The stairs are a favorite set piece of the directors of the films. They offer different perspectives and justify different camera angles. Be allowed the movement to leave the world and strengthen horizontal subliminal messages. In the case of the spiral staircase and stairs, corners tend to be used more in comedies and musicals. The long flight of stairs vertical lines provided to dramas. Heading up the stairs, the character tends to ascend to a higher position of personal status. Descending often represents a staff reduction, entering the dark path of travel, or take a step down the social ladder. The Queen does not go up the steps to enter the room dance with the common people, who always makes his entrance elegantly down to the lower level. The steps are a favorite device, that when used well, help the depth of a movie. There are a few celebrities who are part of film history.
The film The Battleship Potemkin, a silent 1925 film, has one of the most famous and most copied sequence ever created. Eisenstein, film director, was among the first to use effectively in a montage sequence film. It occurs in the Odessa steps. The sequence on the Odessa steps has to go by the Cossacks to fire on civilians. The camera cuts between the boots of marching by victims, firing rifles, and a baby carriage. The carriage rolls down the stairs, going to the victims and down into chaos. It is one of the sequences most famous film. It has been copied over and over again in several films, including Brian De Palma's Untouchables, The Francis Ford Coppola, Father God, and The Laurel and Hardy music box. While the slaughter did not occur in the Odessa steps, to be immortalized in film and often mistaken for the site of the slaughter.
The film "Rocky" not be the same without the music and the seventy-two steps leading to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It's an iconic image. This is a classic movie scene. The Underdogs, Rocky Balboa running up the stairs trying to get in shape. It is painful to see. Again and again defeated by the climb. Then in a moment of glory, up the stairs with ease. The camera pulls back to show him, arms raised, dancing with the city beneath him. We know you're done. Now we just have to win the fight. That scene has been repeated time and again. Such measures have been used many times more, ie, in Rocky II, III and V. The steps leading to the revered institution of the Philadelphia Art Museum, but is now known as "The Rocky Steps."
In the Laurel and Hardy film, The Music Box, a short comedy released in 1932, Laurel and Hardy attempt deliver a piano. The antagonist of the film is a set of stairs that seem to grow steadily. In the film, Stan and Ollie take the piano up the steep, only to find problems sending the piano rolling down again and again. A sequence even includes a baby stroller as an homage to Battleship Potemkin. It's the classic story of Sisyphus, the poor destined to spend his life pushing a boulder up a hill, only to roll down.
Stairs has played an integral role in so many movies. (The Exorcist, the endless steps represent the difficult challenge ahead of the priest. Muere fall down the stairs.) Steps can become in own characters, or symbols that can leave a lasting impression.
Connor R. Sullivan converted a garage into an apartment and chose one of several curved stair cases to lead to the second floor. He recently researched using spiral stair cases but found that the curved would work better.
Rocky Balboa – Rocky Steps at Philadelphia
