Category: The Story of Film

The Story of Film – Episode 5

avian1adLeave a comment

Notes:

The following material is from Wikipedia: 

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

The Story of Film – Episode 4

avian1adLeave a comment

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

avian1adLeave a comment

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

avian1adLeave a comment

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

avian1adLeave a comment

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