The 1930s: The Great American Movie Genres…

• Her Dilemma (a.k.a. Confessions of a Co-Ed) (1931) dir. Dudley Murphy
  • Close up seems very awkward and cluttered because it was shot with two cameras for sound reasons
  • Lighting flatter
  • Sound downgraded cinema at first
• Love Me Tonight (1932) dir. Rouben Mamoulian
  • Set in Paris
  • Depicts the morning awakening of Paris as a kind of emerging symphony of everyday sounds
  • Shows sound connecting people, a metaphor for travel
  • Put the sound of yappy dogs onto a shot of old ladies to mock them
• The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920) dir. Carl Boese and Paul Wegener
  • Daring diagonal compositions
• Frankenstein (1931) dir. James Whale
  • Inspiration from the golemn
  • Copying German expressionism gave Hollywood movies a nice horror style
  • Added fear to the pleasures of moviegoing
• Eyes Without a Face (1960) dir. Georges Franju
  • Surgeon’s daughter has a disfigured face so she wears a mask
  • Horror cinema often about the unseen
  • She seems like an emotionless ghost, floating around
• Audition (1999) dir. Takashi Miike
  • Horror movies get closer to our nervous systems than almost any other movie genre
• The Public Enemy (1931) dir. William A. Wellman
  • One of the first famous gangster pictures
  • Start of a moral debate about gangster films
• Scarface (1932) dir. Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson
  • Turned the gangster genre into a Greek tragedy
  • Actor’s eyebrows were thickened to make him look almost ape-like, he was a big dumb gun lover with a thick italian accent
• Scarface (1983) dir. Brian De Palma
  • Used trademark crane shots
  • Shiny buildings, flashy pop music
  • Adapts “the world is yours” scene
• Seven Samurai (1954) dir. Akira Kurosawa
  • Mixed gangster themes with a traditional Japanese film look
• Once Upon a Time in America (1984) dir. Sergio Leone
  • “Perhaps the best gangster film of the lot”
• The Iron Horse (1924) dir. John Ford
  • Shows a lot about the western genre
  • Staple of westerns was moving shots and chase scenes
  • Gangster films mostly static shots
• My Darling Clementine (1946) dir. John Ford
  • Many of the best westerns about the time society is just being born for white people
• Twentieth Century (1934) dir. Howard Hawks
  • The speed was new in cinema
• Bringing Up Baby (1938) dir. Howard Hawks
  • Took the speed and mayhem further
  • Her apartment is almost all white so the two characters stand out
• The Men Who Made the Movies: Howard Hawks (1973) dir. Richard Schickel
  • He made movie icons that people still remember
  • Helped shape the movie genre
  • Versatile personality; both an optimist and pessimist
• Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Mervyn LeRoy
  • Was choreographed by someone who had been in the army
  • Social comment is married with patterned images
• Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) dir. Winsor McCay
  • Black and white; flickering; comic
• The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) dir. Lotte Reiniger
• Plane Crazy (1928) dir. Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks
  • Turned animation into an infinitely popular art form
  • Created mickey mouse
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) dir. David Hand, William Cottrell, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, and Ben Sharpsteen
  • Disney filmed a real actress and then transcribed the images into a cartoon
  • Result got standing ovations
  • Disney; it seemed; could do more wrong
• One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) dir. Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske, and Wolfgang Reitherman
  • Drawings became copied onto photo-film because it was cheaper
  • Innovative techniques and ideas became more conservative and safe

…And the Brilliance of European Film

• The Blood of a Poet (1931) dir. Jean Cocteau
  • Voices shout as he plunges into the mirror
  • Nothing that could be done with silent cinema
  • Influenced by Picasso
• Inception (2010) dir. Christopher Nolan
  • Corridor build in huge barrel and spun
• Zéro de conduite (1933) dir. Jean Vigo
  • It seems to be snowing inside
  • Director slows the action and plays with sound
  • Plays a music piece backwards for his slow action scene
  • Film was seen as an attack on French schools and was banned
• If…. (1968) dir. Lindsay Anderson
  • Had students rebel from rooftops
• L’Atalante (1934) dir. Jean Vigo
  • Same non-conformism, same wonder, as previous film by same director
  • Low shot to frame actress against sky
  • Many admired it’s visual beauty but wanted a more conventional story
  • Vigo was not interested in plot
• Le Quai des brumes (1938) dir. Marcel Carné
  • Often called a poetic realist film
  • Mist and dust make town look weary
• Les Enfants du Paradis (1945) dir. Marcel Carné
  • Story sweeps through the lives of many
  • Enforced escapism, since France was occupied by Germany
• La Règle du jeu (1939) (a.k.a. The Rules of the Game) dir. Jean Renoir
  • Takes place in a chateau where aristocrats know nothing of real life
• La Grande Illusion (1937) dir. Jean Renoir
  • Same dying, aristocratic class
  • Both Nazis and French soldiers of regular origin have same weight in frame
  • Renior stopped his plot for a moment to have the soldiers talk about good and human decency
• Limite (1931) dir. Mário Peixoto
  • Woman sits on hill, alone
  • Shots get closer as if we are walking towards her
  • Camera seems to soar
  • Refined ideas of French impressionists film
• The Adventures of a Good Citizen (1937) dir. Stefan Themerson
  • Themerson’s love to seem to play with light and angles
• Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958) dir. Roman Polanski
  • References Themerson’s shot with men carrying a mirror into the woods
• Das Blaue Licht (1932) dir. Leni Riefenstahl
  • Soft mountain light
• Triumph of the Will (1935) dir. Leni Riefenstahl
  • Documentary of sorts that pictured Hitler and his party in almost mythical way
• Behind the Scenes of the Filming of the Olympic Games (1937) dir. Leni Riefenstahl
  • Attatched camera’s to balloons and dug others into the ground to get close to the athletes
• Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty (1938) dir. Leni Riefenstahl
  • Used close up lenses to pick out details in the crowd from afar
  • Filmed athletes as if they were Greek gods
• Tiefland (1954) dir. Leni Riefenstahl
  • Seems to have used people from concentration camps from extras
• The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (1993) dir. Ray Müller
  • Director Leni never changed her style
• Vertigo (1958) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
  • Camera becomes the eye of the actor
  • Cut the everyday world out of his pictures
• Saboteur (1942) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
  • No scenes show how the man got out of the house
  • Hitchcock had his own otherworldly logic
• Sabotage (1936) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
  • Knows that fear is different than shock
  • Tells us no less than 15 times the boy’s package is a bomb and will blow up at 1:45pm
  • Fear comes from knowing the shock is coming
• The 39 Steps (1935) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
  • Hitchcock loves close ups
  • Film obsessed by hands
• Marnie (1964) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
  • Hitchcock reversed the order of shots
  • Used to bring us into the world gently, wide shot, then mid shot, then close up
    • He started with close ups and then widened the shot to show us
• Ninotchka (1939) dir. Ernst Lubitsch
  • Lit like romantic cinema in the 1920s
• The Wizard of Oz (1939) dir. Victor Fleming
  • Lives in a grey reality
  • Walks into the land of Oz and becomes colored
  • Oz is a fantasy land, but Dorothy realizes there is no place like home
• Gone with the Wind (1939) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Victor Fleming
  • Starts in a a fantasy world but ends in reality and war
  • Attacks escapism
  • Large overhead shot shows it as if god is looking down on Scarlet and criticizing her