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Life Lessons and the Art of the Camera

Life Lessons and the Art of the Camera
by: Eve Robitshek

        “It's art. You give it up, you were never an artist in the first place.” According to critically-acclaimed painter, Lionel Dobie, art and painting his way of life. With an art gallery in three weeks, Dobie must have his painting finished in time. His muse and painting assistant, Paulette, left for a vacation with another man and is just now returning. In order to have inspiration to finish his painting, he needs Paulette back. She agrees, but on the condition of abstinence. With her as his muse once again, Dobie finishes his painting. After not receiving the reassurance for her paintings from Dobie Paulette desires, she returns home. Dobie finds a new muse and the circle continues on. Like the quote expresses, painting is a crucial aspect of Dobie’s life. In order to display this, Martin Scorsese uses the camera as a device to further support this notion. Through the cinematography, Scorsese is able to display Dobie’s complex relationship with Paulette and painting, through diverse and complex camera movements and shots.

          In the opening shots of the film, Lionel Dobie walks aimlessly around his apartment. His mindset is aligned with the camera in tracking his walking side to side, to the butt of his cigarette, or the camera whipping from his face to him throwing a shoe at a buzzer. The pace of the shots and the intensity of the movement of the camera come together to create a feeling of rush and scramble. Through the movement of the camera, Scorsese shows the need for something to change in Dobie life. On this note, later that day, Dobie goes to the airport to pick up Paulette from her vacation. When the scene opens it begins in slow motion showing Dobie’s infatuation with Paulette. As they begin to walk, it is a normal shot-reverse shot, until he finds out that she went on vacation with another man. As they walk outside, the camera tracks from the high angle of the building to the ground where the two of them are. Through this swift jib shot, the anger and chaos that Dobie feels are evinced. As they keep talking, the shot returns to a shot-reverse-shot until Paulette tells Dobie she will not come back to his loft. The camera then begins to move circularly around her to Dobie while he asks her, “Where are you going to go? What can you afford?” Dobie uses his power against her and the camera shows this switch back.

       The main feature of the cinematography is to exhibit the toxicity of Dobie and Paulette's relationship. In Life Lessons, the pair can be described as a cat and mouse dynamic relationship and the use of the camera helped to advance this argument. In the film, a few scenes make this extremely evident. In one scene, Dobie is painting with loud music playing. Paulette is trying to call her mother so she comes downstairs to yell at him to turn it down. It begins with her screaming at him which eventually turns into her return of passion for Dobie because of his painting. The camera begins with her watching him paint slowly beginning to move around him. The cuts slowly become faster and faster and the camera tracking his movements more as she becomes enthralled with his work. The camera slowly pushes in on her cutting back to him, then wild cuts of close-ups, to wide shots. The wild cinematography conveys the rapidity of her emotions. The scene ends with a wide jib shot pulling out on her watching him paint. Scorsese uses the camera as a device to show Paulette’s new attitude in one motion.

       Another scene that combines the movement of the camera to the emotion of the moment is where Paulette has gone upstairs to her room after the party with Ruben and Dobie watches from below. The camera begins tracking Dobie and then moves around him to reveal his watching Paulette and Ruben is her room. Through this camera technique, the viewer can get both what Dobie is looking at and how he feels about it in the same shot. Dobie then puts on music and begins to paint shirtless. Walking into a wide shot of the painting, dissolves are put on top of each other to show that Dobie immerses himself in his painting to forget his issues with Paulette. After a while of painting, he returns to his radio and once again looks at Paulette’s window. He changes the music to an opera and sits in his chair. The camera begins to push in from a wide shot to a close-up, eventually standing up and walking toward her window. The scene jumps out from a close up on his face to an extreme wide shot of him watching and then a pan on the painting. Like the scene earlier with Paulette, he attempts to distract himself with painting but eventually is drawn to her presence, which is shown through the extreme wide shot of him watching her.



            In Martin Scorsese’s short film Life Lessons, the camera gives life to the relationships, between the characters and Dobie’s relationship with his paintings Through the cinematography, relationships are further developed and moments come to life. The visual storytelling through the camera is one of the most important elements of the film and is what brings the film to a new level.

Link to the last scene described: https://vimeo.com/54708030







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