Story of Film – Episode 3 – The Golden Age of World Cinema

Story of Film – Episode 3 – The Golden Age of World Cinema

Movie Theater
Movie Theater” by Pioneer Library System is marked with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Notes

The following material is from Wikipedia.

1918-1932: The Great Rebel Filmmakers Around the World

  • The Thief of Bagdad (1924) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Raoul Walsh
    • Soft lighting, shallow focus, dream-like
  • The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer
    • Realism
    • Taking the fantasy and gloss out of main-stream cinema
  • Robert and Bertram (1915) dir. Max Mack
    • Challenge to conventional cinema
    • Over-acting and adolescent
    • Mocking the portrayal of sex and love
  • The Oyster Princess (1919) dir. Ernst Lubitsch
    • Mocking modern-day norms
      • Commentary on capitalism, race, gender, etc
  • The Mountain Cat (1921) dir. Ernst Lubitsch
    • Visually daring
    • Strangely symbolic
    • Surreal production design and screen-masking
  • The Marriage Circle (1924) dir. Ernst Lubitsch
    • Early film after Lubitsch’s move to Hollywood
      • Had to be creative with portrayal of sexuality with American censorship
      • Communicating the ideas of sex and romance without actually showing – we can only infer
  • La Roue (1923) dir. Abel Gance
    • French film
    • Work of impressionism
    • Viewers are able to see inside a character’s mind – flashes of short shots
  • Napoléon (1927) dir. Abel Gance
    • Four-hour film
    • Made main-stream romantic cinema look static in comparison
    • Rethought the camera’s relationship to movement
    • Great showing of dynamism (characterized by vigorous activity and progress)
    • Masterpiece of impressionist filmmaking
  • The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) dir. Robert Wiene
    • Influential expressionist film – looking deeper into the human mind
    • Filled with fear and murder
    • Flooded set with flat light and painted shadows directly on the walls and ground
    • Bizarre imagery – questioning point of view with jagged lighting and space
  • The Tell-Tale Heart (1928) dir. Charles Klein
    • Jagged set design and lighting
    • Directly influenced by Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
  • The Lodger (1927) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
    • British director – worked in Germany
    • Using similar shadowing and hysteria to Dr. Calagari film
  • A Page of Madness (1926) dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa
    • Japanese film
    • Visual overlays and fast cutting as seen in La Roue
    • Uses complex flashbacks to communicate story of character
    • Goes further than The Cabinet of Dr. Calagari
      • Rather than seeing insanity within one character, the entire film seems psychotic
    • Combines techniques of impressionism with the unease of expressionism
  • Metropolis (1927) dir. Fritz Lang
    • One of the most iconic films of the silent era
    • Portrays a clash between workers and an authoritarian industrialist (set in 2000 in a giant city)
    • Influential with story of exploitation and use of urban landscapes
  • The Crowd (1928) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. King Vidor
    • Influenced by Metropolis
    • Another film set within a city landscape
  • Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) dir. F. W. Murnau
    • Made by German director
    • Expressionist masterpiece
    • Husband and wife walking through the city through traffic – city shifts to nature
    • Voted the best film of all time by French critics
  • Opus 1 (1921) dir. Walter Ruttmann
    • Looked by biology – painted on glass
    • One of the first abstract animations
  • Entr’acte (1924) dir. René Clair
    • Placed the camera underneath a dancer
  • Rien que les heures (1926) dir. Alberto Cavalcanti
    • Experimental film
    • Used imagery of multiple eyes
  • Spellbound (1945) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
    • Influenced by Rien que les heures
    • Used imagery of multiple eyes within a dream sequence
  • Un Chien Andalou (1929) dir. Luis Buñuel
    • Attempted to show the unconscious works
    • Nuanced and layered imagery
    • Graphic imagery – showing of free association
    • Innovative method of editing
  • Blue Velvet (1986) dir. David Lynch
    • Influenced by Bunuel’s work
  • L’Age d’Or (1930) dir. Luis Buñuel
    • Shocking imagery and editing
    • Members of the Fascist League of Patriots threw ink at the screen and attacked viewers during its premiere
  • Kino-Pravda n. 19 (1924) dir. Dziga Vertov
    • Russian film
    • Camera attached to train
  • Glumov’s Diary (1923) dir. Sergei Eisenstein
    • Eisenstein’s first film
    • Actors performed “mug for the camera” (directly to the camera, posing/making faces to draw attention)
  • Battleship Potemkin (1925) dir. Sergei Eisenstein
    • Using steps as the scene for a murder
    • Dolly movement along the steps as people run
    • Each shot averaged about 3 seconds, much shorter than American or German cinema
    • Portraying panic w/ montage of attractions
      • Emotions come from the screen to the viewer
  • The Untouchables (1987) dir. Brian De Palma
    • American film inspired by Eisenstein’s step sequence in Battleship Potemkin
    • Using splintered editing, short shots, grand staircase
  • Arsenal (1929) dir. Alexander Dovzhenko
    • Ukranian director/film
    • Takes place during time of war
      • Depicts woman standing frozen in the midst of dead villages
      • Shows the partially buried body of a soldier, his face still smiling
    • Shocking and unsettling imagery that evokes emotion in audience
  • Earth (1930) dir. Alexander Dovzhenko
    • Man walks down road, singing to himself but suddenly collapses
      • Left as a mystery to viewers
  • I Was Born, But… (1932) dir. Yasujirō Ozu
    • Japanese film
    • Ozu: philosopher turned into one of the greatest directors to have ever lived
    • Director known for being serious – this film is a comedy but has a level of maturity
    • Naturalistic performances from actors
    • Dark and honest masterpiece of film with great commentary on society
  • Tokyo Story (1953) dir. Yasujirō Ozu
    • Framing mid-shot of female character w/ her almost looking into the camera
    • Lower angle placement than the norm
      • Using hip height rather than shoulder height creates feeling of balance
    • Focus on precise rhythm and matching shots
  • Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) dir. Chantal Akerman
    • One of the few films to use Ozu’s camera height
  • The Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Yasujirō Ozu
    • Implementation of pauses
      • Giving the story a breather and allowing the space and composition of the shot to also have a breather
    • Ozu’s focus was on centering the human body and de-centering the human ego
      • Creates balance; far different than romanitcism in Hollywood film
  • Osaka Elegy (1936) dir. Kenji Mizoguchi
    • Working around the same time as Ozu
    • Attacking arrogance in Japan and turning focus onto Japanse women
    • Story about a young woman sold into a geisha house
    • Bold staging: character in extreme foreground with action still occurring in background
    • Ends with the young woman on a bridge, contemplating suicide
  • Citizen Kane (1941) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Orson Welles
    • Welles later used similiar staging to Mizoguchi
      • Background actions still in focus
  • Chikamatsu Monogatari (1954) dir. Kenji Mizoguchi
    • Woman married to overbearing husband
    • Intense scene dealing with an affair and suicide
      • Rather than capture the emotion with well-lit, close-up shots, Mizoguchi uses dark lighting and cuts away to further distance between actors and camera (shot of woman’s back – we soo no emotion)
  • Mildred Pierce (1945) dir. Michael Curtiz
    • American film
    • Female character finds herself on a bridge, contemplating suicide as seen in Osaka Elegy
    • Still romanticism though – scene is visually beautiful
  • Romance of the West Chamber (1927) dir. Hou Yao and Minwei Li
    • Chinese film
    • Typical film – period costumes, iris to emphasize one person/part of shot
  • Scenes of City Life (1935) dir. Yuan Muzhi
    • Evovled towards leftist, realist cinema
    • Use of camera angles and suggestive imagery to convey ideas
  • The Goddess (1934) dir. Wu Yonggang
    • Woman forced to sell her body to pay for son’s education
    • Tracking movement conveys spread of information/gossip among parents
      • Woman is shunned and isolated because of her situation
    • Well-known film for popular Chinese actress Ruan Lingyu
      • Women related to and understood her authentic and genuine performances
      • A beginning of real acting
  • Center Stage (1991) dir. Stanley Kwan
    • Ruan Lingyu played by Maggie Cheung
      • Recreating her mannerisms
  • New Women (1935) dir. Cai Chusheng
    • Another Ruan Lingyu film
      • Playing the role of an actress who committed suicide after being hounded by the press
    • An all too-real relation to Ruan’s life as tabloids trashed her modern, realistic acting in a scene dominated by gloss and sparkle
      • Led to her suicide

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