Notes:
The following material is from Wikipedia:
1957-1964: The Shock of the New – Modern Filmmaking in Western Europe.
- Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Louis Lumière
- When movies were a bright, new art form
- One of the first films shown
- Summer with Monika (1953) dir. Ingmar Bergman
- Among-st the most sensuous of its time
- Allowed actress to look straight into the camera
- The Seventh Seal (1957) dir. Ingmar Bergman
- Bergman’s best known film in the 50s
- Winter Light (1963) dir. Ingmar Bergman
- About a night who returns from the crusades and faces his own mortality
- Realizes the senses are among the best thing humans have, and uses them to question god
- Man declares that god is dead
- Death common among Bergman’s films
- In scene between clergyman and his wife, Bergman shows his guilt for how he treated his wife
- About a night who returns from the crusades and faces his own mortality
- Persona (1966) dir. Ingmar Bergman
- Used film as a self-conscious media
- Film seems pure, violence free, but at the end it erupts with images of violence and ugly images it seems to have been subconsciously holding back
- Pickpocket (1959) dir. Robert Bresson
- Director thought of human life as a prison from which we must break out
- 50mm lens
- Ordinary people clothes
- Not unusual composition in any way
- Tries to show the invisible in his films
- When his girlfriend comes to see him in jail, he has finally found grace
- That is the scene where the prison metaphor becomes fully visible
- People were trapped in their own bodies, and they had to seek to escape to find grace
- That is the scene where the prison metaphor becomes fully visible
- Au hasard Balthazar (1966) dir. Robert Bresson
- About donkey who throughout his life is treated unfairly
- Cinema for director was a path to grace
- Taxi Driver (1976) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Martin Scorsese
- Only having one character in every shot, you only see what the protagonist sees
- Got this from pickpocket
- Only having one character in every shot, you only see what the protagonist sees
- Ratcatcher (1999) dir. Lynne Ramsay
- Hauntingly attatched to objects in the physical world like Bresson
- Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Jacques Tati
- Director disliked strong storytelling like Bresson and Ozu
- Mon Oncle (1956) dir. Jacques Tati
- Show his feelings about modern life
- Films brand new house in flat light
- Woman only turns on her fancy fish fountain when guests arrive
- Famous scene that captures whole building, the camera does not move but our eyes do
- Fellini’s Casanova (1976) dir. Federico Fellini
- Director ran away to a circus when he was 7 years old
- Loved the larger than life circus world
- Big party scene with fireworks and big floats
- Director ran away to a circus when he was 7 years old
- Nights of Cabiria (1957) dir. Federico Fellini
- Shows how modern Fellini was
- Kept outdoing itself and changing style
- 8½ (1963) dir. Federico Fellini
- Director wants to make a film
- Has a muse, she wears only white, approaches him like she is flying, gliding across the ground
- Everything in the film was decided at the last minute
- Director wants to make a film
- Stardust Memories (1980) dir. Woody Allen
- Opening scene, like opening scene in 8 1/2, where character has stepped into another world, like he is looking at his life, or a party, through a pane of glass
- Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) dir. Agnès Varda
- Perfectly captures the spirit of the new wave
- Starts in black and white and color
- We see shots from her point of view, on real streets, real people
- Woman goes to park and seems carefree, is almost growing okay with her apparent diagnosis of cancer
- But then she meets a man, and they are lost in each other’s worlds
- Last Year at Marienbad (1961) dir. Alain Resnais
- Man seems to be remembering looking at a woman
- But the film actually questions what is real
- The memory is of a woman standing in front of two statues
- The camera cranes up, and we see the back of the two statues, and as the camera travels up we see water in front of them
- We wonder, has the man misremembered?
- Man seems to be remembering looking at a woman
- The 400 Blows (1959) dir. François Truffaut
- Boy has neglectful parents and runs away
- Film is about being alive
- Boy’s screen test is used in the actual film
- À bout de souffle (1959) dir. Jean-Luc Godard
- Director Saw Pickpocket ten times
- A loner
- Preferred close ups, to isolate people from the world
- Characters there because they are beautiful in themselves
- Part of the beautiful cinema experience
- Each shot is a thought, a director’s thought
- Ultimate bomb the new wave planted in cinema
- Director Saw Pickpocket ten times
- Life of an American Fireman (1903) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Edwin S. Porter
- Arsenal (1929) (introduced in Episode 3) dir. Alexander Dovzhenko
- Une femme mariée (1964) dir. Jean-Luc Godard
- Sex scene almost the same as sex scene in movie below
- Shows how influential director was
- American Gigolo (1980) dir. Paul Schrader
- Similar framing, body parts as film above
- Accattone (1961) dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini
- Director was a poet, was gay, and used the word “stupendous” a lot
- First film
- Captured his life experiences
- Was a bout a pimp in dirt-poor Rome
- Used religious music to make everyday struggles dramatic
- Made everything look sacred, so even the face of the pimp would become like a sacred man in a painting
- The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini
- Took cinematographer to see below film in order to show him what he wanted
- Influenced filming of woman in this movie
- Took cinematographer to see below film in order to show him what he wanted
- The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer
- A Fistful of Dollars (1964) dir. Sergio Leone
- Resisted the allure of comedies
- Made a western movie
- Character was lonely, because director loves Kirosawa’s film
- Visual style amazing
- Foreground and background far apart but all in focus, deep staging was not common
- Gave the movie an epic quality
- Foreground and background far apart but all in focus, deep staging was not common
- Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Sergio Leone
- Took innovation of techniscope and applied it to a mythical setting
- In opening sequence, channels the neo-realist idea that time in cinema should be real
- Only director who made the music beforehand and then played it for the actors while they were filming
- Johnny Guitar (1954) (introduced in Episode 6) dir. Nicholas Ray
- Previous director saw this film
- Leone loved the idea of waiting for the future introduced in this film and used it in his film
- Senso (1954) dir. Luchino Visconti
- Color, lighting, and costumes sumptous
- Heart of film is with ordinary people and the gods, they are protesting
- They look down on the aristocrats
- Director thought civilians and peasants had the greatest moral weight in society
- Rocco and His Brothers (1960) dir. Luchino Visconti
- Director used crane’s eye view to look down on the aristocratic world
- Filmed in a moving tram
- L’eclisse (1962) dir. Michelangelo Antonioni
- Actress walks out of the shot, out of the film, never to reappear, in the famous ending
- We see the street corners, the places where she and her man once were, but it’s all empty
- The void seems to take over
- We see a woman from behind, and think it’s our main character returned, but it’s just ordinary passerby
- The Passenger (1975) dir. Michelangelo Antonioni
- In ending, character is lying on bed, and the camera leaves him and seems to go for a walk
- When the camera finally returns to the character, he is dead
- In ending, character is lying on bed, and the camera leaves him and seems to go for a walk
- The Travelling Players (1975) dir. Theodoros Angelopoulos
- In second shot, the camera slowly withdrawls
- The shot is just about the street as it is the people
- The Wheelchair (1960) dir. Marco Ferreri
- Edgy, non-conformist tone
- Film opens with men walking with toilets on their head, making fun of the military marches in the country at the time
- What Have I Done to Deserve This? (1984) dir. Pedro Almodóvar
- Features the same kind of dysfunctional family as the wheelchair
- The tone is the same as the wheelchair
- Viridiana (1961) dir. Luis Buñuel
- Became director’s most banned film
- Uncle kisses his niece, who he has drugged, and she is a nun
- Little girl watches from the window
- Uncle symbolizes Franko
- I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967) dir. Vilgot Sjöman
- La Maman et la Putain (1973) dir. Jean Eustache
- Man shows his despair straight to camera