Miriam serves Sarah a special sherry in a delicate crystal glass, then sits down at the piano and plays Léo Delibes' "Lakmé Flower Duet" while Sarah becomes enraptured by the sounds and sensations they convey. The Hunger's union of cinematic and musical artistry reaches its peak in the pivotal seduction scene between Miriam and Sarah. But instead of ascending to heaven like Christ, David remains in a state of eternal purgatory, unable to die and escape endless torture. Holding the nearly lifeless David in her arms as a haze of white light descends from above, Miriam resembles the Virgin Mary cradling Jesus Christ after his crucifixion. As Miriam carries David, now aged a century in the span of a single day, to his eternal resting place in the attic, Goldblatt creates a living rendition of Michelangelo's La Pietà. Scott and Goldblatt also merge religious symbolism against Luciferian themes in the film, particularly in the scene where David meets his ultimate fate. It's as if director Scott is reminding viewers of the thin line between tranquility and brutality, pleasure and pain. A splash of deep red blood lands on a page of Alice's white sheet music. ![]() As Alice plays a classic Édouard Lalo piece, John, in a desperate attempt to keep himself alive, slashes her throat. This contrast is emphasized in a particularly cruel and heartbreaking scene involving Miriam's and John's 15-year-old violin student Alice ( Beth Ehlers). The musical score of Jaeger and Rubini also accentuates these startling shifts in tone, segueing from the classical sounds of violins and cellos to the modern sounds of electronic synthesizers. John moves from the splendor of the brownstone to the cold, stone walls of Sarah's medical clinic, then to the steel-gray skies and gritty rain-soaked streets of New York City. When John begins to age rapidly within a matter of hours, his striking beauty replaced by sagging skin and sunken eyes, the landscape around him changes, too. As viewers are seduced by the exquisite and the serene, they're suddenly jolted into terror and darkness. This jarring juxtaposition of the beautiful against the horrifying is a recurring theme throughout The Hunger. The camera pans across the interior of Miriam's and John's sprawling brownstone like the tip of an artist's brush, white lace curtains ruffling from the breeze of the open windows, the expansive marble staircase bathed in bluish shadowed hues and a faint background mist, the home's accentuated hallway arches and columns denoting old money wealth and modern sophistication.Īt the same time, Miriam and John have a bland, gray, concrete basement with an incinerator where they dump the bodies of the victims upon which they feast in order to maintain their eternal youth. From the moment the 1983 horror masterpiece The Hunger begins, director Tony Scott, cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt, and music composers Denny Jaeger and Michel Rubini waste no time in letting audiences know they're about to experience a piece of master-crafted art.Ĭinematographer Goldblatt frames virtually every shot in The Hunger like an elegant oil painting come to life. The action moves to the young couple's home as the seduction continues, culminating in a shocking moment of bloody violence as Deneuve and Bowie suddenly slash the couple's throats. ![]() ![]() A visual seduction of the couple begins as the camera cuts back and forth to punk band Bauhaus' lead vocalist Peter Murphy, looking bat-like behind a wire cage, singing "Bela Lugosi's Dead" in a deep, throaty bass. Two figures dressed in black and disguised behind sunglasses ( Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie) move in the smoky shadows, spotting a young couple on a crowded dance club floor. It's six minutes of mind-swirling imagery, dizzying lighting, and frenzied editing set to an ominous goth rock anthem, and it's one of the most incredible opening sequences ever put on film.
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