Standing assigment:
Each week watch one full-length feature film on Turner Classic Movies or
American Movies Classics [or similar source].
All films MUST be dated BEFORE 1990.You must have a least ONE film from each
decade [up to 1990] Write a viewing review to turn in on the following
Monday [see Handout section of this site] and a corresponding entry into your
film journal as directed.
DO NOT use the drop box until further notice!!
www.imdb.com - your source for basic film information
Test - Thurs 12/10 Chapter 7 Narrative and Genres
TEST - Thurs 11/12 on notes about Structure of Film. Not from Text, only from
notes [Wizard of Oz examples]
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UNIT 3 - Narrative Independent Project
Due - TBA
This lesson examines the elements of narrative as a formal system of meaning,
with special emphasis on Citizen Kane. “Narrative,” as your text explains,
can
be defined as “a chain of events in cause and effect relationship occurring
in
time and space.” As you will see, each part of this definition can be broken
down in various ways depending on the type of narrative we are looking at.
________________________________________
Guided Viewing: Citizen Kane (1941)
Independent Viewing: Groundhog Day (1993), Run, Lola, Run (1998), or Sliding
Doors (1998).
Instructional Notes ________________________________________
Citizen Kane (1941, United States: Turner Home Entertainment)
Credits: Directed by Orson Welles. Written by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson
Welles. Photographed by Gregg Toland. Edited by Robert Wise and Mark Robson.
Art direction by Van Nest Polglase and Perry Ferguson. Costumes by Edward
Stevenson. Decors by Darrell Silvera. Music by Bernard Herrmann. Mercury
Productions. RKO Pictures. Premiered May 1, 1941, at the Palace Theatre, New
York.
Cast: Orson Welles (Charles Foster Kane), Joseph Cotton (Jedediah Leland),
Dorothy Comingore (Susan Alexander Kane), Agnes Moorhead (Kane’s mother),
Ruth
Warrick (Emily Norton Kane), Ray Collins (James W. Gettys), Erskine Sanford
(Mr. Carter), Everett Sloane (Mr. Bernstein), William Alland (Thompson, the
reporter), Paul Stewart (Raymond, the butler), George Colouris (Walter Parks
Thatcher), Fortunio Bonanova (Signor Matisti), Gus Schilling (Headwaiter),
Philip Van Zandt (Rawlston), Harry Shannon (Kane, Sr.).
Notes on Orson Welles
Orson Welles (1915–1985) had many identities: actor, producer, director,
writer, magician, bon vivant, raconteur, boy wonder of the stage and radio
(the “voodoo” Macbeth for the Federal Theatre; the Halloween Eve, 1938,
broadcast of The War of the Worlds), creator of Citizen Kane, a film that in
its flamboyance and theatricality summarized much of his earlier work in
theater and radio while it helped to redefine the potentialities of the
American studio film. A useful “case study” of the film, Robert Carringer’s
The Making of Citizen Kane, stresses the status of Kane as a collaborative
achievement. Carringer concerns himself, in particular, with the writing of
the screenplay, the art direction, and the cinematography. Through careful,
extensive research, Carringer is able to reconstruct in detail the
preproduction, production, and postproduction phases of the film’s making.
The
result is a fascinating insight into one highly typical and at the same time
remarkably untypical instance of the filmmaking process as it was practiced
during Hollywood’s golden age. Carringer’s book, however, somewhat undermines
Welles’ achievement by suggesting that Citizen Kane is the single masterpiece
of the director’s career. I would suggest, however, that he takes too narrow
a
view of what constitutes film art. Carringer values craft and polish at the
expense of other, less tangible and self-evident qualities, and this partly
explains his emphasis on the collaborative work of technicians and artisans.
No one would want to deny the brilliance of Citizen Kane—it is, in a quite
literal sense, a masterpiece, fashioned to demonstrate its creator’s mastery
of the medium, validating his entry into the guild of film artists. What is
extraordinary, of course, is that Welles should have produced his masterpiece
the first time out, although his background in theater and radio, as well as
several experiments with filmed sequences for stage plays, had certainly well
prepared him for at least some aspects of filmmaking.
Citizen Kane, wonderful and brilliant as it is, nevertheless lacks the
emotional resonance, the sense of felt life, present in a number of Welles’
other films, from The Magnificent Ambersons to Chimes at Midnight. In part
because of its complex narrative scheme—a series of flashbacks narrated by
Kane’s friends and enemies—Citizen Kane never allows intimacy with the
central
character, never really shows us what it feels like to be Kane. By contrast,
other Welles-created characters—Quinlan in Touch of Evil (1958) or Falstaff
in
Chimes at Midnight (1966), for example—press their humanity close to the
camera lens and allow access to the depths beneath. For all of its technical
brilliance and narrative ingenuity, or perhaps because of these qualities,
Citizen Kane remains a somewhat cold film at the center.
If we look at Welles’ films as a group, undistracted by the various myths
surrounding their creation, we find a remarkable body of work. Citizen Kane
may be the jewel in the crown, but the crown itself, in all of its sometimes
frequently rough-hewn splendor, remains a delight to behold. Anyone who
seriously considers the powerful nostalgia of The Magnificent Ambersons, the
nightmarish vision of The Lady from Shanghai, the brilliant chiaroscuro of
Othello, the combination of tawdriness and tragedy in Touch of Evil, and the
lyric intensity and narrative flair of Chimes at Midnight cannot think of
Welles as a one-movie man. And because Welles was an actor who frequently
starred in his own films, the Wellesian cinema presents us with a picture of
Welles more satisfying than any biography. Charles Foster Kane, Franz
Kindler,
Michael O’Hara, Macbeth, Othello, Arkadin, Quinlan, Falstaff, Clay: these
characterizations (some, undeniably, more successful than others) evoke, as
well as anything can, the many-faceted phenomenon that was Orson Welles.
Assignment – Citizen Kane
1. Brief essay. Answer in a paragraph or two (6 points). Citizen
Kane
is told primarily in flashback, and some episodes are related more than once
by different people. What is the effect of this? Do the different versions of
events contradict each other? Is there any significance to who tells
what?
2. Choose the best answer for each of these (2 point each).
a. Which of these would not be an element of Classical Narrative
Cinema?
(1) An abstract formal development
(2) Desire as a motivating force
(3) A strong degree of closure
(4) Individual characters as causal agents
b. The ending of Citizen Kane is notable for
(1) its leaving the central mystery of the story partially open.
(2) its thorough resolution of an unusually large number of plot lines.
(3) its sudden introduction of a newsreel that summarizes and clarifies the
narrative causality.
(4) it s daring introduction of unmotivated causes that finally allow
Thompson to achieve his goal.
c. In most film narratives, causes and effects originate from
(1) natural causes.
(2) coincidences.
(3) special effects.
(4) characters.
d. The time it takes to watch a film is called
(1) plot duration.
(2) story duration.
(3) narrative duration.
(4) screen duration.
3. Answer the following questions on your Independent Viewing film in a
sentence or two (2 points each).
a. In what ways has temporal order , frequency , OR duration been
manipulated in the PLOT to affect our understanding of events?
b. How does the closing reflect a clear - cut pattern of development that
relates it to the opening?
4. Since the events of Citizen Kane cover a long period of time, and since
they are not always related chronologically, there is a strong possibility
that viewers may be confused as to what happens when. How does Welles prevent
this from happening? (2 points)
5. Many people (including Welles himself) have referred to the
whole “Rosebud”
device as “dollar book Freud,” a cheap and superficial plot device. What do
you think Rosebud contributes to the film? Is it meant to “explain” Kane’s
character? Does it? Assuming you haven’t guessed already, do you feel cheated
when Rosebud is explained at the end? (2 points)
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_____________________________________________________
Unit 2 - Film Form Independent Project
In this lesson, we will look at how form contributes to meaning. The elements
of form include function, similarity/repetition, difference/variation,
development, and unity/disunity.
Required Reading and Viewing
________________________________________
Guided Viewing: Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967)
Independent Viewing: Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Stagecoach (1939), or
North by Northwest (1959), Thelma and Louise (1991).
Instructional Notes
________________________________________
Bonnie and Clyde (1967, United States: Warner Home Video)
Credits: Directed by Arthur Penn. Produced by Warren Beatty. Screenplay by
David Newman and Robert Benton. Photographed by Burnett Guffey. Art Direction
by Dean Tavoularis. Edited by Dede Allen. Music by Charles Strouse. Special
effects by Danny Lee. Special consultant: Robert Towne.
Cast: Warren Beatty (Clyde Barrow), Faye Dunaway (Bonnie Parker), Michael J.
Pollard (C. W. Moss), Gene Hackman (Buck Barrow), Estelle Parsons (Blanche),
Denver Pyle (Frank Hamer), Dub Taylor (Ivan Moss), Evans Evans (Velma Davis),
Gene Wilder (Eugene Grizzard).
Bonnie and Clyde and Some Aspects of Film Form
Nearly all films—nearly all narratives, for that matter—move from some
initial
situation to some final resolution, but the strength and significance and
force of that movement varies. CONVENTIONS—in this case, the conventions of
the gangster film—arouse certain expectations in a viewer. In Bonnie and
Clyde, the initial situation—Bonnie and Clyde meet and form the beginnings of
an outlaw gang—leads us to expect a certain resolution: the outlaws, after
initial success, come to a bad end. And, of course, that is just what
happens,
though much of the film is marginal to that movement. (The conventions of any
genre can, of course, be violated, and conventions change over time.) A good
part of the narrative of any film, in fact, is an attempt to hold off the
inevitable conclusion (the specifics of narrative form will be discussed in
the next lesson).
Form and Meaning
FORM is related to MEANING, and it is often from form that meaning arises.
Experts suggest four kinds or levels of meaning that can be brought into play—
what they call the REFERENTIAL, the EXPLICIT, the IMPLICIT, and the
SYMPTOMATIC. What is important to remember about these categories is that the
movement here is from the particular to the general, from a bare bones plot
description to a broad, and arguable, contextual interpretation. So we might
say that the REFERENTIAL meaning of Bonnie and Clyde would be something like
this: "in the 1930s, two young, restless people decide to become outlaws;
after adding to their gang and becoming successful bank robbers, they are
finally ambushed by the law and killed” (note that this leaves a lot out,
including the romance). On a slightly higher level of generality, we could
give the EXPLICIT meaning as something like this: "a life of crime, though it
may seem exciting and glamorous, ends in certain death.” More broadly, we
have
an IMPLICIT meaning: "Though crime is wrong, the state of America in the
1930s
may have provided some justification for a criminal life.” Finally, on the
broadest level of all, we might say that Bonnie and Clyde exhibits a
SYMPTOMATIC meaning, a meaning that tries to place the film in its broadest
context, social and historical: "the 1960s, like the 1930s, is a period of
rebellion against established authority, and, now as then, young people who
take arms against that authority will be crushed and destroyed in the
process.” This last meaning, of course, would cover many films, books, etc.,
of the Vietnam era, and it is simply one interpretation among many. How we
assign meaning depends, to a great extent, on what we choose to concentrate
on
in our analysis of the film, what, for example, we consider to be foreground
and what we consider to be background.
Function
One way to approach interpretation is by considering FUNCTION: what is the
function of any particular element in the text, why is X in the film at all?
We might ask, for example, what the function of the undertaker played by Gene
Wilder might be. What is the function of Clyde’s impotence? How does the poem
Bonnie writes function in the film? Why are people frequently taking pictures
of each other? Why, for that matter, does the film begin with a “slide show”
of sorts—a series of still photographs? We might note, first of all, that the
film is in part about people who yearn for fame and publicity as much as it
is
about being gangsters. Not only do Bonnie and Clyde like to pose and to take
pictures of each other, but they also make reference to movies (“I’ll bet
you’re a movie star,” Clyde says to Bonnie; Bonnie looks at film magazines;
after their first significant robbery, they go to a movie, etc.). Both Bonnie
and Clyde are very conscious of themselves as “celebrities” in a way that
probably would not have been the case in the 1930s but made perfect sense in
the 1960s, when the film was produced. These outlaws are creating themselves
as legends as they go along. So that is one meaning we can find in the film.
Similarity and Repetition; Motif; Difference and Variation
FORM also involves SIMILARITY AND REPETITION. All texts of any length are
likely to include repeated elements, even if only by chance, but there is
usually present a formal pattern of repetitions. A significant, repeated
element in a film is referred to as a MOTIF. A motif can be an object, color,
person, place, sound, etc. (photography, discussed above, can be seen as a
notable motif in the film). Similarity and repetition is particularly obvious
in Bonnie and Clyde, since the whole film is built on ritual elements, the
bank robbery and the shootout, which occur a number of times at regular
intervals. Along with similarity and repetition, we have DIFFERENCE AND
VARIATION. Again, we can limit ourselves to the same elements—bank robberies
and shootouts—since they are both the same and different, they are repeated,
but with variation. The bank robberies become more and more professional, the
shootouts more and more deadly. (On your own, think about how the concepts of
development and of unity/disunity can be applied to Bonnie and Clyde.)
Questions
________________________________________
• A. Bonnie and Clyde has been criticized for presenting its characters
as much more attractive than they were in real life. Is this a valid
objection, in your opinion? How might you justify the filmmaker’s decision to
use attractive people in the title roles?
• B. Bonnie and Clyde is set in the 1930s. Is the period setting
convincing? Is there anything in the film that does not seem to belong to the
1930s?
• C. How would you describe the tone of the film? In other words, what
range of emotional reactions does the film seem to be demanding of its
audience?
1. Answer the following questions in a sentence or two for each (each
question is worth 2 points unless otherwise indicated).
a) Mention some of the ways an audience can be said to be aware all along
of how Bonnie and Clyde is going to end? Does the ending seem inevitable to
you?
b) What is the function of the family picnic sequence in the film? This
sequence is filmed in a different manner from the rest of the film. Why?
c) Bonnie and Clyde was considered very violent when it first came out.
Does
it seem violent to you? Is there anything unusual in the way the violence is
presented in the film? (1 point)
2. Choose the best answer for each of these (1 point each).
a) Form and content are
(1) opposing elements.
(2) irrelevant to film analysis.
(3) tightly related within a filmic system.
(4) narrative elements.
b) When perceivers ascribe implicit meanings to an artwork, they are
usually
said to be
(1) experiencing it.
(2) critiquing it.
(3) interpreting it.
(4) evaluating it.
c) Which of the following is not a principle of film form?
(1) Development
(2) Unity/disunity
(3) Diegesis
(4) Similarity/repetition
d) The concept of a social ideology is normally connected to which of the
following?
(1) The referential meaning
(2) The implicit meaning
(3) The explicit meaning
(4) The symptomatic meaning
e) A description of The Wizard of Oz as a film about a girl who is
swept
up by a tornado and taken from her Kansas f arm to the land of Oz relies
on
(1) explicit meaning.
(2) implicit meaning.
(3) symptomatic meaning.
(4) referential meaning.
f) A motif is
(1) a stylistic element.
(2) a narrative element.
(3) a character trait.
(4) any of the above.
3. Consider the various elements of form in ONE of the films I have listed
at the beginning of this lesson ( Independent Viewing) and respond to the
following questions in a few sentences for each (2 points each).
a) Carefully study the opening sequence of your chosen film and suggest how
that sequence generates expectations about the film’s development.
b) Choose a motif from your chosen film and indicate its importance in the
film as a whole.
c) Briefly consider unity/disunity in reference to the ending of your
chosen
film.
___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
1st Independent Viewing HW - Due Sept 21
2nd due - Sept 28
CH 1 Vocab quiz; column 2 words, Tuesday Sept 22
CH 1 Vocab quiz; column 3 words, Thursday Sept 24
TEST: Thursday, Oct 1 - Chapter 1 thus far.
Oct 5 - 1st project due comparing "The Player" to your movie. {choose
from "Sunset Boulevard", "The Bad and the Beautiful" or "Barton Fink"}
NO INDEPENDENT viewing assignment will be due this date.
Independent Viewing 1—Film Production
Movies and Meaning, Chapter 1
Guided Viewing: The Player (1992)
Independent Viewing (choose one): Sunset Boulevard (1950),
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Barton Fink (1991
Instructional Notes ________________________________________
The Player (1992, UnitedStates: New Line Home Video)
Credits: Directed by Robrt Altman. Written by Michael Tolkin, from his novel.
Produced by Cary Brokaw, David Brown, Scott Bushnell, William S. Gilmore, and
Michael Tolkin. Original music by Thomas Newman. Cinematography by Jean
Lépine. Film editing by Maysie Hoy. Production Design by Stephen Altman.
Costume design by Alexander Julian. Sound by Kenneth R. Burton.
Cast: Tim Robbins (Griffin Mill), Greta Scacchi (June Gudmundsdottir), Fred
Ward (Walter Stuckel), Whoopi Goldberg (Detective Susan Avery), Peter
Gallagher (Larry Levy), Brion James (Joel Levison), Cynthia Stevenson (Bonnie
Sherow), Vincent D'Onofrio (David Kahane), Dean Stockwell (Andy Civella),
Richard E. Grant (Tom Oakley), Sydney Pollack (Dick Mellon), Lyle Lovett
(Detective DeLongpre), Dina Merrill (Celia), Angela Hall (Jan), Leah Ayres (
Sandy), Paul Hewitt (Jimmy Chase), plus assorted celebrities playing
themselves.
Notes on the Hollywood Myth
In 1907 the Selig company of Chicago sent a troupe of actors to Los Angeles
to complete a film version of The Count of Monte Christo. Exteriors were
filmed on the Santa Monica beach. The following year, Selig built a studio in
Edendale, east of the village of Hollywood, and filmmakers came to Hollywood
proper in 1911. “Hollywood,” Robert McAdams writes in his forward to
Hollywood: Legend and Reality, “has always been a concept as much as a
place,” and that concept has frequently been examined in terms that reveal it
to be an archetypal American myth. That myth has two sides, one bright and
one dark, one that accentuates the positive, one that looks primarily at the
negative. Anyone even casually acquainted with the literature of Hollywood
knows something of the dark side—What Makes Sammy Run? The Day of the Locust—
the titles alone are a giveaway. But what of the bright side of the myth? For
that, we have to look a bit harder. To some extent, we are dealing with a
historical development: the closer we get to Hollywood’s origins, the more
likely are we to find movies greeted with enthusiasm. The key text here is
Vachel Lindsay’s Art of the Motion Picture. Although the title makes it sound
like a textbook, it is far from that. It is, rather, a tribute to the
incredible potential of the movies. Lindsay’s enthusiastic acceptance of the
movies, what we might call the “visionary” approach to Hollywood, surfaces
only sporadically in the following decades; for the most part, the dark side,
what we might call the “demonic” view, thoroughly governs whatever idea we
have of Hollywood. The demonic view holds sway in part because it informs
much of Hollywood fiction, where an essential element of the myth centers on
the writer as victim, the promising talent who begins by wanting to write the
Great American Novel and ends up a broken, cynical, talentless (albeit,
perhaps wealthy) screenwriter.
The Hollywood Writer
Interestingly, though perhaps not surprisingly, even movies about Hollywood
tend to focus on the experience of writers—in The Player, though the main
character is a producer, writers (and quite specifically the writer as
victim) are crucial to the film’s various plot situations. In both novels and
films, the Hollywood screenwriter often becomes the object of both pity and
contempt. The writer yearns for an innocent world of his youth, which usually
means rural America, particularly the Midwest, sometimes the South. William
Holden’s failed screenwriter in Sunset Boulevard was just about to pack his
suitcase and buy a one-way bus ticket back to his newspaper job in Dayton,
Ohio, when the deadly lure of success betrays him into a final, tragic grab
for the brass ring. He ends up in a swimming pool, convincingly performing
the deadman’s float. The writer portrayed by Dick Powell in The Bad and the
Beautiful begins his screen life in a small, idyllic southern town, a happily
married “professor of medieval history.” In spite of his subsequent Hollywood
success, the film suggests, he should have stayed at home, for his triumphs
come at too great a cost. His southern belle wife betrays him for a Latin
lover and pays for her indiscretion by dying in a plane crash. The gods who
shape the destinies of American writers are harsh indeed.
Making Movies About Making Movies
In movies (as distinct from novels) about Hollywood, the positive (visionary)
and negative (demonic) are usually held in an uneasy equilibrium. This should
not surprise us: filmmakers always walk a tightrope, but their sense of
balance suffers a particularly severe test when the subject is Hollywood
itself. In one sense, making a film about making films isn’t much different
than making films about manufacturing automobiles in Detroit: the day-to-day
reality of a highly technical, technological industry is not likely to
interest an audience, so you deal with personalities instead. At the same
time, a filmmaker knows that the mass audience harbors certain preconceptions
about Hollywood that it does not have for Detroit, and these preconceptions—
valid or invalid—have to be addressed. Indeed, the temptation is to reinforce
them. But this is precisely where the bind comes in. For many of these
preconceptions are of the tabloid variety—Hollywood as Babylon—and one cannot
expect studio executives intent on respectability to reinforce such a view of
their industry.
Assignment
1. Answer the following questions in a sentence or two for each (each
question is worth 2 points unless otherwise indicated).
a) As indicated in the Instructional Notes, many books and movies about
Hollywood focus on the figure of the writer. How are writers presented in
The Player? Does the film present a positive or negative image of the
writer?
b) Altman often films scenes in which several conversations are going on at
once (as we will see, Orson Welles does the same thing as early as Citizen
Kane, [1941]). What is the point of doing that, in your opinion? We might ask
if this makes the film more “realistic” or if it is merely annoying since at
times we cannot hear every line of dialogue.
2. Choose the best answer for each of these (1 point each).
a) A master shot is (1) a shot considered good enough for inclusion in a
film. (2) a preliminary test of whether the camera is working. (3) a single
take of all of the action in a scene. (4) a close view of the film’s star.
b) An important contributor during the preparation stage of filmmaking
primarily would be the (1) editor. (2) camera operator. (3) foley artist. (4)
art director (production designer).
c) The aspect ratio of a film refers to (1) the profits of a film in pro
portion to its costs. (2) the percentage of shots t hat are made on location.
(3) the width of the images in relation to their height. (4) the proportion
of the total amount of footage shot to the amount used in the final cut.
d) Which of the following is not one of the modes of production? (1) Small-
scale (2) Conglomerate (3) Independent (4) Studio
e) A storyboard is series of comic strip sketches of the shots in each scene
of a film prepared in advance of actual shooting. (1) True (2) False
f) The standard professional gauge for films shown in commercial theaters is
(1) 8mm. (2) 16mm. (3) 35mm. (4) 80mm.
g) Critical flicker fusion is the phenomenon that accounts for the ability of
the human eye to see motion where none exists. (1) True (2) False
3. Briefly compare the film you watched independently to The Player of each
of the following issues (2 points each):
a) Which of the filmmaking personnel seem the most important and how are
those characters presented?
b) How convincingly is the filmmaking process itself depicted?
c) What balance do you see between the visionary and the demonic approach to
filmmaking in each film?