Notes
The following material is from Wikipedia.
The 1930s: The Great American Movie Genres…
- Her Dilemma (a.k.a. Confessions of a Co-Ed) (1931) dir. Dudley Murphy
- sound was the big thing, picture was secondary
- flatter lighting, had to adjust to switching between wide shot and close up
- “cinema became far less cinematic”
- Love Me Tonight (1932) dir. Rouben Mamoulian
- “emerging symphony of everyday noises”
- inventive, new way of using sound
- used sound as a metaphor for travel
- substituted real sound for metaphorical sound, “freed directors from sonic literalness”
- The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920) dir. Carl Boese and Paul Wegener
- genre: horror
- diagonal composition, expressionist design
- Frankenstein (1931) dir. James Whale
- borrowed heavily from The Golem
- German expressionism became popular style for horror films
- “greatest essay in prejudice”
- Eyes Without a Face (1960) dir. Georges Franju
- horror cinema: the dread of the unseen
- Audition (1999) dir. Takashi Miike
- has one of the greatest shocks in film
- is more able to get closer to our nervous system
- The Public Enemy (1931) dir. William A. Wellman
- genre: the gangster picture
- had no European roots
- many denounced the film for the character’s charm, was the start of a moral debate about gangster films
- Scarface (1932) dir. Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson
- turned the gangster genre into Greek tragedy
- “smallness of the big man”
- Scarface (1983) dir. Brian De Palma
- was remade
- chimed well with the consumerist 1980s
- Seven Samurai (1954) dir. Akira Kurosawa
- mixed gangster theme with traditional themes of samurai and villagers
- one of the most influential films of all time
- Once Upon a Time in America (1984) dir. Sergio Leone
- probably best gangster film
- The Iron Horse (1924) dir. John Ford
- genre: western
- landscape film
- camera moves fast as opposed to gangster films where camera was often static
- used train as a dolly
- My Darling Clementine (1946) dir. John Ford
- mob films are about lawbreakers in a cynical age, westerns are about lawmakers in an idealistic age
- lighting is brighter, gives the feeling that this is a brand new world
- Twentieth Century (1934) dir. Howard Hawks
- genre: comedy
- comedy was feminized with creation of sound
- new speed
- Bringing Up Baby (1938) dir. Howard Hawks
- took speed and mayhem even further
- apartment was almost completely white so characters and leopard stood out
- overlapping dialogue: combined realism and surrealism, new concept
- The Men Who Made the Movies: Howard Hawks (1973) dir. Richard Schickel
- Howard Hawks shaped cinema in many ways
- Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Mervyn LeRoy
- genre: musical
- was inspired by the geometry of a bathroom, used geometry cinematically
- showed POV of war from a woman
- extremely innovative
- Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) dir. Winsor McCay
- genre: cartoon
- The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) dir. Lotte Reiniger
- Plane Crazy (1928) dir. Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks
- first mickey mouse film
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) dir. David Hand, William Cottrell, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, and Ben Sharpsteen
- filmed a real woman and transcribed that onto paper, was the start of motion picture
- had touches of surrealism, but were gradually replaced by more conservative ideas
- One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) dir. Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske, and Wolfgang Reitherman
- used different technique
…And the Brilliance of European Film
- The Blood of a Poet (1931) dir. Jean Cocteau
- scene where man goes through a mirror and people shout as he does, couldn’t have been done in silent cinema
- influenced by smoking opium
- Inception (2010) dir. Christopher Nolan
- inspired by The Blood of a Poet
- Zéro de conduite (1933) dir. Jean Vigo
- about youth, political undertones
- had a song played backwards, inventive way of using sound
- youthful, lively aesthetic
- seen as an attack on French schools and was banned for a period of time
- If…. (1968) dir. Lindsay Anderson
- inspired by Zéro de conduite, took more serious tones
- L’Atalante (1934) dir. Jean Vigo
- themes of nonconformism and wonder
- response to film was turbulent
- Le Quai des brumes (1938) dir. Marcel Carné
- poetic realist film, product of Nazi invasion of France
- had film shot with diffusion on the lense
- main character remains expressionless
- reflected mood of France at the time
- Les Enfants du Paradis (1945) dir. Marcel Carné
- enforced escapism, nostalgic for a carefree time in France
- La Règle du jeu (1939) (a.k.a. The Rules of the Game) dir. Jean Renoir
- Renoir was “the great humanist”
- camera just seems to observe, no innovative camera angles, framing, or lighting
- “the terrible thing is that everyone has his reasons”: most iconic line of film noir
- La Grande Illusion (1937) dir. Jean Renoir
- about human balance
- gave equal weight to French officer, German officer, and French soldiers
- Renoir had an Asian philosophy to an extent which appeared in his film
- Limite (1931) dir. Mário Peixoto
- South American film
- refined the ideas of the French impressionist filmmakers
- The Adventures of a Good Citizen (1937) dir. Stefan Themerson
- Polish film
- played with light and exposure, experimental
- reflected invasion of Germany
- Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958) dir. Roman Polanski
- Das Blaue Licht (1932) dir. Leni Riefenstahl
- used soft light, mist, and mountain landscapes
- Triumph of the Will (1935) dir. Leni Riefenstahl
- propaganda documentary featuring Hitler
- images were geometric, euphoric, bombastic, etc.
- Behind the Scenes of the Filming of the Olympic Games (1937) dir. Leni Riefenstahl
- filmed 1936 games
- attached films to balloons and dug holes in the ground to get closer to the action
- featured in the movie Race!
- Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty (1938) dir. Leni Riefenstahl
- used zoom lenses to get detailed shots in the crowd
- would flip shots of divers so it appeared they were soaring
- filmed people as if they were Greek gods
- thought in terms of cinema more than any other director of her time
- Tiefland (1954) dir. Leni Riefenstahl
- used glossy film techniques
- The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (1993) dir. Ray Müller
- Vertigo (1958) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
- “the assembly of pieces of film to create fright” – Hitchcock, was greatest image maker of the century
- used phantom ride technique
- films had an otherworldly logic
- Saboteur (1942) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
- slight sound of wind, different than the norm of big dramatic music, so that the small details weren’t missed
- Sabotage (1936) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
- had a deep understanding of the concept of fear and its difference between shock
- shown in the scenes with the package: fear was knowing the package was a bomb, shock was the bomb exploding
- The 39 Steps (1935) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
- obsessed with hands
- uses close-ups frequently, compared them to symbols
- Marnie (1964) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
- cuts to a high level shot to increase intensity, new technique
- Ninotchka (1939) dir. Ernst Lubitsch
- lit like romantic cinema in the 20s
- escapism of paris
- The Wizard of Oz (1939) dir. Victor Fleming
- iconic scene: see back of sepia version of Dorothy, she opens door and is suddenly in a world full of color
- also theme of escapism
- Gone with the Wind (1939) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Victor Fleming
- thought of as an escapist film, yet the film attacks the concept of escapism