I've read on several posts and articles that Almodovar pays tribute to many films in Broken Embraces. Can anyone point out any specific examples?
The scene where Mateo and Lena are at the beach reminded me of The Postman Always Rings Twice. And the scene where they are in the car reminded me of the Spanish film Death of a Cyclist, but I'm not sure whether there was an intentional reference there.
Any thoughts?
I thought there was a lot of Hitchcock - the use of the color red, the stairway which Ernesto pushes Lena down, the film within a film within a film idea, blindness (incapacitation) as a risk/vulnerability factor, the fade to blacks.
Not that other directors don't use these motifs - just that Almodovar seemed to employ them in a Hitchcockian way imn this beautiful film.
Well, there is the fact that the film being made is Almodovar's own "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown."
There are also references to Michael Powell's "Peeping Tom," which is about a young photographer serial killer; he has a long blade in his tripod; he skewers women and films their deaths. Ernesto Jr. with his videocamera suggests this kind of intensity, and towards the end he actually tells Mateo that, even if he was kind of like the "hero" of Peeping Tom, he never killed anybody. There is a scene which seems to represent a reversal of the Peeping Tom murder weapon, when Lena attacks Ernesto Jr. with the tripod and pins him against the wall.