Bienvenue...
On this blog, Olivia Kastick (I) will attempt to document her thoughts and impressions on the book A Movable Feast by Ernest Hemingway in weekly blogs. Furthermore, I will watch the film Midnight In Paris by Woody Allen and then compare the film to the novel. Midnight In Paris contains many of the same themes and aspects of A Movable Feast, and both are set in Paris, France. This blog is a creative way to replace the final exam.
Film analysis is a technique used by critics and movie audiences to examine creative choices made by a movie's cinematographer. The creative elements of a film are done in a way to add a specific effect or to convey the filmmaker's vision. I think comparing literature to film is a great way to assess the ways that film can bring another element to storytelling. In film, the creator can make the viewer see and feel using techniques that is impossible for a book to do. These techniques include camera angles, lighting, and soundtrack. While literature allows the reader to imagine the characters and setting for herself, a film allows the filmmaker to deliver his vision of the story with great detail and drama. It has been an eye-opening project for me because I've begun to think more about the way a book was written and the way a scene in a film was shot, and how these techniques are used to add to the story.
Film analysis is a technique used by critics and movie audiences to examine creative choices made by a movie's cinematographer. The creative elements of a film are done in a way to add a specific effect or to convey the filmmaker's vision. I think comparing literature to film is a great way to assess the ways that film can bring another element to storytelling. In film, the creator can make the viewer see and feel using techniques that is impossible for a book to do. These techniques include camera angles, lighting, and soundtrack. While literature allows the reader to imagine the characters and setting for herself, a film allows the filmmaker to deliver his vision of the story with great detail and drama. It has been an eye-opening project for me because I've begun to think more about the way a book was written and the way a scene in a film was shot, and how these techniques are used to add to the story.
An Introduction...
A Moveable Feast was written by Hemingway in the form of memoirs, short stories, and journal entries about his time spent as an expat living and writing in Paris, France in the Roaring Twenties. A few years before his death, Hemingway found a box of old writings from this time period and decided to edit, rewrite, and publish a compilation of stories about his time in Paris. However, he committed suicide before he could finish and A Moveable Feast had its final draft completed and published posthumously by Hemingway's wife, Mary, and his grandson, Sean. The new edition also includes a forward by Hemingway's son, Patrick. While not his most famous piece, A Moveable Feast is considered a masterpiece of Hemingway because it so perfectly captures the charming essence of Paris and the misunderstood Lost Generation in the 1920s.
The title, A Moveable Feast, refers to how some holy days, such as Easter, do not have a fixed date. It suggests that the memories made in Paris remain with you wherever you go, and the memories themselves are a moveable feast. Source:
Hitchens, Christopher. "Hemingway's Libidinous Feast." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 01 June 2009. Web. 05 June 2015. |
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” -Ernest Hemingway |
About Hemingway...
Ernest Hemingway was a young American newly-wed writer when he moved to Paris as an expat in 1921. His wife, Hadley, lived with him in a tiny apartment in the Latin Quarter. Their apartment was small and did not have running water. Hemingway also rented a hotel room at 39 rue Descartes where he did most of his writing. It was in Paris that Hemingway became acquainted with famous creative minds like James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, Pablo Picasso, Ezra Pound, and Salvador Dali. In Paris, he published many pieces for the Toronto Star newspaper. Although he and his wife left Paris in late 1923 once Hadley became pregnant, they returned to Paris in with their infant son, John (nicknamed Bumby) in early 1924. It was in the next few years that Hemingway wrote his most famous novels and stories, such as The Sun Also Rises, In Our Time, and A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway really made a name for himself while in Paris. Many of his writing topics were influenced by his time as a soldier in World War One and by the charm of Paris. While his writing career had become very successful, his personal life was falling apart. His wife Hadley found out about his affair with Pauline Pfeiffer and they divorced in 1928. Hemingway left Paris with Pfeiffer in 1928. His writing style that he developed in Paris became known as revolutionary for the literary world because of his unique prose and understated style.
Source:
"Moveable Feast (Hemingway) - Author Bio." A Moveable Feast. Lit Lovers, n.d. Web. 05 June 2015.
"Moveable Feast (Hemingway) - Author Bio." A Moveable Feast. Lit Lovers, n.d. Web. 05 June 2015.
Midnight in Paris, 2011...
Midnight in Paris is a romantic-fantasy film released in 2011 written, produced, and directed by Woody Allen. It stars Owen Wilson as Gil Pender, a tragically romantic and successful film writer trying to write his first novel, travels to the beautiful city of Paris with his fiancee to visit his future in-laws. Misunderstood by his company, he wanders the streets of Paris in the middle of the night and proceeds to be picked up by a strange car and travels in time back to the 1920s. He finds himself in the company of the most famous writers and creative minds of the Lost Generation and wonders if he should leave everything behind and stay in the past.
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