- Technical competence and visual style
- Distinguishable personality
- Interior meanings and messages
Technical Competence and visual style
Jeunet’s visionary style is influenced by French comic book art: bright colours, dark contrast, and fanciful contraptions. The look has sort of a dusty 1950’s quaintness about it, but one modernized by brute force rather than by evolving design. Jeunet is also renowned for his great involvement in the technical side of his films, making sure every detail contributes to the dark, fantastical, dream like worlds he creates in each movie. He does so through the use of innovative techniques, many of which he developed himself.
Show clip from DVD Trailer of City of Lost children and then clip from Amelie (when she is looking out of window over Paris)
As you can see from both of these clips, colour is very important to Jeunet as he uses heightened greens, yellows and reds to create an other worldly ambiance, which is achieved using digital enhancement.
Also noticeable from these clips is Jeunet's use of camera angles to distort and deform, almost disfiguring some characters. He does so to elevate the 'fairy tale' feel to his work (although Jeunet does so with a deliberate, contrasting nightmarish feel, to give edge to the worlds he creates). The City of Lost children is a prime example of this, which often uses wide angled lenses to distort human features and sets. (From source Two): This is a camera lens which has a wider than normal angle of view, and usually a short focal length. This produces an image that is foreshortened in the center and increasingly distorted in the outside edge. The effect is clearly visible and automatically catches the audiences attention at the beginning of the City of Lost Children clip.
He has also developed his own camera, known as the 'snorrie cam' which he uses in his films, most predominantly Delicatessen. This is a camera attached to the actor or actresses body, but unlike a steadicam which absorbs all movement, this expresses each movement of the actor giving the audience a very direct and personal experience.
Show clip from Delicatessen when snorriecam is used, extreme close up of face.
Jeunet’s technical competence was recognised at the 2002 oscars where his film Amelie was nominated for five awards.
"He (Jeunet) told me this is a happy movie in our first conversation," Delbonnel says. "He said he wanted the audience to feel good while they were watching the film, so they leave the theater with smiles on their faces. He described a kind of fairy tale look. Jean-Pierre knew exactly what he wanted the images to achieve."
They discussed the possibilities of timing Amelie digitally very early in preproduction. The director wanted to make selective use of dark blacks and deeply saturated colors without affecting other parts of images within the frame.
"Jean-Pierre heard that Duboi was going to offer a new service that would allow us to do the same things that we had done with telecines on commercials," Delbonnel says. "Jean-Pierre said he wanted real blues and greens and golden yellows."
Delbonnel describes a scene filmed on a Paris street on a rainy day. The sky was almost white and the wall of a building in the background was very dark. He guided the colorist through the use of four or five Power Windows in that one shot. He fine tuned the colors of the sky and a building wall, enhanced drops of rain falling on the ground and deepened the greenish and reddish colors on the front of a grocery store.
Distinguishable Personality
Jeunets style is immediately recognisable. In my primary research 75% of the people I questioned could distinguish his style from other current French films. This not only included people who knew Jeunet’s work, but also those who had never heard of him before.
As discussed in reference to his technical and visual competence, the trait characteristics of Jeunet’s work are his use of heightened colour, distorted camera shots, innovative editing, relentless attention to detail, intricate contraptions and the dark, artificial, mythical ambience he creates in each film.
There is also one common theme that is addressed in each of Jeunets films; Dreams.
Show Clip from Delicatessen and A Very Long Engagement
(Compare the two to justify)
Jeunet is aware of his unique style and praises this for his success. As stated in an interview (SOURCE 1) he said;
“I think I am the only director in the French language whose films are released everywhere in the world,” he says.
“Maybe I am lucky,” he continues, more cautiously. “Or maybe it’s because my films are more visual.”
His plots are so fantastical that they are accessible to a world wide audience. Jeunet
