Directors Flashcards
At one point in this film, a group of women dressed as soldiers help load a cannon before they all wave their hats together. One man in this film places his umbrella into the ground, upon which it promptly turns into a giant mushroom. Thomas Edison made secret copies of this film, earning a fortune off of it while its European director went bankrupt. Its most iconic scene features an object shaped like a face slowly getting closer to the viewer until a bullet-shaped vessel hits its eye. This film begins at a conference where a group of skeptical astronomers eventually approve the title event. For 10 points, name this science-fiction film directed by Georges Melies, a pioneering film in the genre about an expedition to Earth’s only satellite.
Le Voyage dans La Lune
Two brothers from this country invented the Cinematograph that they used in their black and white film Exiting the Factory. The word “RAILOWSKY” can be seen in the background twice in a photograph from this country. A blurry figure rides a bicycle next to a spiral staircase in a photograph by an artist from this country; that photograph was included alongside one of a man jumping from a ladder to a puddle in a book that was prefaced by a philosophical definition of the title
France
This technique is used in the interludes shot from the back of a moving train in Lee Chang-dong’s film Peppermint Candy. The first use of this technique was in the Lumière brothers’ Demolition of a Wall. This technique is applied to the stock footage used in Flyora’s hallucinations at the climax of Elem Klimov’s Come and See. Cégeste placing a death mask onto the Poet’s face in The
Reverse motion
One of these objects can be seen behind a brick wall on the left of De Chirico’s The AnxiousJourney. The right side of a painting of one of these objects depicts a tiny hunter and his two dogs. One of these objects is the depicted in the most famous of the early Lumière Brothers films. Pedestrians and white-gray clouds surround two of these objects in a Monet painting of the
Trains
This director wrote the lyrics to the song “La Complainte de la Butte” (“lah com-PLENT duh lah BOOT”) for a film whose visual style was influenced by the paintings of Degas. In a film by this director, a commedia dell’arte (“koh-MAY-dee-ah del-AR-tay”) troupe arrives at the same time as the lavish title object, which was purchased by a Peruvian viceroy. Jonathan Rosenbaum has used the phrase “Trilogy of Spectacle” for this director’s mid-50s Technicolor period pieces:
Jean Renoir
In a scene from this film, characters expecting a shipment of caviar and vodka instead receive a crate of books, which they angrily set on fire. During a Christmas scene, a character in this film repeatedly practices saying “Lotte hat blaue Augen” (“LOT-tuh haht BLAO-uh AO-gun”) in halting German. To create a diversion, characters in this film noisily play flutes, and, after they’re confiscated, bang pots and pans. In this film, after a character interrupts a vaudeville show with news that Fort
La Grande Illusion
This man painted two versions of the nude portrait Blonde Bather, both using as model his future wife Aline Chargot. Chargot also appears in this painter’s most famous work, looking into the face of a little Affenpinscher dog while sitting across from the painter Gustave
Pierre-Auguste Revoir
In this film, a shot of a news bulletin posted in two languages pan right, then left to follow a singing man before resting on the main characters leaning out a window listening to the music. The first shot of this film tilts up from a spinning record on a gramophone to a man singing along to the song Frou Frou. A shot in the film moves past men singing It’s a Long Way to Tipperary to men inspecting stage props and costumes; that scene ends with a shot of surprised
La Grande Illusion
During the production of a film from this country, a snowstorm along a central canal caused continuity issues, causing cinematographer Boris Kaufman to point his camera towards the sky to frame characters. In a film from this country, a talking statue tells an artist that to escape his studio he must pass through a mirror, an action accompanied by disembodied shouting. A different film from this country used slow motion to show a dormitory pillow fight. The
France
In a film from this country, a nobleman lets his lower-class poacher friend smoke in his face while adjusting his tie. In another film, an enemy officer laments the death of the nobility with an imprisoned officer from this country, who he’s later forced to shoot in the stomach. The son of a painter from this country directed and starred in a 1939 film set at an aristocrat’s country estate. A film from it ends with its boy protagonist escaping a
France
Harriet develops a crush on the visiting Captain John in this country in The River, the first color movie by Jean Renoir. A film from this country has a long close-up of water bugs skimming on a pond. In a film from this country, a character played by Johnny Walker sings a song to a struggling poet about massaging peoples’ heads with oil. Two siblings in a film from this country chase a train through a field of flowers and return to find their elderly neighbor
India
A character in a film from this country says that his ambition is life is to become immortal and then die. One film from this country features a juvenile who is imprisoned after stealing a typewriter. Characters in a film from this country burst into singing a national anthem while in a POW camp. This country, the home of a director who created the
France
A character in this film is introduced by a tracking shot that moves from a chapel’s crucifix, to a military portrait, to spurs and swords on a table, and eventually to that man at a breakfast table. The set designer’s chance discovery of a potted geranium in this film’s shooting location led its director to incorporate it into a scene where a character cuts the flower in mourning for his friend’s death. Two characters in this film build a nativity scene on Christmas Eve while staying in Elsa’s farmhouse. In a scene of this film, the camera pans over men frozen in silence at the sight of a man in a dress as they prepare for a vaudeville show, at which news about
La Grande Illusion
A film in this language includes a piano-accompanied, dress-up dance of death, and a quick-cut montage of rabbits and pheasants being shot by a hunting party. That film in this language ends after Schumacher shoots Andre in a greenhouse, and opens with Andre’s plane landing. Another film in this language shows its protagonist flourishing a revolver in a convertible using an innovative series of
French
A film from this country opens with a joke about a man falling from a skyscraper repeatedly saying “So far so good.” That film from this country depicts a day in the lives of three troubled youths. Another film from this country features a shootout with unusual jump cuts and centers around a criminal who fashions himself after Humphrey Bogart. This home country of the films Hate and Breathless is also the setting of a film about a delinquent who is caught plagiarizing and steals a typewriter. That film from this nation is The 400 Blows. For 10 points, identify this country home to a namesake ‘New Wave’ of cinema and directors François Truffaut and Jean Renoir.
France
This director produced a film that opens with a close-up shot of a turntable playing a song and zooms out to show an officer who sings along. That film ends with the protagonists trudging through the snow humming “There Once Was a Little Ship”, a song that had earlier been played to distract guards by de Boeldieu. Hundreds of rabbits were killed during production of a hunting sequence in a film by this director in which a character asserts that “The awful thing about life is” that “everyone has their reasons.” This man directed a film in which Maréchal and Rosenthal escape from Wintersborn and a film that opens with Octave revealing that Christine has not come to Le Bourget Airfield to greet Andre Jurieux. For 10 points, name this director of Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game, the son of the painter of Luncheon of the Boating Party.
Jean Renoir
A chef in this flm justifes cooking with regular salt, despite a lady’s request for sea salt, because he’ll “put up with diets, not fads.” The tension between a man’s wife and his mistress in this flm briefy dissipates when they express mutual distaste at his habit of smoking in bed. In this movie, four skeletons dance to a player piano rendition of Danse macabre during a masquerade ball, afer which a main character is repeatedly thwarted in his attempts to remove his bear costume. A Jewish character in this flm obsessively collects mannequins that play music. In an extended scene in this flm, servants pass through a wood, lightly tapping trees with sticks, to drive rabbits and pheasants out toward the fring line of waiting hunters. A woman wears her maid’s cape and hood during a liaison at a greenhouse, tragically inciting that maid’s husband to mistakenly kill the woman’s lover, who at this flm’s beginning returns to home to Paris from a successful transatlantic fight. This flm is set at La 4 Coliniere, the estate of Robert, the husband of Andre Jurieux’s mistress Christine. For 10 points, name this 1939 flm satirizing French high society, directed by Jean Renoir.
La Règle du Jeu
In one film from this country, Robert explains that Andre’s death at the hands of Schumacher was an accident. In another film from this country, the main character is accused of plagiarism by the teacher Sourpuss, causing him to run away. The magazine Notebooks on Cinema was important to a cinema movement in this country. Rick Blaine originally met Ilsa in this country in Casablanca. In a film set here, the film-loving Michel is betrayed to the police by Patricia, and that film, Breathless, is an example of this country’s “New Wave.” For 10 points, name this country home to Jean Renoir and Francois Truffaut, the latter of whom set most of The 400 Blows in Paris.
France
In a film titled in English for this type of person, one of these people from Fenyang courts a karaoke hostess named Mei-Mei. A film titled for this type of person ends with the protagonist telling Jeanne “to reach you at last, what a strange path I had to take.” Moe, a woman played by Thelma Ritter, tries to convince one of these people named Skip Candy to hand over a sensitive microfilm to the government. Jia Zhangke’s (“jee-ah zhahng-kuh’s”) debut feature is about one of these people, as is a Samuel Fuller film named after
Pickpockets
This person titles a film in which its actors, such as the painter Jean-Claude Fourneau and the academician Florence Delay, were put through the same shots repeatedly until all emotion was stripped from their performances. That film by Robert Bresson about this person opens with title cards that declare the film a “protest against judges.” In one film, the window grille of this person’s prison cell projects a
Joan of Arc
A 1974 movie about this mythological figure by Robert Bresson was inspired by a chronicle about him known as the Vulgate cycle. This figure is styled as the “knight of the cart” in an epic written by Chretien de Troyes in which he rescues a queen from the evil Maleagant. This figure, the son of Ban and Elaine, was abducted and raised by the
Sir Lancelot
A film with this title includes a sequence cutting between the take-off of a transatlantic flight and the activity on the floor of a stock exchange, culminating in a POV shot suggesting that the plane is flying over the floor. That three-hour-long silent film of this title was directed by Marcel L’Herbier [ler-BYAY]. Another film with this title includes two unusually long shots of prisoners mechanically being led out of a blue police van, with the photo shop assistant
L’Argent
A film by this director opens with a shot of a newspaper that dissolves to a shot of a man showing the bottom of his shoe to show how he walks properly. In Voyage in Time, Andrei Tarkovsky claimed that this director was the only to achieve “absolute simplicity in cinema”. In one sequence, this director paired a close-up of a man’s eyes behind a bush with shots of another man reaching into his hat for a wire, before he breaks off a branch to set up a rabbit trap. In a film by this director, a shot lingers on the protagonist listening to a
Robert Bresson
Giffard’s (“zhee-FAR’s”) nose is broken by this material while he is chasing after the protagonist. In another scene from the same film, men working with this material appear to be dancing to the impromptu music made by pedestrians watching from the street below. A drunk man staggers through a space where this material used to be, triggering a descent into revelry that culminates in the protagonist bringing down part of a building’s ceiling. An employee at the Royal Gardens
Plate glass
After a woman wearing a dress of this color talks about running away together with her lover, we hear the sound of a train whose vibrations cause a glass to fall off a table, in an allusion to Stalker. Luo Hongwu searches for a woman who’s almost always seen wearing a dress of this color in the 2018 film Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Barbara’s dress of this color starkly contrasts with the outfits of the other patrons when she arrives at the Royal Garden restaurant in Jacques Tati’s Playtime. Bucking tradition, this is the color of the dress worn by
Green
A shot in one film shows this person attempting to snip a climbing vine on the side of a house in the middle of the night, while two people watching him from two round windows resemble moving eyes. Waves buffet a paint can as this character sits by the seashore painting a kayak, which then folds up and causes a panic because it resembles a shark. A film’s color palette changes from drab grays to cheery reds and greens after a scene in which this person visits a fancy new restaurant, shattering a glass door and forcing the doorman to carry the handle as if it was still there. This character touches a buzzing radiator and plays with a bouncing water pitcher in a sequence set in the stark white kitchen of the Villa Arpel. A film about his holiday introduces this character, whose
Hulot
A character played by this person throws a ball through a shop window after being distracted at a fairground stall. In another film, this person played a character whose leaf-covered spare tyre is mistaken for a wreath after he accidentally attends a stranger’s funeral. In one film directed by this person, a middle class couple own a fountain shaped like a fish and only turn it on to impress guests. That film by this person sees the creation and disposal of red plastic tubing, accidentally knotted so as to resemble sausages - that film is Mon Oncle. For 10 points name this French actor and director of Jour de Fête who also portrayed Monsieur Hulot [Oo-loe].
Jacques Tati
In a film about this period, an uncle and his adult niece refuse to speak to a man with a limp, but the niece eventually breaks her silence by whispering goodbye to him. During this period, films like Carnival of Sinners and The Murderer Lives at Number 21 were produced by Continental Films. The lack of supplies during this period greatly complicated the shooting of a film about a pair of
German occupation of France
In this film, part of the soundtrack from Otto Preminger’s film Whirlpool plays diegetically as a character runs into a cinema. An actor’s appearance in Web of Passion is referenced in this film by his character’s alias, Laszlo Kovacs. A novelist in this film, who claims that he wants “to become immortal, and then die” in an interview, was played by the director’s friend Jean-Pierre Melville. To imitate the real-life film The Harder They Fall, a character in this film constantly runs his thumb along his lower lip. This film’s protagonists ride in a convertible in a sequence that jarringly switches between different shots. In this film, Patricia helps the Humphrey Bogart-obsessed Michel avoid the police. For 10 points, many jump cuts feature in what French New Wave film, the first by Jean-Luc Godard?
Breathless
The director of Pale Flower criticized a shot in which a man of this profession sits in a watchtower to watch two gangs fight. A film titled for this profession opens with its protagonist reclining and smoking on his bed next to a large bird cage. In another film, a man tries to protect his daughter from these people by chasing her with a razor and cutting off her long hair. A film titled for this profession follows the hitman Jef Costello and was directed by
samurai
An affair between film characters from these two countries is revealed when some roses with love notes nestled in the petals abruptly open up. At the end of a film, the two main characters call each other by the names of cities in these two countries after the woman screams “I’ll forget you! I’m forgetting you already!” A man from one of these countries tells a woman from the other country “You saw nothing in [the title location]” in a scene which opens with a close-up of entwined limbs covered in
France and Japan
Alain Resnais’s only Oscar was for a short film about this man.
Vincent van Gogh
Useless Knowledge is one of three collections of short vignettes making up a trilogy titled ‘[this location] and After’ by Charlotte Delbo. Poet Jean Cayrol [zhon keh-ROL] wrote the script for a short Alain Resnais [re-NAY] documentary film showing images from this location, Night and Fog. François Mauriac [mori-ack] helped to publish a novel in which Madame Schächter [sheck-tuh] starts screaming about an imaginary fire on her way to this location. Eliezer and his father arrive at this location from Sighet in that novel. Another author recalled the story “Cerium” from a collection titled The Periodic Table and in the memoir If This is a Man. For 10 points, name this location prominent in Elie Wiesel’s [vee-ZELZ] Night and much of Primo Levi’s work, a concentration camp in Poland.
Auschwitz
A woman tells her lover this city means “the beginning of an unknown fear for us as well” and later, that woman stares at that man in the Casablanca cafe in this city. A woman in a film titled for this city is slapped for shouting that a German man whom she had an affair with “was my first love!” In the first lines of a film titled for this city, a man states (+) “you saw nothing in [this city]. Nothing” to which she replies “I saw everything.” At the end of that film titled for this city, she tells her lover that his name is this city to which he responds her name is
Hiroshima
