CINEMA chpt 5-6

Pre-Classical

1895-1920, this phase was the earliest period of experimentation and exploration during the silent film era. In this period, the rules were wide open, mainly because there were no rules. The filmmakers of the period created the rules, establishing many of the genres we still today enjoy. Genres like romances, action films, historical epics and westerns grew in popularity.

Classical Model

1920-45, by this period, the rules became solidified, and both filmmakers and viewers knew them fully. Audiences by this period had specific expectations for their favorite genre films, and filmmakers had become experts at producing them. This coincided with the Golden Age of Hollywood, a time when the Studio System held sway, the Star System became a force and the Classical Model that still dominates mainstream commercial cinema was established. Main genres like romance melodramas, gangster films, romantic comedies and musicals all thrived during this era.

Post Classical

1945-62, during this phase, the inevitable saturation and boredom set in with the audience for the classic genres. Filmmakers started trying to breathe life into the tired formulas that had served them well up to then - mixing genres, introducing new elements and updating the films for the times. Science Fiction and Film Noir became popular, whether you see them as genres or styles. Huge widescreen epics were made and gimmicks like 3-D were used to try and bring people out of their homes where they watched TV and back into the cinemas. Toward the end of the era, the Auteur Theory began eroding the power of genre films. The public began to accept the main ideas of

Revisionism/Modernist

1963-75, by this phase, the New Waves were spreading all over the world, and the traditional modes of cinematic production were breaking down. The studio system finally collapsed, and, desperate to find filmmakers who could speak to modern audiences, Hollywood began courting film school graduates and independent filmmakers. Modernism, an artistic movement growing out of the Modernist historical era, finally fully hit film during this time, and an avalanche of new themes, subjects and styles exploded onto the filmmaking scene. Many artists with avant-garde leanings filtered into cinema during this time. European Art Cinema became extremely popular, and directors were starting to be treated like serious artists. The auteur theory began to hold sway, further establishing filmmakers as worthy of high art critical attention. Filmmakers handled mature sexual subjects, examined deep psychological forces operating in people and societies, experimented formally, strayed from logical plots, explored ambiguous ideas and handled issues about gender, sexuality and race. Genre films were ignored or downplayed, and the Revisionist tendencies caused filmmakers, if they made genre films at all, to play with and question all of the traditional assumptions and often completely overturn and reject the core myths of many genres. We will look at Auteurism more in Week 12.

Revisionist/Modernist

1963-75, the classic studio system broke down during this period, Modernism began heavily influencing films and European Art Cinema, along with the Auteur theory, became extremely popular. Genre films were attacked or even rejected. We will focus more on this phase next week.

Postmodern

1976-present, this is the phase we are probably still in today. As traditional forms of making and viewing films were attacked, something new eventually replaced it. When some of the new, young filmmakers began to find success in handling the new subject matter and themes, Hollywood took notice. Eventually, a new model was established, with independent directors creating bold, artistic films, and the traditional studios financing, marketing and distributing the final products through increasingly global multinational corporations. The current Postmodern era is marked by a nostalgic return to certain genres, an incessant hybridization, a readiness to revise genres, a self aware approach, a multicultural vantage point and a mix of high and low art forms - elevating things like music videos and cartoons to worthy vehicles of expressing serious artistic concerns. The internet, digital video, cable TV, virtual reality and videogames have all threatened to almost completely obliterate the traditional means of making and releasing films

Postmodern

1976-present, this is the phase we are probably still in today. The new model of filmmaking was established, marked by hybridity, nostalgia, multiculturalism, self-awareness and a mix of high and low art. New outlets like the Internet and cable TV become extremely important. We have no idea where it is all heading. We will focus more on this a little next week and Week 15.

Socialist Realism

A Soviet doctrine and style in force from the mid-1930s to the 1980s that decreed that Soviet texts, including films, must promote communism and the working class and must be "realistic" (actually, an idealized representation of the working class) so that they would be understandable to working people. After World War II, socialist realism was also enforced in the East European countries under Soviet rule.

Dutch Angle/Canted framing

A camera angle in which the vertical and horizontal lines of the film's image appear at an angle to the vertical and horizontal lines of the film's frame. For example, in a Dutch angle shot, the vertical lines of a door frame appear slanted. Often used to suggest disorientation by the film's subjects or to disorient viewers or both

Italian Neorealism

A film movement in Italy during and after World War II that created films that combine imaginary and actual events, are usually located in actual settings, and show ordinary and believable characters caught up in difficult social and economic conditions, such as poverty and unemployment. Probably the best-known neorealist film is The Bicycle Thief (above) (also known as Bicycle Thieves). The first major movement to shake the foundations of classical cinema was the Italian Neorealist movement. Growing out of the urgency of the post WWII devastation and obliteration of the national Cinecitta Film Studio, these filmmakers used the available equipment - portable newsreel cameras - and shot their simple, timely stories of occupation, death and misery in the streets with nonpro actors. The proliferation of cheap, fast film stock that needed very little light, portable lightweight cameras and a hungry horde of filmmakers anxious to tell new stories that reflected the gritty, harsh world in which they lived gave rise to both new documentary and fiction movements. The major directors were Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio de Sica and Luchino Visconti. Other cinema movements like the British Free Cinema began making timely documentaries with similar equipment, and the methods and techniques slowly made their way into fiction feature film production when the French New Wave started.

The French New Wave

A film movement made up of a loose grouping of untraditional movies made in France in the late 1950s and early 1960s. French new wave filmmakers reacted against the carefully scripted products of the French film industry, explored more current subjects, and sometimes employed untraditional filmmaking techniques. Examples of French new wave cinema are the early feature films of Truffaut (such as The 400 Blows and, more so, Shoot the Piano Player), Godard (Breathless), and Claude Chabrol (Handsome Serge). This was a group of young French intellectuals who gathered at the Cinematheque Francaise, run by Henri Langlois, to watch films and discuss politics and art. Many of them began writing about film for Andre Bazin's Cahiers du cinema - a film journal he co-founded that became immensely popular with film aficionados. The young writers eventually began making their own films to prove their radical ideas about what cinema had been and could be. They reacted strongly against the classical traditions of cinema - both the form and content, the means of production and the level of audience participation. They wanted to tell new stories in new ways, and when they acquired money from private sources and government subsidies, they had their chances. The diverse bunch practically exploded on the scene after that, churning out an amazing wave of films that startled the moviegoing public around the world. Strongly influenced by Italian Neorealism, they embraced the use of new lightweight, mobile equipment and the practice of shooting in real locales in the streets. They utilized improv, used fast stock needing low light levels, shot on low budgets, operated with small crews, used real locales, experimented with a variety of techniques like freeze frames, jump cuts, dizzying angles and crafted intelligent, self reflexive films filled with homages to their heroes and intertextual critiques of how the individual battles for freedom in society. Instantly famous when their films won awards and acclaim on the international film festival circuit, the young directors went on to long, successful careers as both critics and filmmakers. 1959-64 was first wave. The major filmmakers were Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Jaques Rivette, Claude Charbol and Eric Rohmer. In all, over 170 directors used government subsidies to make over 200 films. Their works still influence film today.

Genres

A group of fictional films— such as western, science fiction, horror, gangster, musical, and screwball comedy—that share enough similarities that both filmmakers and audiences recognize the films as members of the same group. The reason filmmakers like genres is that they offer them codes and formulas. By using those formulas, they can crank out certain types of film for a ready-made public. They are easy to advertise, as everyone understands what type of film it is. They are easier to make because everyone expects certain types of characters, scenes and themes. Filmmakers can also use sets and costumes from previous films of the same genre, and develop certain stars to carry the films - like John Wayne for Westerns, Adam Sandler for comedies or Nicole Kidman for romances. The key with such formulaic filmmaking is being able to do two things at once - offer the audience what they are expecting and paying for when they go to your genre film, and also giving it to them in new and slightly different ways. To keep them from getting bored, filmmakers must find creative ways to twist the genre a little and update it for the current times.

Tight Framing

A shot in which there is little visible space around the main subjects—for example, the main subjects are near the edges of the frame, and a wall behind them is nearby. Uses for such framing include giving a sense of the subject's confinement or lack of mobility

Flashbacks

A shot or a few shots, a brief scene, or (rarely) a sequence that interrupts a narrative to show earlier events. Noirs have nonchronological, confusing and complex plotlines.

Magical Realism

A style in which occasional wildly improbable or impossible events are included in an otherwise realistic story. For example, in Like Water for Chocolate, the food the film's main female character prepares causes those who eat it to feel the way she felt as she prepared it. Mainly popular in Latin America, especially Brazil, Argentina and Mexico. Often based on popular writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Julio Cortazar and Jorge Luis Borges.

Expressionism (German)

A style of art, literature, drama, and film used to represent not external reality in a believable way but emotions in striking, stylized ways. In film this goal "was accomplished through distorted and exaggerated settings, heavy and dramatic shadows, unnatural space in composition, oblique angles, curved or nonparallel lines, a mobile and subjective camera, unnatural costumes and makeup, and stylized acting" (126). A film that uses expressionistic settings throughout is The Golem (1920)

German Expressionism

A style of art, literature, drama, and film used to represent not external reality in a believable way but emotions in striking, stylized ways. In film this goal "was accomplished through distorted and exaggerated settings, heavy and dramatic shadows, unnatural space in composition, oblique angles, curved or nonparallel lines, a mobile and subjective camera, unnatural costumes and makeup, and stylized acting". A film that uses expressionistic settings throughout is The Golem (1920). This was an artistic movement in Germany that peaked in the 1920s. It eventually found its way into films, focusing on expressing the inner emotions of characters in such external areas as sets, costumes and make-up. It inspired works from a number of key German directors like Fritz Lang, FW Murnau and Robert Weine. Operating mainly out of the UFA studio, they made works that used highly stylized sets, exaggerated acting styles, lots of shadows and horrific stories. When the Germans emigrated to America during the WW2 era, they brought their styles and tendencies with them.

American Independent Cinema

American independent films since the 1960s, which tend to be relatively low budget and focus on personal relationships, originate outside the Hollywood studios and are made all over the United States, not only in southern California. Because of their low budgets, American independent films are usually made without costly directors, writers, and stars (or with personnel willing to work for a relatively small salary, a percentage of any profits, or both). Once the new model emerged in Hollywood, the risky, experimental artists were channeled into the international film festival and art house circuits, where they pretty much remain today. They use the Sundance Film Festival and cable outlets like the Sundance Channel as main outlets, although premium cable and the Internet offer hopeful systems of production and release for some of their future projects. The US Independent Cinema strives to let new voices tell their stories, are made cheaply by often young film school graduates, employ greater realism, are ambiguous, explore controversial subjects, reject genres and usually premiere on the Film Festival Circuit in the hopes of picking up larger studio distribution deals. A major company in the 1980s and 90s that helped facilitate independent distribution and exhibition was Miramax. One of the latest indie movements is called Mumblecore, a sort of Do It Yourself brand of filmmaking that highlights very low budgets, digital cameras, personal relationships, quirky or ironic humor, non-pro actors improvising, and 20-something slackers spewing tons of navel-gazing dialogue. Its main festival is the SXSW festival in Austin, and the main filmmakers include the Duplass brothers and Andrew Bujalski, among others.

Parody

An amusing imitation of human behavior or of a text, or group of texts, often to satirize or to playfully poke fun at the subjects or styles of the source. Examples of film parodies are Rocky Horror Picture Show, a musical parody of horror movies, and Spaceballs, a parody of sci-fi movies, especially the original Star Wars. To imitate a text, part of a text, or a group of texts in an amusing way.. When a genre falls out of favor with the public, sometimes the only way to keep it relevant is to make fun of its conventions and tired messages. Mocking it, exaggerating elements, spoofing well-known facets, ridiculing its morals and just having fun by playing around with the genre can at least keep it around a little longer. Sometimes it might make it harder to ever take it seriously again - like with the Western. Once Blazing Saddles came along, it might have forever marginalized the genre. However, horror spoofs like Scary Movie seem to have done little to dampen the public's thirst for the genre, although many modern horror films have an accentuated awareness and maybe even a tongue-in-cheek tone, like the Scream franchise.

Narration (Voice-Over)

Commentary in a film about a subject in the film or about some other subject, usually by someone offscreen. Occasionally the narration comes from a person on-screen. Filmmakers may use narration off and on throughout a film or only occasionally. Sometimes they use it only at the film's beginning or ending, or both. Narration is sometimes used in documentary films and in TV commercials, in fictional films, and on rare occasions in experimental films.

Bollywood

Extremely popular Hindi-language movies made in India that usually feature complicated plots, large casts of mostly uncomplicated characters, frequent extravagant musical interludes, and happy endings. The word Bollywood was derived from a combination of Bombay (India) and Hollywood. Some use Bollywood affectionately, and others reject the term as derisive and condescending.

Dogme 95 and the Vow of Chastity

Film movement begun by Danish filmmakers in 1995 when they drew up the "Vow of Chastity," a set of rules expressing their rejection of the expensive filmmaking techniques used by commercial film industries in Denmark, France, and the United States; "superficial actions," such as murders; and genre films. Instead, the focus was to be on realistic characters and settings. Although initially established in Denmark, the movement eventually spread to include directors from many countries. The most famous film from this movement is the first Dogme 95 film, Thomas Vinterberg's The Celebration.

Hong Kong Cinema

Hong Kong cinema refers to the commercial film industry produced (by the 1980s) in the local Cantonese dialect, as distinguished from the Taiwanese New Cinema and from films produced in official Mandarin Chinese in the People's Republic of China. Hong Kong had a first New Wave in the late 1970s and 80s that saw mainly art films from graduates of overseas film schools and were not commercial. Ann Hui, Tsui Hark and John Woo got their starts then. The Second New Wave saw a revival of genre films and technical audacity from filmmakers like Wong Kar Wai. The mainstream industry from the 1980s to today makes commercial kung-fu and crime films. They want to preserve Asian cinema from the threat of Hollywood. Their films have lavish effects, many sequels, intense style and focus on comedy and action. Main filmmakers today include Tsui Hark and John Woo. Hong Kong films are in Cantonese, as opposed to mainland Chinese films, which are in Mandarin.

Film Noir

Literally, "black film." A type of film first made in the United States during and after World War II, characterized by frequent scenes with dark, shadowy (low-key) lighting; (usually) urban settings; characters motivated by selfishness, greed, cruelty, ambition, and lust; and characters willing to lie, frame, double-cross, and kill or have others killed. Examples are Murder, My Sweet; Out of the Past; and Touch of Evil. Dark cinema, in 1946 coined by French critics. Described as a genre, subgenre of the detective/crime thriller, a film movement or even a stylistic and narrative tendency.

Cahiers du cinema

Most new wave directors had watched many films at the Cinémathèque Française (French national film archive) and various film clubs and had written about films and the film medium in the journal Cahiers du cinéma. In their writings they advocated that directors should have control over all creative stages of production, and they criticized traditional French films, especially those of the preceding decade.

Femme Fatale

Often films noirs feature a femme fatale, invariably an attractive, young, worldly woman who thinks and acts quickly and is verbally adroit. She is also manipulative, evasive, sexy, dangerous, perhaps even lethal, especially to men who succumb to her wiles and charms. These films don't think much of women, in general. Women in Noirs are seen as utterly vicious, lying, seductive killers. Part of the pleasure of watching Noirs is following the women as they reel in the unsuspecting male and punish and destroy him for his idiotic romantic dreams. For some reason, viewers find that endlessly entertaining, almost as if the man deserves it, somehow, for being "weak". Whatever the reason, the woman usually has a strong desire to lie, steal and betray to get her way, finding enough time along the way to exploit and emasculate every man in her path, manipulating them with sex and love. Some like to point to the "power" of these female characters, but when one closely inspects their qualities, the view of women is hardly positive. In classic Noirs, the sex and violence is never graphic, but later Neo-Noirs have far fewer constraints.

Genre Revisionism

Referring to a new or revised interpretation or representation of a subject (such as history, a narrative, or genre). Unforgiven is a revisionist western, for example, in that most of the film is critical of violence and killing.

Auteur Theory

The belief that some filmmakers—usually directors though sometimes producers, writers, or actors—function as the dominant creators of films and that the auteur's films embody recurrent subjects, techniques, and meanings

Auteur Theory

The belief that some filmmakers—usually directors though sometimes producers, writers, or actors—function as the dominant creators of films and that the auteur's films embody recurrent subjects, techniques, and meanings. This theory, firmly announced as a "policy of authors" in Truffaut's seminal "A Certain Tendency in French Cinema" article, stated that the director was the driving creative force in film. A few men had paved the way before Truffaut. First, Bazin had written about his belief that the director's personal vision was important to the art of cinema. Second, Alexandre Astruc had written about what he called the "camera-pen" - the way the new film artists used a camera like writers used a pen. Looking back at the countless American commercial genre films they watched at the Cinematheque Francaise during the postwar period, Truffaut and the other critics at the Cahiers du cinema claimed the best ones - the most artistic and well-crafted - bore signatures by their strong creators that could be seen to recur from film to film for those looking for them. Certain stylistic tendencies, thematic concerns and symbols would recur in these films, and certain directors essentially signed their names distinctly in that way like the brush strokes of a painter or the musical stylings of a musician. The films that contained these imprints of personal vision from the best directors were considered works of art, not just entertainment or money-making products. The Auteur Theory called for directors to maintain complete creative control over their films - producing, writing, directing, editing, scoring and maybe even shooting or acting in them - as much as possible. The more control, the better the end product for a strong artist. The idea spread like wildfire, and soon after the immense commercial and critical success of the first wave of films from these directors, new waves began rising up from all corners of the globe - in Germany, Czechoslovakia, Japan, Britain, Senegal, Brazil, Australia and even America, to name but a few countries. In America, film critic Andrew Sarris termed the new theory, the "Auteur Theory", to refer to films made with deep meaning, great technical mastery, a strong personal style and for which the director was the key creator. Some, like Pauline Kael, opposed it as it lessened the idea of film being a collaborative medium and ignored the fact that it was often impossible to determine the director's true contributions or intentions.

Neo-Noirs

The classic Noir period generally runs from the 1940s-1950s, with important precursors in the 1920s-1930s. During the 1950s, the mood in America lightened, and the Film Noir went out of favor. However, as societal tensions from factors like the Cold War grew in the 1960s and 1970s, there was a revival of them, usually in color. Events like Vietnam, Watergate, the Manson killings, violent protests and the Oil embargo put some filmgoers in the mood for darker films. Despite the end of that era, noirs still pop up even today. Films like Chinatown, Shaft, The Long Goodbye, Night Moves, Blade Runner, Body Heat, Against All Odds, Blood Simple, The Long Good Friday, To Live and Die in LA, Seven, Basic Instinct, LA Confidential, Memento, Fight Club, Hollywoodland, Devil in a Blue Dress and The Man Who Wasn't There have all proven the enduring popularity of the Film Noir up to the present time.

Andre Bazin

The man who co-founded the Cahiers du cinema and helped give rise to the great New Wave rebellion against cinema tradition, was actually a bit of a throwback in his own aesthetic stance on cinema as an art. He supported a Realist ethic - one that privileged deep focus, long takes and mise en scene to promote greater audience participation in reading the frame. In contrast, many New Wave directors privileged the artist's vision and exercised their right to reinterpret reality, fragmenting and then juxtaposing those fragments in a reassemblage presented to the viewers as a "new and improved" reality. Bazin and the realist school thought the viewer should pick and choose details from within the frame with minimal interference from the filmmaker. He felt that the cinema's greatest asset was its almost indexical relationship to reality - it could record what was there, what the eye would see. As such, it should do that and let the viewer take part in creating the filmmaking experience by choosing details and assembling meaning in their own head from more subtle, less authorial hints that the director has constructed. The realists felt this would lead to a more dynamic and powerful experience, harnessing the imaginations of the viewers and adding them to the mix. That the New Wave filmmakers ended up making highly formal, fragmented and technically diverse films was a mild irony. However, they argued that whatever approach the subject demanded should be used. So at times, the New Wave filmmakers employed realist techniques. That included the master formalist of them all, Jean-Luc Godard, who had long dance scenes play out in long take in Vivre se vie, used lengthy tracking shots in Weekend, expertly handled dense mise en scene in films like Pierrot le fou, and practically worshiped Dreyer's Gertrude in print, one of the most austere realist artifacts known to cinema. As usual, filmmakers freely play the two main poles of cinema - formalism and realism - off of each other to dynamically charge the evolution of the art form.

New American Cinema

The modern era of filmmaking grew directly from the New American Cinema of the 1960s-70s and the dissolution of the studio system. For a brief period, the floodgates opened and studios funded a horde of young filmmakers in an attempt to find voices to speak to the new cultural moments in the country. While many filmmakers took the chance to experiment and pursue personal visions, many simply took the chance to get a foot in the industry and try their hand at creating solid entertainment that was artistically rendered and predicated on an independent model of production - utilizing studio funding, marketing, distribution and exhibition access. A lot of film school students, as well as independent producers, took their opportunities in this period. The new model that slowly emerged allowed personal visions for a period. Serious film artists had a brief moment in the sun when European Art Cinema dominated art house circuits in the early 70s - even Porn Chic became playable in these venues. But for the mass audience in general, the new model was forming elsewhere. Blaxploitation films also played during this period to large audiences - films that played with African-American stereotypes, exaggerating them for mockery's sake, exploding myths and examining new, albeit often absurd, ways of seeing the African-American experience in films that were anti-mainstream. The era of experimentation and playfulness did not last forever, however.

Cine-Clubs

These small artistic gatherings across Europe in the early parts of the Twentieth Century brought different artists together from different countries. Set up in most of the major cities in Europe during the 1910s-1920s, this early artistic cultural exchange existed as a place for like-minded people to meet, show films, discuss them in relation to society and the other arts and learn from each other. Painters, writers, musicians and any other artists who wished to join were welcome. They tended toward Avant-garde productions - films created for art's sake. As such, only serious artists tended to frequent them. These gatherings had as much to do with establishing cinema as a serious art form worthy of critical attention as any other single factor. They were, in essence, the first film academies or schools, albeit informal and somewhat impromptu. Although WWII halted a lot of this activity and stifled the air of artistic freedom, the idea never went away. It led directly to the small cliques that began springing up during the postwar period, and eventually bred the French New Wave out of the Cahier du cinema/Cinematheque Francaise circles, as well as being eventually formalized into the film schools we now have today around the world.

European Independent Film/Art Cinema

Various films since the 1960s directed by European directors working outside the commercial mainstream—such as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut (throughout their careers, not merely during their earlier new wave years), Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Luis Buñuel—are also alternatives to classical Hollywood cinema. Sometimes these films are called art cinema, but it is more descriptive to refer to them as European independent films. From the 1950s to the 70s, a varied group of European art film directors began to rise in critical and popular reputation. The New Waves around the world helped establish these filmmakers as artistic giants. Their films dealt with sexual themes in mature ways, had episodic structures that were intellectual and subjective, featured a fragmented view of reality, were highly self-aware, eschewed genres and explored mental states. Their independent approaches to financing and complex, technically impressive works inspired filmmakers and artists everywhere. They became so popular for a time in the 60s and 70s that their films regularly played in big city art houses and college towns throughout America. Some of the main filmmakers were Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Michaelangelo Antonioni and Luis Bunuel. More than any other group or movement, next to perhaps the French New Wave, these filmmakers established film as a serious art.

New German Cinema

a group of postwar filmmakers, many of whom went through film school, rose up and revolutionized the film industry in Germany in the 1960s and 70s. After publishing the Oberhausen Manifesto declaring a new cinema, a group of linked independent filmmakers and film school graduates started making new types of artistically-oriented films. They were given financial help from German TV and eventually the government. They started out with strong avant-garde influences during the Young German Cinema of the 60s, and then became more accessible during the New German Cinema of the 70s, after their funding increased. The main filmmakers included Alexander Kluge, Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders, Volker Schlondorff, Margarethe von Trotta and Helke Sander.

Universal Horror Films

another great influence was the style of Hollywood horror films being made during the 1930s at Universal Studios - films like Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy. These films used expressionistic sets, low-key lighting and a bold cinematic style to bring their monster tales to life.

Self-reflexivity

exposes the formal properties and encourages awareness of the filmmaking process for both filmmakers and viewers. Characteristic of a text—such as a play, novel, or film—that refers to or comments on itself as a text. A self-reflexive text draws readers' or viewers' attention to itself as something constructed and thus not inevitable in its techniques, subjects, and conventions. Examples of self-reflexiveness are found in Luigi Pirandello's play Six Characters in Search of an Author, John Fowles's novel The French Lieutenant's Woman, the documentary film Man with a Movie Camera, and the fictional films Tom Jones and High Fidelity. In self-reflexive movies, a character may interrupt the story to seemingly look at the audience or speak directly to it. Unlike films of the classical Hollywood cinema, self-reflexive films do not as often downplay the conventions and manner of their making but foreground them. Many experimental films are self-reflexive at times, as are occasional documentary films.

British Free Cinema

film movement in the 1950s that grew mainly from The National Film Theater in London. A group of young critics watched films, discussed them and wrote about them in Sequence magazine, eventually publishing a manifesto. They wanted to make films free of the dominant industry, use the new equipment and explore new styles and attitudes. They made a series of documentaries examining their culture before moving into features. Main filmmakers included Karel Reisz and Lindsay Anderson.

Remythologization

filmmakers play with conventions and iconography, experiment with different tones and moods, mix elements of other genres, but in the end - they affirm the core myth of the genre. The Clint Eastwood western, The Unforgiven, seriously questions the idea of heroism and violence, prying apart the roles and conventional actions of the men of the West. However, in the end, the importance of law and order and the validity of civilizing the wild at any cost is affirmed, as the hero does what he must to correct problems.

Demythologization

filmmakers play with everything, but in the end they completely attack and reject the core myth of the genre. They turn the genre upside-down, subvert all of its main themes and essentially kill it off in favor of a new worldview. The Western Little Big Man shows the US Calvary to be insane, violent and inhuman, while the Native Americans are good. The civilizing forces are crushed. In the crime gangster film Goodfellas, the lead criminal ends up free and living a comfortable, middle class, suburban life at the taxpayers' expense, expressing disdain for his boring lifestyle and wishing he was back in his life of crime. Not only does crime seem to pay, but it seems to be a better life. Such an odd anti-social view of the criminal essentially ends the crime genre as we know it and posits the idea that the genre no longer has meaning. It does not mean that crime films are dead, but some sections of society are seriously questioning its truth. If that trend continued, and society embraced the idea, then crime gangster films would cease, because criminals would become heroes in action flicks. You can ask yourself if this is happening, and society is upside-down, or if you believe criminals are heroes, or if Scorsese was making a somewhat ironic and satirical point, however true, for society to think about. He has made crime films after that without suggesting the same exact thing.

Hybrid

films mix two or more genres. See below for more.

Genre as Vehicle - Sugarcoating the Pill

genres can be used as vehicles for new messages and viewpoints, as well. They do this when previously marginalized groups finally gain a forum to speak. A genre can become a smooth and pleasant way for people to relay some harsh and unsettling messages that have never been heard before in mainstream cinema. Minority issues, Women's issues, Gay issues, political agendas - any new stance or interpretation of society and humanity can be slid inside the form of a given genre to help deliver it to the public. The melodrama, Pinky, helped tell audiences about racism. The romance thriller The Crying Game used the IRA action to deliver a tale about alternative sexuality. Cabaret used the musical to warn about the dangers of escapism when racism is literally killing people.

Anti-Hero

he is a loner rebel, selfish, shell-shocked, drifting, has his own moral code, behaves as a criminal to counter what he sees as a criminal society. Part of the pleasure of watching Noirs is rooting for a character who rebels against society. The anti-hero is usually a man who breaks the rules because he believes the society that makes the rules is corrupt. He is usually consigned to the margins, drifting around aimlessly and unable to forge solid friendships or love relationships. If the hero is a cop, he will be very similar, but still connected to society by a slender thread that is constantly threatening to snap (like Dirty Harry). The anti-hero trusts no one, follows his own code, does not express his inner feelings to avoid being weak but has an odd tendency to fall in love with dangerous women. And that is often his downfall. There might be a slight moral in that the men who have trouble expressing their emotions and try to hold them all in behind a poker face end up exploding out in pointless, irrational violence. Watch a few Noirs and see what you think.

Third Cinema

in Latin America in the 1960s and 70s, it was mainly spearheaded by a manifesto published by Fernando Solanos and Octavio Getino called "Towards a Third Cinema". They said the first cinema was Hollywood - based on money, entertainment and bourgeois escapism. The second cinema was the European Art Cinema and the elitist Auteurs. Their Third Cinema would be for the masses, with the director as a collective, and it would attack Hollywood, capitalism and colonialism. They screened their films secretly to avoid censorship, rejected the commercial model and forced viewers to take risks to see the films. The movement grew mainly in Argentina, Brazil, Cuba and Bolivia, Africa and Asia. Anywhere that a group did not feel represented by the first two cinemas, however, could be the start of a Third Cinema. Africa is often considered a strong part of this.

British New Wave

in the 1950s and 60s, Reisz, Anderson and Tony Richardson led this group of critics after they wrote their views in Sight & Sound and The New Statesman. The movement was also influenced by The Angry Young Men theater movement. They privileged working class heroes from the North and challenged the status quo. Their gritty realism was referred to as "kitchen sink dramas". Some of the main filmmakers to ultimately emerge from the movement included Joseph Losey, Ken Loach, John Schlesinger and Jack Clayton.

Modernism

is the art and social movement the grew from Modernity, peaking in the 1950s. The culture and society changed greatly during the modern era. GIs traveled and got educations. American moved from the North East toward the South West. They started moving into suburbs. Pop culture became dominant. Freud's influence spurred people to think more deeply about their inner life and examine previous taboo subjects like sex and violence more thoroughly. Artists picked up on these new currents and experimented with new ways of expressing the fears and desires of the the new age. Some of the major voices were Stravinsky in music, Joyce in literature and Hitchcock in film. Artists like them and many others explored new territories, shocking audiences with new and daring approaches to their respective art forms.

Topical Accommodation

probably the easiest way to alter a genre is the most superficial - to simply change what the viewer sees and hears to make it more modern. This means incorporating things like more sexual imagery, rock music, slang, new fashions, hybrid cars and characters using email and cell phones. This can also include the inclusion of more high profile or heroic characters who are from minority groups, who are women or who are gay, for instance. So the old Hollywood classic Romantic Comedy, The Shop Around the Corner (based on a play) has the characters use e-mail in the updated version, You've Got Mail.

Intertextuality

references from other texts are built into the meaning systems. The relation of one text (such as a film) to another text or texts (such as a journalistic article, a play, or another film). Types of intertextuality in films include allusion, homage, parody, remake, prequel, sequel, and compilation film.

Chiaroscuro

refers to the treatment of light and dark in the film frame. Whatever is in the light and whatever is in the dark is carefully planned and has importance. Shadows, lines of light and areas of total darkness set mood, reveal character and move the story.

Auteurism

that films were artworks and the main creative forces, usually directors, could make superior films that eclipsed any generic product churned out by studio hacks.

Avant Garde

the peak period of the avant-garde ran from 1890-1960. These artists pushed the boundaries of all previous traditional notions of art and culture. They set out to explore the edges of man's knowledge, to go out front where no one else would go and bring back what they found for the rest of society. These artists created art for its own sake, believing that the artist had a duty to serve art above all else. They tend to be strongly anti-materialistic, to attack mass culture and to detest the middle class. When artists from painting, music, theater and sculpture began forming groups and clubs in the early 1900s, they eventually welcomed filmmakers into their circles. Specific Cine-clubs began appearing before long, and filmmakers were gradually accepted as serious artists in their own right, with a healthy group of avant-garde filmmakers like Rene Clair, Luis Bunuel and Germaine Dulac experimenting with new ways of seeing the world through films. The avant-garde in all arts still thrives to this day, of course, but it hit a peak in the early 1960s, right as the new waves of cinema were beginning to spread out all over the globe, eventually making it the most important art of the new age. We will discuss this more in Week 13.

Conventions

these are more complicated elements of a genre, but all viewers are familiar with them to the point that they become cliches. Again, with genres, that is good and bad - it's good because they are reliable, but it's bad because they get boring. Conventions of a genre are the roles and routines - the characters, settings, plot elements, actions and main scenes you expect to experience in specific genre films. For the western, you would expect a hooker with a heart of gold, a hard working good guy, a villain in a black hat (an icon), a poker game, a barroom fight and of course a shootout. For a crime/gangster film, you would expect a psychotic hitman, an aging patriarch, a noble cop hero, big capers, revenge killings, a meeting of the families and some kind of ultimate punishment. If you don't find these things in the film, you might be disappointed or think it is incompetent, but if you expect them and get them every time, you will of course become bored by them. At that point, people might start mocking the conventions - western parodies like Blazing Saddles and Lust in the Dust are examples of this.

Chinese Fifth Generation

these filmmakers were the first generation to make films after going through the prestigious Beijing Film Academy. It reopened after the Cultural Revolution, which ran from 1966-76 and produced only opera epics and propaganda films. By the late 1980s, they had arrived. They made films that privileged Modernity over traditional Chinese concerns and strove to establish a new identity. Their films mainly dealt with the past in an effort to avoid the censors. The first generation in China ran from 1895 through the early days of cinema. The second ran during the silent era in the 1920s. The third ran during the War era in the 30s and 40s. The fourth were stalled during the period that ran during the Cultural Revolution. The main filmmakers of the Fifth Generation are Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige and Tian Zhuangzhuang.

Crime/Gangster Films

these films influenced Noirs by their subject matter, anti-hero lead characters, dark stories, stylized violence, low-key lighting and urban decay. See examples below for more.

Myth

this is the core of the genre. The various themes and ideas in the film eventually coalesce in one basic message or moral, and this is the reason why specific genres are made and watched over and over. A culture will use these genres to tell itself stories about why it does certain things in certain ways, why it believes what it does and what the meaning of life is for that society. The deep truths and beliefs at the core of a genre become almost religious experiences, stimulating people often to watch films over and over because of how it reinforces their beliefs and makes them feel about their own lives. The traditional ideas and institutions of society end up being supported and praised in these ways, and cinema sometimes serves as a kind of social force, bonding people together, teaching them cultural mores and providing them with meaning. The question is not whether films do this or not - they do. The question is whether or not a genre's message is valid and worthy of being promulgated. At different times in history, a culture will reassess its views and even perhaps change them. Art can be an important tool in this process of assessing beliefs, at times helping to create them, at others to reflect them, most likely usually a little of both. The Revisionist phase of film genres saw filmmakers and viewers enjoying a constant overturning and rejection of all the classic genres. However, by the Postmodern phase, many genres still existed and were as powerful and popular as ever. Their enduring hold on the public is no accident - people seem to hold the core myths of these genres dear to heir hearts no matter the time or place. Genres like romance, comedy and horror seem to either always be with us, or at least cycle into popularity on a regular basis. Genres like westerns and musicals seem to have mainly faded from the popular consciousness and lost their importance to our collective psyches, cycling back very rarely and weakly, if at all. Why is this? Well, if you pry open the layers of the genre and identify the core, you will likely see why. When a society stops believing that the core myth of the genre is valid or important, it will drop them. If there is no way to update or revise it, it will eventually die out. By the time the core myth dies out, the conventions and iconography of that genre are also likely no longer very interesting to a culture. The core myth of the western deals with civilization taming the wild and bringing law and order as a good thing to the uncivilized. What changed in the way society thinks to invalidate this core myth? First, we simply ran out of "wild". Once America had fully settled the western frontier, there was nothing left. Every corner of the map has been pretty much mapped out by now, so the idea of going into the wild to civilize it simply doesn't have the same kind of pull on our psyches. Further, the very idea of "civilizing the natives" has become questioned - forcing Native inhabitants of any land to take on European or American religious views or societal structuring policies is now viewed as hubris or worse - cultural imperialism, perhaps even genocide. And finally, the specific idea of European Americans killing Native Americans and taking over their land has been losing favor for a long time - the imagery showing them being shot or rounded up is extremely distasteful to a modern audience. When taken together, these modern trends in the way society sees itself and thinks about the core myth of the genre have essentially rendered that genre no longer valid. Can it be revived? At times, a filmmaker may try to revise the western, or poke fun of it, but it appears as if the genre is kaput as a vital artistic and entertaining means of expressing societal fears and desires. Can you deconstruct the reasons why any other genres, like the musical, might have faded ?

Iconography

this refers to the most obvious surface level of films. It is a kind of shorthand code telling the viewer what kind of film it is and preparing them for the viewing experience. Viewers pay attention to these cues to tell them what kind of film it is and expect certain things to be provided to them when they pay for the experience. One of the first places you see the film's iconography is on the movie posters, trailers or DVD box. You will see all of the main images and hear the main sounds that go along with that genre. You will then naturally expect more of the same in the film. For instance, in a western, you would expect to see horses, cowboy hats, guns, wide-open desert vistas, etc. You would expect to hear gunshots, horses running, barroom pianos, spurs, etc. When you see and hear these things in the ads, you know what kind of film it is. If you see part of the film, you would be able to tell what genre it was pretty quickly based on these codes.

Sugarcoating the Pill

this refers to the process of embedding a specific message or commentary within the generic patterns of a film beyond the core myth of that specific genre. So, while a Western might be about man civilizing the wild, a specific Western like High Noon can also have an allegorical message about McCarthyism in 1950s America. When filmmakers use their films to relay personal or political messages like that, they are in essence using the genre as a vehicle to carry their ideas. Genres make great vehicles because they are so recognized and popular with the public. When the viewers go for a fun day or night out at the cinema, their guards are down. If a filmmaker were to just state outright their personal or political beliefs, viewers would likely resist or shut down. They might even walk out. However, if the filmmaker can hide it underneath the facade of a comedy or western, the public takes it, internalizes it and only later might realize what the film was saying. In that sense, it is like giving someone a bitter medicine by hiding it inside cherry syrup - sugarcoating the pill, in essence. Using humor, sex, action or any other "enjoyable" things are great ways to slide political messages, moral complaints, sermons or any other hard sells past the viewers.

Modernity

this term refers to the historical fact of the modern era: 1890-1945. Prior to this period, in the 1700s, the Age of Enlightenment had seen man elevate human reason, science and technology. Traditional beliefs about God and man's place in nature began to be questioned and rejected. During the 1800s and the start of the Industrial Age, machines took over, with people slowly moving from rural farms to urban cities to work in factories. Pollution, pointless, robotic work and crowded, crime-ridden cities soon began to depress people, while others reveled in the constant stimulation and sin, producing an explosion of pop culture. The Modern era saw people openly questioning traditional morality and social norms like never before. After a Great Depression, two horrifically deadly World Wars, an atomic bomb dropped and extermination camps uncovered, humanity was reeling. People were angst-ridden, alienated, depressed and traumatized. This new age needed new forms and voices to express what was going on. Cinema became the dominant means of expressing these swirling currents.

Pulp Fiction

this type of novel greatly influenced Film Noir. The stories usually dealt with hardboiled, tough detectives who took on seedy cases set in a gritty underworld of sexual perversion, betrayal and violence. The major writers included: Dashiell Hammet and his detective, Sam Spade; Raymond Chandler and his detective, Philip Marlowe; and James M. Cain and his best known book, The Postman Always Rings Twice. These novels had cold, cynical loners moving through morally bankrupt urban landscapes. They used cynical, quick, clipped, hard-boiled dialogue, erupted into violence and had complex, nonchronological storylines that took their characters into mazes and traps.

Revisionism

ultimately, revising genres takes on two major forms. Filmmakers can play around with the iconography and conventions all they want, but if in the end they honor the core myth of the genre, that means the genre is still valid. Likewise, if the public desires and enjoys the experimentation, but still needs the core myth affirmed, the genre is valid. So, filmmakers must take a stance on the genre when they choose to work with it - they have two options:

Subgenres

would simply be films that are a bit different from a main genre, but not distinct enough to warrant their own category.