder, as the pause button is depressed the camera tilts up to reveal a classroom and HGW is teaching a class the process and methods of conducting an interview to a classroom of students. As HGW presses the play button on the tape recorder and the timeline jump cuts back into the flashback of the continuing interrogation of prisoner 227, it is much later in the interrogation process , prisoner 227 is tired and struggling to remain awake and the interrogator is actively preventing the prisoner from sleeping. Exiting the flashback to the visual of the tape recorder again with the camera zooming out to reveal the classroom once more.

HGW asks the students a question regarding what they have heard on the tape, the prisoner is word perfect according to HGW this means the prisoner is lying having rehearsed his statement and his demeanour is wrong for an innocent man, he is docile also an indication that he has something to hide, a subject that was innocent would have been confused and angry at being interrogated. The camera follows HGW as he restarts the tape.

The flashback continues in the interrogation room as prisoner 227 breaks down and confesses, giving up the name of the person who facilitated his neighbours escape. Exiting the flashback with a jump without the visual of the tape recorder but straight to the classroom, HGW asks the students what else did they hear? jump cut back to the interrogation room where HGW is observed to be dismantling the seat of the prisoner’s chair, removing the seat cover and placing it into a sealed jar. Jump cut back to the classroom the visual of the tape recorder appears to have been abandoned. HGW tells the class that it is the sound of the scent sample being removed and stored for the tracker dogs to be able to follow the scent should the prisoner escape. The scene closes with the sound of applause coming from HGW’s boss standing in the doorway, which is soon joined by the clapping from the students as the lesson ends.

The convention established in the early scenes of the flashbacks being initiated and ended with the visual of the tape machine being played and paused was abandoned in the later scenes. This can be explained on the basis that as the spectator becomes aware of the convention for the flashbacks the jumps between the classroom and the interrogation room have become established by the change in the location and subject and the visual clues of the tape machine, the pressing of play to go into the memory of the interrogation and the operation of the pause button to stop playback and to re-enter the current timeline in the classroom becomes unnecessary. Bordwell says “Once flashbacks had become solid conventions, Sturges could risk pushing them in fresh directions.” (Bordwell, 2009) in reference to Preston Sturges script for the film The Power and the Glory (1933) an early example of a film that utilises flashbacks.

Bibliography

• Bordwell, D. (2009) Observations on film art : Grandmaster flashback. Available at: http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2009/01/27/grandmaster-flashback/ (Accessed: 12 March 2020).
• Bordwell, D., Staiger, J. and Thompson, K. (2002) The classical Hollywood Cinema Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960.

Technical Specs (IMDB)

Runtime 2 hr 17 min (137 min)
Sound Mix Dolby Digital
Color Color
Aspect Ratio 2.35 : 1
Camera Arriflex 535B, Hawk C- and V-Series Lenses
Laboratory CinePostproduction Geyer Berlin, Germany
Film Length 3,759 m (Sweden)
3,800 m (Portugal, 35 mm)
Negative Format 35 mm (Kodak Vision2 250D 5205, Vision2 500T 5218)
Cinematographic Process Hawk Scope (anamorphic)
Printed Film Format 35 mm

Journal Links

• Case study (Part 3) Interstellar (2014)
• Casablanca (1942) Flashback classical Hollywood style

Interstellar (2014)

Contains Spoilers

The flashback concerns a representation of the past that intervenes within the present flow of film narrative. (Turim, 2013)

Interstellar (2014) a film by Christopher Nolan. Cooper played by Matthew McConaughey is coerced into piloting a space mission to save the human race from a dying Earth. Earth is experiencing a blight, its crops are failing, the soil blown across the land in an endless cloud of dust, much like the 1930’s American Dust Bowl. The mission is a lie there is no workable plan to save the Earth, the true mission is to locate a habitable planet and populate it with the human embryos carried aboard the spacecraft, the Earth and its people to be abandoned to their fate.

Flashbacks are used to link Cooper back to his past and to his daughter when she was a child on the family farm. On Mann’s ice planet Cooper, his faceplate cracked in the attempt on his life by Dr. Mann, Cooper struggles to breathe on the ice planet, flashback with a jump cut to the scene where Cooper presents his daughter with a watch. The watch a duplicate of his own, his intention that they can compare times when he arrives home from his mission in space. The flashback ends as Murphy flings the watch away from her and we cut back to the scene of Cooper on the planet still struggling to breathe. The reason for the flashback is not clear at this time, but later in the course of the film we will understand the importance of the watch, there’s usually always a reason for introducing something new into a film.

This watch is how Cooper communicates the essential data back to an older Murphy using binary code through the second hand of this watch. Murphy then uses this data so that she can complete the work on the gravity calculations and save the people of the Earth from the blight. In this case it could be argued to appear to be exactly as Bordwell says “The flashback is not presented as an overt explanation on the narration’s part; the narration simply presents what the character is recalling.” There does not seem to be a reason for Cooper to remember this memory from his past in this the moment of his imminent death from asphyxiation. However the flashback sequence does appear to fill a gap in the narration and presents a reminder to the spectator of the importance of the two watches as the film progresses.

In another flashback near to the end of the film, Cooper enters the Black Holes event horizon. He sees Murph and himself repeated ad infinitum, throughout the three-dimensional space created by the fifth-dimensional beings (we later suspect from Tars to be humans from the future). Each version a flashback in itself, back to memories of Coopers and Murphy’s past, these memories of receiving what we now know are messages that appear within her bedroom. The books fallen from the bookshelves attributed by Murphy’s to the poltergeist, also the altered gravity revealed by the tracks in the dust. The answer to Murphy’s poltergeist and the manipulation of objects and gravity is her own father in a future three-dimensional space where while in the Tesseract he pushes against the books from a relative position in space but seemingly behind the bookcase. Strumming the strings of gravity to create the gravity lines in the dust on Murphy’s bedroom floor.
Jump cut to the memory of Cooper slamming shut Murphy’s bedroom window as the dust storm rages around the house revealing the gravity tracks in the dusty floor, we see Cooper of the future as he sees himself close the window while looking through the back of the bookcase.
In a final flashback after Cooper has delivered his message the data from Tars that is needed to complete the gravity calculations using the second hand of the watch to count out binary data to an older version of Murphy.

Cooper reaches out to Brand in the past as the Endurance space-ship travels through the wormhole. It is Cooper hand that reached through the ship to Brand as the Endurance entered the Black Hole the first time.
Interstellar can be a confusing film as it involves time and space, theoretical physics and astronomy. The majority of the flashbacks are centred around Coopers memories of his daughter Murphy and her, as its turned-out well-founded belief that someone was trying to send her a message. But some of the older versions of Murphy that Cooper viewed from within the Tesseract were from a time after Cooper had left the Earth and therefore Cooper could not have been present at these points in time and therefore this flashback could not be derived from his own personal memory, so it could be argued that this is an example of a prosthetic memory. As Landsberg says “ …prosthetic memories are those not strictly de-rived from a person’s lived experience… (Landsberg, 2004) p2. This flashback, takes the spectator back to the moment when in the spaceship Endurance and when Brand is explaining to Cooper that time can only go forward not backward. The only proviso to this statement being that a race, so far in the future, that had found a way to manipulate time itself, which of course they interact with through the time manipulation evident in the Tesseract scenes. The Tesseract created by five-dimensional beings and constructed for them inside the Black Hole presumably so that Cooper could look back in time and communicate with Murphy, a Murphy from his past. Cooper could see into the past but Cooper himself could not return to the past physically and as the Tesseract closes, he is left to drift somewhere in the region of space near Saturn.

Cooper wakes in a Hospital bed but not a hospital on Earth revealed by Cooper leaving his hospital bed and seeing a totally enclosed World, a cylinder of a World where gravity has been mastered, where there is no true up or down. Cooper is finally reunited with the centenarian Murphy in the same space station orbiting Saturn, where Murphy encourages Cooper to seek out Brand who intends to colonise Edmunds World and follow plan B.

More case studies of flashbacks

• Casablanca (1942) Flashback classical Hollywood style
• Film Flashbacks example Chapter continued

Bibliography

• Landsberg, A. (2004) Prosthetic Memory : The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia University Press. Available at: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=107227&site=ehost-live&authtype=ip,shib&user=s1523151.
• Turim, M. (2013) Flashbacks in film: Memory & history, Flashbacks in Film: Memory & History. Taylor and Francis. doi: 10.4324/9781315851761.

Technical specs

Runtime 2 hr 49 min (169 min)
Sound Mix Datasat | Dolby Digital | IMAX 6-Track | Dolby Surround 7.1 | Sonics-DDP (IMAX version)
Color Color (FotoKem)
Aspect Ratio 1.43 : 1 (70mm IMAX – some scenes)
1.78 : 1 (IMAX Blu-ray & 4K UHD – some scenes)
1.90 : 1 (Digital IMAX – some scenes)
2.20 : 1 (70mm)
2.39 : 1
2.39 : 1 (35mm & Digital)
Camera Beaumont VistaVision Camera, Leica Lenses
IMAX MSM 9802, Hasselblad and Mamiya Lenses
Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL2, Panavision C-, D-, E-Series and Ultra Speed Golden Lenses
Laboratory FotoKem Laboratory, Burbank (CA), USA (also prints)
Film Length 17,114.9 m (49 reels) (IMAX 70 mm)
4,582 m (Spain)
4,630.65 m (8 reels) (35 mm)
Negative Format 35 mm (also horizontal) (Kodak Vision3 50D 5203, Vision3 250D 5207, Vision3 500T 5219)
65 mm (horizontal) (Kodak Vision3 50D 5203, Vision3 250D 5207, Vision3 500T 5219)
Cinematographic Process IMAX
Panavision (anamorphic)
VistaVision (some scenes)
Printed Film Format 35 mm (Kodak Vision 2383)
70 mm (also horizontal) (also IMAX DMR blow-up) (Kodak Vision 2383)
D-Cinema

Flashbacks are rarer in the classical Hollywood film than we normally think. Throughout the period 1917– 60, screenwriters’ manuals usually recommended not using them; as one manual put it, ‘Protracted or frequent flashbacks tend to slow the dramatic progression’ (Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson, 2002) p42

For an example of an early use of the flashback in classic Hollywood Cinema, the film Casablanca (1942) has a single use of the flashback, the purpose is to show how Rick and Ilsa first meet in Paris.

Casablanca (1942) To many cinephiles Casablanca is an example of Hollywood filmmaking at its best and as Dana Polan says in his Casablanca essay, “ One of the great films of cult veneration, Casablanca is the perfect example of Hollywood perfection.” (Geiger and Rutsky, 2005) p363

Rick is drinking alone, drinking heavily as he waits in expectation for Ilsa to come and (as she must) to plead with Rick to give them the travel documents for her and her husband Victor, to enable them to escape the Germans and Casablanca and fly to Lisbon and then onto America. Rick is centred in the frame as the camera zooms in and the image of Rick begins to blur and cross dissolve to a scene set in Paris.

We know this because the Arc De Triomphe is framed and back projected behind Rick and Ilsa seated in a car, with the music La Marseillaise, the French National anthem playing in the background. “Here’s looking at you kid” says Rick. The lengthy flashback sequence explores the missing background to Rick and Ilsa relationship, when they meet again in Casablanca, we know that they know each other from the past and that they must have had a loving relationship but where and when is not known until the flashback sequence is introduced. In the flashback we relive Rick and Ilsa’s year of living in Paris as war approaches and the eventual occupation of France and goes some way to explaining the circumstances as to how they meet again in Casablanca a French Protectorate under French/Vichy control rather than under German occupation.

Rick and Ilsa fall in love and as the German occupation of France becomes imminent, they agree to leave together on the last train out of Paris. Rick waits in vain for Ilsa to appear at the station, a letter arrives and Ilsa isn’t coming. As the train begins to depart and with Sam’s urging, they board the train as steam fills the screen and cross dissolves back to Rick still seated in the bar as he lets go of his glass. This is an example of the traditional method and of the use of a flashback in cinema, the position of the protagonist in the frame and the use of blurring as Bordwell notes “ …there are several cues for a flashback in a classical Hollywood film: pensive character attitude, close-up of face, slow dissolve, voice-over narration, sonic ‘flashback,’ music. In any given case, several of these will be used together…” (Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson, 2002)

The flashback limited itself to their meeting in Paris and apart from a rain drenched letter there was no explanation for Ilsa’s no show at the train station. Only later in the film in the current timeline do we learn why Ilsa did not meet Rick at the train station, that she was married to Victor before she met up with Rick in Paris and her reason for doing so, thinking that her husband was dead, she a widow, her husband killed in a Nazi concentration camp then only for him to turn up alive and well just before her planned new life with Rick in Casablanca.

Technical specifications Casablanca (1942) IMDB

Runtime 1 hr 42 min (102 min)
1 hr 22 min (82 min) (cut) (West Germany)
Sound Mix Mono (RCA Sound System)
Color Black and White
Aspect Ratio 1.37 : 1
Camera Mitchell BNC
Film Length 2,811 m
2,815 m (Sweden)
Negative Format 35 mm (Eastman Plus-X 1231)
Cinematographic Process Spherical
Printed Film Format D-Cinema (2012 2K Digital re-release)
35 mm (Eastman 1302)

Bibliography

1. Bordwell, D., Staiger, J. and Thompson, K. (2002) The classical Hollywood Cinema Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960.
2. Casablanca (1942) – Technical Specifications – IMDb (no date). Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034583/technical?ref_=tt_ql_dt_6 (Accessed: 9 March 2020).
3. Geiger, J. and Rutsky, R. . (2005) Film Analysis. A Norton Reader. First. Edited by J. Geiger and R. . Rutsky. W. W. Norton & Company: Inc.

• Film Flashbacks example Chapter continued
• Film Flashbacks Example Thesis Chapter

Film Flashbacks (Part 2)

The flashback could be motivated compositionally (giving us essential story information), realistically (proceeding from a character’s memory), and intertextually…(Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson, 2002) p19

Anna (2019) a film by Luc Besson. Anna Poliatova played by Sasha Luss is a highly trained Russian government assassin. Throughout the film the timeline is proliferated with flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks, each of which is essential to the scene and for the audiences understanding of the film’s progression. Each of the flashbacks revisiting memories from Anna’s past and expanding upon her characters background and with details essential to understanding through past events what is happening in the current timeline. Anna shares many similarities with recent films and television for example the narrative and style of Atomic Blonde (2017 ) and the TV series Killing Eve ( 2018 – ), the female protagonist with a Russian background recruited for espionage and assassination. Set in the near past before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the deconstruction of the Soviet Union and where the KGB is still the agency for espionage in Russia.

Anna is recruited into the KGB to retrieve information by the means of assassination at the direction of her handlers, that is Olga played by Helen Mirren who models this role on Rosa Klebb a character in From Russia with Love (1963) and Alex, who is also Anna’s Russian love interest and her recruiter to the KGB.

Film Flashbacks used to great effect

Luc Besson uses the flashbacks to great effect in the first flashback sequence Anna shoots her target then the scene fades to blackout followed by an inter-title saying 3 years earlier, informing the audience that what follows is a memory from 3 years ago. While in Anna’s memory 3 years earlier we cut to another flashback of a childhood memory where Anna is present at the instant of her parents’ deaths, killed in a head on collision with a lorry with Anna seated in the back of her parent’s car. This flashback sequence ends with a flash to white and the sound of a cameras flash, but we return not to the current timeline but remain within the flashback from 3 years earlier. Alex looks at his notebook and says “it says here that you like to play chess” we enter another flashback with a flash to white and the sound of the camera flash as we enter Anna’s memory of playing chess with her father in the park. Flash to white with the sound of camera flash to another inter-title saying 3 years later, out of the flashback sequences and returning to the current timeline.

This lengthy flashback with flashbacks contained within it provides the origins of the main character and the audience now understands how a market stall seller in Russia finds her way to Paris to a modelling job in the Paris fashion industry and then through that role is then able to assume the role of International assassin and assassinate her target. The use of inter-titles at the beginning and the end of the sequence clearly indicates where in the past the memory and the flashback occur.

Flashbacks: For instance, there are several cues for a flashback in a classical Hollywood film: pensive character attitude, close-up of face, slow dissolve, voice-over narration, sonic ‘flashback,’ music. In any given case, several of these will be used together. (Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson, 2002)

The flashbacks contained within the main flashback sequence are preceded and terminated by a flash to white with the accompanying sound, similar to that of a cameras flash. I am uncertain as to the value of the childhood memories being inserted into the flashback sequences other than to show that Anna is an orphan and that as a very young child, she showed high levels of intelligence beyond her natural years by playing chess, but then maybe that was the point? Flashbacks seem to provide the details that are missing in the current timelines to keep the flow of the film but are in fact key to explaining/understanding the narrative underlying the current sequence.

Technical Specs Anna (2019) IMDB

Runtime 1 hr 59 min (119 min)
Sound Mix Dolby Digital
Color Color
Aspect Ratio 2.35 : 1
Camera Leitz M 0.8 lenses
Leitz SUMMICRON-C lenses
Printed Film Format Digital (Digital Cinema Package DCP)

Bibliography

• Bordwell, D., Staiger, J. and Thompson, K. (2002) The classical Hollywood Cinema Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960.
• Anna (2019) – Technical Specifications – IMDb (2019). Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7456310/technical?ref_=tt_ql_dt_6 (Accessed: 9 March 2020).

Links to more articles

• Example Thesis Chapter
• More Examples