Assignment 7: Theories of Montage

Eisenstein's lack of affection for the continuity editing of the D.W. Griffith school of film are shown in the famous Odessa steps sequence. The Odessa steps wouldn't take as long as it took in the film to go down on. That tells you that Eisenstein wasn't interested in the geography and the characters' spatial relation. He was interested in juxtapositions of different shots to engage a person simultaneously on an intellectual and an emotional level.

You can see the exploitative level in which Eisenstein cuts the film. You see a child fall and see him bloody, after that he screams out for his mom which is meant to manipulate the viewer in the cheapest way, but it obviously worked. Also in John Hess's Filmmaker IQ video about Soviet Montage he explains the Marxist Dialectic way that Eisenstein was going for in his theory of editing. You see soldiers marching down steps and cut to people running away down the steps and you get the idea of "Oppression" into your mind.

After that the Battleship Potemkin that was mutinied by the oppressed shoots the Odessa theater and it cuts to 3 different shots of stone lions that are progressively rising up to portray the proletariat rising to revolt against the Tsarist government. That sequence obviously doesn't have any continuity but gives you an abstract idea if you think about it. This is how Soviet montage was used because they lack a narrative momentum and have to do with ideas. Joseph Goebbels loved the film as a propaganda piece and was very influential in his involvement with the propaganda agency of the Third Reich.

Assignment 6: Early World Cinema

a)       Dreyer chose the final days of Joan of Arc because he wanted to show the Christ parallels of the character. They were both people who said blasphemous things and were summarily executed for it. I think he also wanted to show the trial like the judges were perceiving it as well. They didn't see the battles or anything and were just there for the trial. Also, there is no real recorded history of how she was in battles. She's become a somewhat mythic figure. The trial was actually recorded and it is known what actually happened.

b)      Her acting was really fascinating and one of the greatest performances I have ever seen. Her acting seemed really different from the acting of that time because it seemed that she was really naturalistic and authentic. Actors during that time would act as if they were in a stage play and pretty much act for the camera. Falconetti's performance seemed like she was naturally reacting to what was happening and to the characters which is what acting has become today.

a) The subjective camera has "to capture and reflect to the audience the emotional turmoil and suffering of" the character. One shot that is influenced by that technique is in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver when Travis Bickle stares at a bubbling cup of water to reflect his character's psyche that is slowly bubbling up to foreshadow his burst of violence later in the film. In Metropolis, you see the subjective camera on display when Maria is being pursued by the scientist with the flashlight and you experience it through her eyes.

Assignment 5: D.W. Griffith and Oscar Micheaux

a)       D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation starts with a prologue about how bring Africans to America was the cause of unrest and the Civil War because whites and blacks shouldn't have to live by each other. It is about 2 families who live opposite of each other on the Mason-Dixon line. The sons are friends because they went to boarding school together. The Civil War starts and they fight on each other's respective armies. A couple of them die then reconstruction begins and black people are freed so they and the carpetbaggers cause the South to go into disarray. Then the Ku Klux Klan gets formed and saves the South by not allowing black people to vote and putting them in their place.

b)       Oscar Micheaux's Within our Gates is about a light-skinned black lady Sylvia as she travels to the North to try to get funding for a black school. She gets hit by a rich white woman's car and she decides to donate money to the school. We then get a flashback to Sylvia's history where her adoptive parents get lynched for a murder they didn't commit. Meanwhile, the murder victim's brother goes to try to rape Sylvia but then he finds out that she is his daughter from an affair with a black lady, he's been the one putting her through school.

c)       The Birth of a Nation is effectively a racist propaganda film that posits that the Ku Klux Klan was a good for the South. It is a masterfully made film that argues for evil. On the other hand, Within our Gates is a film that tries to deal with the issues that black people have to deal with now that they are free but then not really equal citizens. It is not as affecting as The Birth of Nation because it didn't have a immensely talented filmmaker like D.W. Griffith behind it. It is essentially a decently made film that argues for equality. The ending of Within our Gates shows that white people being sexually aggressive toward black women was much more prevalent then the opposite that is portrayed in The Birth of a Nation.

d)       The Birth of a Nation actually led to a revival of the Ku Klux Klan and the film was used as a recruitment tool. People who were ignorant of the history of the Civil War ate the film up and perceived everything in it as true and probably pushed efforts to equalize black people into society even further back as the film portrayed them as not being worthy of the vote.

e)       It made the people who were supportive of the film react extremely to the point that Klan members would dress up and ride in full regalia in New York City. Also, the NAACP's effort weren't that successful but it did raise the profile of the NAACP as a organization who'll fight for black people's equality. Their campaign did successfully persuade film censorship boards to spring up in cities such as Boston and Chicago to ban The Birth of a Nation.

Assignment 3: Early Silent Films

a)      It took so long to become movie stars because movies were considered a gimmick and a passing fad at first so people didn't take them seriously. Another reason was that the companies making the films would just give you the title of the film and the company that made it. They didn't want to put any actors' names on it because they wanted you to have brand recognition. Also, they didn't want a reason to pay actors more because they were suddenly in demand.

b)     I believe it is considered a break-through film in America is because it tells a story with innovations not seen before in movies. It probably was one of the first films to shoot on-location as opposed to in a studio where it is much easier to film because they could control the light and wouldn't have to worry about weather hazards. It also uses cross cutting to show two different things happening at the same time but in different locations towards the end with the bandits on the run and the telegraph operator being awoken by his daughter, I assume. The final shot of the film with the leader of the bandits firing straight at the audience must have been shocking and it's been homaged in several subsequent films, the most famous homage probably in Goodfellas, when Joe Pesci's character shoots straight at the audience in the last shot of the film.

c)     The Edison Trust was basically a bunch of companies who had the power coming together to form a monopoly on who could make films and distribute them. The independent film makers eventually won because they understood that people wanted to see the films based on the story and performances and not how long it was.

d)     The Lumiere brothers were probably the first documentarians because they shot everyday things on-location. They would just set up a camera where some action would probably take place and let things happen. There was probably a lot of film that was scrapped as in any documentary but there are some great moments that are captured such as the two kids who are fighting over something I couldn't make out but that seems exactly how pampered kids act today which shows that we haven't changed much at all in more than a hundred years. The famous urban myth about the train arrival film is that when it was shown to an audience that everybody was frightened by it, it sounds silly but I doubt it. It seems like those myths that come up that tries to make people back in the day look silly and naive.

        Thomas Edison's films on the other hand were pretty much re-enactments of feats of strength or everyday events done in a studio. I think it was meant to see what our seemingly menial tasks of everyday life looked like. He also filmed some athletes and showman doing entertaining things like dancing and twirling a wand. Whereas the Lumiere brothers were capturing real life as it happened on-location, Edison's films were capturing re-enactments of real life in a studio setting.

       Melies' films were the most radically different from the other two film producers. He had an emphasis on storytelling and visual tricks to tell fantastical adventure stories. They were very theatrical and A Trip to the Moon was really a satire on imperialism it seemed to me. It had that theme underlying the adventure you were taken on which is what the greatest films eventually would be. The magical effects were visually dazzling and the film as a whole was very charming. As The Great Train Robbery was probably the first Western, A Trip to the Moon was probably the first science-fiction film.