I'm ashamed to say that I'd never seen Seven all the way through until yesterday. I'm kind of pleased about that though, because after reading into all the noir and neo-noir visual cues and such, the film made a much bigger impact on me.
I got some fantastic ref, especially of murder scenes, and I've done a little bit of visual analysis. Here are just some of the 150 stills that I picked out. I'll be trying to apply some of the techniques I learnt from this into my own work. First, lets look at the check list:
- Chiaroscuro lighting
- Bars, Diagonals and Frames within Frames
- Long Tracking Shots and Deep Focus
- Obscured scenes
- Urban settings filmed at night
- Dutch Angles and Inverted Frames
- Water and Reflections
Oh boy, does this film hit all those visual markers.
Look at that magic. This film makes brilliant use of chiaroscuro, even though it's shot in colour. It creates a fantastic sense of atmosphere and is used to great effect to highlight the characters. Somerset's profile shown contrasting against the lighter curtains would look brilliant on it's own, but it's enhanced by the bars and frames within frames, as well as the image being distorted as it's shown through glass. Its a fantastic shot that really puts you on edge.
Again, the bars and frames within frames reflect how trapped the characters are in this scene. I particularly love the use of colour however. Tracy's bars are white; she is somewhat virtuous and dislikes the city she's been forced to live in. However, Mills' bars are black. This perhaps shows the contrast between these two characters, and maybe how Tracy is trapped by Mills' actions.
Or maybe I'm reading into that too much. I don't know.
Those Venetian blinds though... Plenty of beautiful contrast, patterned shadows, frames within frames, and a distorted image. The foggy, horrifying atmosphere is presented beautifully in this scene.
I loved this shot, panning across the two rooms, showing how isolated both Somerset and Mills were, even from each other, by this case that only gets worse and worse. Chiaroscuro is being used here to highlight the two characters while they are boxed in.
There were some really interesting camera angles in this film as well. The Lust murder scene was so... twisted and the colours and camera angles used in the scene really reflect that. You felt uneasy watching it. Such saturated reds mixed with these sickly greens.
There also was some use of inverted frames as well, which was pretty interesting.
So I suppose we'd better talk about the killer. Kevin Spacy was terrifying in this movie, and the cinematography only helped to enhance him and his role. A lot of reds were associated with him throughout the film.
However, one of my favourite scenes was the car journey to the "big surprise" awaiting Mills. Aside from the fantastic acting, visually it was very well done. Both John Doe and Mills are shown behind these bars, where as Somerset never is, although he does frequently see John Doe through the rear view mirror. This reflects how the both of them are locked within this long sequence of events and both of them will be trapped by the outcome.
That repeated red motif is used again here, highlighting John Doe as the central point of this shot. Chiaroscuro and rim light are again used to great effect.
Again, repeated red, as the two detectives and the audience first catch a glimpse of the killer. Everything is pointing towards this man, he is even framed in contrast with the light window behind him, with two big, red exit signs either side of him. Fantastic.
This is my favourite shot. No joke, I thought it was absolutely fantastic. Reflections aren't often used in neo-noir, but this whole image came together and hit me like a tonne of bricks. The reflection, with so much distortion from the rain that you still can't see his face. The inverted frame, the heavy contrast. It's so "noir" it hurts.
And just to top everything off, the credits role backwards again.
Seven, surprisingly, had a lot of similarities to Kiss Me Deadly. The "big bad" hidden from view for a large portion of the film, the box that you never see inside (at least it wasn't a nuclear bomb again), and those damn backwards rolling credits.
This film has given me so much inspiration and reference for this project. It's grimy, urban, dark atmosphere was brought together with some beautiful cinematography (nice work there,Darius Khondji), and the sets were very well designed. It was a noir film through and through: the visual cues were there along with complicated plot and the world-weary protagonist. It also had the neo-noir violence and eroticism.
I'm feeling inspired.
- Hannah
