Sets, Scenes and Environments: Aki Kaurismaki's 'The Match Factory Girl

Here are some stills from one of Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki's wonderful films, 'The Match Factory Girl'.  Like most of Kaurismaki's films, it focuses on an outsider - here a woman, Iris, who is isolated and unhappy.  She works in a match factory, and lives with her parents.  Kaurismaki's mise-en-scene is richly coloured and composed.

Bleak browns, blues and greys infuse daily life - the flowered patterns are cheap, old and autumnal, but they suggest the possibility of hope.  Iris' pink headband tying back her greasy hair is an assertive note, perhaps an expression of her strength and individuality.

Iris meets a man.  The pink that was confined to her hairband finds full expression in the dress she buys for her date - colour enters her life.

The protagonist's bleak life is turned around when she falls pregnant after the one-night stand.  There is the possibility of a new life, and she prepares to meet her lover to tell him the news.  He brutally rejects her.  Note the baby-clothes colours and bottle of pop with a straw, and how the change in her hair subtly suggests her feelings.

The drama unfolds into a tale of revenge, told with great black humour. Poison is involved.

Here is the compelling opening scene of a match factory production line:

There's an excellent article on Kaurismaki on the Senses of Cinema website here.

Costume and Character: Danilo Donati / Pasolini's 'Oedipus Rex' (1967)

Some more costume designed by Italian costume designer Danilo Donati, this time looking at headgear for Pier Paolo Pasolini's 'Oedipus Rex' (1967).  The costumes here share a non-naturalistic aesthetic with those in Fellini's 'Roma', but the effect is quite different.  Here, there is an improvised feel, as if made with a low budget and out of a limited range of available materials.  This helps to give a unique look to the film (note the 'false beard' of Oedipus as well as the unusual crowns) - at once basic and primitive but also unmistakably modern.  Along with the black and white inter-titles used throughout, and the references to modernity in the midst of antiquity, the film has strong elements of Brecht's alienation effect.

The ancient Greek myth of Oedipus is a familiar one.  Oedipus, the king's son, is abandoned as a baby and left to die in the wilderness because of a prophecy that he will kill and replace the king.  He is rescued by a shepherd.  Later in life, he kills the king (not knowing that he is the king, and his original father) in an argument over right of way, and then goes on to solve the riddle of the tyrannical Sphinx and to marry the queen (who doesn't know Oedipus is her son, nor the murderer of the king).  In the fullness of time he finds out what he has done - killed his father the king and married the his mother, the queen.  This shocking revelation causes Oedipus to put out his own eyes, and return to the wilderness in repentance and shame.

Here's a clip of Pasolini's treatment of the story:

There's a good article on Senses of Cinema website about Pasolini here.

Costume and Character: Danilo Donati / Fellin's 'Roma' (1972)

Here are some of the influentially extravagant, high camp costumes designed by Italian costume designer Danilo Donati (1926-2001).  Donati designed many costumes (as well as sets) for the great Italian directors Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini, amongst others. These are works created for Fellini's 'Roma' (1972), in which life in Rome is depicted and contrasted in the 1940s and the 1970s -  it's a poetic historical essay, rich in satire. 

This is the famous Catholic fashion show scene towards the end of 'Roma',  in which many more of Donati's costumes can be seen:

Costume and Character: Vintage Halloween Photos

It's a couple of days after Halloween already, but I've just found some really creepy and fascinating old photographs of Halloween costumes and masks from the first half of 20th century America.  These are all courtesy of a book by Ossian Brown called 'Haunted Air' (see here for details). 

The handmade, amateur quality of these costumes and masks has a real aesthetic of its own.  They're infinitely more disturbing than most mass-produced popular-culture plastic Halloween masks.  Somehow they seem to connect more strongly with the liminal moment of Halloween.  Halloween was originally called Samhein, celebrated by the Celts who lived in Britain, Ireland and France 2000 years ago, before the Roman invasion.  It was the original New Year's Eve - the new year beginning, for the Celts, on November 1st - and it was believed that the membrane separating the living and the dead became more permeable on this night, that the dead could return to the Earth.

It all puts me in mind of Leatherface, from Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'