Chicago Design Critique

495 Words2 Pages
Chicago Design Critique Rob Marshall’s Chicago is a musical that rewards the audience not only from a listening but also from a visual point of view. Marshall used light and color extraordinarily well to create mood and to carry the film's messages about corruption and murder. Billy Flynn (Richard Gere) is introduced wearing working class clothes. He sings a song about love claiming that the only thing he cares about is love. What he says and what he wants are two different things. When we see his office it is filled with expensive items so clearly he only cares about his $5,000. Money is everything, and his job is to create a sense of innocence rather than defend the innocent. Throughout the film he wears a red scarf or a red tie. The color points to his guilt and his own corruption. Dark blues and bright reds set the stage for murder and corruption. Billy Flynn describes the level of corruption in his song “Razzle Dazzle”, wearing a burgundy jacket, describing the law and the courtroom as a three-ringed circus in Chicago. His repeated phrase is "that's Chicago." The world that Marshall paints is dark. The only real color throughout the film is red for murder and corruption. One of the funniest and most beautifully choreographed scenes is the "Cell Block Tango." The women are dressed like dominatrix in black and white and with heavy boots on. The only color in this cell block dance is a red scarf that the dancers pull out to indicate their individual murder. One very interesting thing in this scene is that Mrs. Borusewicz (Jayne Eastwood) tells her story a foreign language. We do not know exactly what happened, but we do know she says that she is innocent and that she pulls out a WHITE scarf. She is the only one to be hanged. In her disappearing act, unlike any of the other women accused, she wears white. The light is bright and positioned to
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