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.

Assignment 2

a)         I chose Adaptation and it came out in 2002.

b)         Adaptation was directed by Spike Jonze and is a film about the process of writing a film and the main character, Charlie Kaufman, is the fictionalized version of the screenwriter of the movie. He is tasked with adapting a book about flowers but then suffers from writer's block. While he's reading the book that he needs to adapt it shows the story of the author going to Florida to interview the man the book is about. Kaufman's brother in the film lives with him and is attempting to write a screenplay as well but with all the Hollywood conventions that Charlie hates.

c)        I saw it on Vudu because I bought it a while ago.

d)        I think it's the main premise of the film in that it's written by Charlie Kaufman and the main character is Charlie Kaufman and the script he is writing is exactly what is happening in the film. At one point Charlie goes to a screenwriting seminar and is neurotically narrating all his perceived inadequacies, then the film abruptly cuts to the presenter saying that narration is the worst tool that a hack screenwriter can use to "tell" instead of "showing".

e)        I think what made him so popular is the amazing amount of dangerous stunts he did. Also, he always plays helpless and naive characters that you could really empathize with which is helped by his face for which he is famously referred to as "The Great Stone Face".

f)        I think Sherlock Jr. and The Purple Rose of Cairo are pretty similar in what it portrays in the meanings of film experiences. In Sherlock Jr., Buster Keaton's character works as a projectionist at a local movie house and fantasizes about being the greatest detective in the world in a film. That is what a lot of films aspire to do, I believe. His character imagines himself in the role of the main character of the film which is really postmodern and ahead of its time. The Purple Rose of Cairo does that a little bit toward the end but for most of the film Mia Farrow's character uses films as a way to escape the hopelessness and inadequacies of real life. There's a hilarious line in the film where she says, "I just met a wonderful new man. He's fictional but you can't have everything." That line speaks to one the themes of the film which is that people fantasize about characters in film but they aren't real and don't resemble real people. One of the characters from a film she loves leaves the film and comes into the real world and a lot of the comedy comes from his interactions and discoveries of the real world. Every time he talks about how something should happen like they do in films then Mia Farrow shoots him down by saying that in the real world everything doesn't work out perfectly.

          Adaptation is different from those films because it is actually about the process of making a film. The main character's inadequacies in life crossover into his writing and he suffers from writer's block because he doesn't want his script to be a conventional Hollywood movie. The direction he wants to take the script is something he doesn't believe will be successful because he thinks he's so inadequate in everything he does. His job is to write films but he's trying to adapt a book, him and the author of the book can't find something to be passionate about and the only way he actually becomes passionate about the script is inserting himself into the script which he then calls "self-indulgent."