Influences - Shaving Scene

In our short film, there is a shaving scene where Christian (the main character) cuts himself shaving in preparation for the day. The shot is then followed by rapid editing of Christian in the countryside in the rain. The implications of this are to convince the audience that Christian is insane, and has in fact committed suicide. The main influence for this scene is the short film ‘The Big Shave’ (1967, Dir. Martin Scorsese).

In the film we can clearly see that whoever is shaving in this film, though he may look fine to begin with, he begins to cut himself. At first we see nothing wrong, to which he eventually cuts himself so often, the audience watching this realise something is wrong with this person. This short film is a microcosm of the mentality of the Vietnam War. Basically, no matter how much damage this man does to himself he keeps going causing mass harm. Similarly, No matter how many people were sent in to be massacred in the Vietnam War, more and more kept on getting sent in.

This film is a huge influence to us for not only this scene, but the mental state of the character in Scorsese’s film is similar to our film, and this mental state continues throughout our film. Because of this, this film can also be considered as an influence for the mental state of the main character (Christian) as well. However, the main reason ‘The Big Shave’ was so helpful to us was for the shaving scene in ‘Existence of Christian’.