9.3 Visual Influence

 9.3 Visual Influence

"Office at Night," Edward Hopper, 1940

In "Office at Night," Hopper displays a typical office room with office furniture and two people working. The man is at his desk reading while the woman is standing near the file cabinet, awaiting instructions.

That it is night time is shown through the open window and the light on the man's desk. According to Hopper, the idea for this painting came to him during his train journeys in New York City when he would be able to catch glimpses inside the office interiors.

One interpretation is also that a physical relationship between the two people in the office is depicted through the stirring of the blinds.

Hopper was deeply influenced by artists such as William Merrit Chase, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Robert Henri, George Bellows and Rockwell Kent.

Though Hopper worked for a couple of decades in an advertising agency at a job he hated, he continued to experiment and paint through the years. He also worked with etching techniques since 1915.

- edward-hopper.org

Hopper's style and cool interior spaces have continued to influence painters, filmmakers and other artists through the decades.

Nicholas Christopher (1997), in his book Somewhere in the Night, has discussed the influence of Hopper’s paintings on Force of Evil (1948). He describes, for instance, how director Abraham Polonsky took his cinematographer George Barnes along to a Hopper exhibition in Greenwich Village to show the man exactly how he wanted the film to look.

"Night Windows," Edward Hopper, 1928

NOTES FROM DENAH'S PRESENTATION:

MODULE 9.3 VISUAL INFLUENCE

In terms of visual influence, I know that in you know the Hitchcock Class II talk quite frequently about the influence of not only kind of contemporary literature, but also art and art history on him. And certainly he's not alone. In being influenced by, you know, parallel art movements and obviously we know and have seen that many of these noirs are adopted from works of literature, works of crime fiction, you know, pulp novels, detective novels, etc.

 

But the. Visual style and approach of this film on the first page of the introductory page of the module. I think in the caption of the still you know I mentioned something about the strong German expressionist influence, and you'll definitely see it in certain periods of this film. And I think that you will also see. You know some strong influence, maybe even from, you know, like the 1920s, like Russian filmmakers also, for those of you that might have taken Cine20A with me or with Kevin. But in terms of, you know, these late night offices that we see. And this kind of move from a legitimate lawyers office in the beginning to his brothers kind of backroom low rent, you know, lottery gambling operation that he has and you know, some like, slumlord kind of apartment situation.

 

 Edward Hopper is undoubtedly a huge influence on, you know, not only film makers like David Lynch, which I believe is well documented, documented and discussed by himself, as well as other people. But the, you know, contemporary nature of Hopper, I have two images here, office at night from 1940, you know, which gives us a very spare kind of room, right? Notice nothing on the walls. This obviously is pre computers. So we have wired. Bones, we have bank bankers lamps. We have, you know, big Royal Key. Typewriters. And we have a secretary doing her secretary's job of either getting or filing files.

 

NIGHT WINDOWS

Um, and this one, which is a little more. Life kind of between the frames or behind the scenes night windows, which is very reminiscent of, you know, something you might see from across the street and another building or even perhaps from the ground in a city like New York, where life is your life is kind of on display as long as the blinds Are open. So, you know, pay attention to like the

 

 framing that Polanski and his crew, his cinematographer, is using. You know

 the way that they shoot the city, for example, there is a scene where.

Garfield is walking down Wall Street and it's totally vacant. Nobody is around and it's so incredibly eerie because all of the images that you ever see of Wall Street is bustling with people and energy. And you know, like that equals. Like the strength of money in the United States and you know, the success of our commerce and right, the strength of our markets and all of that and all of that is just like ripped away in this film.

So how? They're framing these scenes and kind of, you know, the context in which they happen, which is oftentimes the opposite of how we're accustomed to seeing them.

 And then maybe if you're not as familiar with Edward Hopper's paintings after you see the film, you might just wanna look some of them up, because I think that you'll be able to find some other kind of, you know, visual influence or connection.