Ms. DeLane Dooley

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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]
____________________________________________________
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)

-----------------------------------------------------
_____________________________________________________
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?

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Ms. DeLane Dooley

Film Studies