Film Midterm: Movie Screenings Flashcards
A Trip to the Moon
year/director/style/plot
Year: 1902
Director: George Melies
Style: trick-film, silent film
Plot: men/scientists go on a trip to the moon, engage in adventure and conflict, and then return
Additional: mise-en-scene, continuity/linear editing, cinema of attraction, theatrical
The Great Train Robbery
year/director/style/plot
Year: 1903 Director: Edwin S. Porter Style: silent cinema of attraction Plot: Events of a train robbery Additional: editing patterns, close-up use, off-scree space, un-personal
narrative editing
The Lonedale operator
year/director/style/plot
Year: 1911
Director: D.W. Griffith
Style: early short drama
Plot: A girl takes over a telegraph station after her father takes ill. After the payroll for the town’s mine is delivered, two men try to steal the money. Their robbery is foiled because the girl is able to telegraph for help and then hold the would-be robbers off until help arrives
Additional: character psychologies, editing patterns, close-ups, personal, traditional early editing, not much variety, same perspective
paralel editing
early cinema
A Drunkard’s Reformation
year/director/style/plot
Year: 1909
Director: D.W. Griffith
Style: dramatic short film
Plot: Implication of value through a sort with characters to identify with, leads to the narrative
Additional: cinema as means of social reform, parallel theater-cinema
meta-cinematic
A Corner in Wheat
year/director/style/plot
Year: 1909 Director: D.W. Griffith Style: Combining 2 stories Plot: greedy tycoon who tries to corner the world market on wheat, destroying the lives of the people who can no longer afford to buy bread Additional: thematic editing
early cinema
Fantomas
year/director/style/plot
Year: 1913
Director: Louis Feuillade
Style: Silent serial
Plot: Fantomas causes trouble, steals money from the princess at the royal palace, frames an actor for it, and avoids the guillotine, troublemaker criminal
Additional: mise-en-scene, influences on avantgarde, realistic style, believable staging, unrealistic plot, filming in one shot, chaos, surrealism
The Kid
year/director/style/plot
Year: 1921
Director: Charlie Chaplin
Style: silent serial comedy
Plot: Chaplin’s first feature; The Tramp discovers an orphan and brings him up but is left desolate when the orphanage reclaims him. His story of raising the boy and getting him back by all means possible.
Additional: different uses of the sight gag, evolution of The Tramp character
Sherlock Jr.
year/director/style/plot
Year: 1924
Director: Buster Keaton
Style: silent serial comedy
Plot: Keaton’s character longs to be a detective. When his fiancée is robbed by a local thief, he is framed for the crime. Using his amateur detective skills, the projectionist follows the thief to the train station only to find himself locked in a train car. Disheartened, he returns to a theater, where he falls asleep and dreams he is actually Sherlock Holmes.
Additional: use of deep staging, meta-cinematic devices
The Cheat
year/director/style/plot
Year: 1915
Director: Cecil B. DeMille
Style: classic Hollywood style (complex editing, more angles, breaks down space, mood, POV, use of lighting)
Plot: Edith Hardy uses charity funds for Wall Street investments in hopes of buying some new gowns. She loses all the money and borrows from wealthy oriental Tori. When her husband gives her the amount she borrowed, Tori won’t take it back, branding her shoulder with a Japanese sign of his ownership, which ends up with Hardy shooting Tori, which leads to a trial in which Tori is exposed. Underlying message of racism in America.
classical hollywood
innovative lighting
star system
The Cheat: establishment of classical hollywood style, discuss how issues of race and gender become intertwined with the nascent consumerist culture
shows asian culture as something beautiful and scary at the same time
ADD
Intolerance
year/director/style/plot
Year: 1916
Director: D.W. Griffith
Style: narrative film
Plot:Epic that intercuts four separate stories about inhumanity. In Babylon, Prince Belshazzar is brought down by warring religious factions. In Judea, the last days of Christ are depicted. In France, Catherine de Medici presides over the slaughter of the Huguenots. In California, a woman’s husband is sentenced to hang for a murder he did not commit.
Intolerance: Context of movie in Griffith career/Eisenstein’s distinction between editing and montage
Eisenstein’s view/Ideological consequences of its editing patterns
Birth of a nation??
Context of movie in Griffith’s career?
Used to apologize for Birth of a Nation, which was controversial due to black face/depiction of blacks
Eisenstein’s distinction between editing and montage
Eisenstein’s view: form/style/content all equally important in a film
Ideological consequences of its editing patterns
Eisenstein claims Griffith fails ideologically, only great theatrical storyteller, does not have enough intellect or perspective to show the story as any more than a performance, Eisenstein says he can never get to the true level of montage, it is only a representation, does not give a solution or ideas, never fully completed. D.W. Griffith saw films as an art form and didn’t want them to be censored
started feature films
1915
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
year/director/style/plot
Year: 1920
Director: Rober Wiene
Style: German Expressionism
Plot: At a carnival in Germany, Francis and his friend Alan encounter the crazed Dr. Caligari. The men see Caligari showing off his somnambulist, Cesare, a hypnotized man who the doctor claims can see into the future. Cesare then predicts Alan’s death, and by morning his prophecy has come true, making Cesare the prime suspect. However, is the doctor controlling him?
Caligari: Kracauer’s reading of Calgari?
Caligari and the uncanny?
Caligari and the Gothic novel?
One of most successful expressionist films, metaphor for post WWI, literary influence, patterns of double
Kracauer’s reading of Calgari?
Caligari and the uncanny?
Caligari and the Gothic novel?
One of most successful expressionist films, metaphor for post WWI, literary influence, patterns of double
Nosferatu
year/director/style/plot
Title: Nosferatu Year: 1922 Director: Murnau Style: Plot:
