History And Historiography Flashcards
What is histotoriography.
1 The study of the methods and principles through which we organize the past.
2 Writing history from a particular viewpoint
What is one way of organizing history?
Periodization - divides films into historical segments, or periods
How we examine Film history is made up of different types of formulas or models. What are they
1, industrial history looks at the technology, business practices/policies that shape how films are made and how they are distributed- eg. old Hollywood studio model
- Social history analyses films thru their contexts, the society in which they are made and the one they are trying to depict
- Formal history analyses stylistic choices, cinematography, look gating, costumes, acting and soforth
- Genealogical - how power relationships influence development/importance of one historical period over another
How and why does film WRITE history
- record actual happenings ( or re-create)
- focus on a person in history eg. Catherine the Great depicted in 1934’s The Scarlet Empress
- shapes how masses see and understand history
Periodization
1defined by historical events
2share thematic and stylistic concerns
Match the periods
- Silent. a) 1929-1945
- Classical. b) 1895-1929
3 post World War 2. c) 2000+
4 Digital. d) 1945-1975
5 Cinematic Globalization e) 1975-2000
What is canon
The commonly accepted list of great works
What is cultural weight
Some cultures are undervalued in analysis of their films to country, minority, and we try to counterbalance this
Characteristics of silent cinema 1895-1929
1 rapid development in film technology, form (structure), culture, and development of film industry around the world
2 dominated by Hollywood after WW1 1914-1918
3 Hollywood introduced synchronized sound technology
4 period saw development of film stars system, genres, studio system, and feature length narrative films
Which is not part of industrialization
1 growth of leisure time and commercialized leisure activities
2. People moving into country out of city, no immigration
3. Shift of traditional class race and gender lines
4 development of popular culture ( as opposed to high culture)
Beginning of cinema history
Screening of Lumiere brothers ‘Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory’ March 22 1895
What is a Nickelodeon
Small theatres in store fronts and arcades screening short films for 5 cents
What is the Motion Picture Patents Company ( or the Trust) formed 1908
A means to standardize, control growth of technology, technique, subject matter and exhibition practice ( where and when film shown)
Early Cinema
1895 to 1915
Characteristics of early cinema
1 less to tell a story more to provide exiting spectacle: trick films, comic sketches, life etc
2 shift from single to multiple shots and early development of narrative form ( how to manipulate film form to tell story)
3 examples Fred Ott”s Sneeze 1896
4 By 1911 DW Griffiths ‘The Lonedale Operator’ about burglers threatening a telegraph operator, used 100 shots and parallel editing (cutting back and forth) to build suspense. Also varied camera distance, developing American narrative style
Were women involved?
Yes
1 directors producers assistants editors writers actresses
2) eg Lois Weber ‘Where AreMy Children’ 1916
3) driven out of industry as standardization,Hollywood mode of production solidified in the ‘20’s
Who else did standard practices and economic interests of studio system drive out?
African Americans who like women were involved at the beginning of century, even likeOscar Michaux confronted racism and segregation
What are race movies
Early 20th century films with all black casts, often shown because of segregation at night ‘midnight rambles’
When did slapstick comedy begin
@ 1910 with literary adaptations also popular
Who were 2 wildly popular actresses who helped begin the star system
- Biograph Studios ‘Biograph Girl’ Florence Lawrence
2 Mary Pickford, America’s sweetheart
Who are ‘benshi’
In Japanese early cinema, narrators of silent films
What country challenged the Trust’s length of film through its epic films?
Italy
What 3 historical developments caused Hollywood to come of age
1 standardization of film production
2 establishment of the feature film
3 the cultural and economic expansions of movies in society
What were standardized formulas of Hollywood in early cinema
1 a)studios created teams of there own people including scriptwriters, producers, directors, camera operators, editors, actors
b) longer 100 minute films
c) more sophisticated subject matter
d) elegant theatres attracting elegant people crossing social boundaries
e) development of narrative realism and placement of viewer’s perspective into editing and narrative action
f) films explored simultaneous actions, complex spaces, and psychological interactions of characters through narrative. Camera movement, framing, editing put viewers in the story rather than at a theatrical distance
Genres of early cinema Hollywood
Slaptick - Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton modified pure comedy ( keystone cops) by using humour to dramatize human and social themes
Serious spectacle eg DeMille’s ‘Ten Commandments’ which ironically had lurid sex and violence as well as a strong moral purpose
NB early 20s saw lots of sex/drug scandals with Hollywood stars and calls for censorship became widespread
1927 ‘the Jazz Singer’
1st feature length film with synchronized speech
20’s Hollywood
- Comedy, lavish spectacle, thrilling melodrama
- 50 million weekly moviegoer
- fan magazines flourished stars were norm
- technology exploded - eg synchronized speech
German Expressionist Cinema ( in film, theatre, painting etc, expressionists turned away from realism towards the irrational and unconscious sides of human experience)
1918 ( end of WW1) to 1929 - years of German poverty, starvation, humiliation which gave ride to German nationalism, and Hitler in the 1930’s
A) Characterized the despair thru lighting, sets, costume design
B) this period - known as the Weimar Rebublic- was a period were arts flourished and social norms relaxed. First LGBTQ activist movie ‘Different from the Others’ made
C) differed from Hollywood thru commitment to artistic expression through its giant nationalized ( public not private) studio UFA - Robert Weine’s ‘The Cabinet of Dr, Caligari’ 1920: shadowy atmosphere, distorted/artificial sets
Prominent German Expressionist filmmakers
1) Fritz Lang ‘Metropolis’
2) F.W. Murnau ‘Nosferstu’
Soviet Silent Films 1917-1931
- not entertainment history, born out of Russian Revolution and not linked to capitalist economics ( Russian royal family murdered, Russian begins Communism - theory of social equality (the collective), equal money/food/land for everyone)
Films therefore were documentaries/historical subjects and highly politicized to further spread/ teach Communism
Dziga Vertov created a collective workshop called the Kinoki, or cinema eyes, to figure out how cinema communicates both directly and subliminally.
Committed to everyday truths but recognized how the structure of how film is put together affects both the messaging and audience reaction
What is montage aesthetic?
Vertov’s Man With a Movie Camera’ 1929
—film of a city where the energy of the city is reinforced by moving from one subject to another, split screens, superimposition, variable film speeds
- always puts viewer in the action
Eisenstein’s ‘Battleship Potemkin’ 1925 about uprising of oppressed sailors representing Eisensteins theory of montage
French early cinema
George Melies - took film to the fantastical, trick films like ‘The Vanishing Lady’ 1915
- was the worlds most successful film industry before WW1
Who was Oscar Micheaux
African American novelist, writer producer-director
- rediscovered figure in film history
- hot topics, like lynching ‘Within our Gates’ 1925
- an alternative aesthetic
French Impressionist cinema 1920’s
Cinema in 1920s championed by artists and intellectuals
- avant-garde movement to challenge familiar or objective ways of seeing in order to revitalize human perception
- also surrealism focusing on memories, hallucinations, fantasies ‘the Seashell andrhe Clergyman’ 1928
Classical Cinema
Who were the big 5 and little 3 studios who dominated industry, controlled distribution and therefore had a huge impact on both the industry and culture
5 -20th century fox, MGM, Paramount, Warner Brothers, RKO
3- Columbia, Universal, United Artists
What was the Motion Picture Producers and Distruters Association omg America ( MPDDA, now MPAA) formed in 1922?
Purpose to regulate movies’ moral content
- known as ‘Hayes Office’
The Production code they established was initially ignored but strictly followed from 1934
-conservative list of principles governed depiction of crime and sex
- kept censorship in their hands instead of the government
-sometimes led to distortion, like changing lesbian relationships in stories to straight
Classical Cinema Characteristics:
- movie dialogue + growth of characterization, characters became more psychologically complex because of dialogue
- prominence of generic formulas like musicals and westerns
- sound capacity incl popular music, where African Americans could appear even if they were barred from central dramatic roles
Classical - emergence of studio classics like
Capra’s ‘It Happened One Night’ 1934, a successful story both in theatre and film because of synchronized dialogue
- it was a social allegory about common people correcting greed and egotism of rich
Ford’s ‘Stagecoach’1939
1939: gone With the Wind’, ‘Wizard of Oz’ Wuthering Heights, Mr. Smith Goes to a Washington
What minorities were marginalized in classic era
Stereotypes of racist and ethnic minorities despite blacks and Latinos fighting in WW2
- also difficult generally for them to find employment in the film industry ( including women)
Who was Hattie McDaniel
First black to win Oscar as Mammy in Gone with the wind
What was the percentage of Americans who went to the movies weekly in 1930
65%
European Cinema 30s and40s
Internationalism is like globalization, but in this era many countries were becoming nationalistic ( what is good for my country is good, don’t care about others, part of reason for WW2
National cinemas promote stories that define their own language and culture.
What films were international?
- Blue angel, 1930 filmed simultaneously in German, French and English
2’Madchen in Uniform’ 1931 about a lesbian relationship/repressive hierarchies