The angelic voice of lost paradise, a new age of old Hollywood, the silk, satin and pearls show in front of the bright lights with the name of Lana del Rey. For over ten years, this 20th-century musical icon has presented elegance, prosperity and good music and style for her supporters worldwide. With her sublime sense and talent combined with a noble culture of historical artistic space, she creates poetics referencing the cult of sophisticated classic literature, film and colour. This article will present to you some of Lana del Rey’s famous movie references and connotations of cinematic experience. This will be the first part of the series, so stay tuned for more.
Her newest album release “Did you know there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd?” with the track “Paris, Texas” references the movie of the same name from the year 1984. directed by Wim Wenders. This movie is a story of the lost American dream deep inside the vast desert. It is a tale of hopeless love, which is longing to be found on the country map between the states in little places.
‘She wore blue velvet. Bluer than velvet was the night. Softer than satin was the light. From the stars.’ That is a strange world where director David Lynch puts viewers in the exciting story of Blue Velvet from the year 1986. This movie is a surrealistic escape from reality followed by various painful emotions and beautiful visuals. Blue-coloured Velvet here symbolises a memory of the old American day’s protagonists still used to remember but only can get close to them when they close their eyes—extravagant velvet coloured with sadness, freedom and dreams. Lana del Rey did a cover for her earlier album “Born to Die” of the infamous Bobby Winton’s work that became the theme song of ‘Blue Velvet’.
“The Korova Milkbar sold milk plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of old the ultra-violence.” says the protagonist of the film called Alex at the beginning of the Clockwork Orange – a film that focuses on reformation, nature and control. This screenplay, initially titled Ludovico technique, was so intriguing that its director Stanley Kubrick had the film pulled from the cinema after various mixed reactions. The story is based on a novel of the same name, written by Annthony Burgess and published in 1962. This movie presents a psychological expression of classical and emotional conditioning. The term “clockwork” literally means “mechanism” or “winding device” and refers to a caricature of the individual as a “device” that the system manipulates and creates its identity according to the same principles used in psychology. Lana del Rey plays in her album of the same name with the metaphor of “ultraviolence” as a destructive term for the state of mind and situation, damage and destruction of love.
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.” The words of Vladimir Nabokov and his controversial story of forbidden romance, spring and summer days, white fences and innocence, and little Russian elegance due to its theme of provoke has been used a fair number of times in the film industry. Heart-shaped sunglasses, cherry lollipops, social impropriety and the movie screen of the 60s, capture Stanley Kubrick’s version of the infamous Lolita from the year 1962. The dark approach of Kurick’s style of aesthetics captures love possession and youthful manipulation in black and white camera lenses. In living cover, 35 years later Kubrick’s work Lolita has another breakthrough in cinematic history. Director Adrian Lyne in 1997. created a new interpretation of the classic with the foggy image of erotical purity, a traumatizing story with angelic cinematography taking Jeremy Irons as a lead role. Lana del Rey in her songs plays with the motif of the bad romance in Nabokov’s novel multiple times.