Sleepy Hollow



Intro

The blogpost this week for us is to find out the German expressionistic elements that could be found in the movie Sleepy Hollow, which is an American film produced and directed by Tim Burton in year 1999. By that, the goal of this post for me is to study about this movie, watch it, and get to know about what theory is used in it which showed the semantic and syntactic approach to genres for the film. Along my study of this film, by accomplishing my goal, I would also have an attempt to determine the German expressionistic elements found in film by stating it out in the analysis section of my post.


Theory Discussion

Talking about genre, it come with semantic and syntactic, in which the semantic is basically things or parts that are expected in the genre of a film, while in which the syntactic is the ideology of the certain genre. The semantic aspect is mainly about visuals of the film which related to the mise-en-scene while the syntax is the theme of the genre of movie. Both of these aspects have to be use complimentary, in order to achieve the genre of certain movie that it intended to present.

Related to the theory German expressionistic, which defined as a series of related creative movements that started off before the First World War in Germany, the themes of it included revolt, self-analysis, madness, and primitive, sexual savagery, and so on. We are going to discuss about few types of it later in the analysis part.

While still relating to the theory, the visuals which included in the film are gothic settings in dramatic shadows and a lot of unnatural acts, which is going to be discuss in the analysis part too.


Synopsis

At 1799, Johnny Depp act as a police officer at time, called Ichabod Crane, whom is arranged to a place called Sleepy Hollow to investigate several murder cases by finding out a murderer who has already decapitate three people and started to threaten the lives in there. He found out there is a headless ghost who committed the murders and kept committing murders, he decided to figure out the person who is manipulating the ghost. On the way, he falls in love with a girl who is called Katrina Van Tassel.


Analysis

For the semantic part, which is the visual aspect for the whole film, I would like to talk about few parts as I stated below.

In this film, the production team has produced a lot of high contrast visuals in this film. We can see through the usage of creative lighting styles such as the frequent occurrence of lightning in some scenes, and also the settings and effect of some scenes such as thunderstorm for scenes that needed it. Such as the scenes especially where Ichabod is being chase after by the headless ghost. Those scenes able to give the audience to feel the horrible of headless ghost and the nervousness and helplessness of Ichabod. High contrast visual which has very bright highlights at the same time with extremely dark shadows, some of the bold colours, and able to produce texture of scene, makes some scenes look more attracting and enhance the feel that the story wanted to present. During our discussion in class, we also found that the distorted bodies were found in the shots of the elders in meeting rooms, such as blocking and positions.

For the syntax part, which is as known as the themes of genre of movie, I would like to touch in few parts too.

One of the part that I am going to discuss is the revolt part, which is also something similar to rebel. By investigating the mysterious murders that happened in town, scientific method to deduce crimes and to find out murderer. For instance, the part which I found it is revolt is the scene where Ichabod Crane dares to challenge the New York State during the investigation. Other than that, the witchcraft also presented the revolt part in the film as she happened to practise the act of revolt by doing her revenge while knowing it is against the legal system.

Besides, there is also self-analysis parts happened in this film which I find in the film is when the actors are having reflects of themselves, which in short if to let the audience know what the character thinks. For instance, the dreams of Ichabod induce him to think about what he wanted to do after the dream and indirectly interfere the way and thinking of him while doing his investigation along the way.


Conclusion

In summary, I find this film is really interesting as I have never watched a film that is similar to this before. Also, I really like the clothing and makeup of them by that time and I find that it is good to let us know what the old times are like and how they dressed and had their makeup by then. Been liking Tim Burton’s production since he started to keep working together with the actor Johnny Depp.

Reference link:

https://www.moma.org/s/ge/curated_ge/

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