Flickz Lang

@flickz-lang

String of things I learn on cinema. This is pretty much a place for me to stick up some notes and stills for my reference. ALL STILLS HAVE A SUPPORTING COMMENT: CLICK TO VIEW IT. At the moment it is all about style in gangster movies. When I move onto something else, so will the subject of the posts.

34 posts

Posts

Notes on FREUD on narcissism: attraction to the self takes over from the attraction to others

therefore gives the traditional gangster sexual dysfuncionalism. This is evident in Little Caesar with Rico's latent homosexuality towards Joe and the infatuation of Otero with Rico. Evidence of this is a scene which opens with Otero and Rico's reflection in a mirror, Otero is dressing Rico with head in front of Rico's crotch (image soon)

Parody of the American Dream

The rise and fall of the immigrant, underprivalaged small-time crook who climbs the 'queer ladder of social mobility', to become a gangster and die rge ambiguous tragic hero.

This is signalled through costume as the transition is marked by the purchasing of a new wardrobe.

Example: Public Enemy (1931) - after alcohol raid, Tom and Matt get measured for suits, then go to a club in their finery.

#Stella Bruzzi

Some Like It Hot: Spats Columbo

Example of the clothes-fetishist gangster. Arrival in unblemished pair of spats.

#Some Like It Hot #Spats #clothes-fetishist #gangster

defined iconographically against his predecessors, the gangster consciously strives to emulate the mythologised ideal by obsessively judging how he looks

on Lacanian theory in Stella Bruzzi.

#Stella Bruzzi #Lacan #gangster

Myth does not deny things, on the contrary its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it gives them clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact

Roland Barthes - Mythologies (1957)

movie gangsters reveal a narcissistic preoccupation with clothing, and in the way they link violence with vanity, they often operate to glamourise menace. The suits in gangster movies also help the actors to cast a spell over the audience

On Gangster Suits and Silhouettes - Lorraine Gamman

#gangster style #Lorraine Gamman

Gangster films are about looks - they are about making the spectator desire what the gangster possesses.

On gangster films - Stella Bruzzi (Undressing cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies) p.87

#Stella Bruzzi #Gangster #desire

Hollywood's much criticised 'hero-worship' of the gangster-figure can also be seen as an early manifestation of a culture as fascinated by death as it is life. In this ambivalent cosmos, the gangster Tom Powers is both shining and a fallen angel.

THE PUBLIC ENEMY (1931) - Taschen

#Public enemy #1931 #Taschen #James Cagney