Week 4 - Dance Musicals+Auteurs: The 50’s & 60’s - part 1. Flashcards
Dance has been w/ us since
The beginning of film
Fred Astaire dancing since
Youth as a vaudeville star
TOP HAT was made during
Mid-depression (35)
When TOP HAT came out why were people going to films?
To escape/be transported
Astaire movies plots always
romance stories b/w Fred & Ginger Rogers
Bus Stop Song
Isn’t it a lovely Day? Raining
Astaire & choreo/filmmaking
Did his own choreo, was a stickler for long/uncut dances & full bodies shown
Fred Astaire’s career in film was
loooong
West Side Story reception
SUCCESS, won 10 Oscars
50’s/60’s ________ the ______ was most in charge
auteurs, director was most in charge
Auteur model different from
Hollywood models
50’s & 60’s saw the return of
European Cinema
Cinema Verite is shooting ________
live “as it happens”
French New Wave staples
- Cinema Verite
- Jump Cuts
The 7th Seal Takes place during
Black Plague Europe
7th Seal Director
Ingmar Bergman
Scene in 7th seal similar to joan
young witch burning, except opposite of god b/c it is satanic
witch in 7th seal is ______ of death
pitiful/terrified, not brave like joan
Throughout movie ______ follows as ______ plays a member of each community
Death follows as plague plays a member of each community
Throne of Blood by
Kurosawa
Kurosawa was a __________
MAJOR auteur
Throne of Blood is interpretation of
Macbeth
Throne of Blood took place in
Futule Japan
Not Japanese translation of Macbeth but
rendition w/ it’s own culture
Kurosawa lenses
telephoto/zooming lenses
what effect did lenses have on film?
flattened space like compressed Japanese prints, everything in focus
Throne of Blood metaphorical setting
Forest Maze symbolic w/ mind and dream space
Kurosawa non-human characters
Mystical beings and witches
Throne of Blood put more power in ____ than in ____
visuals than in words
Kurosawa borrows from _______
Noh theater, relying heavily on stylized symbolic gestures & mask like faces
Ex. of Kurosawa sound
Bird cry to tell story
Lady MacBeth asks & Kurosawa sound
How did you interpret that bird’s cry? Uses it to convince husband
Evil deed in Throne of Blood, how is it filmed?
It is done off camera, and we see Lady Macbeth waiting
Sound also musically used to express
murder
Last scene of throne of blood
Trees of the forest come to attack
Breathless by
Godard
Breathless about
Charming petty criminal
You could only see EuroCin like Breathless in
Arthouses/special theaters
Breathless almost all _____ w/ lots of ______
handheld, lots of jump cuts
Godard wants to _______ audience _____
wants to remind audience it is a movie/unsuture you
Who turns in main character of Breathless?
American love interest in France, for $$
Last Year at Mareinbad a portrait of…
Portrait of Hell? Limbo? Dreamspace?
We know LY@M certainly is ______
not real
There is a lot of ______ in LY@M, ex.
Repetition, guy playing the game who always wins
LY@M themes
circular themes
LY@M main man & <3 triangle
Man continuously trying to convince wife of other man that he knows her and is in relationship with her, at end of the film he doesn’t even seem convinced
The Black Death, or the Black Plague, was
one of the deadliest pandemics in human history
total number of deaths worldwide is estimated at 75 million people
Title of 7th Seal
The Seventh Seal: quote used for the title
“And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.” [Bible, New Testament]
main character in 7th seal
Antonius, a knight in search of the meaning of life is set in 14th-century Sweden
Knight in 7th Seal
A knight (Max von Sydow), tormented and doubting, returns from 10 wasted years in the Crusades, and Death (Bengt Ekerot) comes to claim him.
Knight & death
Hoping to gain some revelation or obtain some knowledge before he dies, the knight challenges Death to a game of chess.
End of 7th Seal
knight tricks Death in order to save a family of strolling players—a visionary, innocent, natural man, Joseph (Nils Poppe), his wife (Bibi Andersson), and their infant son.
The knight and his squire
The knight, a sane modern man, asking to believe despite all the evidence of his senses, is childlike compared with his carnal atheist squire (Gunnar Björnstrand).
Antonius & Squire after crusades, come to find
returning home from the Crusades to find a world crumbling under the grip of the Plague
The chess game & God
As the game is played out the grim reality of a disease-ridden world, where religious fervor is rife whilst God seems clearly absent becomes apparent.
What does the 7th Seal question?
questions the absence of God during a time when Christianity’s stronghold on a continent waned.
Filmmaking in 7th Seal
Cinematographical masterpiece
What’s ironic about this period and biblical references in 7th seal?
As the Biblical-reference title suggests, the film takes place in a situation where the day of judgement seems to be at hand
Parallels of 7th Seal & Modern Times
for cold-war parallels with the late 1950s when the world was facing up to the prospect of nuclear annihilation
Bergman’s direction is incredibly powerful, with many memorable moments - the opening light in the sky; the parade of flagellants; and, of course, the dance of the dead over the hill, shot on the spur of the moment in a truly inspired piece of film-making.
”Contains some of the most extraordinary images ever committed to celluloid”
*******
n/a
What did SS do for audiences?
greatly enlarged potential audiences for films from other foreign directors.
SS compared to Hollywood movies
content far more intellectual and less dependent on plot than the standard Hollywood movies.
SS & hypocrisy of the crusades
returning soldiers disillusionment with a crusade which does not seem to have fulfilled its Holy purpose
Blok meets a young happy couple with their baby. Jof and Mia (the names mean Joseph and Mary) and, as he is so swayed by their cheerfulness and simple innocence, he diverts death from taking them so they can escape and thus he can die without regrets
*****
conclusion/end of SS
Symbolism in SS
Religion, Death, Metaphysics, juxtaposing frivolity and terror to confuse moments of jest and threat, 20th century existentialist themes - these are all fair game for Bergman.
Most symbolic image of SS
of six figures led a dance by Death silhouetted against a dark stormy sky
After WWII, America worked to assure that European film industries reconstituted themselves based on free-market principles rather than on the protectionism that had predominated during the 1930s. Hollywood had a big backlog of films and was eager to export to Europe. And European audiences were anxious to have Hollywood films available once again.
Film relations after WWII
why did America fight hard to shape the development of post WWII European film industries
from a desire to purge former axis countries of any cultural remnants of fascism. For this reason, as well as a desire to limit competition
Which continent won battle of film distribution?
In the end, America prevailed and films were freely traded like other commodities.
How did American producers respond to booming EuroCin?
American producers and investors began to invest in European films where production costs were lower and profit margins higher.
Who eventually mastered funding?
Italian directors became especially adept at searching out American investors to finance their films.
Who began to produce super subversive films?
the late 50s and early 60s, Swedish and Danish film companies exported “sexually liberated films” to sophisticated international audiences.
How much did British filmmaking succeed? Who was it geared towards?
The British film industry in this period concentrated on producing English language films, which they hoped they would be able to market to American audiences. They rarely succeeded.
The British film industry in this period concentrated on producing English language films, which they hoped they would be able to market to American audiences. They rarely succeeded.
*****
n/a
Who became successful in spreading intn. film culture? example?
Film festivals also became increasingly important in shaping an international film culture . The Cannes Film Festival was started in 1946 and became an important international showcase for culturally important films,
Kurosawa and Ray brought Indian/Japanese films to
VENICE FILM FEST, showing japanese and indian films in front of large international audiences for the first time
The term auteur (French for author) is used to describe film directors (or, more rarely, producers or writers) who are considered to have a distinctive, recognizable style, because they:
a) repeatedly return to the same subject matter,
(b) habitually address a particular psychological or moral theme,
(c) employ a recurring style, or
Autuers should be ________ despite __________
identifiable despite their genre
French Wave influenced by
Italian Neorealism
During this same period young film-makers in many countries were creating their own “new waves”, for example the working-class cinema of the “angry young men” (Kitchen Sink Cinema) in Britain, but
the new wave movement in France turned out to be the most influential.
French New Wave filmmakers linked by
linked by their self-conscious rejection of classical cinematic form and their spirit of youthful iconoclasm
French New Waves involvement in politics?
Many also engaged in their work with the social and political upheavals of the era, making their radical experiments with editing, visual style, and narrative part of a general break with the conservative paradigm.
2 examples of French New Wave Directors that began as
Critics,
By means of criticism and editorialization, they laid the groundwork for a surge of concepts which was later coined as the auteur theory (or, more correctly, “La politique des auteurs” (“The policy of authors”).
*******
French New Wavers Truffaut & Godard
The beginning of the New Wave was to some extent an exercise by the ______ applying _______________
Cahiers writers in applying this philosophy to the world by directing movies themselves.
How did French New Wavers address old filmmaking
rebellion against the reliance on past form & criticism
French New Wave budget
low budget,
What did having low budgets do for french new wavers?
helped film-makers get at the essential art form and find what, to them, was a much more comfortable and honest form of production.
Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, John Ford, and many B-film directors were held up in admiration while standard Hollywood films bound by traditional narrative flow were strongly criticized. By who?
French New Wavers
French New Wave’s distinct philosophy
existentialism
Existentialism stressed _____________
stressed the individual, the experience of free choice, the absence of any rational understanding of the universe and a sense of the absurdity in human life.
an existentialist seeks to act authentically, using free will and taking responsibility for all their actions, instead of playing pre-ordained roles dictated by society. The characters in French New Wave films are
often marginalized, young anti-heroes and loners, with no family ties, who behave spontaneously, often act immorally and are frequently seen as anti-authoritarian. There is a general cynicism concerning politics
The French New Wave directors took advantage of _________________ which enabled them to ________________
of the new technology that was available to them in the late 1950s enabled them to work on location rather than in the studio.
FNW film equiptment
used lightweight hand-held cameras,
developed for use in documentaries,
faster film stocks, which required less light
and light-weight sound and lighting equipment.
B/c of equiptment used , how could FNW films be shot?
quickly and cheaply
. The cost of film was a major concern; thus, efforts to save film turned into stylistic innovations: for example, in Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless Example of outcome
JUMP CUTS: several scenes feature jump cuts, as they were filmed in one long take: parts that didn’t work were simply cut right from the middle of the take, a purposeful stylistic decision.
Light & sound preferences of French New Wavers
. Available light was preferred to studio-style lighting and available sound was preferred to extensive studio dubbing.
Common setting of FNW films
mise-en-scène of Parisian streets and coffee bars became a defining feature of the films
behavior of the camera in FNW films
camera was often very mobile, with a great deal of fluid panning and tracking
Often only one camera was used, in highly inventive ways; following characters down streets, into cafes and bars, or looking over their shoulders to watch life go by.
**** FNW ******
n/a
The way the films were made reflected ____________ by drawing attention to the conventions used in film-making.
an interest in questioning cinema itself,
the French New Wave directors strove to present an alternative to Hollywood, by consciously breaking its conventions, while at the same time paying homage to what they regarded as good in Hollywood cinema.
******
n/a
Jump Cut, 2 definitions
(1) A cut between two shots - that are so similar that the cut appears to be an interruption in a single shot.
(2) A disjunctive, disorienting cut; a sudden transition that may be illogical or mismatched in relation to normal continuity.
Cinema Verité:
The literal meaning of Cinema Verité is “cinema truth.” Cinema Verité is a documentary style in which no directorial control is exerted.
****
n/a
Direct Cinema
Cinema Verite term is frequently substituted for, or confused with, the term describing the New-Wave’s “handheld” camera techniques in narrative film called “direct cinema”. But Godard still used Verite.
