Sunday 13 December 2009

Unit 3- Elephant Man, Treves' House / Hospital Decoration

I wanted to post this a while ago, but it was quite hard to find the scenes. As I am using the Victorian Style, I decided to go back to one of the films I watched when I started the University course in unit 1, Elephant Man.
I wanted to associate what I want to depict to something well produced visually, so I took 2 scenes from the same film, to contrast, the exuberant and cluttered Victorian House Style with a not so decorated communal buildings, such as the hospital.
The first scene shows Mr. Treves' House, and is well visible how the Victorian style pays a lot of attention to the detail, the small things make the whole picture. While in the hospital, as being a communal building which was often overcrowded or with problems in sanitation the same attention to detail decay and is no longer visible, giving place to a more efficient style. e.g. Long corridors, with arches, and several doors and some decoration. the contrast of the beautifully worked with the efficiency.




3 comments:

Charlotte said...

Yes that is a good contrast. True although Lady Nightingale had changed the way nursing was aproached by making rounds to check on the patients at night and by keeping everything clean, not every hospital had that sort of care.

Ruben Martins said...

Also, most of the hospitals in that time were overcrowed most of the times, so sanitary condition were quite low. and to add insult to injury, a bit later with the World War I and II, all sorts of hospitals suffered the most overcrowded period. I read that in that time 125 women were sharing 5 bathrooms, which is pretty difficult to think about.

Charlotte said...

True. Plus I remember hearing on a TV show that the goverment didn't start really caring about people's health untill WW2