A Little Church, A Staircase With Two Complete Spirals And An Enticing Legend
Stairs are a favorite set-piece for film scenes. Theyoffer different perspectives and justify different camera angles. Theycreate the motivation to leave the horizontal world and enhance the subliminal messages. Spiral Stair Cases and Curved Stair Casestend to be used more inlighthearted work. The long stretch of straight vertical staircases is better for more serious work. rising up the stairs, the character is often ascending to a higher position of personal state. Descending symbolizes a personal decline, entering the dark path on ones journey, or taking a step down the social ladder. The Queen always walks down the steps to enter the ballroom with the common people; she always makes her entrance gracefully coming down to the level of those below. Steps are a favorite device, that when used well, add to the meaning of a movie. There are some renowned steps that have entered movie history.
The film Battleship Potemkin, a 1925 silent film, has one of the most famous and most reproduced montages ever created. Eisenstein, the films director, was one of the first to effectively use a montage sequence in films. It occurson the steps in Odessa. The montage on the Odessa steps has the Cossacks marching down shooting into the crowd. The film cuts are betweenbooted feet marching down, victims, firing rifles, and a baby carriage. The carriagerolls down the steps, passing victims and heading down into the chaos. This montage is perhaps the most studied film sequence. It has been reproduced time and time again in many films, including Brian De Palma’s Untouchables, Francis Ford Coppola’s The God Father, and Laurel and Hardy’s The Music Box. While the massacre didn’t occur on Odessa steps, they are immortalized on film and often mistaken for the site of the massacre.
The movie “Rocky”would be a different film without the music and the seventy-two steps rising up to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The steps are an iconic image. It is a classic film portrayal. The underdog, Rocky Balboa runs up the steps trying to get in shape. It is painful to watch. Again and again he is defeated by the stairs. Then, in a great turn of events he surmounts the stairs with aplumb. The camera pulls back to show him, arms raised, dancing with the city beneath him. It’s clear he’s made it. Now he just has to win the fight. That scene has been replicated over and over again. The stairs have been used over and over, namely in Rocky II, III, and V. Those steps lead up to the well known building of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but are now commonly referred to as “The Rocky Steps.”
In the Laurel and Hardy film, The Music Box, a short comedy released in 1932, Laurel and Hardytry to deliver a piano. The antagonist of the film is a set of stairs that go on forever. In the film, Stan and Ollie hoist and push the piano up the steep flight only to run into difficulties that sends the music box plummeting down over and over again. One sequence even includes a baby carriage as a tip of the hat to Battleship Potemkin. It is the well known fable of Sisyphus, the poor soul destined to spend his life pushing a rock up a hill, only to have it roll back down.
Stairways haveplayed an integral part in so many films. In the exorcist, theendless steps up represent the hard challenge in front of the priest. He diesfalling down the steps.Steps can become characters of their own, or symbols that linger long after the last flicker on the screen.