Writer, producer and director Wes Anderson’s unusual and idiosyncratic films take place in world which seems to be entirely his own. Often anachronistic and highly stylized, the Andersonian universe looks like little else being shown in contemporary cinemas. Yet, Anderson is also one of the most allusive filmmakers working today. Littered throughout his oeuvre are endless allusions to films, directors, authors and books which have had significant influence on Anderson as an artist. In fact, Anderson’s films can only be fully appreciated when viewed through the lens of his many sources, since his films emerge as he carefully collects, compiles and crafts his many influences into a sort of collage. In order to understand how this dichotomy operates in Anderson’s work I examine the influence of several key directors, authors, and films. Through this study I show that one of the things that make Anderson unique is the very way in which he interacts with the sources to which he is alluding. It is his uncommon ability to weave homage and critique together which makes him a truly allusive auteur.

Writer, producer and director Wes Anderson’s unusual and idiosyncratic films take place in world which seems to be entirely his own. Often anachronistic and highly stylized, the Andersonian universe looks like little else being shown in contemporary cinemas. Yet, Anderson is also one of the most allusive filmmakers working today. Littered throughout his oeuvre are endless allusions to films, directors, authors and books which have had significant influence on Anderson as an artist. In fact, Anderson’s films can only be fully appreciated when viewed through the lens of his many sources, since his films emerge as he carefully collects, compiles and crafts his many influences into a sort of collage. In order to understand how this dichotomy operates in Anderson’s work I examine the influence of several key directors, authors, and films. Through this study I show that one of the things that make Anderson unique is the very way in which he interacts with the sources to which he is alluding. It is his uncommon ability to weave homage and critique together which makes him a truly allusive auteur.

Den här uppsatsen fokuserar på kompositören Alexandre Desplats verk i regissören Wes Andersons filmer. Uppsatsen grundar sig i filmmusikens narrativa funktioner och hur dessa står i relation till det visuella. Syftet med uppsatsen har varit att belysa filmmusikens relation till det som syns i bild, resonera kring musikaliska emotioner, semiotik och semantik. Studien har utförts genom att tolka och förstå Desplats kompositioner genom relevanta teoretiska redskap. Det visade sig till slut att Desplats verk har en vägledande och aktiv närvaro i relation till det visuella, musiken kommenterar och för berättelsen framåt. Resultaten av analyserna har varit lyckade i förhållande till syftet, att Desplat och Anderson har ett välfunnet samarbete är en självklarhet i sig men i den här nedbrytande formen framhävs just de detaljer som utgör ett gott samarbete mellan en kompositör och regissör.

<p> </p><p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p>The focus of this essay is the american director Wes Anderson and the use of colour in his films. I also put some focus on colour as a neglected element in film studies, and what has caused this neglect. In my own research, I have analysed three of Anderson's films: <em>Bottle Rocket</em> (1996), <em>The Royal Tenenbaums</em> (2001) and <em>The Darjeeling Limited</em> (2007). To get a broad sense of a films use of colour, I have investigated the colour scheme, the colours of the costumes, as well as colour patterns. I have also interpreted the symbolism related to certain colours and then used the results of the analyses to answer the question; "how does Wes Anderson use colour, and in which film is this most apparent?" A very generalizing answer to this question, is that Anderson use colour as a means of signifying the characters' feelings and ambitions, and also their relations to the themes of the films. He does this by connecting symbolic values to certain colours and makes these colours stand out in certain scenes and in the characters' clothes. The film that best shows this use of colour is <em>The Royal Tenenbaums</em>. In short, this essay will hopefully bring some understanding of how colours are used in the films of Wes Anderson, but also open up the eyes of the readers to the importance of the neglected element itself; colour.</p><p> </p>

Abstract The focus of this essay is the american director Wes Anderson and the use of colour in his films. I also put some focus on colour as a neglected element in film studies, and what has caused this neglect. In my own research, I have analysed three of Anderson's films: Bottle Rocket (1996), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and The Darjeeling Limited (2007). To get a broad sense of a films use of colour, I have investigated the colour scheme, the colours of the costumes, as well as colour patterns. I have also interpreted the symbolism related to certain colours and then used the results of the analyses to answer the question; "how does Wes Anderson use colour, and in which film is this most apparent?" A very generalizing answer to this question, is that Anderson use colour as a means of signifying the characters' feelings and ambitions, and also their relations to the themes of the films. He does this by connecting symbolic values to certain colours and makes these colours stand out in certain scenes and in the characters' clothes. The film that best shows this use of colour is The Royal Tenenbaums. In short, this essay will hopefully bring some understanding of how colours are used in the films of Wes Anderson, but also open up the eyes of the readers to the importance of the neglected element itself; colour.

My family is a collection of characters and big personalities, often with very strange, but brilliant characteristics and interests. When looking for a model that would be consistent with the look and concept I envisioned – witty, comedic, populated with eccentric characters, with carefully and specifically detailed visuals – the films of Wes Anderson, particularly The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Moonrise Kingdom (2012), and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), came to mind immediately. Each of his stories is very deliberately structured with a playful sense of chaotic charm, which is the tone I hope to capture in my storytelling. And, not coincidentally, I noticed that when people talk about my extended family, they refer to us as ‘the real-life Tenenbaums,’ meaning that each person is unapologetically who they are with larger-than-life personalities. Growing up hearing wild tales of life with my grandparents in their New York apartment from my mother and extended family, I was inspired to create my own film version of these stories. In choosing to emulate this director’s style within my film, I intend to capture the light-hearted spirit of my family in a manner that is easily recognizable and which is in keeping with its character.

This thesis examines the influence of Romanticism on a selection of seven films from four contemporary American filmmakers: Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson, Charlie Kaufman, and Spike Jonze. The research questions are as follows: How do particular Romantic ideas, either canonical ones or those located on the more critical fringes of Romanticism, relate to the work of the filmmakers I consider? What Romantic features do these films regularly exhibit, both aesthetically and in terms of narrative? How do these features inform their overall point of view? Finally, how do such Romantic ideas and aesthetics relate to the current cultural milieu in which the films were created? There are many familiar and more obscure Romantic strains running through the films. These include a preoccupation with personal history and memory; an undercurrent of deeply felt emotion and reliance upon mood and tone to convey it; a foregrounding of the creative process and the imagination; and an ambivalent relationship to both the natural world and civilised society. In terms of aesthetics, the films in question depend on qualities of the beautiful, picturesque, and sublime to represent the complex emotional states of their characters and to elicit emotional responses in their audiences. Above all, these films represent a preoccupation with subjectivity and self-consciousness: specifically, the coming to personal self-consciousness that creates a rift between the individual subject and a greater sense of society. By utilising the work of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Romantic authors and philosophers such as Friedrich Schlegel, William Wordsworth, Henry David Thoreau, John Keats and others, combined with twentieth- and twenty-first century readings of these works via literary and cultural theorists and critics such as Harold Bloom, M.H. Abrams, Leo Marx and Anne Mellor, I emphasise the historical trajectory of general Romantic concepts. Taking established cinematic theories (“quirky” cinema, “smart” film, the “new sincerity”) as a point of entry, I explore the underlying stylistic and narrative connections between the films I discuss. I argue these films share a fundamentally Romantic form and vision specific to their own historical and cultural environment.

Denna uppsats har som syfte att undersöka hur visuell rytm används i Wes Andersons film The French Dispatch och hur det påverkar filmens narrativ. En fallstudie görs på en scen från filmen. Den rytmiska strukturen identifieras och teorier om visuell rytm, narrativ och begreppet mise-en-abyme appliceras på materialet och filmen som helhet. Slutsatsen är att användandet av visuell rytm påverkar narrativet på flera nivåer: Det kan förmedla spänning i narrativet, komplexa teman och ett metadiskursivt perspektiv genom mise-en-abyme. Medieproduktionen är en animerad informationsfilm som introducerar arbetsmarknadsanställningar. Produktionen är ett skarpt uppdrag i samarbete med Malmö stad.

How should we, Americans, confront our complicity in reproducing the Shoah? For complicit we are, if consumerism is any metric: Steven Spielbergs 1993 film Schindlers List had grossed $321 million as of 2012; more than 40 million people have made the pilgrimage to the sacred US Holocaust Museum; at last count, The Diary of Anne Frank had sold 30 million copies. These numbers are stale staples in the debate over the ethics of Shoah representation, of course, but they bear out the skepticism of critics who have questioned American Holocaust consumer culture. And consumerism is only the first of many such ethical quandaries, which include how to deal with the trauma that audiences experience upon viewing Holocaust films and what happens when secondary witnesses overidentify with Holocaust victims.This paper takes up an unusual form of Holocaust art: misrepresentative film. I discuss two films, Quentin Tarantinos Inglourious Basterds and Wes Andersons The Grand Budapest Hotel, to argue that intentional misrepresentations not only call attention to the pitfalls of traditional representation but also encourage audiences to work through the transhistorical trauma of the Shoah. Released in 2009, Tarantinos was perhaps unique in cinema for its radical alteration of history, intended to give audiences the sheer pleasure of seeing the Nazi regime go up, literally, in flames. Though the film is undoubtedly a revenge fantasy that, using Dominick LaCapras terms, embodies acting out€ in response to historical trauma, it does so by flipping the traditional narrative: unlike most depictions of the Shoah, it complicates the victim-perpetrator binary, identifies audiences with the transgressors, and constantly calls attention to its own fictionality. Movies like The Grand Budapest Hotel are evidence that Tarantino really did shatter the constraints of the genre. Basterds certainly makes no effort toward historical accuracy, but since its appeal depends on the audiences awareness of its inaccuracies, Tarantino is still elbow-deep in real history. Anderson is not. Budapest is a troubled film, haunted by invasions, wars, arrests, and displays of arbitrary power, many of which recall the Third Reich. The function of these ominous forces, however, is not to offer commentary on the Shoah but simply to recreate the illusory world of Stefan Zweig, on whose writings it was based. In producing a movie about Nazi-occupied Europe in which the troubles of the period are relegated mostly to the background, Anderson furthers the deconstruction of the Holocaust film genre, raising the possibility that such films can be historically serious without being bound by restrictive rules.

How should we, Americans, confront our complicity in reproducing the Shoah? For complicit we are, if consumerism is any metric: Steven Spielbergs 1993 film Schindlers List had grossed $321 million as of 2012; more than 40 million people have made the pilgrimage to the sacred US Holocaust Museum; at last count, The Diary of Anne Frank had sold 30 million copies. These numbers are stale staples in the debate over the ethics of Shoah representation, of course, but they bear out the skepticism of critics who have questioned American Holocaust consumer culture. And consumerism is only the first of many such ethical quandaries, which include how to deal with the trauma that audiences experience upon viewing Holocaust films and what happens when secondary witnesses overidentify with Holocaust victims.This paper takes up an unusual form of Holocaust art: misrepresentative film. I discuss two films, Quentin Tarantinos Inglourious Basterds and Wes Andersons The Grand Budapest Hotel, to argue that intentional misrepresentations not only call attention to the pitfalls of traditional representation but also encourage audiences to work through the transhistorical trauma of the Shoah. Released in 2009, Tarantinos was perhaps unique in cinema for its radical alteration of history, intended to give audiences the sheer pleasure of seeing the Nazi regime go up, literally, in flames. Though the film is undoubtedly a revenge fantasy that, using Dominick LaCapras terms, embodies œacting out in response to historical trauma, it does so by flipping the traditional narrative: unlike most depictions of the Shoah, it complicates the victim-perpetrator binary, identifies audiences with the transgressors, and constantly calls attention to its own fictionality. Movies like The Grand Budapest Hotel are evidence that Tarantino really did shatter the constraints of the genre. Basterds certainly makes no effort toward historical accuracy, but since its appeal depends on the audiences awareness of its inaccuracies, Tarantino is still elbow-deep in real history. Anderson is not. Budapest is a troubled film, haunted by invasions, wars, arrests, and displays of arbitrary power, many of which recall the Third Reich. The function of these ominous forces, however, is not to offer commentary on the Shoah but simply to recreate the illusory world of Stefan Zweig, on whose writings it was based. In producing a movie about Nazi-occupied Europe in which the troubles of the period are relegated mostly to the background, Anderson furthers the deconstruction of the Holocaust film genre, raising the possibility that such films can be historically serious without being bound by restrictive rules.