Intertextuality

Intertextuality

Intertexuality is a term to describe the visual referencing between films. Basically, films ‘borrow’ from each other, and the audience may recognise certain camera angles, aspects of Mise en scene, snippets of sound or methods of editing in some films that you have seen in others.

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 Visual example of Intertexuality; fully explained. 

I watched the film opening of ‘Psycho’ and then four other film openings and there was much Intertextuality.

Apart from being one of the most famous thrillers of all time, Psycho uses what is known as the 'Classic Opening' at the start of the film.  We get a wide shot of a city scape, we cut to a shot of a building, then to a window in the building, then to a room in the building, where we finally meet one of the key characters of the film.  This type of classic sequence tells us a lot about the film to follow: the location, the type of area in which the film is set, the key characters, what the key character does etc.

I watched the opening of the film ‘what lies beneath’. In it  there is the iconic bathtub prop which is also used in ‘Psycho’, however, unlike Psycho, there isn’t an actual murder scene, we just see a man ‘Harrison Ford’ carrying a woman into a running bath/inbuilt shower. Quite like Psycho, there is also a medium close up of the victim/dead/dying person.

I also watched the opening of a student made opening of a film called ‘Succubus’. In it there is also much Intertextuality. The film follows the same plot as Psycho, and in this I mean that a person gets killed in a bathroom with the Mise-en-scene being a shower, knife and running water mostly. It even has a  medium close up of the dead person. However, unlike Psycho, it stars a woman murderer and her face can be clearly be seen so that the audience know who it is. In Psycho, the murderer’s face cannot be seen and not much detail is put in e.g. close ups of the antagonist.