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1918-1928: The Triumph of American Film…
- Citizen Kane (1941) dir. Orson Welles
- Shows example of set stage, able to control light
- Hollywood working wonders with light
- The Thief of Bagdad (1924) dir. Raoul Walsh
- Legendary set designer
- Elegant, decorative
- Desire (1936) dir. Frank Borzage
- Casting shadows
- lights to illuminate hair + eyebrows
- Gone with the Wind (1939) dir. Victor Fleming
- dolly to make image glide, like the camera is actually being blown with the wind
- Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) dir. Mervyn LeRoy
- Choreography, abstract, geometric
- Singin’ in the Rain (1952) dir. Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen
- “a studio system was the garden where we all worked.” – Donen
- Even the shadows have light in them
- The Maltese Falcon (1941) dir. John Huston
- Streetwise, angels with dirty faces
- harder lighting, sharper shadows, nighttime settings, gangster outfits.
- Murder, melodrama, movie journalism
- The Scarlet Empress (1934) dir. Josef von Sternberg
- Paramount style, sparkling, costumes on display, feminine, romantic.
- The Cameraman (1928) dir. Edward Sedgwick and Buster Keaton
- Keaton in this film shows his fascination with the camera.
- One Week (1920) dir. Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton
- Keaton became the comic image maker
- He thought like an architect
- Sherlock Jr. (1924) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Buster Keaton
- Keaton helped define silent cinema
- He played with editing, cutting from one location to another
- Three Ages (1923) dir. Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline
- daredevil-ing
- head shot to make the building look really high
- The camera position
- Buster Keaton Rides Again (1965) dir. John Spotton
- Keatons inventiveness was sometimes spontaneous
- saw a train arriving and shot the scene to make him look like he stopped the train himself and started it again
- The General (1926) dir. Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton
- comedy epic, set during the civil war
- the first half of the movie character travels north to the captive lair.
- in the second half every visual joke shown in the first half is repeated and amplified in reverse order.
- We get the pattern, and start laughing before it even happens
- The climax of the film is known as the most stunning visual event ever arrange for a comedy, perhaps for any kind of film
- Keaton used a real train and bridge for the shot, the bridge collapses and the train falls into the river.
- Divine Intervention (2002) dir. Elia Suleiman
- Suleiman, influenced by keaton
- Filmed in deapan
- made grumpiness funny
- Limelight (1952) dir. Charlie Chaplin
- Chaplin, another great silent film comedian.
- Chaplin was far more into body movement rather than camera like Keaton.
- City Lights (1931) dir. Charlie Chaplin
- Chaplin thought like a dancer
- He would rehearse a comic movement before filming it in costume.
- Shows how chaplins mind worked, showed improvisation
- The Kid (1921) dir. Charlie Chaplin
- Recreated the childhood of Chaplin
- The film humanized comedy, chaplin was cinemas charles dickens
- Bad Timing (1980) dir. Nicolas Roeg
- Shows unconscious live of the actors by doing close ups on the hands of the actors to show them as twitchy mental energy.
- The Great Dictator (1940) dir. Charlie Chaplin
- Hitler kicking a balloon that looks like the world, like Hitler is playing with the world. Chaplin wants to make him look like a buffoon.
- Fascism and ballet
- Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953) dir. Jacques Tati
- Inspired by Chaplin, characters leaning forwards and wearing short trousers rather than backwards with long like Chaplin
- Toto in Color (1953) dir. Steno
- Inspired by Chaplin Wore Chaplin’s hat and had the same demeanor
- Awaara (1951) dir. Raj Kapoor
- Inspired by Chaplin Streetwise, stealing from the rich
- Sunset Boulevard (1950) dir. Billy Wilder
- Impersonates Chaplin with Character
- Some Like It Hot (1959) dir. Billy Wilder
- Uses smoke like Chaplin in the great dictator
- Safety Last! (1923) dir. Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor
- One of the most famous climaxes in 20s cinema
- a vertical obstacle race, a bird, clock, a dog, a wind gauge, and a rope get in his way. When he finally reached the top of the building he meets his sweetheart.
…And the First of its Rebels – They wanted to show real life, non-fiction film
- Nanook of the North (1922) dir. Robert Flaherty
- was about Nanook phycology. Uses nanook and his family rather than actors and stars. It made the audience look more ethically.
- Documentary as an art form
- The House Is Black (1963) dir. Forough Farrokhzad
- Tracking shots
- Sans Soleil (1983) dir. Chris Marker
- Filmed real places in japan then wrote a fictional commentary.
- Imagined works on top of nonfiction pictures
- The Not Dead (2007) dir. Brian Hill
- interviewed a man on his experiences in war then turned his words into a poem that he would say as a script in the movie
- Blind Husbands (1919) dir. Erich von Stroheim
- Filmed himself square on
- The Lost Squadron (1932) dir. George Archainbaud and Paul Sloane
- Drive to Realism, showed actress how to comb hair
- Greed (1924) dir. Erich von Stroheim
- Money was hand tinted yellow.
- Wife wins lottery, as she gets greedy her husband gets drunk with whiskey and beats her.
- Eventually the man murders his wife
- By the end the yellow overtakes the color of the film
- Queen Kelly (1929) (shown as part of Sunset Boulevard) dir. Erich von Stroheim
- Had actress act in a movie that was watching one of her previous movies
- For some reason the film never saw the light of day
- The Crowd (1928) dir. King Vidor
- Realism, the greatest 20s america pre-wallstreet social problem picture
- Leading actress, growing despair, no fancy costume.
- First movie to use New York extensively.
- Overhead studio crane shot
- Made seven endings
- Final ending was where he was lost again in the crowd like at the beginning.
- The Apartment (1960) dir. Billy Wilder
- Dissolve from crowd to main character in office
- The Trial (1962) dir. Orson Welles
- Forcing perspective
- Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924) dir. Yakov Protazanov
- All angles, diagonals, modern clothing.
- The queen is shown earth life from mars, uses shots from cities, battleships, and a relationship
- She then wants to take over earth
- Posle Smerti (1915) dir. Yevgeni Bauer
- A scholar studies in his room, uses open door slit on screen, like a painting
- Deep space shot, filmed in natural light.
- Actress dies but then the actor dreams of her, she is filmed in intense light
- On his deathbed, the ghost of the actress appears.
- The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer
- Actress of Joan of Arc is always filmed only in closeup, no makeup, eyelashes caked with tears
- no depth to image, nothing in background, no set, lighting and focus on Joan, no shadows.
- walls painted pink to remove the glare so not to detract from joans face
- filming done in silence
- they painted the shadows
- Director had the actors say the exact words from the speech over 500 years ago.
- Ordet (1955) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer
- A radical simplification, only accepted things in the scene directly related to the story.
- SIMPLICITY
- you can’t simplify reality without understanding it first.
- Dreyer asked actress to set up kitchen as if it was her own and filmed it.
- The President (1919) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer
- Simplified images even in size
- Vampyr (1932) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer
- Shadows have a life of their own
- He used lots of white, most in all of hollywood at the time
- Gertrud (1964) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer
- Films as if in heaven, correlates with love
- Dogville (2003) dir. Lars von Trier
- Uses simplicity like Dreyer
- Vivre sa vie (1962) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Jean-Luc Godard
- Filmed character going to the cinema, the film she watched was The Passion of Joan of Arc by Dreyer