Week 3 - Confronting stereotypes: Race Movies-Good/Bad Girls Flashcards
Stereotypes have been a staple of entertainment films since
earliest days of cinema
First racist films
Actualities, i.e. edison
Stereotypes in the movies often serve as indicators of the values, prejudices and desires of a particular cultural-historical period.
***********
No answer
Edison peep show dance & race + 2 ex.
were often pseudo-ethnographic studies of exotic “native peoples.”
The Pikaninnies Doing a Dance (1894) and Negro Dancers (1895).
what effect did racist actualities have on long term effect on film industry? used as?
setting the cultural tone of black racial representation, used as comic motifs
techniques of racism in white acting
white actors using burnt cork or black-face
Situations of racist actualities
shorts were largely set in racially and socially segregated situations
Birth of a Nation setting
American Civil War
First “race” film made by?
Emmett J. Scott, personal secretary to Booker T. Washington
Scott’s film
The Birth of A Race
Where did The race films of the 1920s and 1930s emerged from?
out of the Harlem Renaissance
race films rose simultaneously w/
“race records” (black music produced for a black market)
race films a reaction to
reaction to Birth of A Nation and widespread segregation within the Hollywood film industry
the most prominent producer of race films
Oscar Micheaux
The Homesteader, over 30 race-film companies were formed and hundreds of race films were shown in black-owned theatres around the country
***************
films featured all black casts and advanced themes of education, upward mobility, race, pride, social achievement and patriotism as a natural part of black character and black community life.
No answer
Goddess like/perfect women characters
Pillar of Virtue – played by Lillian Gish, Doris Day, Julie Andrews - types.
Sexy/rich/fabulous women characters
Glamour Girls – sex goddesses and femme fatales like Mae West, Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe.
Dramatic women characters
The Emotive Woman – the sexually frustrated Rosalind Russell in Picnic or Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Strong women characters
The Independent Woman – Kathrine Hepburn, Barbara Streisand in Funny Girl, Jane Fonda in Klute.
four types of female roles can be seen as
variations and subsets of the basic good girl/bad girl dichotomy
viable reconciliation of the basic good/bad dichotomy can be seen in
female characters who are able to rise above imposed gender roles and combine sexuality and intellect to control their fates.
4 types of women characters appear when?
This type of character will first appear as a significant female role model in the films of the 1960’s.
in 50’s Films aimed their cameras at
problems of American life
examples of problems of American life
attacking racism, McCarthyism, and yellow journalism, as well as examine drug addiction and abortion
Why didn’t films attack similar topics before?
They were banned from film
In the box-office heyday of the 40s and 50s, the term “_________” or “message” film was conventional in its usage among the film industry and the public.
social problem
McCarthy & Committee
In the 1950s McCarthyism, in the form of the House Un-American Activities Committee, dampened some of Hollywood’s enthusiasm for left-leaning critiques of American society, but the genre continued nonetheless over the next two decades.
Example of social film director
Stanley Kramer’s exposés of racism — “The Defiant Ones”, “Pressure Point” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” — became synonymous with the genre.
Michael Wood critique of social problem films
charged that Hollywood’s most significant contribution to the myth of the Social Problem “is that there is only one problem.” All social problems are treated in the same way in these films. REDUCED to the simple
In a social film what is disturbed?
The disturbing and disruptive problem in these films is [usually] within the family, and the structuring absence in these films relates to the structure of this family institution.
orientation implicitly masculine, of what?
SOCIAL FILMS: since, until the advent of the contemporary women’s movement in the 1960s, women’s problems were not considered social problems.
On top of only one social problem there is also only one _________
SOLUTION:
Although the male must remain separate and capable of individual action, he and his “problem” exist within a social grouping; he and his problem are domesticated. The solution – the riddance of deviancy – inevitably results from his individual actions and includes reintegration into the domestic-civilized order.
3 things that describe film gris
Film gris: crime, critique and Cold War culture in 1951.
some of the most significant cinematic achievements of the filmmakers blacklisted in the late 1940s and early 1950s known as
the Hollywood Ten hearings
Anderson coined film gris based on?
as an offshoot of film noir characterized by leftist criticism of American society
what happened to many social filmmakers
blacklisted out of hollywood, genre began to dissappear
Film gris optimistic?
No, pessimistic
Film Gris displayed a bitter consciousness of poverty and class conflict, and showed "the unreality of the American dream." ****************
n/a
social pessimism in the United States generally was a response to
- the end of wartime unity,
- postwar economic problems,
- and the beginning of the Cold War and
- a host of anti-communist government and industry organizations, including the HUAC motion picture hears
Social critique in film gris focuses on the critique of
the law as a boundary dividing society into a good, legal world and a bad, illegal world
Andersen suggested that Hollywood leftists sensed their days in the industry were numbered, and film gris may have been an attempt by some of them to make the most of their remaining time there. Andersen makes two additional arguments about film gris:
- First - “The crime movie had often been a privileged genre for social commentary.”
- Second - the films represent the social causes of crime, such as unemployment, materialism, and class division.
n/a``
Stereotyping __________ for marketing
economically good
Race films challeneged + ex.
Stereotypes, Birth of a Race
Who had all black casts?
Oscar Micheaux
Hallelujah response
success
Civil Rights movement underway when what movie came out?
The Defiant Ones
Defiant Ones was a __________ film for Hollywood
coureageous
Defiant ones has an evolution of stereotypes and then _________ them throughout the film
challenges them
Only ___ cop is voice of humanistic reason, the rest ______
1 cop, the rest out of sport
Much of Defiant ones dialogue is ____________
tongue in cheek
Example of tongue in cheek line in Defiant Ones
“They’ll probably kill eachother before 5 miles” & running together in next shot
Both characters in Defiant ones where in society?
Bottom of society
Ironic lynching line
“You can’t lynch me! I’m a white man!”
Who saves characters in Defiant Ones?
Woman who gives them shelter and offers a getaway to white one
Joan of Arc editing/sets
Simple sets & editing
Cinematography in Joan
GREAT cinematography
The Blue Angel is the name of
The cabaret in the film
The Blue Angel takes place in
The Weinmar Republic
Famous entertainer @ Blue Angel
Lola lola
Main character of Blue Angel & his timeline
Professor @ all boys school who goes to investigate students at BA, then falls in love/marries Lola Lola, then is cheated on & turned into a clown, driven crazy & he takes his own life.
Who plays Lola Lola?
Marlene Dietrich
Is Lola Lola a nice person?
NO, antagonist
Cat People Star
Simone Simon
Even though Cat People was B-Grade film it was ______ & _______ many times
well done & copied many times
Real star of Cat People production
Producer, Val Luten
Cat People ______ what it ________
implies what it cannot afford
Cat People _____ budget
low budget
What is Irena in CP afraid of?
Relationship and what she might do
Irena & Alice
Irena jealous of Alice & stalks her
Irena profession in CP
artist/designer, trying desperately to lead a normal life.
A Century of Black Cinema
This 90-minute documentary explores the history of a century of films involving African-American people, and takes a look at the lives and work of many accomplished actors and directors. A celebration of the finest African-American entertainers to grace the silver screen.
The Defiant Ones, The (1958)
An engrossing depiction of racial tensions and an oppressive penal system, both Poitier and Curtis give memorable performance
**
n/a
Tony Curtis character in Defiant Ones
bigoted uneducated Southern “cracker” is probably the best performance and role of his career.
Defiant Ones established ________ as a _______
established Sidney Poitier as a star
Defiant Ones director
Stanley Kramer
Criticism of Defiant ones by James Baldwin
it’s a fable informed by a certain amount of white liberal wish fulfillment.
As two convicts, one black and one white, wake up arm-in-arm like a pair of sleeping Siamese twin babies, they look at each _____________
with an instant rage, a telling scene
.Asleep they nurtured each other, but awake their racial hatred is rekindled with a vengeance
Defiant Ones & the N Word
In contrast to today’s films, where the word “nigger” is thrown about as if it means nothing more than any other profanity, this movie treats it with the contempt it deserves
–Noah immediately lashes back with the furious retort, “Nigger! You call me that again, and I’ll kill you!”–
, “How come they chained a white man to a black?” Sheriff Max Muller, played in an Oscar nominated performance by Theodore Bikel, says with disgust, ______________
“The warden’s got a sense of humor.”
After a while, however, their chained condition brings them together and makes them realize the similarities of their conditions and of their upbringing. Both view ___________
Both view their backgrounds and their confinement as somehow having been caused by society’s repression - one for being black and the other for being poor.
The Passion of Joan of Arc tells the story of Joan of Arc in the process of several trials, interrogations, humiliations, tortures and finally her execution.
****
n/a
she has heard the voice of God commanding her and her jailers think _____________
that this unholy act makes her a vessel of the devil
. The tragedy of Joan is right there in her eyes, what we read from her despairing expression is the terrifying suspicion that _____________
she has been betrayed by God
Maria Falconetti in Joan’s telling feature
her eyes say everything
Carl Dreyer and rules of filmmaking in Joan
He eliminated the rules of editing, makeup, set direction, screenwriting
The film is a masterpiece in every respect but most importantly in it’s technique, he breaks the rules of film construction to tell a story that ___________
seems often like memory.
we aren’t sure from one moment to the next where one wall begins and another ends, where characters stand in conjunction to one another. This may seem to the casual viewer to seem lazy but if you follow the film from Joan’s point of view it takes on the qualities of a ______________
nightmare where one images flows to the next and we aren’t sure where we stand.
Director of Joan
Carl Dreyer
The convolution of narrative in Joan is born out of Dreyer’s __________
refusal to work from a screenplay, working from the actual transcripts of Joan’s trial
Dreyer uses the tight close-ups of Falconetti’s face against ___________
those of her interrogators.
Falconetti wears _________
no makeup
All of the mechanisms used in Joan lead to
one of the most effective uses of pure filmmaking in the history of the medium. Dreyer set out to make a film that used only what was needed to tell the bare bones of a story we already know
Director of Blue Angel
Josef von Sternberg
man reduced to nothing due to obsession and jealousy.
Professor Rath in Blue Angel
What does Rath do to marry Lola?
Resigns his position in the school
Some critics saw the Blue Angel as an allegory for
pre-war Germany, but von Sternberg is very clear that he did not intend to make a political film, unaware of brewing tumult in the current German politics;
The moral simplicity of a fable, with the slicing sensuality of a pulp novel produced the perfect bridge between the emerging decade and the ending one; between cultures and their impending collision
****
Blue Angel Germany
n/a
Cat People became RKO’s _______ compared to ___________
became RKO’s top grosser for 1942, bringing in $4 million, compared to the studio’s “Citizen Kane” at $500,000 in 1941.
Cat People undertone
undertone of sexual danger, protagonist fears that passion could turn her into a panther
Cat People scary scenes
Pool & bus stop
How does Irena in CP feel about Oliver?
she really does love Oliver – love him, and need him, as “the only friend I’ve ever had.”
What is strange about the production of Cat People
how unusual it was for a producer, not a director, to be the ruling auteur of a group of films.
something touching about Irena, who has never had a friend, and fears she will kill the only person she loves, and is told she is insane. At the end, Oliver pays her a simple tribute: “She never lied to us.”
****
n/a
