History of World Cinema Midterm Study Guide

Long take

shot that has an unusually long duration (i.e. > 30 seconds)

Long shot

subjects are seen in total, with space above and below the subjects.

Soviet Montage Filmmakers - Common interests

• EDITING • TYPAGE • CINEMA AS A MACHINE ART

Parallel editing

Going back and forth b/w lines of action in separate spaces that are happening at the same time. AKA Crosscutting, continuously alternating two or more scenes that often are happening simultaneously in different locations. Diagram: -

Andrew Higson. "British Film Culture and the Idea of National Cinema." ____. "The Documentary Idea and the Melodrama of Everyday Life—The Public, the Private, and the National Family: Millions Like Us and This Happy Breed" [excerpt]

"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

Differences b/w French Impressionism and German Expressionism

French v. German • Focus using, on interior state (through camera angles, lighting) v. focus on externalized interior state (extravagant set design and acting) • What cinema can do to transform, penetrate reality v. tortured subjectivity distorts cost • Makes people into objects and gives objects personality v. further popularizes style of visual art

Five distinct policies adopted by national cinemas in response to Hollywood (Andrew Higson)

1. Collusion • "Jointly exploiting the domestic market through the distribution and exhibition of American films" 2. Direct competition with Hollywood • May involve collusion: profits from distribution and exhibition of American films are reinvested in production 3. Product differentiation. • When films are aimed at the domestic market alone --> in Britain, either the cheap, popular genre film or the art cinema/ quality film/heritage film 4. Protectionist intervention • Barriers to free trade and incentives for domestic production 5. International cooperation • An attractive option, since Hollywood dominates globally, not just in one nation

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.

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.

Reflexivity

A film that makes the audience aware of the filmmaking process, acknowledges that it is part of the film medium.

Continuity editing

AKA invisible editing. Style of editing marked by its emphasis on maintaining the continuous sand seemingly uninterrupted flow of action in a story. System of cutting to maintain continuous and clear narrative action. • 180-degree rule • Shot reverse shot • Eyeline match Diagram: -

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)

Characteristics of production, distribution, and exhibition during the transitional years of cinema

As film becomes an industry and cultural institution, film practices become more stable and uniform. Development of National Film Styles • During WWI, interrupted trade and nationalist fervor contribute to the development of national film styles Film Production and Organization Becomes Increasingly Organized and Industrialized • New business practices w/ industrialization and the emergence of Classical Hollywood Cinema • Economies of scale: Division of labor, Streamlined "assembly line" production flow, vertical integration, standardization Changes in Distribution and Exhibition • Creation of film exchanges itinerant exhibition - fixed venues, theater building boom, shorts --> features, vertical integration • Earliest fixed sites of exhibition: "Nickelodeon" theaters Nickelodeon Era, 1905-07 • Cheap, lucrative storefront theaters • High turnover (low ticket prices, continuous programming) • Location (business districts, working class neighborhoods) • Film exchanges (films rented, not owned) The Move to Features • By 1908, single-reel film became the industry standard - 1000 ft, 35mm, 16 fps = about 16.5 min • 1912 Multireel films 2-3 reels in length • 1913 U.S. production co's begin to produce "feature length" films, runtime of 1 hour or more

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

Soviet montage

Approach to editing that emphasizes dynamic, often discontinuous, relationships between shots and the juxtaposition of images to create ideas not present in either shot by itself.

Analytical editing

Begins with master shot, where viewer sees the entire space. Followed bu cut-ins to see same detail from a closer distance. Editing that breaks the continuity of time and space and putting them back together to create emotional impact. Ex: The Gay Shoe Clerk (1903) - zoom in on woman's foot from longer shot of clerk putting shoe on her foot. Diagram: -

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)

Screening 1: How a French Nobleman Got a Wife through the New York Herald Personal Columns (Edison Manufacturing Co., 1904, U.S., 11 min.); The Great Train Robbery (Edwin S. Porter, 1903, U.S.A. 12 min.); A Trip to the Moon (Georges Méliès, 1902, France, 15 min.)

Both George Méliès' "plotted trick film," A Trip to the Moon (1902), and The Edison Company's "chase film," How A French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns (1904), employ elements of narrative structures, but each film chiefly seeks to create a spectacle for the audience. First, by having the actors repeatedly look into the camera in A Trip to the Moon, Méliès creates an exciting cinematic experience where the audience is directly addressed. Also, through the elaborate and fantastic set design, bright hand coloring of the film, and innovative editing techniques seen in each frame of A Trip to the Moon, it is clear that the film's plot serves, as Méliès' stated, "merely as a pretext for the 'stage effects" or "the 'tricks'" that are a feature of "the cinema of attractions" (Gunning, 230). Additionally, though the drawn-out chase of a potential suitor by a horde of women in How A French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns may have a linear narrative structure, the film employs techniques that are characteristic of "the cinema of attractions." In following each woman encounter and respond to various obstacles on her chase in these lengthy shots, the film provides "mini-spectacle pauses in the unfolding of narrative" (Gunning, 233). Undoubtedly, these examples of early cinema amazed audiences by creating the spectacles described by Gunning in his description of "the cinema of attractions."

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

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)

Cinematographe

Camera, printer and projector created by the Lumiere brothers

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.

Typage

Casting of actors based on their physical or personal similarity to a character (i.e. examples in Odessa steps scene in Battleship Potemkin) • Meant to represent different social strata • Creates dynamism within shots by casting people w/ unusual and remarkable physical characteristics • Ex: Odessa steps sequence displays different forms of locomotion, contrasts with the mechanical stepping of the soldiers as they advanced down the stairs

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)

Four ways of defining "national cinema" (Higson)

Cinema and the nation: Possible ways of defining "national cinema" • Industry (in economic terms - production, distribution) • Audience (in terms of what people are watching) • Branding - only some films (prestige films), segment of films that pertain to or promote national culture/identity • All films and their content and style, in terms of their "representation" - films attempt to speak for the people, deal with questions of national identity, promote the national worldview Films are public representations that reflected a shared imaginary • "The nation" a shared community, a common culture

André Gaudreault. "The Culture Broth and the Froth of Cultures of 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.

Expressivity v. narrative clarity (Kristin Thompson)

Cinema of the 19-teens developed in two directions • Clarity - convey necessary narrative information to tell the story; technique: editing • Expressivity - excess, creating emotional intensity or suspense; techniques used may seem redundant, but slowing down allows us to absorb emotion Catalog of elements used in films, expressive mise-en-scene

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

Anton Kaes. "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Expressionism and Cinema."

Conversely, in Anton Kaes piece, 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Expressionism and Cinema," the author remarks upon how Robert Wiene's convention-breaking, German expressionist film divided American audiences with its "visual shock-effects, deliberately nonrealistic, painted studio sets and complex and confusing narrative" (Kaes, 41). Though the style shares a variety of features with the European avant-garde movements in its attempts to "disorient the viewer and challenge traditional perceptions," German Expressionism specifically employed techniques of "exaggeration and distortion" (Kaes, 43). With its use of aestheticized set design and overly dramatic makeup, costuming, and acting in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Wiene's expressionist interest in distortion and theatricality was on full display. By including very little camera movement, Wiene highlighted the exaggerated acting and surreal set design of the film to express and externalize the twisted internal mental state of the characters. Though The Fall of the House of Usher and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari employed different cinematic techniques, it is clear that both used extreme stylization to emphasize the paranormal aspects of their film and express the internal state of their characters.

Cultural series (André Gaudreault)

Cultural series, how you construe genealogy of cinema - projection v. photography emphasis • Cinema developed in more than just one country *there's more to cinema than just the invention of the technology. *it is a social, cultural and economic system Early films were diverse and experimental—no single technology, no one genealogy (Gaudreault's "cultural series")

Jump cut

Cut where there is a distinct mismatch in the action (enough to be noticed by the audience)

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

Modernism

Defining film as an art with specific formal qualities • Tend to emphasize form, materials, and construction over content • Self-reflexive use of form - experiencing something constructed for us • Concerned with medium specificity - artists exploit unique qualities, properties of the medium Difference w/ Avant-Garde? • Innovation, even aggressive in pursuit of new (want to tear down the old) • Belligerent artists, create and destroy

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 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

Charles Musser. "At the Beginning: Motion Picture Production, Representation, and Ideology at the Edison and Lumière Companies."

Edison and Lumiere • Edison created movies in his studio the Black Maria • One of his employees created film with strongman Sandow, featuring him moving through a series of poses which makes it appear as if photographs of him are coming to life. • Edison's films were more visceral, sensual.

Contiguity editing

Editing on-screen direction to create contiguous space, Syncing of images (could be unrelated) to create association between them (i.e. chase scene) Ex: Chase Films Diagram: -

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

Bo Florin. "Sjöström: From National to International."

Films defined by lyrical intimacy. • Created through downplayed acting • Lighting in scenes • Mise en scene and montage emphasizing a circular space with a clear center where movements converge • Use of 360 degree cinematic space and dissolve technique.

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).

Cinema of attractions

Exhibitionist (extravagant) cinema • Direct address to the audience • Goal is not realism or narrative so much as to awe and amaze. • Dominant until ~1906-1907, then goes underground.

Multiple-language version

Film produced in several different language versions for international markets (i.e. The Blue Angel)

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

National film styles that emerged in distinction to Hollywood

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

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.

Deep focus

Image presented with great depth of field, all objects across from foreground to background presented with equally sharp focus at the same time.

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

photogénie

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" Builds on the soul of the object in the image • What is the best to be photographed • Views inanimate objects as having an innate personality • Emphasis on the face • *Close up on face leads to object; opposite is true for objects

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

Kinetoscope

Invented by Edison, images viewed through a peephole. Kinetoscope parlors: social venues where people could pay to watch images.

French Impressionism

Medium specificity-->self-reflexivity • Used camera techniques to showcase the qualities specific to cinema including slow-motion, superimposition, tracking shots, focus • Concerned with hidden life of things; stuff we aren't used to seeing • Cinema as a time-based medium, allows for capturing movement - not only in space, but also in time • Wants to raise cinema as an art form, explore what it has to offer • Techniques to capture mobile aspects of the world - slow/fast motion, freeze frames, reverse motion • Close-up and idea of magnification - bring things close to the eye that we may not normally see in real life • People and personality can be enhanced by cinema - personification, ability to attribute personality, characteristics to inanimate objects • Ex: The Fall in the House of Usher

Italian Neorealism

National film movement characterized by stories set amongst the poor and the working class • Filmed on location • Frequently using non-professional actors. • Mostly contend with the difficult economic and moral conditions of post-World War II Italy • Analysis of reality through universal truth • Often became melodramatic • Long takes, deep staging=define sense of space • Depicted conditions of everyday life, including poverty, oppression, injustice, and desperation

German Expressionism

Outward projection of interior states, especially agitated states and abnormal psychology (ex: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari). • Made by commercial studios, appropriating expressionism from other art forms • Interested in distortion, theatrical, painterly • Use of aestheticized film sets, makeup, acting • Epstein's complaint - not medium specific • Externalization of character's internal state - expressing the twisted inner mental state of the protagonist

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

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

Overlapping editing

Repetition, cuts that repeat part or all of action, stretching of time through overlapping editing - action prolonged through various shots. Ex: Battleship Potemkin

Diegesis

Setting created in a film through the objects, events, spaces and the characters that inhabit them, including things, actions, and attitudes not explicitly presented in the film but inferred by the audience.

Elliptical cutting

Shot transitions that omit part of an event

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

British documentary movement

Subject matter • Films tried to reflect character and way of life Social and political objectives - (Higson) • With the emergence of a British film press and studios, cinema used as a mass medium to stimulate patriotism, as well as a means of education • Focus on labor, depicted the working class, social impetus to promote the public good • Concerned with public good, employed public gaze and montage construction. Example: Housing Problems documentary • Moral realism - social mission, show how industries work and how workers contributed • Poetic realism - interest in expressive, creative treatment and reality 1930s British documentary films • Publicly funded (state sponsored) • Promoted specific national industries • Showed different forms of labor • Often focused on the working-class • Evinced concern with the public good • Employed a "public gaze" and montage construction - Hollywood deals with individualized drama and singular protagonist, montage creates cross-section of society, idea of collective Studying audiences • Studying spectatorship v. reception studies • Spectatorship: often reconstructed through examination of the film's formal construction and pertinent contexts (directorial, social, political, historical) • Reception studies: attempts to understand how empirical viewers watched and responded to films • Both may turn to close analysis and examination of the film's address • Both assume spectatorship is complex, contradictory, heterogeneous, and historically variable

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

Textuality and Film Form • 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)

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

The Blue Angel • Sound helps to construct a sense of space, manipulate audience response • 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.

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). For example, after describing the camera movement used in Photographing a Female Crook (1904) and Hooligan in Jail (1903), Gunning states that "the enlargement is not a device expressive of narrative tension; it is in itself an attraction and the point of the film" (Gunning, 232). These examples demonstrate that the early films included in "the cinema of attractions" offered "a new sort of stimulus" for the audience. (Gunning, 232). Through the creation of these cinematic spectacles, these films were able to directly address the spectator and appeal to to his/her sense of wonder.

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.

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 (Hansen 10). • Cinema regarded as an avatar of the modern, the popular medium for negotiating the complexities of modernity, as the industrial art form • Moving away from idea of classical Hollywood as norm, timeless, universal • Movies showed what was new, modern, changing • Using vernacular as dialect - interested in how situated audiences experiences Hollywood and how these films borrowed from Hollywood

Mise-en-scene

The relationship of an object or objects within the frame to each other, to the setting, and to the frame itself. What happens within the frame.

Contrapuntal use of sound

The sounds or music used in a film that contrasts with the action in the shot. • Impression relayed by the sound at odds with that from the visuals, actions onscreen • Often relates to mood • Ex: In The Blue Angel, Prof. is taken to balcony seats and introduced - sounds of jeers, riff-raff below, audience could care less

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).

Kuleshov effect

Viewers derive meaning from two shots sequentially than one shot in isolation (and their reactions will change based on the types of shots they are presented with) Demonstrate how the Kuleshov Effect works -

Eisenstein's concept of montage v. Pudovkin's concept of montage (according to Eisenstein)

Vsevolod Pudovkin - his dynamic, narrative editing was put down by Eisenstein as "brick by brick" montage - Sergei Eisenstein - unlike Pudovkin's "brick by brick" approach, montage as conflict + LEAP According to Eisenstein, Pudovkin did not truly explore the potenial of montage ("brick by brick" is an insult) • However, like Eisenstein, often uses editing to create metaphors and uses typage

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

Michel Chion. "Projections of Sound on Image."

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Characteristics of production, distribution, and exhibition during the early years of cinema

~ 1890s to ~ 1904 early cinema characteristics • one shot, one camera position • approximately 1 min in length • exhibited in a mixed variety format: - vaudeville and burlesque - circuses and amusement parks - traveling theaters and the lecture circuit • many films were tinted, toned, or hand- colored - between 1908 and 1925, as many as 80% of prints Early cinema was NOT primitive • 1895 - Lumiere brothers credited as beginning cinema, but there were prior experiments with the medium • Gunning: identifies common mode of address in these early films - exhibitionist, aim to wow the audience • Gaudreault: cultural series, how you construe genealogy of cinema - projection v. photography emphasis • Musser: how the inventions and technologies determined what early films looked like - draw connections of aesthetics of early filmmakers and their collaborators, surroundings

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.

Mark Shiel. "Describing Neorealism."

• Realism as visual truth • Realism as political or ethical disposition

André Bazin

• b. 1918, d. 1958 • Cofounder of Cahiers du cinèma • "Spiritual father of the French New Wave" • Bazin's cinema: William Wyler, Orson Welles, Charlie Chaplin, neorealism, Jean Renoir • One of the themes of classical film theory: cinema's realism • Influenced by Christianity, Existentialism