The Verve Bitter Sweet

Symphony

Made: 1997Produced by: EMI Music Distribution Released by: Hut RecordingsInfo:the first single from the album, reaching number two on the UK Singles Chart and stayed in the chart for three months.MTV played the video of the song frequently. In it, Richard Ashcroft lip-synchs the song while walking down a busy London pavement, oblivious to what is going on around and refusing to change his stride or direction throughout. At the 1998 Brit Awards, "Bitter Sweet Symphony" was nominated for Best British Single, and at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards, the song was nominated for Video of the Year, Best Group Video.

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This comment is an example of inter-textual reference of the film cruel intentions in the way of when the main character Sebastian dies this particular song plays over the top, so people can link the two together. There was quite a few comments like this.

Inter-textual referencewith Cruel Intentions

Here are some of the sections towards the end of the film when the song plays. Overall the film is about back biting and trying to do people wrong which links to the meaning of the song by the Verve.

The Verve- Bitter Sweet Symphony

the establishing shot there is panning to follow Richard Ashcroft, who is the main singer, as he walks onto a busy high street. The diegetic sound of violins fades into the video. In my opinion this amplifies that he isn’t aware of his surroundings. As Richard starts to walk after he stopped at the curb, the beat of the rest of the song continues, this could show that he is emotional unstable.The video seems almost unsaturated, because it lacks in bright colours, this could connote that he hasn’t had a very exciting life.

As he is walking through his surrounding, as he walks through the street he doesn’t move for the different people and remains on a set out path, this could show he has no emotion and he is quite arrogant. At one point he bangs into a woman and she falls to the fall, but he carries on walking, this connote that he had a lot of put downs in his life and didn’t have any support. It remains at a medium long shot for about 5 seconds, but then flicks to an extreme close up, this was almost to show that he didn’t have any emotion, and could connote that he has had a hard life.

In the final camera shot, there is a medium long shot of the lead singer with a line of people, this could almost connote that as he got older he meet like for like people, and his life got easier but also it could mean that those people also had a hard life.