Roman Polanskis Repulsion Essay -- Film Movies

Roman Polanskis Repulsion Analysis of an aspect of visual form in the moving picture Repulsion In the 1964/65 film Repulsion by Roman Polanski, the story is about the conflict between reality and fantasy or sanity and insanity inside(a) the main characters take heed Carol played by Catherine Deneuve. Therefore the narrative technique of symbolism is used to display visually to the films audience what happens to Carols mind. In this particular instance, the degeneration of Carols state of mind is symbolised. Carols state of mind degenerates, or breaks down because of her repulsion of masculinity in a sexual context. Through Carols eyes, we train masculinity as being aggressive, obsessive, unprocessed/sexually enkindleive, rapacious and sinister, and although these are masculine traits, they are not a full stand foration of males/masculinity in society. Therefore one can see that Carol has misunderstood and become very wary of men. She is a very pretty woman and the fil m uses her to display an almost stereotypical femininity atonic/ fragile and delicately featured ironically, the complete opposite to Carols own view of men. And so, overall, the film basically represents male domination and female vulnerability. in like manner to highlight the difference between Carols reactions to men and her reactions to women, the writer has chosen to place her character in a beauty parlour. This is used to represent a pleasant but superficial world against a nasty one through Carols eyes that is. From the beginning, one can class that there are going to be elements of surrealism in the film by the style in which the credits are run. These opening credits run in general upwards (I say generally as some of the credits are at angles but still maintaining an upward-ish direction) over an extreme close-up shot of Carols face, and also some credits finishing on-screen at her top eyelids whereas some finish by running off-screen. During the film, we see Ca rol go to work at the beauty parlour. By the camera-man shooting over her shoulder, a personal view of her life and how she sees life around her. If the camera was used as her eyes, it would have make these scenes too subjective and too unsubtle. We can therefore look at the same things as Carol, but for our own sakes, though this does leave a authoritative ambiguity. For example, when Carol walks to work, she looks at an empty, da... ...late with the rotting rabbit and the cut-throat razor on it. This could symbolise that she is on the razors edge and that it is rotting her mind away. It is unclear why Carol has become repulsed by men and sex. It is suggested that it is to do with something or even someone in her past, e.g. she might have been sexually abused by an quondam(a) person. Maybe that is why she is repulsed by the landlord and in her irrationality, she attacks him. She also regards the photo of her when she was young with happiness. That, along with the bells and t he sound of girls running around dubbed over the film at that point, could suggest that she went to a convent school, which are all girls, and therefore makes her feel safe and protected, as the beauty parlour does. Carols neurosis of life might be that she see men as sexual objects only, not as real people, and so she is repulsed. Then one can ask, why is she repulsed by this? And the only realistic answers are that she might have been abused in her childhood, or something else deep and psychological of a very sexual nature affected her back then. only it is extremely hard to say exactly what, since we are never shown any part of her past.