Story of Film – Episode 1 – Birth of the Cinema
Notes
The following material is from Wikipedia.
Introduction
- Saving Private Ryan (1998) dir. Steven Spielberg
- Camera work made it feel like you were in the actual moment
- Three Colors: Blue (1993) dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski
- Flood of white light used to contrast young and old woman
- Casablanca (1942) dir. Michael Curtiz
- Considered a Hollywood classic
- Too romantic to be classical in the true sense
- Romantic films are always in a rush
- The Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947) dir. Yasujirō Ozu
- Real classical movies
- Pause between the story
- Hollywood is not classic, Japan is
- Odd Man Out (1947) dir. Carol Reed
- Sees troubles reflected in bubbles (in drink)
- Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967) dir. Jean-Luc Godard
- Character once again looks into bubbles and sees troubles
- Taxi Driver (1976) dir. Martin Scorsese
- Another example of character looking into bubbles can see their own troubles
- The French Connection (1971) dir. William Friedkin
- Camera races through space like a bullet
1895-1918: The World Discovers a New Art Form or Birth of the Cinema
- Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge (1888) dir. Louis Le Prince
- The Kiss (1896 film) (a.k.a. May Irwin Kiss) (1896) dir. William Heise
- Little moment that everyone could understand
- Had to watch the film inside something; too private and small
- Cinema needed to be bigger (Lumiere brothers)
- Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895) dir. Louis Lumière
- Considered one of the first, if not the very first motion picture
- Documented everyday life
- Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1896) dir. Louis Lumière
- One of the very first films that the brothers shot and showed
- Said to have unnerved the audience;
- They thought the train was coming at them
- Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1894-1896 ?) dir. William Kennedy
- Dickson dir. William Heise
- Sandow (1894) dir. William Kennedy Dickson
- What Happened on Twenty-third Street, New York City (1901) dir. George S. Flemingand Edwin S. Porter
- Cendrillon (1899) dir. Georges Méliès
- Innovation by accident
- Le voyage dans la lune (1902) dir. Georges Méliès
- La lune à un mètre (1898) dir. Georges Méliès
- The man in the moon
- Astonished people
- Melies: first special effects director
- The Kiss in the Tunnel (1899) dir. George Albert Smith
- One of the first to film from the front of the train
- Created ghostly tracking shot, known as the “phantom ride”
- Shoah (1985) dir. Claude Lanzmann
- Filmed on the same train lines that took Jewish people to gas chambers
- Phantom ride at its most morally serious
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) dir. Stanley Kubrick
- Zooms through the colored light of the cosmos
- Main character, or film itself, is tripping or having an out of body experience
- The Sick Kitten (1903) dir. George Albert Smith
- One of the first closeups in cinema
- Shows more detail
- Birth of closeups
- Cut between wide and close seemed almost natural
- One of the first closeups in cinema
- October: Ten Days That Shook the World (1928) dir. Sergei Eisenstein
- Closeup gives sense of movement and tragedy
- Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) dir. Sergio Leone
- Closeup shows character’s moment of realization
- The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight (1897) dir. Enoch J. Rector
- Broader image showed more of the action
- Birth of widescreen cinema
- The norm now
1903-1918: The Thrill Becomes Story or The Hollywood Dream
- Life of an American Fireman (1903) dir. Edwin S. Porter
- Street action, followed by cut to action from inside house
- Re-cut years later
- Multiple cuts between view inside and outside the house as the firemen made each individual save
- Audience was able to follow story despite editing
- Could now show flow of action from one space to another
- Made chase sequence possible, emphasized movement
- Continuity cutting: editing equivalent of the word “then”
- Landmark: theatrical cinema was giving way to action cinema
- Sherlock Jr. (1924) dir. Buster Keaton
- Used double exposure
- Used cuts to show the world around him being replaced by another world, instantly and almost magically
- The Horse that Bolted (1907) dir. Charles Pathé
- Cuts showed what was happening in different locations at the same time
- Parallel editing
- Editing equivalent of the word “meanwhile”
- Not continuity editing; does not say “then”
- The Assassination of the Duke of Guise (a.k.a. The Assassination of the Duc de Guise) (1908) dir. Charles le Bargy and André Calmettes
- One of the first films in which actors turned their backs to the camera
- Reverse angle shot
- Vivre sa vie (1962) dir. Jean-Luc Godard
- Refused to use reverse angle shot
- Only showed the back of the actress
- Those Awful Hats (1909) dir. D. W. Griffith
- First movie star (Florence Laurence)
- The Mended Lute (1909) dir. D. W. Griffith
- Actress (movie star mentioned above) appeared in this film after it was claimed she was dead
- The Abyss (1910) dir. Urban Gad
- New famous actress: Asta Nielsen
- Less censorship in Europe (sexiness)
- Stage Struck (1925) dir. Allan Dwan
- Costume
- The Mysterious X (1914) dir. Benjamin Christensen
- Photography, crosscutting
- A dream drawn of film (drawing on film)
- One of the most daring debuts in film history
- Häxan (1922) dir. Benjamin Christensen
- Multiple light sources
- Ingeborg Holm (1913) dir. Victor Sjöström
- Naturalism and grace
- Sjostrom: very influential director
- The Phantom Carriage (1921) dir. Victor Sjöström
- Multi-layered film (stories within stories)
- Re-exposes film to show separation of body and soul
- Shanghai Express (1932) dir. Josef von Sternberg
- Youth and glamour
- The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) dir. Charles Tait
- First feature-length film
- Filmed in Australia (outdoors, available light, head-on framing)
- The Squaw Man (1914) dir. Oscar Apfel and Cecil B. DeMille
- First Hollywood feature
- Eyes match across cut; creates emotional connection
- 180 degree rule
- The Empire Strikes Back (1980) dir. Irvin Kershner
- More 180 degree rule
- Falling Leaves (1912) dir. Alice Guy-Blaché
- Alice Guy-Blache: first female director and studio boss
- First story with an arch
- Suspense (1913) dir. Phillips Smalley and Lois Weber
- Sideways POV shot
- Split-screen; shows multiple people all in the same moment
- Inventive shot using mirror
- The Wind (1928) dir. Victor Sjöström
- Female screen writer
- Woman shoots her husband and buries his body in the sand; wind blows sand away, exposing body
- Corpse is exposed, just like her fear
- Showed female audiences things they felt, but had never seen
- Rescued from an Eagle’s Nest (1908) dir. J. Searle Dawley
- “Stagey” family scene with painted skyline
- The House with Closed Shutters (1910) dir. D. W. Griffith
- “Stagey”, airless
- Way Down East (1920) dir. D. W. Griffith
- Delicacy of performance matches delicacy of light
- Visual softness
- Griffith wanted to show “the wind in the trees”
- Orphans of the Storm (1921) dir. D. W. Griffith
- Psychological intensity of a lens
- Used visual softness and back lighting to make actors stand out against backgrounds
- The Birth of a Nation (1915) dir. D. W. Griffith
- Haloed imagery, tracking shots
- Showed the danger of cinema
- Mixed epic with intimate
- Extremely racist, caused some black audience members to be attacked
- Portrayed KKK as heroes and saviors
- Rebirth of a Nation (2007) dir. DJ Spooky
- Sampled and played with toxic scenes of “Birth of a Nation”
- Sort of scribbling on scenes
- Cabiria (1914) dir. Giovanni Pastrone
- Moving dolly shots
- Production design
- Intolerance (1916) dir. D. W. Griffith
- About love’s struggle throughout history
- 3.5 hour film
- Different tints used in portrayals of different time periods
- Red, sepia, blue, yellow
- Cutting between different time periods
- Asking people to not notice action or story, but the meaning of the sequence
- Souls on the Road (a.k.a. Rojo No Reikan) (1921) dir. Minoru Murata
- Two story lines intertwine
- Pioneering use of parallel editing in Asia
- First great Japanese film