Motion Picture Final Exam
Third Cinema styles
(1) Documentary: The filmmakers of Third Cinema produced some of the most innovative works using various forms of documentary. Ranging from newsreel styles, to TV reportage and eyewitness reports fused with fictional accounts, to creative use of heavy-handed propaganda, television commercials, and photographs, documentary styles illustrated their revolutionary message in innovative ways. Filmmakers using documentary styles often viewed cinema as a site of debate and used images to visualize these concepts in a concrete way. Some filmmakers, such as Santiago Álvarez, made newsreel shorts using still images and carefully selected songs and sounds because these were all he had access to in Cuba. Others filmed documentary footage of coups or protests and were forced to produce and edit their work in exile. Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino's La Hora de los Hornos (Hour of the Furnaces) and Patricio Guzman's La Batalla de Chile (Battle of Chile) are two classic examples of documentary style films; for these films, the fusion of documentary footage with other elements helped shape their revolutionary message by suiting its content. (2) Cinema Novo: was a cinematic style used in Brazilian films of the 1960s and 1970s. Cinema Novo is generally associated with the films of Glauber Rocha due to his influential essay "Estética da Fome" (Esthetic of Hunger), but also includes important works such as Nelson Pereira dos Santos's Vidas Secas (Barren Lives). The main aim of Cinema Novo was to clearly demonstrate the scarcity of resources experienced by many in the Third World. For Glauber Rocha, Cinema Novo was revolutionary in its aim to make the hunger of millions of people understood intellectually, by both those who live it and those who do not, using language (or lack thereof) and images capable of reflecting conditions of poverty. In his words, Cinema Novo is "an evolving complex of films that will make the public aware of its own misery." Cinema Novo was often filmed from the perspective of the people, avoided actors with major star power, and used lighting, cameras, and camera angles creatively to fit the films' budgets. It also avoided existential commentary on poverty, instead presenting it as it is experienced. (3) Allegory is used in Third Cinema to illustrate problems in a few different ways. In many films, one character is used to represent a larger group, particularly members of a particular social or political class, and illustrates the problems and conflicts experienced within this group. Ousmane Sembene's characters often are used allegorically, such as in Moolaadé, where the Mercenary stops a public whipping and is murdered for his values, and the tribe leader's son returns from overseas and must make a decision to leave tradition behind in favor of progress. In other films, the past is used to speak about the present, such as when a historical character's name or image is used to reflect a present-day persona. Particular sequences or scenes can be used as symbolic examples of desire or frustration experienced by those involved in a struggle against colonialism or domination.
Define Third World/ Third Cinema Ch 16 p. 538-547
- "Third World" - once referring to nations that were not allied with the First World United States and the Second World of the Soviets , but it has stuck to many of the films and many of the discussions of them. What developing countries have comprised the "third world"? Africa, Asia, Latin America, India, Pacific rim countries, Mexico. - Alternative term "Third Cinema" has been proposed to distinguish politically opposing films from: the First Cinema of Hollywood and Second Cinema of European auteurs. - "Third World cinema" does not so much describe a national tradition as provide a heading for many politically and economically related but geographically scattered national cinemas. Defined by the national origin and its cultural content.
Hollywood Renaissance ('65-'77) Ch 15, p. 485-513
- After the demise of the studio system and the rise of television, the artistic quality of films and their commercial success was diminished. The "New Hollywood" period, spanning the mid-1960s and early 1980s, was a period of artistic and commercial revival. Though they largely continued to follow classical norms, the films made in this period are characterized in that their narrative logic and subject matter were often unconventional. Hollywood experienced a period of innovation and radicalization, with an influx of new talent to renew it, and brilliant directors like Spielberg, Woody Allen, and Martin Scorsese. Movies such as Bonnie and Clyde ('67) and To Kill a Mockingbird and Psycho. - Comprised of these period values: The offbeat antihero protagonists, the explicit treatment of sexual conflicts and psychological problems, the mixing of comic and serious, and the self-conscious use of cinematic effects (slow motion, jump cuts, stylized memory and dream sequences) - Two cliches used in films of this era: graphic sex and violence, and how it is used cast a cynical look on old Hollywood to suggest that their happy conclusions simplified the unresolved divisions of American life.
Alexandre Astruc and "camera stylo"
- Alexandre Astruc is a French film critic and film director born 13 July 1923, in Paris (France). - Before becoming a film director he was a journalist, novelist and film critic. - His contribution to the auteur theory centers on his notion of the "caméra-stylo" or "camera-pen" and the idea that directors should wield their cameras like writers use their pens. -putting a deeper, psychological aspect to films
"la politiques de auteurs" - "policy of filmmakers" ( (auteur theory)
- Cahiers du cinéma is thought to practise the politique des auteurs. (1) "temperature of the director on set" - director does more than just polishing actors. Films are an art form, akin to painting or a poem, with the director as the dominant creative force, or the artist . (2) A film is seen to be the manifestation of the director's personal vision, driven by an idiosyncratic visual style or by characteristic themes and techniques. (i.e. occurring theme from film to film and an outward style [mis-en-scene]) - Hitchcock was well-known for this - The two main factors in the formation of la politique des auteurs in the pages of Cahiers du Cinema were the state of the mainstream French film industry, the Tradition of Quality, and the influence of films produced from within the Hollywood studio system.
- How were the traditional genre forms transformed during the rough decade '64-'77?
- Hollywood had Europeanized films, but maintained its old inclination toward rigid genres and marketable cycles. A series of films about compassionate thieves followed Bonnie and Clyde, a series of romantic comedies followed the Graduate, the chase scene in Bullitt was topped by the chase in the French Connection . They were still descendants of the old genres: the western, the gangster, the policier, the screwball comedy, etc. - Basic genre division in the new films was city films and country films. Beyond those lay the road films (Easy Rider), the wilderness of horror (Night of the Living Dead), and the world of fantasy (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory '71). - The city films developed a thematic opposition between the unnaturalness and brutality of the city and the freedom and openness outside of it. - Suburban films , like the Graduate, showed the suburbs as clean, bright, and new, but lacking a moral center and soul - The country films, were the new "experiential" western, and were more violent sensual, and anti establishment than earlier westerns. The plains and desserts were the last outposts of the free spirit of America - Gangster crime movies mirrored the same basic division between past and presents, city and country, rural and urban criminals.
Truffaut
- In post-war France, these ideas of expression through plot, character and theme were further developed. - Truffaut wrote, in an article entitled "A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema", criticised the Tradition of Quality for being literary, not truly cinematic and for perpetrating psychological realism. This angered Truffaut, who found directors, such as Jean Delannoy and Pierre Bost, creating films lacking in personal flair and only worthy of the title of metteur-en-scène. - Truffaut longed for films that were personally honest and for films that went beyond merely adapting a literary source. His early films were built around freedom in human relationships and film technique.
-What changes did Hollywood note demographically about American audiences of the '60s? - How did that assessment affect output and content?
- In the 1950s, Technicolor developed a far more widespread use, while widescreen processes and technical improvements, such as CinemaScope, stereo sound and others, such as 3-D, were invented in order to retain the dwindling audience and compete with television. However, these were generally unsuccessful in increasing profits. - By the time the baby boomer generation was coming of age in the 1960s, 'Old Hollywood' was rapidly losing money; the studios were unsure how to react to the much changed audience demographics. The change in market during the period went from a middle aged high school educated audience in the mid 1960s, to a younger, more affluent, college-educated demographic. - Foreign cinema converted American producers. European art films (especially the Commedia all'italiana, the French New Wave, and the Spaghetti Western) and Japanese cinema were making a splash in United States — the huge market of disaffected youth seemed to find relevance and artistic meaning in movies like Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup, with its oblique narrative structure and full-frontal female nudity. - The desperation felt by studios during this period of economic downturn, and after the losses from expensive movie flops, led to innovation and risk-taking, allowing greater control by younger directors and producers. , the studios hired a host of young and more underground filmmakers (many of whom were mentored by Roger Corman) and allowed them to make their films with relatively little studio control. - the breakdown of the Production Code in 1966 and the new ratings system in 1968 (reflecting growing market segmentation) - Jack Valenti
Reflexive elements and Truffaut's Jules and Jim
- Reflexivity in cinema means to play with editing, storytelling, and continuity. - Jules and Jim (1962) French romantic drama film, directed, produced and written by François Truffaut. Set around the time of World War I, it describes a tragic love triangle involving French Bohemian Jim, his shy Austrian friend Jules, and Jules' girlfriend and later wife Catherine. - Reflexive elements Truffaut incorporated include newsreel footage, photographic stills, freeze frames, panning shots, wipes, masking, dolly shots, and voiceover narration (by Michel Subor). Truffaut's cinematographer was Raoul Coutard, a frequent collaborator with Jean-Luc Godard, who employed the latest lightweight cameras to create an extremely fluid film style. For example, some of the postwar scenes were shot using cameras mounted on bicycles. -Jeanne Moreau incarnates the style of the French New Wave actress. The critic Ginette Vincindeau has defined this as, "beautiful, but in a kind of natural way; sexy, but intellectual at the same time, a kind of cerebral sexuality, — this was the hallmark of the nouvelle vague woman." Though she isn't in the film's title, Catherine is "the structuring absence. She reconciles two completely opposed ideas of femininity".
Principal films of the French New Wave
-400 Blows (1959) by Truffaut - to raise hell, about a young boy who finds himself getting in constant trouble with adults, and he must endure a prisonlike school and a school-like prison; sentenced to both by hypocritical unsympathetic, and unperceptive adults. Unknown actors, real locations -Alain Resnais's Hiroshima mon amour (1959) -Breathless (1961) by Godard -was one of the earliest, most influential examples of French New Wave (nouvelle vague) cinema. It brought international acclaim to this new style of French filmmaking. At the time, the film attracted much attention for its bold visual style, which included the unconventional use of jump cuts. The director fed lines to actors and a documentary style with improvision. Reminds you are watching a movie, by actors talking to the audience and looking at the camera, to make you think about the story in an intellectual way without getting absorbed.
Hollywood in the last decade Ch. 18 p. 631-633
-CGI, contemporary genres -The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004,US) What is the CSA and how important is the "star factor" currently? Casting Society of America
Chinese and Asian cinema - 5th gen. Ch 14 463-468
-What facilitated the release and acceptance of films by Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou? During the Cultural Revolution, the film industry was severely restricted, coming almost to a standstill from 1967 to 1972. The industry flourished following the end of the Cultural Revolution, including the "scar dramas" of the 1980s, such as Evening Rain (1980), Legend of Tianyun Mountain (1980) and Hibiscus Town (1986), depicting the emotional traumas left by the period. Starting in the mid to late 1980s, with films such as One and Eight (1983) and Yellow Earth (1984), the rise of the Fifth Generation brought increased popularity to Chinese cinema abroad, especially among Western arthouse audiences, with films like Red Sorghum (1987), The Story of Qiu Ju (1992) and Farewell My Concubine (1993) winning major international awards. - Diverse in style and subject, the Fifth Generation directors' films ranged from black comedy (Huang Jianxin's The Black Cannon Incident, 1985) to the esoteric (Chen Kaige's Life on a String, 1991), but they share a common rejection of the socialist-realist tradition worked by earlier Chinese filmmakers in the Communist era. Other notable Fifth Generation directors include Wu Ziniu, Hu Mei, Li Shaohong and Zhou Xiaowen. Fifth Generation filmmakers reacted against the ideological purity of Cultural Revolution cinema. By relocating to regional studios, they began to explore the actuality of local culture in a somewhat documentary fashion. Instead of stories depicting heroic military struggles, the films were built out of the drama of ordinary people's daily lives. They also retained political edge, but aimed at exploring issues rather than recycling approved policy. While Cultural Revolution films used character, the younger directors favored psychological depth along the lines of European cinema. They adopted complex plots, ambiguous symbolism, and evocative imagery.[45] Some of their bolder works with political overtones were banned by Chinese authorities. - Stylistically and structurally, how would you compare Red Sorghum's to other films screened this semester?
French New Wave Ch 13, pg 384-405
-year of emergence - 1958 - 67ish - describes the sudden appearance, on many fronts, of brilliant films by new directors. -Consisted of two primary parts: (1) the Cahier group of critics-turned-directors: Claude, Chabrol, Jen-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, and Francois Truffaut - and (2) the "Left Bank" group who went directly into filmmaking - Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and Agnes Varda - created in resistance to the French studio system, which was exhausted by war films -Films took a new approach to old subjects in an original style and expanded the boundaries of filmmaking - favored new modes of production: real locations, lightweight cameras, low budget available resources, and small crews instead of large productions
What were some influences of the directors of the Hollywood Renaissance?
American Auteurs had a higher control over the scripting, production and editing decisions, giving them more freedom in selecting projects and giving them more credit for their contributions. They controlled the responsibility for the entire project to show their own personal views and visual styles in their films. - John Cassavetes is inspired by the intricacies of living and survival against oppressing forces -Spielberg - Woody Allen - conscious of the older American comic-film tradition that he inherits. He is an observer and chronicler of the social scene. His late-70s films alluded to Soviet cinema and 19th century Russian fiction as well as his comedic mythology. - Martin Scorsese - a tense urban sensibility and visions of spiritually charged moral conflict - Coppola, known for being an all-around movie man, was committed to its past and its future, its genres, and its possibilities. He did commercial epics like Godfather Part II and Apocalypse Now. Exploration of achievement and degradation, the dissolution of the American Dream that immigrants came here for in the first place. Dark underside of American business.
What made it hard for New German Cinema movies to find substantial American audiences during the mid-late 70s? Which American film and director is Fassbinder acknowledging with Ali: Fear That Eats the Soul?
Americans wanted German and other foreign cinema films to be sexy. They were considered to dark and cynical. There was a decline in art repertory theatres in America, which are independently owned. American genre studies and the Hollywood Renaissance of the '70s created Blockbusters like Jaws and Star Wars. -Fassbinders' Ali: Fear Eats the Soul revisions Sirk's All that Heaven Allows
American Independents in the '80s Ch 17 p. 585-590, 602-603
An independent film or indie film is a film production resulting in a feature film that is produced mostly or completely outside of the major film studio system, in addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment agencies. By the mid-1930s, at the top were the five major studios, 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, RKO Pictures, and Warner Bros. Then came three smaller companies, Columbia Pictures, United Artists, and Universal Studios. Finally there was "Poverty Row" who were "major independents" , a catch all term used to encompass any other smaller studio that managed to fight their way up into the increasingly exclusive movie business. Top four on Poverty Row = Grand National, Republic Pictures, Monogram Pictures, and Producers Relasing Corporation (PRC). Poverty Row is a catch all term used to encompass any other smaller studio that managed to fight their way up into the increasingly exclusive movie business. It is worth noting that though the small studios that made up Poverty Row could be characterized as existing "independently" of any major studio, they utilized the same kind of vertically and horizontally integrated systems of business as the larger players in the game. Though the eventual breakup of the studio system and its restrictive chain-theater distribution network would leave independent movie houses eager for the kind of populist, seat-filling product of the Poverty Row studios, that same paradigm shift would also lead to the decline and ultimate disappearance of "Poverty Row" as a Hollywood phenomenon. While the kinds of films produced by Poverty Row studios only grew in popularity, they would eventually become increasingly available both from major production companies and from independent producers who no longer needed to rely on a studio's ability to package and release their work. -Directors that emerged during this period: Burnett, Sayles, Jarmusch, Lee, Soderbergh. -What changes was Hollywood undergoing during the eighties? n retrospect, it can be seen that Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) and George Lucas's Star Wars (1977) marked the beginning of the end for the New Hollywood. With their unprecedented box-office successes, these movies jump-started Hollywood's blockbuster mentality, giving studios a new paradigm as to how to make money in this changing commercial landscape. The focus on high-concept premises, with greater concentration on tie-in merchandise (such as toys), spin-offs into other media (such as soundtracks), and the use of sequels (which had been made more respectable by Coppola's The Godfather Part II), all showed the studios how to make money in the new environment. Footloose, Flashance, Saturday Night Fever, less political, about freedom from conventional blue collar life. The 1990s saw the rise and success of independent films not only through the film festival circuit but at the box office as well while established actors. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 1990 from New Line Cinema grossed over $100 million in the United States making it the most successful indie film in box-office history to that point. Miramax Films had a string of hits with Sex, Lies, and Videotape, My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown, and Clerks, putting Miramax and New Line Cinema in the sights of big companies looking to cash in on the success of independent studios. - By the early 2000s, Hollywood was producing three different classes of films: 1) big-budget blockbusters, 2) art films, specialty films and niche-market films produced by the conglomerate-owned indies and 3) genre and specialty films coming from true indie studios and producers. -How would you describe the structure and style of Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise? concieved as a black and white film consisting of nothing but sequence shots (Each scene is presented in a single long take) linked by blackouts. The scenes follow one another in chronological order. The number of three.
Cahiers du Cinema and Bazin
Andre Bazin - renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist. Bazin started to write about film in 1943 and was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 1951.
-What gave rise to the "dark, or black comedy" during that era? -What social/cultural institutions are satired in Harold and Maude?
Black comedy: (1) the omnipresence of death (2) absurdity of life This is shown in Harold and Maude through his joking attempts at taking his life and Maude's purposeful drug overdose on her 80th birthday. She believed that after 80 you are just holding on. She had experienced the Holocaust, but decided to live her life to the fullest, often seen stealing cars, talking back to cops, and overall living recklessly. They have a relationship that is unconventional considering their age difference.
-What was the first blockbuster? -How did Hollywood begin to recover in the late '70s? -Know the significance of Spielberg, Lucas, Industrial LIght and Magic.
Jaws - Prior to 1975, summertime was considered by Hollywood executives and movie theater employees alike to be a graveyard: a dead zone where beautiful weather and outdoor activities kept people out of the theaters and gave Hollywood little motivation to turn out high-quality content. All of that changed with the release of Steven Spielberg's Jaws in the summer of 1975. The film not only smashed all previous summer box office records but all box office records period. Those records stood until two years later when the summer release of Star Wars blew through them both. The success of both films firmly cemented the concept of "summer blockbuster" in the public consciousness and Hollywood took note; every year since they've done their best to lure people away from summer activities and into theaters with high production value action-filled movies. - Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) is an American motion picture visual effects company that was founded in May 1975 by George Lucas. It is a division of the film production company, Lucasfilm, which Lucas founded, and was created when Lucas began production of the film Star Wars. For many years, particularly during the widespread inception of computer graphics in film during the 1980s, ILM was considered the leading industry standard production house for computer graphics in film; many studios other than Lucasfilm sent scenes to the studio for CGI. It is also the original founder company of the animation studio Pixar.
Motion Picture Export Association
Primary function: Following World War II, in 1945, the Motion Picture Export Association of America was formed to restore the American film market, and fight the trade barriers and restrictions imposed on American films. In 1994, its name was changed from the Motion Picture Export Association of America to the Motion Picture Association to more accurately reflect the global nature of audiovisual entertainment in today's international marketplace.
"Das Neue Kino" Ch 16 p. 528-536
The "Das Neue Kino" - New cinema - German cinema movement - What stifled the revival of the German cinema post-WWII into the early '50s? Post-war German cinema and the country in general were filled with American culture, they struggled to redefine themselves and rid the past of what happened. Many were uneducated about the horrors of the war, with Hitler and the Holocaust, even in the 70s. hey still had a split identity with the Berlin Wall (East and West Germany). - the Oberhausen Manifesto was formulated by 26 German screenwriters and directors at the Oberhausen Film Festival of 1962, called for a new German cinema, "free from the stifling habits and conventions of the German film industry". The group successfully pressured West German legislature to set up a film board and allocate subsidies for film production Key directors, Herzog, Fassbinder, and Wenders, made the first three feature films of the late '60s, early '70s that achieved international acclaim. They were supported by gov't subsidies. Signs of Life (Herzog, '68), was about a German soldier fighting the war still on an island. Love is Colder Than Death (Fassbinder, '69) and Wenders' The Goalie's Anxiety at Penalty Kick ('70).- a man kills a stranger he just met and waits for authorities to take him -Fassbinders' Ali: Fear Eats the Soul revisions Sirk's All that Heaven Allows -- Filmverlag der Autoren is a German film distributor originally founded in 1971 to help finance and distribute independent films by German Autoren film directors, that is directors who are renowned for predominantly adapting their own screenplays. Many directors of the New German Cinema movement were associated with it such as Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders, and Alexander Kluge; whose films were produced and distributed by the Filmverlag and many of whom were members of the Filmverlag's board.
Third World Cinema Themes
They vary depending on the filmmaker, the country of origin, the resources available, and the political and social climate, these films are part of the Third Cinema project because they address certain topics and adhere to particular guiding themes: (1) Aims for liberation of the oppressed and working class, to give them a voice. (2) It examines the political, social and cultural issues of these "third world" nations, and questions the structures of power, particularly colonialism and its legacies. These films were produced to either educate their own citizens about the cultural history and contemporary conditions of the nation and/or to present that nation's problems and positions to citizens of the rest of the world. (3) Third Cinema engages questions of identity and community within nations and diaspora populations who have left their home countries because of exile, persecution, or economic migration. (4) Third Cinema opens a dialogue with history to challenge previously held conceptions of the past, to demonstrate their legacies on the present, and to reveal the "hidden" struggles of women, impoverished classes, indigenous groups, and minorities. (4) Third Cinema challenges viewers to reflect on by the experience of poverty and subordination by showing how it is lived, not how it is imagined. (5) Third Cinema facilitates interaction among intellectuals and the masses by using film for education and dialogue. (6) Third Cinema strives to recover and rearticulate the nation, using politics of inclusion and the ideas of the people to imagine new models and new possibilities.
African-American pioneers
What were the significant contributions of African- American screen pioneers - Micheaux, Robeson, McDaniel, Poiter, and van Peebles? At the beginning of the 20th century, black representation in film, largely consisted of stereotypes that distorted the black experience and were shaped by the sentimental racism of American culture as well as the more overt racism of society. The early black independent filmmakers struggled to counter the demeaning portrayal with more realistic images of black Americans, of ten drawn from the literature of black writers. Black-produced and Black-cast movies that created an alternate set of cultural referents and established new character types and situations that challenged conventional representations. - Poiter in Lililies of the Filed ('63)