History of World Cinema Final Study Guide - FILMS AND READINGS

Bordwell, "The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice"

Defining art cinema and authorship • Art cinema as a particular mode, defined in opposition to Classical Hollywood Cinema • Assumptions we bring to films, how we process narrative • we don't use the same protocol when we watch an art cinema as we do when we watch a mainstream commercial movie • More likely to be accepting of things like ambiguity and lack of resolution in art films; we do not watch the film for intelligibility and plot - look for stylistic indicators of authorship Bordwell Analysis of Narrative • Narrative is a process • Narrative is not only structure but activity: it can be thought in terms of how viewers interact with films as structures that impart information • Bordwell is a formalist • Bordwell is influenced by cognitive psychology, film viewing: a perceptual and cognitive activity Film viewing: perceptual and cognitive • Viewers construct judgments on the basis of inferences • Viewing is a process of hypothesis testing • Viewers tend to look for explanations and identify norms In David Bordwell's piece, "The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice," the author discusses the concept of "art cinema," which he describes as a distinct mode of film practice that possesses a definite historical existence and set of formal conventions. Bordwell begins his piece by noting that art cinema defines itself in opposition to classical Hollywood cinema with its "cause-effect linkage of events," "classical narrative mode" and highly conventionalized, systematic use of editing, mise-en-scène, sound, etc. (Bordwell, 717). Instead, Bordwell notes, art cinema employs a "looser, more tenuous, narrative structure" and its narratives are motivated by "two principles: realism and authorial expressivity" (Bordwell, 718). With its depictions of "real locations," "real problems," and "realistic, complex characters," who may "lack defined desires and goals," art cinema focuses on capturing plausible situations and the psychological states of the characters (Bordwell, 718). Additionally, the realism evident in the "spatial and temporal construction" of these films may be objective (like documentary factuality) or subjective (like highly subjective sequences that reveal character emotion and psychology) (Bordwell, 719). Moreover, art cinema also "foregrounds the author as a structure in the film's system" and is treated as a unifying "textual force" to whom the meaning and organization of the film is attributed (Bordwell, 719). Through "stylistic signatures in the narration," Bordwell notes, an art cinema film can be "read as the work of an expressive individual" (Bordwell, 720). Notably, Bordwell remarks upon the idea of a "puzzling film," which "foregrounds the narrational act by posing enigmas" before he discusses the importance of ambiguity in art film (Bordwell, 721). This ambiguity, Bordwell writes, works to produce excess, contributes to the film's realism (i.e. "in life things happen this way") and authorial vision ("the ambiguity is symbolic" and is a statement that must be interpreted"), and is evident in the open endings which prompt the spectator to "leave the theater thinking" (Bordwell, 722).

Andrew Higson. "British Film Culture and the Idea of National Cinema."

"British National Cinema and Documentary" • National cinema defined against Hollywood • Catered to bourgeois audience • The heritage film: certain aesthetic tradition, reflects aspects of everyday life • Fear of mass production • British values should be promoted

Dudley Andrew. "Time Zones and Jetlag: The Flows and Phases of World Cinema."

"world cinema" • A class of films shaped by distributors, critics, scholars, and cinephiles • Has a history: can be broken down into phases, during which different aesthetic criteria dominated (cosmopolitan, national, federated, world, and global) • In order to understand world cinema at any -me, we must remember that the cinema/c (as opposed to the televisual) is defined by "discrepancy in space and deferral or jump in /me" (60): décalage Cosmopolitan phase • Film spectators in the major ci/es around the world are viewing the same films • Cinema is urban and international National phase • Bolstered by the introduction of sound • Cinema is anchored to a linguis/c community and a national literature • Film actors are replaced by actors from the national theater who reproduce "the speech patterns and physical gestures of the national community" Federated phase • A "retort to nationalism," though s/ll "anchored in territory" • Cooperation between neighbors • Example: the "egalitarian pan-nationalism" of postwar Europe, which emerged as a defense against both the U.S. and the USSR • European festivals promoting distinct national cultures as a shared alterna-ve cinema culture • The inchoate alliance of various New Waves, which opposed the dominant commercial cinemas of their respective countries World cinema phase • Greater attention to peripheral cinemas (third world, Asian, etc.) that offered new experiences to festival audiences weary of a flagging European art cinema • Striking crop of films from Taiwan and the PRC Global phase • "World systems imply transna/onal opera/ons and negotiations that encourage the spread and interchange of images, ideas, and capital across and throughout a vast but differen/ated cultural geography. Global no/ons, however, like blockbuster films, have nothing to negotiate; they expect to saturate every place in an undifferentiated manner" (80). Sound Transition • More countries forming alliances based on their political position within the cold war

Yuri Tsivian. "New Notes on Russian Film Culture between 1908 and 1919."

19-teens Russian Cinema: • Tragic endings, slow moving, emphasis on psychological • Tragic Russian endings came into film from 19th century Russian theatre-- derives from classical tragedy adapted to the level of mass consciousness. • Slowly paced melodramatic plots, emphasis on virtuosic acting and tragic endings reflect emphasis on expressivity vs. narrative clarity at the time. • Often times, Russian movies would release their movies for export with a separate happy "American" ending. • Russian films also emphasize stillness in acting. • "Cinema is architecture, culture is its wallpaper." • Culture helps us understand films, not the other way around.

Xala (Ousmane Sembène, 1975, Senegal, 123 min.)

A Senegalese film, but also an African film and a third world film • Takes something political, social projected onto psychological terrain - a diagnosis of society - El Hadji's issues as metaphors for issues plaguing Senegal • Cultural colonialization - corrosion of local traditions caused by the spread of Western capitalism • Conflict b/w modernity and tradition - marriages and qualities of wives as metaphors for changing times • Fetishism - objects used for rituals/magical properties v. commodities imbued w/ almost magical qualities • Long strides, montage - create contrasts to make viewers think about social stratification and inequality; image clusters - striking juxtapositions • Beggars represents disenfranchised, missing limbs as symbol for castration - celebration at the end is a reconciliation - character brought down to their level • Women preserved cultural traditions during colonial period - idea of cultural patrimony - advocates for protection of polygamy, but ignores or repudiates other aspects of culture that seem inconvenient to him • Three wives as different phases of Senegal's history; third wife becomes fetish - see more of her in portrait than her as a person • Climax - emasculation w/ forcible stripping and being spat upon - still feeling of redemption - role reversal, pride as one of the character's central flaws, critique of a certain type of masculinity - marriage as another chance to flaunt what he has and acquire even more • Long ASL, feels more theatrical, playing w/ alienation effects, critical distance, not totally absorbed in the film to think critically about characters, motivations to prompt political consciousness in the viewer The film depicts El Hadji, a businessman in Senegal, who is cursed with crippling erectile dysfunction upon the day of his marriage to his third wife. The film satirizes the corruption in African post-independence governments; El Hadji's impotence symbolizes the failure of such governments to be useful at all.[2] Indubitably, as Landy described, allegory, satire, and montage in "Xala" play an integral role in Sembene's diagnosis of society. In employing these techniques, Sembene works to criticize cultural colonization in Senegal or the corrosion of local traditions caused by the spread of Western capitalism. Foremost, the problems that plague El Hadji, the film's main character, are used metaphorically to demonstrate the many problems that plagued Senegal. By exploring El Hadiji's marriages and the qualities of each of his wives, who "represent specific stages in Senegalese history as well as specific aspects of the history of sexual oppression," Sembene also explores the changing times and conflicts between modernity and tradition (34). Like many of the objects in the film, the third wife is fetishized through her portrait image and is rarely seen in person onscreen. With continued viewing, it becomes increasingly clear to the viewer that cultural patrimony is a central theme of the film as El Hadji self-serving advocates for the protection and preservation of specific aspects of Sengalese culture like polygamy. Furthermore, with long asides and frequent use of montage, Sembene creates a variety of contrasts, especially between the beggars and the elite, encouraging the spectator to contemplate social stratification and inequality. Clearly, with cinematic techniques like long average shot lengths and montage, as well as the use of allegory and satire, Sembene plays with critical distance and prompts political consciousness in the viewer and encourages him/her to think critically about the film' characters.

Screening 8: Paisan (Roberto Rossellini, 1946, Italy, 134 min.)

A film constituted from "image facts" (46, 48) • Divided into six episodes, set in the Italian Campaign during World War II when Nazi Germany was losing the war against the Allies. • A major theme is communication problems due to language barriers. • See also under "Narrative Technique"- "ordering of fragments of reality" (42) • Instead of continuity editing, but long takes, deep focus, mise-en-scene • Andre Bazin wrote that "the unit of cinematic narrative in Paisà is not the "shot", an abstract of a reality which is being analyzed, but the "fact": • A fragment of concrete reality in itself multiple and full of ambiguity, whose meaning emerges only [afterwards] ... thanks to other imposed facts between which the mind establishes certain relationships." • Robin Wood praised the film's newsreel footage-like style in adding to the realism and compared the scene of peasants being rounded up in the Po Valley to the Odessa Step sequence in Battleship Potemkin.

Soviet Montage: Four Filmmakers

Aall had shared interests in editing, typage, and cinema as a machine art; all very much concerned with psychological , sensory, and intellectual viewer response Kuleshov: Kuleshov effect • Active before the revolution, taught at the State Film School • Woman on sofa, bowl of soup, person in coffin can all evoke different emotional responses from the same first shot of a face with a neutral expression) Pudovkin: Montage was pieced together Brick-by-Brick • Individual protagonist experiences awakening of revolutionary consciousness • Film "Mother" - political suspense film and melodrama - metaphoric use of imagery, clear narrative, delineated characters • Individual protagonist experiences awakening of revolutionary character Eisenstein: Conflict + LEAP • Strong interest in regulating audience response • From concrete to abstract, emphasize conflict and juxtaposition: Montage as conflict • Response - physical, emotional to intellectual - visceral spectator response, grab them on the gut level, move to emotional plane, stimulate intellectual response • "Editing on the principle of conflict" • Saw Montage as a struggle of forces/a conflict Vertov: • Cinema as social analysis, "film facts" are assembled to create not narrative or geographical but conceptual space • Documentary filmmaker, "Man with a movie camera" who believed a new reality could be assembled by film facts • Kino Eye technique, his films would create images that could not be seen by the human eye and would not attempt to recreate what could be seen by the human eye) • Heavily influenced by constructivism (theatre is a machine and the audience is its primary material) Man with a Movie Camera • No narrative, experimental - genre of city symphony • Self-reflexive, scenes of the city - rely on editing, which creates contrast, lyricism, and rhythm • Technology of cinema is an attraction, wonder of cinema on full display • Kino-eye - interested in emphasizing labor, construction and industry as well as materials · Big theory was this idea of people going outside themselves when watching a film= has visceral, qualitative leap/fit of ecstasy in response to content of a film that is created by montage within the film.

Screening 6: The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg, 1930, Germany, 99 min.)

Activating off-screen space • Rath's downfall due to loss of language, reduced to a stage clown • Lola's rise - English speaking and singing international star, whose success is marked by the widespread circulation of her image Sound-image relations are essential to an understanding of Lola Lola's strong sense of self, Professor Rath's tragic downfall from esteemed professor to a vaudeville clown in The Blue Angel, and the film's overall cinematic success. Though sound is used throughout the film to construct a sense of space, often through the use of off-screen sound, it also plays a pivotal role in emphasizing Professor Rath's lack and loss of control. As sound pours through the windows of Professor Rath's rowdy classroom or from the chaotic action onstage and through the door, into Lola Lola's intimate dressing room, it works to create a sense of contrast between private and public space. As Professor Rath abandons his stiff and unyielding persona and embarks on a long, downward trajectory, the audience can comprehend his fall from grace and humiliation as emblematic of the Professor's inability to maintain control over any space or uphold societal hierarchies. Moreover, sound is foregrounded as an aesthetic, expressive, and self-reflexive expressive element in the film. Rath's repeated demands for silence and weak attempts to assert his dominance over Lola Lola suggest his desire to also control sound in the film. By the end of the film, Rath is unable to cling to any semblance of power, rendering him helpless, angry, and mentally unstable. Notably, Petro also discusses the "portrayal of gender relations" and "the rise of the new woman in Weimar Germany, as well as across Europe and abroad," as reflected in the film (Petro, 255). This power dynamic between Lola Lola, who is depicted as multi-dimensional and dynamic, and Rath serves as a remark on "the rise of the new woman" and presents a discourse on femininity and female autonomy. Lola Lola, unlike Rath, is in total control of her image and is shrewd in manipulating how others see her. Moreover, the use of Lola Lola's image and her portrayal as an "icon" in the film through her depiction in poster art and postcards may also serve as commentary on these gendered power dynamics, as well as commercial image culture. By engaging with these items, the students and especially the Professor are able to "personally engage with Lola's image," but are never able to truly possess her. Nevertheless, the multiple language versions of the film complicates the films position in film history. The change in characterizations of Lola Lola, which downplays her sexual autonomy, and Professor Rath, which diminishes spectator sympathy for him, in the English version of the film fails to convey many of these themes. Though these differences between the versions attempted to appeal to their respective audiences, it is clear that the film is so essential to "rethinking the history of national cinemas within international film culture today" (Petro, 268).

American Classical Cinema v. Russian Cinema

American Classical Cinema • Continuity, variation in shot scale • Emphasis on performance, beginning of star discourse • Goal oriented, active protagonist who must overcome some obstacles Russian Cinema • Passive v. active • Slow v. speedy • (Mired in) psychological v. action (goal-oriented) • Sad endings v. happy endings (reason for lizard tail endings for export market)

Bill Nichols. "Film Form and Revolution."

Analysis of Potemkin and Eisenstein's techniques • The theory and practice of montage sought to draw out the political implications from actions and events using form to galvanize the viewer to a new level of insight

Appadurai, "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy"

Appadurai's "new global cultural economy" • Defined by overlap and disjuncture • Nation-states are not the primary agents • Subjective and multiply-inflected by "the historical, linguistic, and poli/cal situatedness of different sorts of actors" (7) • There are "multiple worlds which are cons/tuted by the historically situated imaginations of persons and groups spread around the globe," built up by different kinds of landscapes Appadurai - challenging moderniza/on theory • Globalization challenges linear models of developments • Globalization challenges the binary division of the world into "the West and the rest" • Globalization is not a one-way, unitary movement • Globalization creates a disordering of time and space Appadurai's landscapes: Ethnoscapes, Mediascapes, Technoscapes, Finanscapes, Ideoscapes • Global flows have to navigate these landscapes and the disjunctures between them, in a world increasingly characterized by "deterritorialization." • The social imaginary, how people use images and ideas to construct their identity and deal with reality - "scapes" • How globalization produces this jumbled experience of the world • In contrast to modernization theory - assumes a linear theory of development, idea that U.S. b/c it is more technologically advanced thought of as the future, in comparison to Philippines, a country with less capital • How people increasingly live in global societies, that look very different from each other - weird mix of the traditional and the modern, which varies in each society In Arjun Appadurai's piece, "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy," the author challenges modernization theory and liner models of development across the globe by contending that globalization creates a disordering of time and space. Appadurai expands upon this notion by discussing the "new global cultural economy," which he writes, is defined by "overlap" and disjunction (6). He continues by noting that this disjuncture can be examined by exploring the "relationship between five dimensions of global cultural flow:" "ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, finanscapes, and ideoscapes," which are each "inflected by the historical, linguistic and political situatedness of different sorts of actors" (7). Appadurai continues by remaking upon how global flows must navigate these landscapes and the disjunctures between them in a world increasingly characterized by "deterritorialization," a "central force of the modern world" (11). As people are increasingly dislocated, he notes, many are unable to build communities and the problem of cultural reproduction emerges. To Appadurai, the flux and deterritorialization caused by globalization can give rise to violent, rigid interpretations of identity, a theme which Michael Haneke engages with in his 2000 film, "Code Unknown."

Week 10: Art Cinema v. Hollywood

Bordwell, "art cinema" - distinct mode of film practice, possessing a definite historical existence, a set of formal conventions, and implicit viewing procedures A Distinct Mode of Film Practice, A Definite Historical Existence • Industrial and historical factors that relate to the international audience for art cinema • U. S. v. Paramount Pictures, et al. (1948) creates opening for independents • Films for an international audience • Needed to expand into overseas markets as television eroded audience • End of war opened international trade and facilitated international co productions • Supported by film criticism/film festivals, retrospectives and archival programming, film education, press booklets, film criticism • Tend to be smaller budget independent Classical Hollywood v. Art - Terms List

David Bordwell. "Backgrounds."

Bordwell: - Japanese filmmakers learned classical Hollywood norms - These norms allowed Japanese filmmakers to recognize their "Japanese-ness" - If Japanese films are different, they are not a radical alternative to Hollywood - Rather, the "Japanese-ness" of Japanese films is located in the decorative effects or flourishes that build on Hollywood norms Bordwell's project • To correct misguided critics who see Ozu's films as quintessentially "Japanese" - Response to Noël Burch's 1979 argument, which saw Japanese cinema as radically "other" - Paul Schrader • To create a model for analyzing the poetics of cinema and explaining why certain devices appear in particular directors' films Bordwell: Three Japanese film styles (ca. 1925-1945) Calligraphic - • Sword films, energetic, frenetic movement • Rapid cutting flash montage, flamboyant camera movement w/whip pans and tracking shots • Ex: Chuji's Travel Diary (ITO Daisuke, 1927) Piecemeal • Strongly associated with Ozu • Composed of many short shots, space broken up by editing • Shots tend to be static, decoupage • Ex: Japanese Girls at the Harbor (SHIMIZU Hiroshi, 1933) Pictorialist • Long takes w/ long shot distance • Staging, deep focus w/ decor lighting and figures subordinate to design • Minimal editing, deep space cinematography • Ex: The 47 Ronin, Part I (MIZOGUCHI Kenji, 1941)

Week 8: British Film Culture and Idea of National Cinema

British cinema against Hollywood • 1925: only 10% of films exhibited are British • 1926: only 5% 1930s-1970s • a government quota for British films ensures that British films can compete domestically (just barely) 1980s-1990s • British cinema, which has failed at imitating Hollywood and cannot compete with Hollywood, differentiates itself from Hollywood through art cinema Intellectual film culture in Britain • 1925 London Film Society established • 1927 Close Up, the first British critical film journal begins publication • mid-late 1920s appearance of first British film theory • 1933 British Film Institute established Preoccupations of intellectual film culture in Britain • Anxieties about mass culture • A concern with promoting art, culture, and quality in national cinema • Modernism - defining film as an art with specific formal qualities (London Film Society and Close Up) Ambivalence toward American cinema • Celebrated as avatar of the modern • Feared as culturally corrosive • Realism - the need for a cinema that reflects the everyday conditions of the lives of ordinary people in Britain • Heritage - national heritage, indigenous cultural tradition

Week 1: 1890s-1904: Early Cinema

Characterizations: • One shot • One camera position • Approx. 1 min in duration • Exhibited in mixed variety format: Vaudeville, Burlesque, circuses, traveling theatre companies • Films could be tinted/toned/handcolored Misconceptions: • Lack of uniformity • Black and white • Silent, uniform • In fact, most silent films were not silent, most were in color, early cinema is not primitive cinema). 1888 invention of film replaced glass plate photography • Film strip: series of sequential images, rapid succession of images flash before eyes creating an illusion of movement through flicker fusion. In 19th century inventions of instruments for viewing projections • Praxinoscope, Zoetrope, Phenakistoscope: Edision, Lumiere bros, Melies • Cinema of Attractions rose in popularity until 1906-07 (see definitions section)

Screening 7: Millions Like Us (Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, 1943)

British propaganda film, showing life in a wartime aircraft factory in documentary detail Millions Like Us and the construction of the nation in wartime British cinema • Used as propaganda: carried an obvious social project • See things from an objective POV (not embedded within the diegesis) • Negotiation between national and personal interests • Normalized version of the war • Personal expression is frowned upon and punished (Celia's fantasies)

Sergei Eisenstein. "Beyond the Shot."

Canonical Eisenstein essays, theorizing about what he does in his films in his writings • Editing creates relationships that arise out of juxtaposition In Sergei Eisenstein's piece, "Beyond the Shot," the author declares that there is "no such thing as cinema without cinematography," before outlining his conception of cinema and notably, his theory of "montage" (Eisenstein, 138). First, Eisenstein critiques the lack of montage in Japanese Cinema, before comparing montage to Japanese hieroglyphs. In doing so, Eisenstein aims to show that the "combination of two 'representable' objects achieves the representation of something that cannot be graphically represented" (Eisenstein, 139). Simply, by putting two objects (that are either different or neutral in meaning) together, one can create new meaning. For example, he writes, "the representation of an ear next to a drawing of a door means 'to listen'" (Eisenstein, 139). Moreover, Eisenstein critiques the "brick by brick" style of his contemporary, Vsevolod Pudovkin, who views montage "as a series of fragments" (Eisenstein, 144). Instead, the author defines montage as conflict, or "the collision of two factors" that "gives rise to an idea" (Eisenstein, 144). Montage, as Eisenstein describes, is editing on the principle of conflict, which can be found within shots, between shots (between graphic directions, shot levels, volumes, masses, spaces, etc.), and between sequences (Eisenstein, 145). In addition to using montage editing to create relationships that arise out of juxtaposition, Eisenstein also encourages the spectator to make a qualitative leap as they watch a scene unfold.

André Gaudreault. "The Culture Broth...So-called Early Cinema."

Cinema came from a wide variety of sources, diverse and experimental, don't come from one genealogy. • Should be thought of as a "cultural series" consisting of the innovations of projection, animation and photography. • Backgrounds influenced their inventions, and this hardware shaped the software.

Globalization (Code Unknown)

Cinema first truly international medium • World cinema: a class of film shaped by distributors, critics, scholars and cinephiles. Has a history that can be broken down into phases during which different aesthetic criteria dominated Uruguay round of general agreements on tariffs and trade • Cultural exception introduced by France that said cultural products were not just commodities - protect national cinema to maintain French cultural heritage • Ease int'l coproduction, strategy to raise int'l profile, increased opportunity for transnational cooperation • Liberalization of trade, welcoming foreign investment • Korean policy or globalization, cinema as a lucrative commodity Globalization challenges linear models of development and binary division of "the west and the rest" • Appadurai's landscapes, Global flows have to navigate landscapes and disjunctures between them in a world increasingly characterized by deterritorialization • Appadurai's new global cultural economy, defined by overlap and disjuncture, nation-states are not the primary agents Phases of cinema: Cosmopolitan phase • Film spectators in major cities around the world are viewing the same films, cinema is urban and international National phase • Bolstered by intro of sound, cinema anchored to linguistic community and national literature. • Film actors replaced by actors from national theatre who reproduce the speech patterns and physical gestures of the national community Federated phase • Retort to nationalism, cooperation between neighbors • I.e. alliance of various new wave movements which opposed the dominant commercial cinemas of their respective countries World cinema phase • Greater attention to peripheral cinemas that offered new experiences to festival audiences weary of a flagging European art cinema Global phase • World systems imply transnational operations that encourage the spread and interchange of ideas, images and capital.

Week 4: Film and 1920's Modernist Art Movements

Constructivism • Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitzky • Form and materials • Functionality • Technology • Relevant to the everyday lives of ordinary people (especially workers) Avant Garde Movement • Medium specificity • Innovation • Destruction • Praxis: that the autonomy of the bourgeois work of art should be destroyed and that art should be integrated with everyday life Expressionism • The outward expression of interior states, especially agitated states and abnormal psychology Indoor Effects • Obsessed with creating elaborate sets indoors, built up entire landscapes, created shadowy effects that made their scenery seem unearthly and illuminated. Psychology • Emphasized Impotence and over compensation, expressionist acting which emphasized tortured emotional states

National film styles that emerged in distinction to Hollywood

• Expressive mise-en-scene • Soviet montage film • Art films

Screening 2: Daydreams (Evgenii Bauer, 1915, Russia, 37 min.); A Man There Was (Victor Sjöström, 1917, Sweden, 53 min.)

Daydreams: • Superimposition • Effects meant to convey characteristic's state of mind • Cluttered mise-en-scene In exploring these two essential aspects of cinematic storytelling, Thompson goes on to describe a plethora of elements like expressive mise-en-scene, camera movement, and editing used in various examples of early films. Notably, Thompson describes "the characteristic slowly paced melodramatic plots, the emphasis on virtuosic acting, and the tragic endings" of Russian films in the 1910's (Thomson, 68). One such example of this cinema where "expressivity far outstrips simple narrative clarity" is Evgenii Bauer's 1915 film, Daydreams (Thompson, 68). In Daydreams (1915), the expressive use of mise-en-scene is in full display. First, with the film's exaggerated acting, the audience is able to fully understand the profundity of Sergei's despair over the death of his wife Yelena and the psychological toll of her loss. Moreover, with Bauer's use of longer shot lengths and deep staging, the spectator is encouraged to look beyond the characters and explore Sergei's cluttered bedroom, the streets around his home, the theater and the art studio. This elaborate set design seen throughout Daydreams, as Thompson notes, "contributed little to narrative clarity" but "added considerable compositional interest" (Thompson, 76). Undoubtedly, the examples of expressivity in Bauer's Daydreams and of those Thompson described early cinema worked to create heightened emotional responses from the spectator and captivate audiences. A Man There Was: • Dynamism, use of tinting and silhouetting • Parallel editing

Film form as dialectics

Dialectical materialism (the philosophy of Marxism) · gradual quantitative changes (in mode of production and structure of society) yield qualitative change --> revolution · Nature of reality is such that there are always transformations taking place, always contradictions (appearances to the contrary are a decep'on) · Law of negation: in the collision of opposites, one side will always cancel out the other, and in turn be canceled out by something else Thesis + antithesis = synthesis • Eisenstein: · Montage as collision · Creates a qualitative leap - Or, ecstasy: "to go out of himself."

Week 14: Globalism and Transnationalism

Globalization and transnational flows • The movement of money, goods, information, services, technology, and people across national boundaries • Films that deal with cultural dislocaAon and idenAty within a globalized world

Week 2: The Beginnings of Narrative Film and National Film Styles: "The Transitional Era"

Early cinema must be understand for what it was (not merely a stepping stone) Film Form • Why were feature films more desirable? What made it possible to move from shorts to features? • Enabled you to tell a more complex story - allowed filmmakers to draw on famous plays, novels, biblical tales • Movement towards legitimation - film as a legitimate art forms As film becomes an industry and cultural institution, film practices become more stable and uniform · During WWII, interruption of trade and national fervor contributed to the development of national film styles. · Industrialization: caused changes in film production: economies of scale, streamlined (assembly line) production flow, standardization, vertical integration= companies responsible for multiple stages of production that used to be separated. · Changes in distribution: creation of film exchanges, fixed venues for movies, theater building boom, shorts evolve into feature length films, vertical integration · Nickelodeon Era: 1905-07: cheap, lucrative storefront theatres had high turnover (low ticket prices, continuous programming), were in busy neighborhoods like business districts and working class neighborhoods, were film exchanges b/c films they showed were rented and not owned. · Theatres became more and more grand i.e. Chicago theatre lobby modeled after Royal Chapel at Versailles and staircase modeled after Paris Opera house · The move from shorts to features: 1908: single-reel film became industry standard, 1912: 2-3 reels in length, 1913: feature length film runtime >1 hour

Kristin Thompson. "The International Exploration of Cinematic Expressivity."

Editing techniques spread through the dissemination of Hollywood films after WWI: • Rise of continuity editing to create cohesive narrative space and time. • Shot/Reverse shot, graphic matches. • Shooting into mirrors became popular, using selective lighting effects and backlit silhouette effects based on artificial vs. general flat lighting effect of natural light. • Deep Staging became popular. • Before 1913: Search for narrative clarity in films, 19-teens were a time period of a search for enhanced expressive means, 1920s saw the entry of modernism into cinema. In Kristin Thompson's piece, "The International Exploration of Cinematic Expressivity," the author examines the historiography surrounding the development of cinematic techniques in the early twentieth century. In Thompson's analysis, she contends that the cinema of the 19-teens developed around two concepts: clarity and expressivity. To the author, the concept of clarity refers to the filmmakers desire to clearly convey necessary narrative information in their film. For example, editing techniques like "cutting back and forth between two or more spaces implied strongly that the separate actions were occurring simultaneously" and "shot/reverse shots established that people were face to face" (Thompson, 65). Additionally, Thompson explains the concept of expressivity as "those functions of cinematic devices that go beyond presenting basic narrative information and add some quality to the scene that would not be strictly necessary for our comprehension of it" (Thompson, 65). These "expressive devices" like "increased suspense during a chase" and "awe over the sudden revelation of a spectacular setting," according to Thompson, sought to "deepen the spectator's emotional involvement in the action" and push them "beyond comprehension to fascination" (Thompson, 65).

Week 10: Art Cinema and Rashomon

Emergence of the auteur • Director identified as the creative force, themes • Worked with mise-en-scene and visual qualities of cinema that crossed cultural boundaries and revealed universal truths Emphasis on national culture in post-war Japanese cinema, comes out of American post-war Japanese occupation Jidaigeki film (v. Gendaigeki - 19c. to today) • Japanese film set during the Tokugawa, Kurosawa set several jidaigeki during Warring States period • Kurosawa emphasized historical accuracy over genre conventions (typical character types, story structures, plot conventions, themes 1960's Collapse of the Studio System • Many of his movies have been remade as American Westerns (including Star Wars) • A-list director, int'l recognition and exerted a lot of creative control • Known for audio-visual narration - scenes w/ little dialogue - emphasized through mise-en-scene, editing, blocking Signature Features of Kurosawa • Wipes, "show not tell" • Shots of landscapes to depict mental states • Use of visual narration • Deep staging • Axial cutting • Telephoto lens to compress space • High horizon line • Uses nature to create effect (gusty wind, blinding sunlight, heavy rain, fog) • Unreliable narration, conflicting flashback - Rashomon Effect

Woman of Tokyo and The Goddess and modernization in Tokyo and Shanghai

Film was the popular medium for negotiating the experience of modernity in countries undergoing modernization • Long transition to sound - 1931-1937 • Industry matures - 1930's and women in female roles did not become the norm until the early 1920's • These films reflect both sides of discourse on modernity, women who make personal sacrifices for male relatives Woman of Tokyo: Starred Okada Yoshiko • According to Wada Marciano, the movie is anchored in a female perspective and features examples of traditional and modern women and the doubling of that dichotomy in one woman. • Directed by Ozu who loved low camera position, 360 degree angles, mismatched eyelines, and incorporating textures of everyday life: transitional shots of objects (i.e. teapot) and interposing objects. • Metonymic objects associated with certain characters (gloves, sword). • Objects have symbolic detail: i.e. the kettle is associated with the tension that follows after Ryoichi finds out about Chikako, represents emotional turmoil (linked with emotional state) The Goddess: Starred Ruan Linyu • According to Hansen, the movie is indicative of complex and contradictory attitudes towards modernity • Embodied in a woman who represents modernity's possibilities and pathologies • Both films based on theory of "Risshin Shusse" (rise up and get ahead), theory which was considered necessary in the modern world Woman of Tokyo - the moga as ambivalent representative of Western modernity and its new subjectivities (the "new woman"'s liberated sexuality, economic independence, visibility outside the home, etc.) Moga • Media construct, like "the flapper" • Idea of a modern woman found in popular media, but also the product of a kind of moral panic about how woman's social roles are changing (clothes, hairstyles) • Dressed in Western clothing, rather than traditional Japanese attire • More sexually permissive, liberated

Week 5: Chinese and Japanese films as vernacular modernism/Hollywood film style and cultural identity

Film was the popular medium for negotiating the experience of modernity in countries undergoing modernization. Why? • Cinema is a product of modernity • It created a "virtual space" for modern experience • Domestic films translated and/or situated modernity for the local audience • It contributed to discourse on modernity: what people thought and felt about the modern Vernacular modernism: The ability of cinema to provide to mass audiences both at home and abroad a sensory reflexive horizon for the experience of modernization and modernity Development of cinema in China and Cinema in Japan happened at approx the same speed except Japan was earlier to develop studios/theatres and first to feature a female actress in a movie

Miriam Hansen. "Fallen Women, Rising Stars, New Horizons: Shanghai Silent Film as Vernacular Modernism."

Hansen 2000 (and Wada-Marciano 2008) - The term "classical" is problematic - places West in the center and defines the non-West in terms of difference or deviation - IN ADDITION - "classical" suggests universal, fixed, unchanging norms - Whereas, Hollywood was associated with the modern and the new - Hollywood's economic power and other geopolitical factors contributed to Hollywood's influence - it did not simply "discover" the most sensible filmmaking techniques The Goddess (WU Yonggang, 1934) Made by the Lianhua Company (est. 1929) • Starring RUAN Linyu • Hansen: - Indicative of complex, contradictory attitudes toward modernity - Embodied in a woman who represents modernity's possibilities, as well as its pathologies In Miriam Bratu Hansen's piece, "Fallen Women, Rising Stars, New Horizons: Shanghai Silent Film as Vernacular Modernism," the author discusses the cinema of 1920's and 30's Shanghai as exemplary of a concept she refers to as "vernacular modernism." Hansen begins her piece by arguing against the idea that "the worldwide hegemony of classical Hollywood cinema" related to the "universal" or "timeless quality of their films" (Hansen, 10). Instead, Hansen declares that it had more to do with "vernacular modernism," which she defines as the ability of cinema "to provide, to mass audiences both at home and abroad, a sensory-reflexive horizon for the experience of modernization and modernity" (Hansen, 10). Simply, a product of modernity, cinema provided the spectator with the opportunity to experience its innovative possibilities, as well as offer the audience the opportunity to reflect and form positions on new societal changes. Hansen also notes that for countries like China undergoing the process of modernization, film was the popular medium for negotiating the complexities and "competing cultural discourses on modernity and modernization" (Hansen, 12) Notably, Hansen goes on to discuss how the depiction of the shifting role of women in Shanghai silent cinema serves as an example of "vernacular modernism" and is emblematic of these ambivalent attitudes toward modernity.

Week 9: Italian Neorealism and Postwar Film Culture

Impact of WWII • On the one hand... Disruption of foreign trade contributed to the development of distinct national styles • On the other hand... Marshall Plan helped rebuild Europe—and created infrastructure for the distribution of Hollywood film. In immediate postwar, U.S. films flooded the market. How did European film industries protect themselves against Hollywood's encroachment? • Protectionist measures (setting quota, allocation of Hollywood profits, restriction of imports) • Government-subsidized filmmaking (tax breaks, cash prizes for culturally significant films) • Cooperation and recognition: international coproductions, film festivals, creation of film archives Postwar cinephilia • Cinematheques and repertory theaters encouraged viewing and re-viewing • Films that had not been available during the war suddenly became available Postwar art cinema • Modernist: foregrounds style • Authorial commentary • Reflexivity (references to filmmaking and film culture) • ***And a strong realist tendency - emphasize mise-en-scene, use of deep focus and long takes - "a cinema of duration" and open-endedness Italian Neorealism • Not really a unified movement • Manufactured by critics, grouped at festivals • Long ASL, medium or long shits w/o extreme cuts • Emphasis on location and sense of social milieu • Freedom to scan frame w/ deep space and focus Andre Bazin: Cofounder of "cahiers du cinema" film magazine, spiritual father of the French New Wave • Influenced by Christianity, Existentialism

Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair, 2001, Italy / France / Germany / Italy / United States, 114 min.)

Long Essay: How a film was shaped by forces beyond the nation, outside of socio-cultural context. Film is an international medium and we must consider global forces. Concrete examples from the film under discussion, pertinent historical information, and appropriate use of critical concepts. These concepts should be defined and attributed to the correct author Monsoon Wedding • A film about modern Indian identity and intercultural negotiation that focuses specifically on the dilemmas experienced by women, who are caught between tradition and modernity • A film that is itself hybrid, drawing on Hollywood, arthouse, and Bollywood filmmaking conventions • Links "mobility" (geographic, economic, and virtual-technological) with a crisis of identity • Wealth and materialism threaten "tradiAonal values" • Cultural intermixing creates hybrid identities • The media introduces new values, aspirations, and desires, exacerbating cultural conflicts • Women are caught in-between • As in Woman of Tokyo and The Goddess, conflicts posed by women's sexual agency are used to dramatize a variety of attitudes towards cultural change What is national identity in a globalized world? • Culturally hybrid, takes place in Delhi, but have relatives coming in from Australia and United States • Indian family that is not bounded by the boundaries if the country • English and Hindi, references to American culture • Complicates how we think about national cinema • Look at financing of the film, production companies, language, cast, director - confuses those definitions Plot Structures • How characters relate to each other, parallels we can draw • Time feels condense, momentum, tension b/w structure and chaos • Structured around 2 major conflicts w/ 3 major characters --> bride, groom, boyfriend & Ria, molesting relative, young girl/patriarch • Revolve around woman's sexual autonomy, ability to protect themselves, familial reaction to a female's victimization • In addition to 2 parallel conflicts, 2 parallel romance plots w/ mismatched partners • Nair encourages viewer to question the emotions and inner thoughts of characters Stylistic Devices • Complicated mise-en-scene, which incorporated older media (paining and photography) and framing devices (windows and mirrors), as well as music and sounds to create a rich, layered text • Learning Indianness from popular media - dance performed wedding • Handheld style w/ zooms - documentary-esque • Interludes reminiscent of music videos • Subjective camera movement, slow motion, dances around bodies close to characters • Textuality foregrounded - made to think about the medium, sensual elements, soundtrack, food dance - appeals to all of our senses - use of color, texture, music • Slow motion as fantasy, character interactions add emotional layer • Dual plotlines - sensual characters w/ romance plot, peripheral characters - often servants w/ double marriage • Overlapping editing, continuity errors • Deals with cultural dislocation and identity within a globalized world • Draws on Hollywood, Bollywood, and arthouse conventions • Links mobility with a crisis of identity: wealth and materalism threaten traditional values, cultural intermixing creates hybrid identities, media introduces new values, aspirations, desires, exacerabating cultural conflicts • Women are caught in between (like in Woman of Tokyo and The Goddess, conflicts posed by women's sexual agency are used to dramatize a variety of attitudes towards cultural change In Mira Nair's 2001 film, "Monsoon Wedding," Singh's ideas about the complexities of modern Indian identity and intercultural negotiation are extremely evident. Like Singh, the film pays particular attention to the dilemmas experienced by women caught between tradition and modernity with its examination of female sexuality and self-determination in a patriarchal family structure. Moreover, the movie itself is a product of this "hybrid culture" with its drawing on both Hollywood and Bollywood filmmaking conventions. With its complicated mise-en-scene with its set design and framing devices, the film employs music and a variety of sounds to create a rich and layered text. The hand-held style camera movement, use of zooms, and slow motion seem reminiscent of other forms of popular media and add an emotional layer to the film. Lastly, time feels condensed through its parallel plot structures, which seem to contribute to the overall tension between structure and chaos. In having the duel conflicts of the film revolve around female sexual autonomy and familial reaction a female's victimization, Nair encourages the viewer to question the emotions, inner thoughts, and motivation of each character.

Battleship Potemkin and the new Soviet society

Interested in the clash b/w organized authority and the masses (even those of different classes) • Raw physicality of Eisenstein's work - use violence to make his point • Grabbing the spectator and giving them a jolt • Stretching of time through overlapping editing - action prolonged through various shots • Wants to make working class heroic and strong, contrast with the weak, decadent bourgeois • Wants to show how the working class has been exploited through the depiction of women and children in peril

Sarris, "Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962"

Introducing auteur theory to English speaking word Sarris identifies three features that make a director an auteur - immediately recognizable • Great director has to be at least a competent director, technologically proficient, has to know what they are doing • Recurrent characteristic or style that becomes signature, stylistic, preoccupations themes that appear across work • Ineffable quality that pertains to the director's personality or spirit - we can glimpse throughout the film that embodies character of the director

*Jaspal Kaur Singh. "Globalism and Transnationalism: Cultural Politics in the Texts of Mira Nair, Gurinder Chadha, Agnes Sam, and Farida Karodia."*

Jaspal Kaur Singh, "Globalism and TransnaAonalism: Cultural PoliAcs in the Texts of Mira Nair, Gurinder Chadha, Agnes Sam, and Farida Karodia" • Four women writers and filmmakers • RepresenAng diasporic communiAes in Uganda, South Africa, England, and the U.S. • Comparison between Global North and Global South • Taking into consideraAon postcolonialism and "the reality of movements across racial lines in translocal diasporic spaces instead of upward into the dominant culture" (144) • Gendered community and natonal-ethnic community: an either/or choice for diasporic Indian women? • Singh says no: these authors show the complexity of idenAty formation; there is no simple binary choice • Nor is the choice between "modernity" and "tradiAon" • Many diasporic Indians "want their children to be more Indian than the Indians themselves" (147) • "pressure to remain Indian mounts as a reacAon to... interference in the culture" (147) • This causes a new turn towards conservatism and fundamentalism that reflects an idea of "India" rather than a reality In Jaspal Kaur Singh's chapter, "Globalism and Transnationalism: Cultural Politics in the Tests of Mira Nair, Gurinder Chadha, Agnes Sam, and Farida Karodia" the author examines the work of four female writers and filmmakers "of the South Asian diaspora and their interconnections to the Indian and South African nation-states" through his argument regarding the idea of "Indianness" and discussion of how Indians across the globe hold onto their cultural identity (135). In his further discussion of how cultural exploitation and Indian diasporic communities differ in the global north and south, the author considers the realities of postcolonialism and racial and intercultural interaction in the creation of a "hybrid culture" (137). Those who exist in this hybrid culture, he writes, can be categorized and shaped by the realities of their migration. Thus, Singh employs Appadurai's system of classification in discussing members of this group as belonging to "the diaspora of hope, the diaspora of terror, or the diaspora of despair" (143). Notably, Singh also remarks upon ideas of "Indian womanhood" and writes about how diasporic women negotiate gender, national and cultural identity. To Singh, "the anxiety that modernization produced in the national consciousness is manifested in the reconstruction of women's identities" (137). As he goes on to note, the Indian diasporic women in the examples Singh mentions are caught between their gender identity and national identity with expectations that they will keep their traditions alive, even if it inhibits their own flourishing.

400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959, France, 99 min.)

Plot Written by Truffaut, the film is semi-biographical story about Antoine Doinel, a misunderstood adolescent in Paris who struggles with his parents and teachers due to his rebellious behavior. Antoine Doinel is a young boy growing up in Paris during the 1950s. Misunderstood by his parents for playing truant from school and stealing, and tormented in school for discipline problems by his teacher. Antoine frequently runs away from both places. Antoine is placed in an observation center for troubled youths near the seashore.. A psychologist at the center probes reasons for Antoine's unhappiness, which the youth reveals in a fragmented series of monologues. While playing football with the other boys one day, Antoine escapes under a fence and runs away to the ocean, which he has always wanted to see. He reaches the shoreline of the sea and runs into it. The film concludes with a freeze-frame of Antoine, and the camera optically zooms in on his face, looking into the camera. Stylistic Features • Camera movement, for the most part, standard documentary aesthetic feel - but stands out w/ panning and tracking movements • With POV shots, camera embodies the character • Strong self-reflexive moments - simplicity and interest in authenticity • Foregrounds Antoine's perspective, about his experience • "Neutral Film" - story determined everything else, w/o form - didn't want to be overly lyrical • Very frank, espec. w/ series of clips w/ child psychologist • Freeze frames, playing w/ 1st person/3rd person - fictional character but personal story, autobiographical • How repressive compulsory education is • Parents acting in bad faith, in their own self-interest • Existentialism, responsibility freedom, authenticity The notion that the director ought to be the true "auteur," whose technological competence, personality, personal vision, and "psychological realism" is identifiable throughout a film, is evident in Truffaut's directorial debut, "The 400 Blows." In this semi-autobiographical story, Antoine, a young Parisian boy, is repeatedly misunderstood and dismissed by his parents and teachers. In a deliberate departure from the literary adaptations that marked postwar French Cinema, Truffaut calls upon his own experiences in the creation of the film and his distinct vision is evident throughout. Antoine's unique perspective is foregrounded throughout the film and Truffaut's mark is especially evident through his utilization of camera movement. Even with its mostly standard, documentary aesthetic, the use of point of view shots, especially with pans and tracking shots (particularly those seen in the first and final sequences of the film), are conspicuous and allow the camera to embody the character. Moreover, the repeated use of freeze frames permits Truffaut to play with first person and third person storytelling, as well as the blurred distinction between this fictional character and his own, personal story. Truffaut does not fixate on making the film palatable to the audience. Instead, through the depiction of the trials and tribulations of Antoine, Truffaut seeks to illuminate the realities of adolescence and pain caused by adult apathy.

Week 3: Soviet Montage Film (~1919- 1934)

Soviet Montage • Post-Russian Revolution, 1920's • Characterized by experimental, dynamic use of form • Focused on editing, montage (as opposed to mise-en-scene) and medium specificity • Interested in liberating cinema from bourgeois influence • A worker's, people's cinema - heroes were active protagonists, who had a political conscious, worked for the common people Where did social tensions in pre-revolutionary Russia come from? • Unemployment and food shortages in countryside • Tensions between labor and capital • Intellectuals sided with workers and peasants, blaming the monarchy • 1905 military loss to Japan (a na?onal humilia?on) • 1917: Bolshevik revolution • 1918-1920 War Communism • 1919 Nationalization of film industry, State Film School founded • 1921-1924 New Economic Policy (planned industrialization) • 1928 tightening government controls and attacks on "formalism" • 1934 Socialist Realism becomes state policy (the end of the montage movement) Idea that cinema was an important means for spreading propaganda to the illiterate population • Realism - Cinema capable of capturing changes occurring in society • Idealism - cinema can convey concepts, what the world could/should be • Editing can convey relationships, making connections • New, technological medium associated w/ modern, advanced society that Soviets sought to build Famous Soviet Directors: Kuleshov, Pudovkin, Eisenstein, Vertov: who all had shared interests in editing, typage, and cinema as a machine art; all very much concerned with psychological , sensory, and intellectual viewer response

Week 11: The French New Wave

Stirrings of the French New Wave • Cahiers du cinema rejection of "the tradition of quality" and embrace of Hollywood noir, Western, B movie, pop culture Francois Truffaut, "A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema" --> call to revitalize French film • Emphasis on directors NOT screenwriters as "authors" • "politiques des auteurs" (a policy/politics of authors) • Metteur en scene v. auteur --> arranger v. author Andrew Sarris and Peter Wollen: introduced the concept of the auteur to the English-speaking world Audiences • A smaller, more segmented, more elite audience • Higher standard of living - more money spent on consumer products and at home • Cinema in direct competition with television Film audiences peak in the 1940's and 50's • Studios used sex, violence, widescreen, and color to cater to a younger and generally more male audience - offering what could not be had on TV. The "nouvelle vague" • Coined by L'Express to describe the new youth generation • The very idea of youth culture was new • "teenager": popular usage dates from 1945 on • Both a social concern and a target market - who are they? what are their interests? their habits and values? New aesthetic strategies • Postwar mass culture boom: erodes distinction between high and low • New mass circulated magazines: general interest, cover lifestyle and fashion, media, academic and cultural interests • Expansion of academia, rise of public intellectuals, and broad trends across humanities Influence of the French New Wave • Inaugurated a wave of similar film movements around the world

Robert Kolker. "The Film Text and Film Form."

Textuality and Film Form • Comparison b/w Bazin, Eisenstein, Classical Hollywood Cinema • Eisenstein - editing, • Bazin - qualities of photographic image, directors who use, long takes, long shots, mis-en-scene, not a lot of editing to allow viewer to scan image and make connections within the frame • Classical H'wood cinema - as standard by which others differentiate • Creative authority for filmic texts • Commercialized ergo is made with an audience in mind • Basic building blocks of film: shot and cut • Bazin considering editing as destruction of cinematic form (based on his faith) • Continuity style (ability to show without showing itself)

Week 12: African Cinema and Postcolonialism

The "Third World" • First World: Developed countries with market economies allied with U.S. and Western Europe •Second World: Socialist states with planned economies aligned with USSR and China •Third World: typically developing countries, former colonies or countries that existed in a semi-colonial relationship to the West, situated between (or peripheral to) the conflict between NATO and the Communist Bloc Historical Background • By 1905, almost all of Africa had been claimed by European colonizers, decolonization began post WWII and France gave Africa independence in 1960. Colonialism in Senegal • Settled mainly by Dutch, Portuguese, and French beginning in 15th C. • Coastal cities used to conduct slave trade • Territory traded hands many times, but France had colonial presence from the end of the 17th C., Independence in 1960 Problems in Postcolonial Francophone Africa: • Tribal chiefs were used to control rural populaLons who were remote from the colonizers' urban base • Wealth and education increased chief's dependence on colonial state alienated them from the people. • Structures of colonial government imposed by the metropole remain operative in the postcolonial period, despite lack of relation to indigenous social structures. • Elite recruited and educated by the colonizers have no identity outside structures of colonialism, are loathe to make changes that would threaten their elite status

Patrice Petro. "National Cinemas / International Film Culture: The Blue Angel (1930) in Multiple Language Versions."

The Blue Angel • Phenomena of the multiple-language version as a tactic filmmakers used for international distribution following the rise of sound • *How do you determine the national identity of a film* • Sound helps to construct a sense of space, manipulate audience response • Issue of cinema's ability to cross national borders with the introduction of sound • Use of mine-en-scene: netting, interest in textiles, play with light - mysterious, impenetrable space • Activating off-screen space by including off-screen sound • Sound creates contrast b/w intimate dressing room and chaotic action onstage • Authenticity: see images of Lola Lola before the audience sees the woman herself - comment on commercial image culture; we question whether she has genuine feelings for the Professor or if she is acting • Contrast b/w private and public space, story of main character's fall and humiliation - cannot maintain control of space and hierarchies, by end, seems helpless • Prof - initially staff and unyielding, long, downward trajectory • Lola Lola - in control of her image, can manipulate how others see her as a master of transformation • Sound foregrounded as an aesthetic, expressive element, self-reflexive, use of silence In Patrice Petro's piece, "National Cinemas/International Film Culture: The Blue Angel (1930) In Multiple Language Versions," the author discusses the canonical status of Josef von Sternberg's 1930 film, "The Blue Angel," as well as the idea of a national cinema. Indubitably, the introduction of sound in cinema had an enormous impact on international film trade and national film style. As Petro notes, The Blue Angel represents "a fascinating example of the complexity and turbulence brought about by the transition to sound" (Petro, 256). With the displacement of intertitles and problems of language specificity, the introduction of sound forced Hollywood confront "the cultural and linguistic diversity of its international audience" and "restricted film's cultural adaptability" (Petro, 257). However, the international success of The Blue Angel, which was filmed in both German and English, suggests that Sternberg's "film aesthetics," as well as Marlene Dietrich's acting and persona in her role as Lola Lola, showed the film's attempt to work through these new concerns (Petro, 260).

Screening 4: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920, Germany, 71 min.); The Fall of the House of Usher (Jean Epstein, 1928, France, 66 min.)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) Writen by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer • Directed by Robert Wiene at Decla-Bioscop • Intended as an anti-authoritarian horror story • Anti-authoritarian horror story that embodied the principle "films must be drawings brought to life." Expressionism -- • The outward projection of interior states - Especially agitated states and abnormal psychology, (tortured, alienated) psychological states • Problem of integra>ng the body with the Expressionist sets • Performance mediates between the natural body and the unnatural space What kind of psychology? • Impotence and over-compensation • Super ego - authority, control • Id - unrestrained desire History of psychology in Germany - Anton Kaes: "shell shock cinema," trauma, and flashback structure - Suspicion of psychiatry and hypnosis as treatment - Kracauer's psychology of German audiences as historical study Caligarisme: • The expressionist view of the film • Uncinematic and artificial • A lunatic's vision: : plays it safe, offers narra>ve motivation for avant-garde effects which provides a logical narrative explanation for the weird, edgy events in the film • An offense to modernist art: modernism as chaotic, as the way a deranged person sees The Fall of the House of Usher: • In Epstein's French Impressionist film, The Fall of the House of Usher, the director uses cinematic techniques like camera movement and deep staging to fully display Roderick Usher's disturbed emotional and mental state. The eeriness of the Usher's mansion is also emphasized with shots of billowing drapes, long hallways and large, empty spaces. Furthermore, the film's focus on Roderick's lifelike portrait of his wife Madeline, which takes on a paranormal quality in the film, exemplifies Epstein's interest in animating inanimate objects. Additionally, Epstein's interest in magnification is evidenced in close-ups of Roderick, the clock, guitar, and other objects throughout the film.

Rashomon (KUROSAWA Akira, 1950, Japan, 88 min.)

The film is known for a plot device that involves various characters providing subjective, alternative, self-serving and contradictory versions of the same incident. The film opens on a woodcutter and a priest sitting beneath the Rashomon city gate to stay dry in a downpour. A commoner joins them and they tell him that they have witnessed a disturbing story, which they then begin recounting to him. The woodcutter claims he found the body of a murdered samurai three days earlier while looking for wood in the forest; upon discovering the body, he says, he fled in a panic to notify the authorities. The priest says that he saw the samurai with his wife traveling the same day the murder happened. Both men are then summoned to testify in court, where they meet the captured bandit Tajōmaru, who claims to have set the samurai free after encountering him in the forest. Back at Rashōmon gate (after the trial), the woodcutter explains to the commoner that all three stories were falsehoods. The woodcutter had actually witnessed the rape and murder, he says, but just did not want to get too involved at the trial. According to the woodcutter's new story, Tajōmaru begged the samurai's wife to marry him, but the woman instead freed her husband. The husband was initially unwilling to fight Tajōmaru, saying he would not risk his life for a spoiled woman, but the woman then criticized both him and Tajōmaru, saying they were not real men and that a real man would fight for a woman's love. She spurred the men to fight one another, but then hid her face in fear once they raised swords; the men, too, were visibly fearful as they began fighting. They began a duel that was much more pitiful than Tajōmaru's account had made it sound, and Tajōmaru ultimately won through a stroke of luck. After some hesitation he killed the samurai, who begged for his life on the ground, and the woman fled in horror. Tajōmaru could not catch her, but took the samurai's sword and left the scene limping. At the gate, the woodcutter, priest, and commoner are interrupted from their discussion of the woodcutter's account by the sound of a crying baby. They find the baby abandoned in a basket, and the commoner takes a kimono and an amulet that have been left for the baby. The woodcutter reproaches the commoner for stealing from the abandoned baby, but the commoner chastises him. Having deduced that the reason the woodcutter did not speak up at the trial was because he was the one who stole the dagger from the scene of the murder, the commoner mocks him as "a bandit calling another a bandit." The commoner leaves Rashōmon, claiming that all men are motivated only by self-interest. These deceptions and lies shake the priest's faith in humanity. He is brought back to his senses when the woodcutter reaches for the baby in the priest's arms. The priest is suspicious at first, but the woodcutter explains that he intends to take care of the baby along with his own children, of whom he already has six. This simple revelation recasts the woodcutter's story and the subsequent theft of the dagger in a new light. The priest gives the baby to the woodcutter, saying that the woodcutter has given him reason to continue having hope in humanity. The film closes on the woodcutter, walking home with the baby. The rain has stopped and the clouds have opened revealing the sun in contrast to the beginning where it was overcast. The ambiguity described by Bordwell is extremely evident in Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film Rashomon. A prolific figure in postwar Japanese film, Kurosawa is clearly identified as the film's creative force and emphasized the visual qualities of cinema in his film. With its loose narrative structure, frequent use of flashbacks, and unreliable narration, Rashomon places an emphasis on character psychology, rather than the pursuit of a specific goal. The depictions of the conflicting memories presented by various characters of the rape and murder in the film and its open-ended finale encourage the spectator to contemplate character motivation, the idea of "truth," and even more broadly, human nature. Frequent shots of nature, especially when placed between moments of high tension and emotion in the film, serve to create effect through contrast and even depict mental states. Kurosawa's use of visual narration, with frequent moments of silence, long takes, close ups, exaggerated acting, and deep staging, also serves to create ambiguity, encourage audience introspection, and underscore these themes.

Tom Gunning. "The Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, Its Spectator, and the Avant-Garde"

The Cinema of Attractions: exhibitionist cinema that solicits the attention of the spectator. • Direct address to the audience • Goal is not realism or narrative so much as to awe and amaze. Trick films: provide a frame on which to string a demonstration of the magical possibilities of the cinema. Example: close ups in early film use technique as exhibitionism instead of for narrative punctuation (i.e. in the Gay Shoe Clerk, clerk lifts up womans' leg and examines her foot. System of Attractions remains an essential part of popular filmmaking, chase film genre shows how towards end of this period (03-06) a synthesis of narrative and exhibitionist work was underway, combining spectacle with narrative form (i.e. How a French Nobleman got his wife) In Tom Gunning's piece, "The Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, Its Spectator, and the Avant-Garde," the author defines the term "cinema of attractions" as an "exhibitionist" style of cinema that seeks to "establish contact with the audience" and "solicit the attention of the spectator" (Gunning, 230). These early films, Gunning notes, were not concerned with creating "narrative continuity" onscreen (Gunning, 231). Instead, modes of this exhibitionist cinema such as erotic and trick films aimed to primarily amaze and entice audiences with "a demonstration of the magical possibilities of cinema" (Gunning, 231). Moreover, the demonstration of the innovative technologies (like the Cinematographe, Biograph, or the Vitascope) used to display these examples of early cinema also served as an attraction for the audience (Gunning, 231).

Week 6: National Cinema and International Film Culture: Sound and language specificity

The Hollywood appeal • "classical Hollywood style" • Realistic and easy to understand • "Invisible style" - unobtrusive, pleasurable plentitude • Emphasis on character psychology and emotional identification that transcends class and nation • Hansen - YET, there are historical reasons for this "universal appeal" Miriam Hansen • Low-cost entertainment • Easily accessible, even if you are poor and illiterate • AND a showcase for luxury goods and glamorous lifestyles that one could not otherwise afford • Outside U.S. - the novelty of the new and modern also played a role Vernacular modernism • Yes, non-American cinemas incorporated classical Hollywood style and storytelling techniques. • HOWEVER, these films are not just copies of American films. • Cinema constituted a discourse on modernity. It embodied a variety of attitudes toward Western modernity - not just acceptance, admiration, and imitation, but resistance and rejection as well. WWI • Contributes to the rise of classical Hollywood and development of national film styles • Reallocation of resources • Import bans and battle lines • Postwar Hollywood dumping • Domestic producers and exhibitors at cross purposes The introduction of sound • Like WWI, the introduction of sound has an enormous impact on international film trade and national film style.

Define "third world" and describe one of the concerns or tendencies shared by third world filmmakers. Give a concrete example of how this concern or tendency is evident in the film Xala.

The problem of "nation" and modernization • Concept of "nation" and structures/style of governance were inherited from colonizers • In the years immediately following independence, Senegal was ruled by western-educated elite who remained subordinate to metropole and cut off from masses in home country. • Artistic intelligensia caught between two cultures, at odds with elite and the people Towards a definition of African cinema. Issues: • Technology = culturally determined? • Cinema is a Western invention that is necessarily inscribed with Western ways of seeing the world • Narrative and stylistic forms • Classical Hollywood narrative is a profit-driven form of entertainment • Individualism, classical forms of identification, Western morality (based on religious values or Enlightenment values), romance and family structures --> unsuitable for representing African concerns Concurrent debates on African literature and art • Can an authentic African national literature be developed in the colonizer's language? • Negritude (1930s) and the critique of Negritude as a celebraLon of blackness in language/art forms of the colonizer • African literature written in European languages risked being seen as a minor genre within European literature Femi Okiremuete Shaka proposes the following criteria for defining "African cinema": • Primary audience • Conception and positioning of a broad range of African identities and experiences • Director must be African Creating modern African cultural identity • First phase, 1930s: Negritude and cultural nationalism • Second phase, unLl 1960s: political nationalism and the struggle for independence; gave rise to pan-Africanism • Third phase: Postcolonial states struggle to expunge entrenched colonial power structures and tradiLonal cultural pracLces that should be abandoned in light of modernity Xala serves as a scathing critique of post colonial Senegal • Filmmaking as a political weapon • Though colonizers are expelled, Senegal remains reliant on them for foreign aid to foster "democracy" • Explores class/gender inequality and urban/rural divide • Montage: "Xala plays with visual and aural juxtaposition and conflict" • Satire: doubling, repetition, and return

Jean Epstein. "On Certain Characteristics of Photogenie." ____. "For a New Avant-Garde."

Two Aspects • Mobility • Persona In Jean Epstein's piece, "On Certain Characteristics of Photogénie," the author defines photogénie as "any aspect of things, beings, or souls whose moral character is enhanced by filmic reproduction" and lauds photogénie as "the purest expression of cinema" (Epstein, 314). Epstein places a particular emphasis on two aspects of photogénie: mobility and persona. First, the author notes that "only mobile aspects of the world, of things and souls, may see their moral value increased by filmic reproduction" (Epstein, 315). Simply, Epstein discusses how cinema, as a time-based medium, and its techniques are able to capture movement or mobile aspects of the world in time and space. Moreover, Epstein remarks upon this notion of persona, or how personality can also be enhanced by cinema, by describing the unique ability of cinema to attribute personalities or characteristics to inanimate objects (Epstein, 316).

Weimar Cinema

Weimar Cinema (1918-1933) • Weimar Republic • Framed by two historical ruptures: • 1918 - end of WWI and collapse of monarchy • 1933 - Nazis rise to power • Period of democracy, relative stability, flourishing mass culture • Approaches to cinema and other aspects of Weimar culture and society • Impact of WWI - e.g. Shell Shock Cinema • Premonitions of WWII - e.g. From Caligari to Hitler • Film imports banned during WWI • Later, import quotas to protect German film market from foreign competitors Defining what made German films "German" • Prior to 1930 - The German feature film: only needed to be made in Germany, at least 1500 meters long, at least 14-day production • Effective July 1, 1930 Required to be a "German" feature film: • Production company needed to be German • Screenwriter, director, composer, and the majority of staff needed to be German-speaking residents • All studio work, and ideally all location shooting, must be done in Germany • Import quotas were put in place to protect German film market from foreign competitors Blue Angel released in both German and English versions • American version was censored to make Dietrich less overtly sexual even though the film was released in pre-code era. • In American version, loss of language adds to Jannings' demise • Roth doesn't speak while Dietrich/Lola embodies an English speaker international singer and star • Janning undergoes one slow, terrible transformation while transformation is Lola's element

Screening 5: Woman of Tokyo (OZU Yasujiro, 1933, Japan, 45 min.); The Goddess (WU Yonggang, 1934, China, 85 min.)

Woman of Tokyo • Piecemeal editing; hypersituated objects like kettle • Hollywood film within: Lubitsch • Eyelines don't really match: contrast to their natural acting (artificial relationships between bodies) • Dichotomy of the modern female character and the traditional woman. • How men view the women; punished for trying to be independent The Goddess: • Looks and walks straight toward the camera, emphasizes agency, determination • Electrified flashing lights in skyline shots - not just transitions, establishing shots - meant to create connections b/w woman and urban modernity - her image flashes before him like lights - commercialism • How she is aware of her visual presentation - makes herself an object to display, makeup and dresses emphasize her domesticity • Makes strong connection b/w prostitution and new culture of commerce and display • Commerical prints as home decor - ambivalence/hostility to women's self-fashioning • Literalize's control that men have over women's bodies with bruises from male violence • Attention to the everyday and body - how women use them and how they are abused by men The Goddess: Specifically, Hansen mentions Wy Yonggang's 1934 film, "The Goddess," where Ruan Lingyu stars as an unnamed woman who altruistically "works as a prostitute" to provide a better life for her son. (Hansen, 16). With the representation of her incredible devotion to her child and the abuse she suffers at the hands of her male boss, the audience is encouraged to emphasize with the Goddess. Though she provides and sacrifices for her son, the depiction of her prostitution and of her focus on visual presentation marks Lingyu's character as the embodiment of modernity's pitfalls, as well as its possibilities. In the film, the Goddess's face is repeatedly superimposed over the Shanghai skyline, establishing a strong connection between the "new woman" and the commercialism of urban modernity. Moreover, the inclusion of shots of the Goddesses' clothing and scenes that show her putting on makeup also depict this "clash between traditional Chinese values and contemporary fashionable femininity" (Hansen, 17). In focusing on her outward appearance, the Goddess makes herself an object to display, which suggests a strong connection between prostitution and this burgeoning culture of commerce. As Hansen notes, the Goddess acts as "an allegory of urban modernity"; Simultaneously, in her role as a sacrificing mother, she serves "as the focus of social injustice and oppression" and in her role of a prostitute, as a "metaphor of a civilization in crisis" (Hansen, 15).

Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano. "Imaging Modern Girls in the Japanese Woman's Film."

Woman of Tokyo (OZU Yasujiro, 1933) • Made at by the company Shochiku (est. 1920) • Starring OKADA Yoshiko • Wada-Marciano: - anchored in a female perspective - "traditional" and "modern" women - idea of the new woman who was not sexualized, w/ focus on frivolous materialism (perhaps a danger to traditional gender roles, family) - doubling of that dichotomy, in a single female character Wada-Marciano, Hansen: • East Asian filmmakers did not just copy Hollywood films. • We need a better model for thinking about cultural modernization and interactions between the local and global. vernacular modernism

Code Unknown (Michael Haneke, 2000, France / Austria / Romania, 118 min.)

the local experience of globalization; disjunctive temporalities; uneven flows of technology, people, commodities, media, culture; images of deterritorialization, deterritorialized images • German-born Austrian filmmaker, directs in France and H'wood • Known for making satirical and savage films, eviscerate aloofness of white wealthy Europeans, bubble punctured by violence, which he uses to overwhelm viewer, render them helpless • Uses variety of techniques - suspense, POV, decontextualized images • Wants us to think about image culture, negotiation b/w reality and images • In coexisting, Parisians ignore the suffering of others - how the wealthy disproportionately benefit • Works with offscreen space, long takes, 3 edited sequences, 2 sound bridges - drumming and pistol • Relationship b/w fragments - mostly chronological • How the cosmopolitan middle class use images to bring the world close, but also distance • Encourages active spectatorship - makes you a voyeur, places you in ethical binds, cannot influence what characters do, feel uncomfortable • Delivers moral lesson in unsavory, emotionally harrowing way • Other characters on margins of society - constantly in motion, journeys are very different - uses video and photographs • World in flux, where characters try and often fail to connect • Metro scene - class, race, ethnicity, contemplate dynamics • Code Unknown: all means of communication are insufficient - impossibility of capturing someone's story • Theme of unreadability, questions about significance of action or what's going on v. theme of alienation, communication problems Appadurai - w/ globalization... • People are dislocated, cannot build communities • Developed mechanisms to ignore, prevent interaction, remove themselves • Problem of cultural reproduction - flux and deterritorialization given rise to violent, rigid interpretations of identity Haneke builds upon Appadurai's ideas of disjunction by portraying inequality, prejudice, and ignorance in his depiction of cosmopolitan, 21st century Paris. Clearly, Haneke employs a variety of techniques in his attempt to overwhelm the viewer, render them helpless, and force them to contemplate ethics and morality. From the initial conflict depicted in "Code Unknown," Haneke depicts how in co-existing in a cosmopolitan city like Paris, its middle-class residents often ignore the suffering of others and disproportionately benefit. In working with offscreen space, minimal editing, and most notably, using a series of long takes, Haneke encourages active spectatorship, making the viewer a voyeur and placing them in an ethical bind. In scenes that depict Jean's maltreatment of Maria, an undocumented and impoverished Romanian immigrant, Anne's decision not to act after bearing auditory witness to abuse in her building, and her own assault on the Metro, Haneke delivers moral lessons in an unsavory and emotionally harrowing way and asks us to contemplate racial and class dynamics. Moreover, Haneke emphasizes how, in a world in flux, characters try and often fail to connect and effectively communicate with each other, a notion that supports Appadurai's theories of unpredictability, alienation, and dislocation in our globalized world.

Marcia Landy, "Resolutions of the Third World Filmmakers Meeting (Algieria, 1973)"

• Common concerns of third world filmmakers • Ideological power of Hollywood cinema, how those films express cultural values, ideas, political notions, which is of value to the colonizer and these films can help to spread attitudes • Hollywood cinema was corrosive, contributes to decline of traditional value and erasure of indigenous culture • Concern that third world filmmakers often have trouble getting their films to audiences, concerned with economics and infrastructure of these countries • Interested in juxtaposition Emblematic of politically engaged cinema • Montage - visual and aural juxtaposition • Satire - doubling, repetition, and return - briefcases, cars as fetish, primitive forms of medicine as treatment v. colonial influrences -Evian, suits - contradictions character embodies, hypocrisy of elite, picks and chooses traditions in a self-serving manner • Allegory - Saying one thing by way of another - can be very didactic, to deliver moral lesson, magical qualities, myth, ceremonies, create a thinking spectator who is examining the world of the film in critical, skeptical way In Marcia Landy piece, "Political Allegory and "Engaged Cinema": Sembene's "Xala," the author cites Sembene Ousmane's 1974 film, "Xala," as a film that is emblematic of an "engaged cinema," which "sets itself in opposition to dominant political ideas and cinematic forms" (31). In order to "educate and engage his audience," Landy writes, Sembene employs three aspects of film style: allegory, satire, and montage (32). Landy elaborates upon this claim by providing examples in which allegory works to "develop the film's conflict and the problems of change and resistances to change within a specific historical narrative" (32). Specifically, she writes, "the allegory allows Sembene to develop simultaneously the psychological dimensions of that history as well as the problems of myth and ritual as retreats from history" (32). Moreover, she notes that montage, especially with the use of pointed inserts and image clusters, works to support the allegory by "making manifest his synthetic analysis of the nature and effects of neocolonialism" and further allows Sembene to "expose corrupt and destructive political attitudes and practices" (37). Lastly, Landy notes that the use of satire, which bolsters both the historical framework provided by the allegory and the themes and attitudes foregrounded by the montage, allows Sembene to engage with his audience (40). To Landy, this satire is employed as an effective "means for getting his audiences to recognize, identify, articulate, and actively repudiate the destructive political structures which dominate their lives" (44).

Soviet Montage Filmmakers - Common interests

• EDITING • TYPAGE • CINEMA AS A MACHINE ART

Screening 3: Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925, USSR, 75 min.)

• Graphic Conflict • Conflict of Planes • Conflict of Volumes • Conflict of Shot Lengths • Disjunctive editing: Repetition/ overlapping editing The graphic conflict evident in Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin clearly sought to emotionally and intellectually jolt the viewer. As this epic clash between the organized military authority of Tsarist Russia and the revolutionary masses unfolded through the film, Eisenstein utilized montage techniques to depict the brutality and ruthlessness of the pre-revolutionary government. Notably, there are many examples of conflict evident in the "Odessa Steps" sequence in the fourth act of Battleship Potemkin. First, the frantic rushing of the civilians down the steps is made even more chaotic by the quick switches between high-angle and low-angle shots. Moreover, the repeated close-ups on the boots of the Cossack soldiers, as they mechanically advanced down stairs, add to the impending sense of doom felt by the frightened, unarmed masses. Furthermore, through his use of overlapping editing, Eisenstein stretches time with the various shots of the fleeing crowd and the advancing soldiers. In addition to conflict between shot lengths, Eisenstein also creates dynamism within each shot by showing people with a variety of (sometimes unusual) physical characteristics and of all ages, gender, and social strata. Eisenstein's use of montage in Battleship Potemkin, especially in his depiction of the terrified crowd and emotionless soldiers, clearly works to heighten the drama of the scene and evoke a visceral reaction in the spectator.

André Bazin. "Cinematic Realism and the Italian School of the Liberation."

• Lewis - Bazinian Realism • What qualities he identifies as Italian Neorealism and what that "realism" consists of Precursors • Introduces background on recent history of Italian film •The Liberation: Rupture and Resistance Key concepts • Realism • Italian Neorealism is a style that emerges as a response to the "historic, social, and economic" (32) conditions of the postwar • Critical cinema w/ moral standpoint • "Image facts" - how to preserve ambiguity; meaning of what we see isn't immediately apparent - have to make the connections ourselves What characteristics do these films share? • Concern with "things actually happening at the time," "actual day-to-day events," "reportage" (33) • "As a result, the Italian films have an exceptionally documentary quality that could not be removed from the script without thereby eliminating the whole social setting into which its roots are so deeply sunk" (33). • A humanist cinema - "Nobody is reduced to the condition of an object or a symbol that would allow one to hate them in comfort without having first to leap the hurdle of their humanity" (34) • Concern with the individual; more sociological than political • A critical cinema - "They all reject implicitly or explicitly, with humor, satire, or poetry, the reality they are using..." (34) • Non-professional actors The "fundamental contradiction" of film realism- pp. 38-39 • The art of cinema depends on choice • One of the aesthetic aims of film may well be realism • Technological developments that enhance the realism of cinema eliminate choices • This crude reality would the "reality which the cinema proposes to restore integrally"—e.g. realism as an aesthetic The "fundamental contradiction" of film realism- pp. 38-39 • "Some measure of reality must always be sacrificed in the effort of achieving it" (41). Paisan • A film constituted from "image facts" (46, 48) • See also under "Narrative Technique"- "ordering of fragments of reality" (42) • Instead of continuity editing, but long takes, deep focus, mise-en-scene

*Kanika Batra and Rich Rice. "Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding and the Transcoded Audiologic of Postcolonial Convergence."*

• Movie with very different forms of media, media comments on the kinds of cultural hybridity we see in the film (painting, photography, music videos, television) • Bollywood feel by American-educated director In Monsoon Wedding, "the privatization of the Indian economy and young upwardly mobile Indians' acquisition of education and 'globalized' lifestyles increasingly free of parental restraints, have transformed and diversified media discourses in postcolonial India" (205) • Nair also incorporates older media (painting and photography) and framing devices (windows and mirrors) as well as music and sounds to create a rich, layered text • The film asks questions about identity, imitation, aspiration, learning, public/private, self-presentation How is identity constructed and expressed in a highly mediated and intercultural world? Characters • Aditi and Hemant (an NRI), the bride and groom, married boss and boyfriend, Dubey and Alice (a Christian), the event planner and the servant, Lalit, the patriarch and father of the bride, Ria, his adopted daughter, Tej, the family benefactor who victimized Ria, Aliya, the endangered young girl, Varun, AdiA's younger brother

Truffaut. "A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema."

• Polemical, arguing for increased control of directors • Dislike of literary adaptations Rails against traditional quality, cinema of literary adaptations, costume dramas w/ high production values, a screenwriter's cinema. Criticizes... • Screenwriters sneaking things into the films that are not in the original source material • Believes it is a perversion and a betrayal of the original text to make stories more palatable/appealing to the viewers • Panders to the audience, warped by cheap commercial values • Aspires to realism, but destroys it, under the guide of adaptation of literary classics In Francois Truffaut's piece, "A Certain Tendency in French Cinema," the author, a prominent figure of the French New Wave, rails against "the cinéma du qualité" or "la cinéma du papa," that dominated postwar French film and calls for the revitalization of French cinema (133). Truffaut's distaste for the French films emblematic of this "Tradition of Quality" and their emphasis on the screenwriter, rather than the director, as the "auteur" of the film, is clear throughout the piece (134). He repeatedly laments postwar French cinema, which is dominated by literary adaptations and costume dramas with high production values, for its attempts to pander to a commercial audience. To Truffaut, these films "which aspires to realism," "destroy it at the moment of finally grabbing it" (141). In citing the works of Aurenche and Bost, Truffaut criticizes their attempts to "be faithful to the spirit" of the work through their adjustments to aspects of the plot which are absent in the original source (134). These cheap ploys to make the stories more palatable or appealing to the viewer, Truffaut claims, are perversions or betrayals of the original text.