Modernism and Movies

The city of Paris consisting of newly modern structures and a way of live is suddenly being explored by a curious American tourist, who cant wrap his head around it all. At first the grey and gloomy modernist feel is being expressed by a building made of glass, where the tourist comes in contact with many new and confusing features of modernism. A simple chair becomes entertaining to the tourist as its simple design misleads him into expecting nothing of it, until he sits down and suddenly sinks down into its cushion. This modernity gives almost an austere impression of the environment as it’s depicted in grays, without any emotion or life.

As the tourist becomes further engaged in the environment, one can see it that this seemingly modernist and conformed system can become not as conformed, as things begin to fall apart at the restaurant scene. The message is clearly about modernism and the its interaction with a human, especially one who hasn’t been introduced to it yet. This particular restaurant scene also holds another hidden message within. One that implies modernism is is fit to adapt to any kind of a situation. For example, as everything began to fall apart, instead of fixing the particular things, they were adjusted and suddenly became part of the room and the design. As conformed as modernism seems, it is open to adjustments and change. 

                  Made in the late 60’s, the movie of modernism shares the decade with yet another film that was made whose message was more free spirited and not conformist as opposed to the Totty’s depicted modernism. The Monterrey pop was a festival that was documented for others to see how entertaining and inspiring can an event become where people with a common interest of music among other things can unite and go appreciate the music being performed to them by various well established artists. In simple contrast to the modernism film, which was mainly composed of a grey toned palette, the Monterrey Pop film included multitude scenes exposing the colorful clothing expressively worn by those who attended, more commonly known as hippies in the sixties. This colorfulness establishes singlehandedly establishes a point of separation between the two films conceptually. Thematically, although Totty’s film may imply on the disadvantages of a modern society, however, it is not as literal as the documented film of the festival, where just the performance of Jimmy Hendrix gives out this free spirited message of expressiveness and nonconformity. This particular scene, and the mere fact that Jimmy Hendrix is a black male performing ties into  Tatti's movie with the funny restaurant scene, where the black male is being identified as the band player without a question. It is the same period of time and even though one portrays expressiveness and the other more of gray toned feeling, they share the social status opinion. It is impossible to see a colored black man or a woman in the modernist film other that in the band as it is hard to see any black faces in the audience of Monterey Pop.