Intertextuality

Intertextuality is a term to describe the visual referencing between films. Literally, films 'borrow' from each other, and the audience may recognise certain camera angles, aspects of mise en scene, sound or methods of editing in some films that you have seen in other.



First example of intertextuality, is in film called What Lies Beneath. The aspect that they borrowed in this movie, is from 1960 movie called 'Psycho'. In the scene, a man carries a woman which seems injured, puts her into the shower, with running water, and leave her there to die. The aspects that you could recognise, is the dying in the shower, and also the hand holding the bath. This is quite significant, because in movie Psycho, the director really focused on the hand holding the bath, by the camera work, and they did the same thing. The also borrowed running water theme.



Another example of intertextuality is shown in the movie called The Stepfather. In this film the also borrowed few aspects of Psycho. In the scene, a man is chasing a woman with a knife, and follow her into the bathroom. However, the mirror breaks, and woman kills a man with glass. The aspects that they borrowed from Psycho is music, which is very significant as it is very dramatic and builds up the tension among the audience, and also ripped off curtain as the man drops dead.

Intertextuality is used in some cases just to improve someones idea used in a film, but in some cases just to use it exactly the same as it is. We were thinking in our group how could intertextuality affect our film, and we thought that we could use some aspects, like Jigsaw theme, Indiana Jones move with a hat and a whip, or a scarface aspect with a very known theme: "say hello, to my little friend".