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Cinematograph in Amelie

 

            Jean Pierre Jeunet's film 2001, Amelie, is about a girl called Amelie who works as a waitress in Paris. Her life changes around when she returns a box of childhood treasures hiding behind a wall to its grown up owner. Amelie sees the happiness of the person she returned the box to and decides to straighten out other people's lives by making it better or sometimes by making it worse when she thought the person deserved it. Jeunet conveys the sense of reality and fantasy with the use of colors. In the scene that the narrator is telling the viewer about what Amelie likes, Jeunet uses the colors black, green and red.
             The first shot of the scene begins with Amelie in the movie theater. The camera starts off with a close-up shot of Amelie's face and it slowly pans across the people's face sitting behind her. The seats in the movie theater are bright red and the people's clothing is mostly green. The colors red and green give the viewer a sense of fantasy and fairy tale. Fairy tales are usually connected to big luscious green woods and beautiful princesses dressed in red. Jeunet shows the feeling of people watching movies in the movie theater with the use of the color red and green. People live through fantasies when they watch movies because everything is so perfect and amazing. The use of the color green and red is used to convey the sense of happiness and fantasy people feel when they watch movies. Part of the happiness can also be seen through the smile of the people sitting behind Amelie.
             Jeunet uses the color black, through the use of clips from old movies, in the third and fifth shots to contrast reality and fantasy of films. The third shot is a clip from an old movie of two people kissing, but as pointed out by Amelie, there is some type of insect crawling in the background of the scene. The reality of love and romance in films is conveyed through the insect crawling through the scene making the "perfect love scene" imperfect and flawed.


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