Final Exam - Short Response Flashcards
In full sentences, describe three key features of Kenji Mizoguchi’s filmmaking. You do not need to provide examples.
- staging and framing to keep scenes at a distance
- long takes and camera movement
- distinct themes such as the plights of women in Japanese society
In full sentences, describe three key features of French Poetic Realism, using specific examples from Port of Shadows.
- milieu (social environment): claustrophobic and threatening cityscape, a setting that functions symbolically, night and mist
- plot of doomed lovers: Jean and Nelly, last chance at romantic love drives the plot
- themes of entrapment, fatalism, pessimism: film doesn’t have a happy ending
In full sentences, describe three key features of Jean Renoir’s filmmaking. You do not need to provide examples.
- clash between the old and new world
- misperceptions, lies, and miscommunications
-themes of casual death and violence
In full sentences, describe three ways that Ashes and Diamonds breaks from the model of socialist realist filmmaking, using specific examples from the film.
- an individual and experimental style: carefully staged composition such as the scene with the dining table with a figure backlit through a doorway as well as low angles and deep focus
- concern with Polish identity: contemporary debates about a “local, national socialism”, Polish flag lit through a doorway, the line “Poland has blown up”
- symbolism: christian iconogrophy (upside down jesus statue), fire, and ashes and diamonds (ambiguity, maciek and krystyna discuss whether ashes and chaos will be left “or will the ashes hold the glory of a starlike diamond”)
In an essay, describe the eight formal traits of Italian Neorealism described in the textbook and class, discussing both style and storytelling. (These eight include the five “breaks from classical narrative”.) For four of those eight formal features, be sure to give a specific example. You can use examples from Bicycle Thieves or examples from the lecture or textbook.
