Henry Breitrose requests: > A student is interested in examining the techniques of using still images > in films. Some examples are CITY OF GOLD and THE CIVIL WAR, composed solely > of still images, MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA and BLOW-UP, in which still > images play a major diegetic role. My student and I would appreciate > suggestions of other examples. There seem to be at least three separate categories in here, each of which can offer a number of examples: 1. Compilation films that use photos or other images as part of their main visual substance, as in THE CIVIL WAR. Other documentaries often use such images, but Erroll Morris probably makes more interesting use of them than almost anyone else. See especially THE THIN BLUE LINE. Also, if you can find it, the short film FRANK FILM by Frank Mouris, which uses clippings of images from magazines and newspapers. 2. Narrative films that use photographs or other still images in significant ways in the diegesis, as in BLOW-UP. As others have already said, LA JETEE is an obvious choice, but Terry Gilliam's THE TWELVE MONKEYS (based in part on Marker's film) also uses photographs in some significant ways. The opening of CHINATOWN uses detective's photos of a roadside assignation, while CHINATOWN also uses a few surreptitious photos along with the taped dialogue. Also see the use of still and moving images from earlier John Wayne films that open THE SHOOTIST. More radical uses occur in some European modernist films of the 1950s and 1960s--Bergman's PERSONA (the pictures on the walls of the "morgue" at the opening) and THE PASSION OF ANNA (scenes from Vietnam), Truffaut's JULES AND JIM (the slide of the monumental sculpted head that prompt the relationship between the two title characters and Jeanne Moreau's Catherine), and a number of films by Godard: eg., BREATHLESS (the poster of Bogart), LES CARABINIERS, LA CHINOISE, LE GAI SAVOIR, LETTER TO JANE, etc. Photographs and film clips are part of the visual evidence of a suppressed past in Wajda's MAN OF MARBLE. Photographs of Mao and Stalin adorn the walls of the interrogation center at the beginning of THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. There are the family photos of relatives to be knocked off in KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS. Films (like BLOWUP) that have photographers as major characters also use such images--see THE EYS OF LAURA MARS, REAR WINDOW (although there are only two signficant uses of such photos in the film), the Avedon-inspired fashion photos in FUNNY FACE, scenes in darkrooms like the one in EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN, Elliot Gould in Jules Fieffer's LITTLE MURDER, Caradine in PRETTY BABY, Hugo Weaving as a blind photograher in PROOF, Minnie Driver in THE GOVERNESS. 3. Some of the images cited above also segue into or out of freeze frames--as in MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA. That's a whole category in itself: the end of THE 400 BLOWS is one obvious example, but also see the end of FAIL-SAFE, THE WILD BUNCH, and many others. Still shots that "come to life" were already a cliche by the time Wyler brought a wall sampler to life at the start of FRIENDLY PERSUASION. Don Larsson ----------------------------------------------------------- Donald F. Larsson English Department, AH 230 Minnesota State University Mankato, MN 56001 ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite