The End Of The Western Unit

Of course each western has their own whores/town sluts and then their prestigious women but what i thought was interesting was the different ways the women were portrayed in each of the films we viewed in class during the western unit. In the production Stagecoach there was a portrayal of each type of women figure. We had the looked down upon town prostitute Dallas(Claire Trevor) and the noble wife of a army captain Lucy Mallory(Louise Platt) compared to the group of prostitutes in Unforgiven. Well in Stagecoach you have only two main women figures and one is looked down upon like mentioned before and the other one is high class and thinks that she deserves better but i like how Ford had Dallas take care of Mrs. Mallory so well when she was ill showing the other judgmental people that even though she is a slut and everything she still has emotions and feelings for herself and others. That she could have completely left Mrs. Mallory alone and let her die giving birth or not help take care of her baby especially after how Mrs. Mallory had treated her in the stagecoach but she overcomes her mistakes and ignores the details that hurt her badly to take care of this women who had always shunned her. And i really think that this was a fantastic idea for Ford to create because in a way Dallas is showing the other members of high class that she still is a human being and that she completely deserves to be treated like one.
Where as in Unforgiven there are many prostitutes and that the entire movie is about Will Munny(Clint Eastwood) trying to go out and punish those who had hurt the prostitute which i find ironic to the previous movie because Dallas had to earn her respect and here we have random cowboys on the loose searching to kill for the prostitutes and it just shows them at a higher level than everyone else and like i said before it's really strange but cool. But then once again you have a single women figure and this case it's Will's wife who had cured him from everything bad like from drinking alcohol and killing people which is interesting because this is another example of women having power in this movie and based off the description of Munny before marriage seemed as though God himself couldn't even save him and this women he meets happens to save him....hmmm very interesting ey? I find it amusing that even though these two productions are considered westerns, their portrayal of women in each of the films are different and that in one they have to earn their approval from society and in the other society is protecting them from the bad and how they are able to cure the bad soul. Westerns are amazing!! :]]]

Behind the Scenes: Pan's Labyrinth

~~What happens when make believe, believes it's real?~~


The amazing story line that is mixed with fantasy and gruesome war really pulls the watcher in. Winner of 3 Academy Awards, Pan's Labyrinth displays a great script, fantastic use of makeup and the eerie lullaby that took forever to nail. According to the Official Movie Website “Pan’s Labyrinth is del Toro’s most personal work to date, fusing his deep understanding of childhood with his extravagant imagination and his abiding interest in the Spanish Civil War and the dangers of ideology.” In 2001 Guillermo del Toro thought of the idea but delayed it due to his other productions, however when he was able to resume work on Pan’s Labyrinth in 2003, he had a different plan, he would write it as a fairy tale. Crazy about fairy tales as a child Del Toro had always admired the real Grimm Brothers’ stories and how they all had a bizarre gruesome twist to all of them which influenced the strange things that appeared in most of his productions. Guillermo Del Toro had been keeping a notebook of doodles, ideas, drawings, and plot bits for just about 20 years and it has provided inspiration for all of his films, from Cronos and Mimic to Blade II and Hellboy, and now for his latest film. Pan's Labyrinth. Del Toro would draw in this notebook that he carried around with him always (and frequently lost) and, based on some characters he had sketched out, he pitched Pan's Labyrinth, promising to deliver a script in nine weeks. Nine months later, it was finished. (He compared his dedication to writing the same things over again to Jack in The Shining.)Along with the amazing story line, the music that appeared in the movie was utterly perfect! The music of Pan’s Labyrinth was written by Spanish composer, Javier Navarrete. The music encompasses the fantastical mood of the film - a fairy tale fantasy for adults, set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War. The music captures the tension and imagination of this rich, layered film. Del Toro worked with Navarrete for months on end to get that perfect lullaby that would keep the watchers listening. According to the director’s cut on the DVD, Del Toro would let his wife and daughter listen and send it back to Navarrete tweaked a little and then sending it back and forth until one day when his daughter insisted it was perfect and that even if she tired sleeping to it, it’d be haunting enough that she would not be able to, boom that was it, that was Ofeila’s lullaby. The extra work paid off, because Pan's Labyrinth is a great work of art. A fantasy tale of a young girl who must perform three tasks before she can be crowned a princess of the underworld mixes with a very real and very violent tale of Franco Fascists vs. Resistance Fighters in a forest outpost in Spain in 1944. The stories inform each other, and suggest a child's imagination is a to-be-cherished form of civil disobedience.




Work Cited

~ www.wikipedia.com
~www.imdb.com
~www.panslabyrinth.com
~Pan's Labyrinth DVD