The Sixth Sense: What Is In the Basement?

What’s going on here?

Rules for grades:

20 percent mid-term exam

30 percent final exam

40 percent writing and homework

10 percent attendance. I just give you 10 percent if you come to every class.

For every hour of class you miss, I deduct (-1) percent. If you miss nine hours of class,

you fail this class.

Every time we watch a movie, we will do a different genre: horror, comedy, science

Fiction, musical, animation, drama, classic.

We will start with The Sixth Sense. The genre is horror. What are the five senses:

Taste, touch (feel), hear, see, smell. The sixth sense is intuition.

Let’s talk about the director of the film for a minute: M. Night Shyamalan

1.  He is a “flash in the pan.” You are famous for a short time only.

2.  He is a first generation American. That means he was born in a different country or moved to a different country when he is young. Second generation person’s parents come from a different country.

First and second generation people see the country differently, especially the surroundings (because they are different from where they come from) and behavior of the locals (again because it is different).

Shyamalan’s dad wanted to go to a city in America that had a lot of history.

People said the historical cities are Boston or Philadelphia.

Focus on interpretation.

BTW, Patrick Cowsill

a.)          There is a “bird’s eye view shot” at the start of the film. I want you to think about the director’s purpose in using this shot.

b.)          Soundtrack: ominous (quiet but scary or dangerous) music to set the tone

c.)           Theme: an important idea to a movie; something that happens again and again

One of the themes is the protagonist continually going to the basement.

What does the basement symbolize in this movie?

Color. Why does the protagonist always wear blue shirts?

He won the award as a psychiatrist. Why is he not proud that he won? Why does

he doubt it?

d.)          Foreshadow: when we get hints about what is going to happen later

1.  The troubled man says he is a “freak.”

2.  The troubled man comes from a broken family. Single mom family. F

e) Tracking shot: camera moves with the actor

A church is a sanctuary. Evil things will not enter this sanctuary.

Fall is not such a lively season. The leaves have died and fallen off the trees.

The temperature is cooler. The mood is bleak because the weather is bleak.

The surroundings in fall are stark. He is speaking Latin.

That is the door to the basement. The doorknob is red. In literature, red

symbolizes blood which means death. Why is the doorknob glowing? The door to the basement is maybe locked. Did we see a key? Why not?

Match cut for the camera. We use the match cut to get from an old scene to a new scene in a movie.

Red shawl to red doorknob: match shot (same) RED

The wife feels cold every time he comes in the room. They have a problem in their marriage based on the suicide.