Author: avian1ad

The Story of Film – Episode 9

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Notes:

1967-1979: New American Cinema.

  • Duck Soup (1933) dir. Leo McCarey
    • People expect the president to come in at the top of the stairs but he comes in at the bottom
    • Satyrical
  • Artists and Models (1955) dir. Frank Tashlin
    • Films looked like cartoons
    • Bright colors and vivid imagery meant to give off that reality is fake
    • Director wrote a book about a possum
      • Possum hanging upside down in tree smiling
      • Passerby think he is frowning because he is upside down
      • People take him all over to show him the world and give him an adventure
      • He doesn’t like what he sees in the world, it is scary and disgusting
      • He is now frowning and the people return him to his tree, pleased because they think he is now happy
  • Catch-22 (1970) dir. Mike Nichols
    • One of the great movie satires
    • We want you to like us scene very good show of american character, we’ll chop your children up and feed them to the fish but we really want you to like us
  • Mash (1970) dir. Robert Altman
    • An upside down world where the situation is almost lighthearted when nurses are operating on a man dying
  • The Graduate (1967) dir. Mike Nichols
    • Student floats in his parent’s pool, in a world of beer and boredom, he is expressionless
    • He has an affair with one of his parent’s friends
    • He walks like a robot, slumps in front of the tv, drinks beer
  • The Fireman’s Ball (1967) (introduced in Episode 8) dir. Miloš Forman
    • Deadpan, documentary like, making firemen look clueless and dumb
  • One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) dir. Miloš Forman
    • We’re in a mental institution
    • Close ups, natural lighting
  • The Last Movie (1971) dir. Dennis Hopper
    • Challenged film style
    • We are in Peru, and an american film crew is filming a western
    • It seems a documentary but it really is the story
    • The locals recreate characters and idols out of bamboo and treat them as if they are real
      • Almost like the film is a god that has visited them
      • They recreate the punch out scenes as well, but with real violence since they don’t understand it is fake
    • Bright, daring hate letter to american cinema
  • McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) dir. Robert Altman
    • Anti western film
    • Long lenses, muted colors, camera roams
    • No heroes, just characters lost in snow, out of their depth and uncertain about the world
    • Questioned what American history even means
  • The Conversation (1974) dir. Francis Ford Coppola
    • Was about the new type of sound equipment
    • Professional in his lab, surrounded by his new equipment
    • Accidentally eavesdrops on young forbidden lovers
    • He becomes obsessed with them and their mystery, replaying the tape over and over almost to the point of a mental breakdown
    • He cannot see them but the camera shows us them, in a long lens with a distant shot, the visual equivalent of the characters distance
    • The movie is about becoming obsessed with small pieces of others lives, to the point where your own live dissolves
  • Mean Streets (1973) dir. Martin Scorsese
  • Taxi Driver (1976) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Martin Scorsese
    • About Vietnam veteran driving around in a taxi
    • Filmed in slow motion, the taxi moves around in a slow ghostly way
    • Motivation behind film was existentialism
    • Character walks around in blue lighting, finds it painful to be alive
    • When he makes a phone call, camera tracks away from character, because the moment is too painful to watch
  • Chikamatsu Monogatari (1954) (introduced in Episode 3) dir. Kenji Mizoguchi
    • Director kept his camera away from emotion, similar to the film above
  • Raging Bull (1980) (introduced in Episode 5) dir. Martin Scorsese
    • About a self destructive man
    • Reaches rock bottom before finding redemtion
    • Catholic boxer
    • Slow motion shots for boxing scenes like christ
    • Fast cuts in fights
    • First time Italian Catholicism was in an american film
  • Italianamerican (1974) dir. Martin Scorsese
    • Same type of domestic shot as in film above
  • American Gigolo (1980) (introduced in Episode 7) dir. Paul Schrader
    • About a male prostitute floating through the world
    • 80s red lighting
    • Find grace through a woman the same way as Pickpocket
  • Light Sleeper (1992) dir. Paul Schrader
    • About a drug dealer also floating through the world
    • Director wanting to show rescue from emptiness
    • Drug dealer has revelation with the exact same shot, with a woman
  • Pickpocket (1959) (introduced in Episode 7) dir. Robert Bresson
    • Famous ending borrowed by Schrader
  • The Walker (2007) dir. Paul Schrader
  • The Birth of a Nation (1915) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. D. W. Griffith
  • Killer of Sheep (1978) dir. Charles Burnett
    • Director did not want it to look Hollywood at all
    • Filmed in black and white
    • Used grey-black music
    • From kids point of view
    • Put a narrative together from a lot of things he had seen
  • The Shop Around the Corner (1940) dir. Ernst Lubitsch
    • First great filmmakers Jewish
    • Man is not hero of story, but humor and wit is the centerpiece
  • Annie Hall (1977) dir. Woody Allen
    • Explicitly Jewish character at the center of the film
    • The joke was that New York Jewishness was foreign and unfamiliar
    • Free form shooting
  • City Lights (1931) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Charlie Chaplin
    • Chaplin is the butt of his own jokes, but makes the blind girl see
  • Manhattan (1979) dir. Woody Allen
    • A city symphony
    • Widescreen images
    • Again, Jewish character at the center of the story
  • The Last Picture Show (1971) dir. Peter Bogdanovich
    • Shows how director mixed old and new
      • Black and white, conventional back and forth editing
    • Country music plays
    • At first look, could be a western
      • But woman is dumped by a man for a woman of greater beauty, we see her sorrow
      • He is too inarticulate to even say sorry
    • 16 second dissolve to a wide shot of the town, now ghostly, a horrid place to live, empty
  • The Wild Bunch (1969) dir. Sam Peckinpah
    • Took and stretched the neo realist idea of extending time
  • Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) dir. Sam Peckinpah
    • Showed how torn the director was about american history
    • When Garret finally kills Billy, he quickly turns to shoot himself in the mirror, as if he cannot bear to face himself
  • Badlands (1973) dir. Terrence Malick
  • Days of Heaven (1978) dir. Terrence Malick
    • Director studied philosophy
    • Cuts between character and landscape shot
      • Shows that he is, somehow, trying to capture the infinite
  • Mirror (1975) (introduced in Episode 8) dir. Andrei Tarkovsky
    • Work has much in common with Malick
    • Wind seems to be nature coming alive
  • Cabaret (1972) dir. Bob Fosse
    • Could be an old style musical, except musicals were not usually shot in close ups
    • Director used the best of the old techniques
    • Song in movie about living in the moment
  • The Godfather (1972) (introduced in Episode 6) dir. Francis Ford Coppola
    • Most successful upgrading of gangster movies from the 30s
    • No long lenses, no helicopter shots
    • “North lighting” was rare in american cinema
    • Low lighting levels, shallow focus, internalizes performance
    • Showed network of relationships, unlike the 30s gangster movies that followed one character
  • Chinatown (1974) dir. Roman Polanski
    • Shot wide screen, muted 30s color
    • Private investigator unknowingly stumbles across the story of the water theft in LA, the rape of the land, where they were taking water away from farmers to fill the swimming pools
    • Directors wife and family, unborn child were murdered
      • Seemed to strip him of any delusions about reality
    • Movie about rape, money, greed
    • High point of American cinema of its time
  • The Maltese Falcon (1941) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. John Huston
  • Jules et Jim (1962) dir. François Truffaut
    • Fleeting, lightness, expressionist

The Story of Film – Episode 8

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Notes:

1965-1969: New Waves – Sweep Around the World.

  • Ashes and Diamonds (1958) dir. Andrzej Wajda
    • Takes place in the first day of peace after World War II
    • About rebel with a cause
    • Expressionist film-symbols of the world upside down
  • Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958) (introduced in Episode 4) dir. Roman Polanski
    • Director was Jewish
      • Mother was murdered in Auschwitz
  • Hamlet (1948) dir. Laurence Olivier
  • Knife in the Water (1962) dir. Roman Polanski
    • Director’s first feature film
    • Claustrophobic film
    • Love triangle, actor literally forms triangle with his arm in shot
    • Did not deal with war
    • Modernist – described as art for arts sake
  • The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) dir. Roman Polanski
  • The Hand (1965) dir. Jiří Trnka
    • Specialized in animation and puppetry
    • Hauntingly symbolic movie
    • The hand indoctrinates the man
    • Hand live action, man animated
    • Man eventually tries to resist and dies
  • The Fireman’s Ball (1967) dir. Miloš Forman
    • Filmed almost like a documentary
  • Daisies (1966) dir. Věra Chytilová
    • Two women squeak like dolls when they move
    • Authorities hated the movie
    • Director was banned for working for six years
  • The Red and the White (1968) dir. Miklós Jancsó
    • Detached control of camera is like detached control of white countrymen
    • Used lots of long takes to show suffering
  • Une journée d’Andrei Arsenevitch (2000) dir. Chris Marker
  • Andrei Rublev (1966) dir. Andrei Tarkovsky
    • The year 1400, we are in a bell tower
    • Crisp white photography
    • Film was banned for six years because it was religious
  • The Mirror (1975) dir. Andrei Tarkovsky
    • As a man dies a bird flies fromm his hand, like the christian idea of the holy ghost
  • Stalker (1979) dir. Andrei Tarkovsky
    • For more than two hours we follow three men
    • Then, we meet one of the mens daughters reading a book
    • Dandelion seeds float through the air, smoke drifts upwards
    • We see the girl and a table with a glass in a wide shot, we see the glass moving on its own, we hear an offscreen dog yelp as though it’s scared by the ghostly event
  • Nostalghia (1983) dir. Andrei Tarkovsky
    • We follow a man and a dog throughout the film
    • Shot pulls out, we gradually see they are in a ruined cathedral
    • The whole story seems to be contained within this cathedral
    • It starts to snow
  • Shadows of our Forgotten Ancestors (1965) dir. Sergei Parajanov
    • Film begins with a breathtaking point of view shot of a falling tree
    • Later, shot from a daisy looking up
    • Used foreground well
    • Dream sequence where the actors seem to float, mounted to the camera
  • Andrei Tarkovsky & Sergei Parajanov – Islands (1988) dir. Levon Grigoryan
    • Sergei imprisoned on charges of suicide and homosexuality
      • People protested and he was released 4 years late
  • Boy (1969) dir. Nagisa Oshima
    • A composition using a full wide screen
    • Boy and mother stand, mother seems worried about her son crossing the street
      • But really, they are about to stage an accident
    • They stage accident and mother blackmails the driving, who thinks he ran over her son
  • In the Realm of the Senses (1976) dir. Nagisa Oshima
    • Based on a true story
    • Starts gently
    • About a geisha, set in the 1930s
    • An elder man is poked at intimately by boys, made fun of
      • Symbolism for Japan losing its nationality and respect
    • Geisha becomes obsessed with one of her clients and castrates and strangles him
      • In real life, the woman served 5 years in prison for 2nd degree murder
  • Love and Crime (1969) dir. Teruo Ishii
    • Same real life woman from above seen here, in blue robes
  • The Insect Woman (1963) dir. Shōhei Imamura
    • Films insect as no nonsense metaphor for huans, struggling over rough terrain
    • Woman works on a farm, has a child
      • In shocking shot, suckles the father
    • Director often made films about women
  • Citizen Kane (1941) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Orson Welles
    • Key character framed in far distance
  • Nippon Sengoshi – Madamu Onboro No Seikatsu (1970) dir. Shōhei Imamura
  • Ajantrik (1958) dir. Ritwik Ghatak
  • The Cloud-Capped Star (1960) dir. Ritwik Ghatak
    • About the original sin of the division of India
  • Jukti Takko Aar Gappo (1975) dir. Ritwik Ghatak
    • DIrector distorts the sound as if the it is a sci-fi movie
  • Uski Roti (1970) dir. Mani Kaul
    • Experimental film
    • Man about to throw a stone at a tree to get a guava to give to his woman
    • Slow beats during action
  • Black God, White Devil (1964) dir. Glauber Rocha
    • Director was 25 when he made the movie
    • Shows the opposite of Brazil’s commercial cinema
    • Cowboy and his wife follow black preacher who is talking about revolution
    • Suddenly, all his followers are shot
    • Combined innovative film style with anti-colonist film ideals
  • I Am Cuba (1964) dir. Mikhail Kalatozov
    • Crane shot so beautiful it was shown at a film festival 10 years later
    • Camera floats over funeral
      • Like the soul of a dead student watching over
  • The House Is Black (1963) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Forugh Farrokhzad
    • Founding film father was a mother
    • She was 27 when she made this film
    • Sincere film, people in film are thankful for their lives
    • Shot as a unit of poetry
      • As girl is pushed around in wheelbarrow, we see the lives of others
  • Black Girl (1966) dir. Ousmane Sembène
    • About black woman who works for white family
    • Gives them an African mask as a gift
    • Is impressed by luxuries such as sprinkler in the backyard
    • Work gets harder, girl starts being treated as a slave
    • Eventually, it is too much and she is driven to commit suicide
      • Shot of this is black and white
    • Shaken and guilty, the husband of the white family goes back to where the girl came from to return the mask
    • The brother of the girl follows him around, wearing the mask
    • He is haunting
      • The mask, at first a symbol of hope, has now become a death mask, a symbol of guilt
  • Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) dir. Karel Reisz
    • Was set in working class England
    • Shot in black and white, on real streets, no cinema lighting
    • About man who works in factory
    • His son, seems a bit rock and roll, ends up getting a girl pregnant and she has to get an abortion
    • This form of cinema seemed new, since it was about the working regular class
  • Kes (1969) dir. Ken Loach
    • About a bullied boy who finds joy in training a hawk
    • Shot from the other side of the street, people walk by and in front of the camera, the camera did not inhibit the people
    • Edited for where your eye would naturally go
  • A Hard Day’s Night (1964) dir. Richard Lester
  • Primary (1960) dir. Robert Drew
    • New type of documentary
  • Shadows (1959) dir. John Cassavetes
    • Filmed on the streets, constant movement
    • Made Hollywood cinema look stale
  • Psycho (1960) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
    • Shot in black and white, tv style
    • Had actress wear plain clothes from ordinary stores
    • Steals clothing, goes home and takes a shower to wash away the moral dirt, to feel clean again
    • Woman is stabbed in the shower
      • We feel the experience
      • 70 different camera angles in 45 seconds
  • 66 Scenes from America (1982) dir. Jørgen Leth
  • Blow Job (1963) dir. Andy Warhol
    • Radical approach
    • Stripped cinema of expressive techniques
    • Nothing but a shot of a man’s face
    • We assume from the title he is receiving oral sex
  • Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) dir. Mike Nichols
  • Medium Cool (1969) dir. Haskell Wexler
    • Pushed the relationship between documentary, tv, and american cinema
    • Man watches Martin Luther King Jr’s speech and gets fired up
    • Ending in which cameraman is killed
    • Shots no longer than 4 seconds
    • Turns the camera on us, the audience, to make us think about how we are being represented
  • Easy Rider (1969) dir. Dennis Hopper
    • Mother of all biker flicks
    • Success at the box office because young people were impatient with the old cinema
    • Bikers killed by conservative duck hunters
  • Making “The Shining” (1980) dir. Vivian Kubrick
    • Camera position was central Kubrick’s art
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Stanley Kubrick
    • In one scene, attached camera to the set as it turns to show in space there is no up or down
  • Der Sieger (1921) dir. Walter Ruttmann
    • Hallucinated effects

The Story of Film – Episode 7

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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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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?
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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

The Story of Film – Episode 6

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Notes:

The following material is from Wikipedia: 

Episode 6 – Sex & Melodrama[edit]

1953-1957: The Swollen Story: World Cinema Bursting at the Seams

  • Rebel Without a Cause (1955) dir. Nicholas Ray
    • Man’s emotions are bursting at the seams, he kicks and flails at desk to show his anger
  • Cairo Station (1958) dir. Youssef Chahine
    • Director changed film history
    • First great African film
    • Pushed boundaries
    • Captured tension of the times
    • Shots of train to show people having sex
    • Melodramatic, sexual, and innovative/
  • Paper Flowers (1959) dir. Guru Dutt
    • Used the opposite of Hollywood lighting
      • Lit from below, no hair lighting
  • Raja Harishchandra (1913) dir. Dadasaheb Phalke
    • Early Indian films like this are about saints
  • Sant Tukaram (1936) dir. Vishnupant Govind Damle and Sheikh Fattelal
  • Pather Panchali (1955) dir. Satyajit Ray
    • Wanted to make film about a very specific place
    • Drove 30 minutes to a small Bengoli village
    • Cinematography has tender, luster, texture
    • Portrait of live of son of a priest
    • We were seeing a real Indian village on screen for the first time
    • Director was believer in prime minister who wanted to industrialize India so in the movie, the industrial train arriving is treated as wondrous, hopeful
  • Devi (1960) dir. Satyajit Ray
    • Movie about girl whose father dreams she is a goddess
    • Actress was only 14, start of her career
    • She is filmed lighted from below as if by candlelight
  • Mother India (1957) dir. Mehboob Khan
    • About woman who is getting married
    • She discovers the world of mud, sweat, hard work
    • Combination of romance and struggle
    • Called the Indian Gone With the Wind
    • Landmark in the history of cinema
  • Two Stage Sisters (1964) dir. Xie Jin
    • Camera moves in to get a closer look at a woman’s emotions
    • Everything beautifully placed in the moving frame
    • Painful human drama viewed through beautiful lens
    • In one shot, we move from a gods eye view to a peasants as the camera tilts down in the sky and then moves down to the ground
  • Ikiru (1952) dir. Akira Kurosawa
    • About man who needs to find where he fits into the world
  • Stray Dog (1949) dir. Akira Kurosawa
    • Man tries and tries and tries until he gets what he wants
  • Seven Samurai (1954) (introduced in Episode 4) dir. Akira Kurosawa
    • Man thinks battle is still winnable and dies because of it
  • Throne of Blood (1957) dir. Akira Kurosawa
    • Shakespeare adaptation
    • Films lady like ghost, gliding across the floor, her kimono squeaking
  • The Godfather (1972) dir. Francis Ford Coppola
    • Influenced by previous scene where man gets shot by 100 arrows
  • The Magnificent Seven (1960) dir. John Sturges
  • Limite (1931) (introduced in Episode 4) dir. Mário Peixoto
    • Soaring camera expressing a woman’s liberty
  • Rio 40 Graus (a.k.a. Rio 100 Degrees F.) (1955) dir. Nelson Pereira dos Santos
    • Brought Brazilian cinema back into the spotlight
    • Bold use of deep staging
    • Used advanced visual techniques
    • Was like Brazil’s Cairo Station
  • The Life of General Villa (1914) dir. Christy Cabanne
  • Doña Bárbara (1943) dir. Fernando de Fuentes and Miguel M. Delgado
    • Director virtually invented Mexican cinema
    • Themes of feminine suffering
    • Men are shot against the sky
    • Dona Barbara is hardened by being raped right after her husband is shot and becomes an unforgiving land owner
  • The Wild Bunch (1969) dir. Sam Peckinpah
  • La perla (1947) dir. Emilio Fernández
    • Director himself half Indian
    • Man poor fisherman, but finds pearl
      • Everyone becomes envious and they can’t sell it, it becomes a cancer in their life
    • Dark human themes
  • Los Olvidados (1950) dir. Luis Buñuel
    • Filmed street gangs, physically disabled people, in street light
    • One of the boys dreams of meat as a thing to hunger for, a thing to fear
  • All That Heaven Allows (1955) dir. Douglas Sirk
    • White picket fence, beautiful autumn day, spotless clean car
    • Widowed woman shunned by her friends when she has an affair with her gardener, much younger and of lower class than her
    • Society cannot handle her sexuality, her friends and family get her a TV to keep her company at night and distract her from the gardener
      • She is not watching her TV, but we see her reflection in the screen as the camera moves towards it, showing she is trapped in the rectangle
  • I’m a Stranger Here Myself (1975) dir. David Helpern
  • Johnny Guitar (1954) dir. Nicholas Ray
    • Woman dressed in black, the color of villany, almost spits in anger as she speaks
    • Film is full of political anger
    • Woman’s body movement is strong, she is the most manly in the film, but is rejected because of her sexual deviance
  • Fireworks (1947) dir. Kenneth Anger
    • Anger himself is stripped and beaten by sailors
  • Scorpio Rising (1964) dir. Kenneth Anger
    • Combined masculine costumes with low body close ups, below lighting
    • Added rock music
  • Marty (television show) (1953) dir. Delbert Mann
    • Camera right next to actor
    • Character rather than gloss
  • Marty (1955) dir. Delbert Mann
  • On the Waterfront (1954) dir. Elia Kazan
    • Man confronts Union boss who was also responsible for murder
      • Character does not think much of himself
      • He is composed and slow to anger
      • His fury finally explodes
      • As he was taught in acting school, he let himself feel his emotions, then suppressed them, then let them out
  • Red River (1948) dir. Howard Hawks and Arthur Rosson
    • Old and new cinema fought it out
      • Old actor and new actor fight in movie
  • Touch of Evil (1958) dir. Orson Welles
    • Welles filmed with wide angle lenses to make images bulge
  • The Searchers (1956) dir. John Ford
  • Vertigo (1958) (introduced in Episode 4) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
  • Rio Bravo (1959) (introduced in Episode 5) dir. Howard Hawks
    • Got to show an “ordinary” home
  • Great Expectations (1946) dir. David Lean
    • Adaptation of Charles Dickens book
    • Gothic, erotic
  • Lawrence of Arabia (1962) dir. David Lean
    • Lawrence imagines going to the Arabian dessert
      • Sees the hot sun in the fire of a burning match
      • Hints that his desire for Arabia is sexual
  • O Dreamland (1953) dir. Lindsay Anderson
    • Director bookish and leftist
    • Stare at people was full of pity and admiration, but also disappointment and maybe content
    • Symbolized Britain itself in the 50s
  • Battleship Potemkin (1925) (introduced in Episode 3) dir. Sergei Eisenstein
    • Working classes were pictured as noble types
    • Very leftist film
  • …And God Created Woman (1956) dir. Roger Vadim
    • Actress was very sexy and brought a lot of money to the box office

The Story of Film – Episode 5

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Notes:

The following material is from Wikipedia: 

1939-1952: The Devastation of War…And a New Movie Language

The Story of Film – Episode 4

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Notes:

The following material is from Wikipedia: 

Episode 4 – The Arrival of Sound

The 1930s: The Great American Movie Genres…

…And the Brilliance of European Film

The Story of Film – Episode 3

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Notes:

The following material is from Wikipedia: 

1918-1932: The Great Rebel Filmmakers Around the World

  • The Thief of Bagdad (1924) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Raoul Walsh
    • Soft lighting, shallow focus, makeup, dream-like appearance
  • The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer
    • Scrub mainstream cinema of it’s gloss and makeup
  • Robert and Bertram (1915) dir. Max Mack
    • At first he acted in movies, and then directed and mocked in his movies the heavy-handed way romance and sex where shown in movies
  • The Oyster Princess (1919) dir. Ernst Lubitsch
    • Shows director’s mocking tone
    • All assistants are black
  • The Mountain Cat (1921) dir. Ernst Lubitsch
    • Very visually daring
    • Man gived girl his heart, she eats it
    • “A riot of surreal production design”
  • The Marriage Circle (1924) dir. Ernst Lubitsch
    • American censorship means he had to be inventive with how he portrayed sex and marriage
    • Uses objects to show the characters are having sex
  • La Roue (1923) dir. Abel Gance
    • Tells the story of a complex love triangle
    • We see a man’s own thoughts, what images are passing through his head
    • Images flashing past give us an impression of his final moments
    • “There is cinema before and after La Roue just as there is painting before and after Picasso”
  • Napoléon (1927) dir. Abel Gance
    • 4 hour impressionist film
    • Made mainstream romantic cinema look static in comparison
    • Re-thought the camera’s relationship with movement
  • The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) dir. Robert Wiene
    • Metaphor for the German state and it’s people
    • The whole thing was the dream of a madman, and the German state was not evil after all, and did not control it’s people
    • Jagged spaces and lines like shards of glass
  • The Tell-Tale Heart (1928) dir. Charles Klein
    • Same jagged spaces
  • The Lodger (1927) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
    • Used some of the shadowing and lighting from Caligari
  • A Page of Madness (1926) dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa
    • Director former actor
    • Visual overlays, fast cutting as in La Roue
    • Woman dancing, she is in the asylum
    • We learn through complex flashbacks that she tried to drown her daughter
    • Her husband joins to try and help but ends up going insane in the asylum too
    • The film itself seems psychotic
    • 2nd great Japanese film
  • Metropolis (1927) dir. Fritz Lang
    • Like a fantasy in New York with it’s set
    • Used 36,000 extras
  • The Crowd (1928) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. King Vidor
  • Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) dir. F. W. Murnau
    • Dancing in the movie looked a bit awkward and shy as in real life
    • Had gigantic city set built
    • Voted best film of all time by French critics
  • Opus 1 (1921) dir. Walter Ruttmann
    • Looked like biology
    • He painted on glass, wiped it off, and painted again while filming the result
  • Entr’acte (1924) dir. René Clair
    • Put the camera in places a conventional ballet could only dream of
    • Put the camera under the dancer
  • Rien que les heures (1926) dir. Alberto Cavalcanti
    • Haunting experimental film
  • Spellbound (1945) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
    • Dream sequence reflected previous director’s scene
  • Un Chien Andalou (1929) dir. Luis Buñuel
    • An attempt to show how the unconscious works
    • Editing so that we saw things in other things
  • Blue Velvet (1986) dir. David Lynch
    • Reflected previous director with shot of ant-covered ear
  • L’Age d’Or (1930) dir. Luis Buñuel
    • Man and woman trying to make love, crowd of people stop them
    • Fascist patriots hurled ink at the scene
    • Out of distribution for 50 years
  • Kino-Pravda n. 19 (1924) dir. Dziga Vertov
    • Child of the revolution made it
    • Worships the work of peasants
  • Glumov’s Diary (1923) dir. Sergei Eisenstein
    • First film
    • Actor’s performed, mugged for the camera
    • Director was bisexual, christian, jew, marksman
  • Battleship Potemkin (1925) dir. Sergei Eisenstein
    • Wanted to film on the stage that was steps
    • Shots that lasted on an average of 3 seconds
    • Wanted bodies to roll down the steps
    • Director adored D.W. Griffith
    • Steps create panic which was exactly what director wanted
    • Creates the idea of innocent ruined by the state
    • Charlie Chaplin loved film
  • The Untouchables (1987) dir. Brian De Palma
    • Used similar shot to steps sequence from previous director
  • Arsenal (1929) dir. Alexander Dovzhenko
    • Women stand motionless in the sunshine in dead villages
      • It is like they can hear the song of the war in their heads
    • Soldier goes mad with German laughing gas
  • Earth (1930) dir. Alexander Dovzhenko
    • Man is dancing and suddenly collapses, no one knows why
  • I Was Born, But… (1932) dir. Yasujirō Ozu
    • Shows boyhood
    • Almost all silent films have been destroyed in Japan from causes like natural disasters and bombings
    • Ozu seemed to be telling us the type of innocence in the boys doesn’t last
    • Ozu did not believe in heroes
    • The boys learned that all people are just decent
  • Tokyo Story (1953) dir. Yasujirō Ozu
    • Ozu’s most acclaimed film
    • “Had his own precise rhythm”
    • He would try not to show the floor and filmed part of the ceiling to get more of a three dimensional look
    • Brought the camera around the characters to a 90 degree angle, to take you inside the conversation
    • Used 50mm lenses so nothing was overly bulging
    • Added pauses in his films, to give the story and the space a breather
    • Interested in centering the body and de-centering the ego
  • Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) dir. Chantal Akerman
    • One of the few movies that used Ozu’s camera height
  • The Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Yasujirō Ozu
  • Osaka Elegy (1936) dir. Kenji Mizoguchi
    • About a telephone operator who is forced into prostitution
    • The director’s sister was forced to be sold as a gaysha because they were in poverty
  • Citizen Kane (1941) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Orson Welles
    • The boy is playing in the background
    • Praised for visual boldness buy Mizoguchi did it first
  • Chikamatsu Monogatari (1954) dir. Kenji Mizoguchi
    • Filmed very different from Hollywood romance
    • Since we see her from behind, we do not feel sorrow with her by moral indignation at her plight
    • Director was known as a woman’s director
  • Mildred Pierce (1945) dir. Michael Curtiz
    • American film reflects bridge scene about almost attempted suicide from previous director
    • But since Hollywood, it was filmed romantically and romanticized suicide
  • Romance of the West Chamber (1927) dir. Hou Yao and Minwei Li
    • Period costumes
  • Scenes of City Life (1935) dir. Yuan Muzhi
    • Went more to leftist realist cinema
  • The Goddess (1934) dir. Wu Yonggang
    • Single mother at son’s performance
    • Money is so tight she has been forced to sell herself to pay for her child’s education
    • Tracking shot shows the whispers about what she does for a living passing down the line
  • Center Stage (1991) dir. Stanley Kwan
    • Director had her repeat famous Japan scene
  • New Women (1935) dir. Cai Chusheng
    • Played real-life actress who committed suicide after being hounded by the press
    • Tabloids trashed her name because she was so real and did not romanticize sex
    • Ended up committing suicide by overdose just like her character

The Story of Film – Episode 2

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Notes:

The following material is from Wikipedia: 

1918-1928: The Triumph of American Film…

…And the First of its Rebels

  • Nanook of the North (1922) dir. Robert Flaherty
    • Focuses on one real man
    • Made the audience look for ethically
    • Huge hit around the world
    • People were seeing a real man, a playful father, on screen
    • Documentaries were born
  • The House Is Black (1963) dir. Forough Farrokhzad
    • Iranian film
    • Beautiful tracking shots
  • Sans Soleil (1983) dir. Chris Marker
    • Filmed real places in Japan and wrote a fictional commentary
  • The Not Dead (2007) dir. Brian Hill
    • Interviewed man about war experience and then took his words and made poems and then had him read those
  • The Perfect Human (1967) (shown as part of The Five Obstructions) dir. Jørgen Leth
  • The Five Obstructions (2003) dir. Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth
    • Director asked man to remake movie five times with different twists
  • Blind Husbands (1919) dir. Erich von Stroheim
    • Director had a drive for realism
  • The Lost Squadron (1932) dir. George Archainbaud and Paul Sloane
    • Wanted realism so much he showed an actor how to comb her hair properly, which was a small part of the scene
  • Greed (1924) dir. Erich von Stroheim
    • Famous climax where man murders his wife and kills a rival
    • Coins hand painted yellow, the climax scene tinted yellow to show money and greed consumed him
  • Stroheim in Vienna (1948)
    • Nothing came of film – studio did not like his directing, feared his realism
    • He cried when he saw the cut version of greed, he said the film had been ruined
  • Queen Kelly (1929) (shown as part of Sunset Boulevard) dir. Erich von Stroheim
    • Stroheim played the protector
    • Movie never saw the light of day
  • The Crowd (1928) dir. King Vidor
    • Tried to play 20s realism
    • Tells the story of an ordinary couple where child dies
    • Films actress in static shot, no fancy clothes, just to show her despair as she starts crying
    • First movie to use New York extensively and location
  • The Apartment (1960) dir. Billy Wilder
    • Repeated office shot to show perspective
  • The Trial (1962) dir. Orson Welles
    • Even lower shot, used real people and office desks and even dolls and smaller desks to force perspective onto the viewer
  • Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924) dir. Yakov Protazanov
    • Rebellious idea of realism in cities
    • Modernist costumes, setting on mars
    • On earth for the first time and sees a city, a battleship, and a focus point to a balcony on Moscow
  • Posle Smerti (1915) dir. Yevgeni Bauer
    • Worked at the same time as previous director
    • Daring for the time, a main light source in shot
    • Bravely natural
    • End dissolves from blue to black and white
    • First non optimistic romantic films about real loss
  • The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer
    • Actress had never been in a movie before, nor would she be
    • Actress only filmed in close up
    • Even some on the electricians cried
    • Black background, no set or shadows
    • Walls painted pink so no glare to distract from her face
    • Had the actor read the actual words said from the witch trials 500 years prior
  • Ordet (1955) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer
    • Did not believe in god but liked the plainness of certain churches
    • “You can’t simplify reality”
    • Asked actress to bring all her stuff and make the kitchen her own, then slowly took away things until 4 or 5 things were left, that was the simplified realness
  • The President (1919) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer
    • First film
    • Wanted to simplify and purify his images
  • Vampyr (1932) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer
    • Features shadowns against a white wall
    • The shadows seem to have a life of their own
    • Spare use of whiteness was bold
    • No other director cared so much about whiteness
  • Gertrud (1964) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer
  • Dogville (2003) dir. Lars von Trier
    • Opposite of decorative splendor
  • Vivre sa vie (1962) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Jean-Luc Godard
    • Had his lover go see The Passion of Joan of Arc

The Story of Film – Episode 1

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Notes

The following material is from Wikipedia: 

Introduction

1895-1918: The World Discovers a New Art Form or Birth of the Cinema

1903-1918: The Thrill Becomes Story or The Hollywood Dream

Session 6 Production Project

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Summary

Role: Director

Intention (SMART Goal)

By 3/18 as a part of team 5, I will have completed this blog post, examining the process of directing to be able to make one rough cut.

PRE-PRODUCTION – INQUIRY

Leader in the Field / Exemplary Work(s)

Steven Spielberg

  • The use of silence in this clip is very well done, you can feel the tension rising as the boy is poking around Peter’s face
  • The slow smile and recognition in the children’s eyes and on their faces is well shot

Interview

  • He still admires other directors
  • He listens to his instincts for movies
  • After being criticized for too many kid’s movies, he added more notes of maturity in his career.

Training Source(s)

Eye Tracing:

  • 0:11 – Use cinematic techniques to draw eyes to a portion of the frame and then place important information there
  • 1:07 – Three main techniques to draw the eye’s of the viewer to where you want them; motion, position, and color
  • 1:13 – Motion can be movement of the camera, performers, or even small graphic in the scene
  • 1:36 – Color can be used to evoke certain emotions from the viewer
  • 2:31 – Motion: analyze Steven Spielberg shot: Our eyes follow the waiter because he uses a medium shot size, a shallow depth of field, and a tracking movement
  • 2:43 – Positioning: (in the same shot) Our eyes follow the waiter until they land on our subject where he is positioned
  • 3:04 – Add multiple shots under one camera placement
  • 3:31 – Storyboard allows you to see vectors of each scene and where the viewer’s eyes will be
  • 3:49 – Color: Using one colored element in a black and white film to draw attention to that throughout the scene. Example: girl in the red coat, our eyes follow her as the chaos around her unfolds
  • 4:43 – Motion: using camera props and actors. Positioning: where you place subjects in the established view. Color: where you use color to draw the viewer’s eyes.

Project Timeline

    • Get into production teams and figure out basic concepts and roles
    • Meet with role teams to research directing and finish blog pre-production blog post
    • Divide and conquer different sections (using the half sheet)
    • Take individual notes on exemplary works and leaders in the field
    • Publish/update the blog once pre-production section is complete
    • Rejoin your production team and create a team folder
    •  Flesh out a basic storyboard
    • Show where blocking is incorporated in the storyboard
    • Finish screenplay, identify beats in the script
    • work on advanced storyboard as a team, and identify where the movement will be
    • Create a loose schedule (what shots on what days, how long will it take)
    • Get a rough cut, guiding actors to convey strong and weak movements
    • Incorporate guiding eye movement in the film: How to Use Walter Murch’s Eye Trace to “Direct the Eye” with Cinematic Editing
    • Put evidence of 6 tasks into evidence slideshow, visuals only, one thing per slide
    • Practice with the team to create a flow while presenting
    • Pitch film to teammates, then advisors

PRODUCTION – ACTION

The (FILM, SOUND, or GAME Creation)

POST-PRODUCTION – REFLECTION

21st Century Skills

Ways of Thinking (Creativity, Innovation, Critical Thinking, Problem Solving)

Ways of Working (Communication & Collaboration)

Tools for Working (Info & Media Literacy)

Ways of Living in the World (Life & Career)

Reactions to the Final Version

Self-Evaluation of Final Version

Grammar and Spelling

Grammarly

Editor

Moira Kelley