Notes – Episode 1 

The following material is from Wikipedia.

Introduction

• Saving Private Ryan (1998) dir. Steven Spielberg
  • A lie to tell the truth
• Three Colors: Blue (1993) dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski
  • White light links the young and old
  • Cinema as an empathy machine
• Casablanca (1942) dir. Michael Curtiz
  • Lit like a movie star (highlights in her eyes)
• The Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947) dir. Yasujirō Ozu
  • Japan is classical
• Odd Man Out (1947) dir. Carol Reed
  • Bubbles showing self-absorption
• Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967) dir. Jean-Luc Godard
• Taxi Driver (1976) dir. Martin Scorsese
  • Character looking into bubbles can see their own trouble and the cosmos
• The French Connection (1971) dir. William Friedkin
  • Much of what we assume about the movies is off the mark (factually inaccurate and racist by omission)

1895-1918: The World Discovers a New Art Form or Birth of the Cinema

• Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge (1888) dir. Louis Le Prince
• The Kiss (1896 film) (a.k.a. May Irwin Kiss) (1896) dir. William Heise
  • A little moment that everyone could understand
• Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895) dir. Louis Lumière
  • One of the first films shot by the brothers
    • Documents an element of everyday life
• Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1896) dir. Louis Lumière
  • One of the first films shot and showed by the brothers
    • audience though the train was going to hit them
• Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1894-1896 ?) dir. William Kennedy Dickson or William Heise
• Sandow (1894) dir. William Kennedy Dickson
• What Happened on Twenty-third Street, New York City (1901) dir. George S. Fleming and Edwin S. Porter
• Cendrillon (1899) dir. Georges Méliès
  • “made a man appear”
• Le voyage dans la lune (1902) dir. Georges Méliès
• La lune à un mètre (1898) dir. Georges Méliès
  • Astonished people (first effects)
• The Kiss in the Tunnel (1899) dir. George Albert Smith
  • Filmed on the front of a train (phantom shot)
• Shoah (1985) dir. Claude Lanzmann
  • Phantom ride at its most morally serious
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) dir. Stanley Kubrick
  • Camera seems to zoom through the universe
    • character or film itself is having an out of body experience
• The Sick Kitten (1903) dir. George Albert Smith
  • first close-ups used
• October: Ten Days That Shook the World (1928) dir. Sergei Eisenstein
  • use of pinpointing stillness in chaos to show movement + tragedy
• Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) dir. Sergio Leone
  • close-up used to show realization in a character
• The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight (1897) dir. Enoch J. Rector
  • filmed on 63mm (widescreen cinema is born)

1903-1918: The Thrill Becomes Story or The Hollywood Dream

• Life of an American Fireman (1903) dir. Edwin S. Porter
  • street action first, then cut to see same action from inside
    • later recut to follow the story of the rescue even though the street is magically replaced by the room (continuity cutting)
• Sherlock Jr. (1924) dir. Buster Keaton
  • used double exposure
  • world around character is suddenly replaced by another
• The Horse that Bolted (1907) dir. Charles Pathé
  • cuts used to see what’s happening at the same time (parallel editing – “meanwhile”)
• The Assassination of the Duke of Guise (a.k.a. The Assassination of the Duc de Guise)(1908) dir. Charles le Bargy and André Calmettes
  • reverse angle shot (cameras are put into the action, allowing directors to shoot from any angle)
• Vivre sa vie (1962) dir. Jean-Luc Godard
• Those Awful Hats (1909) dir. D. W. Griffith
  • Actress know semi-anonymously as the “Little Imp Girl”
• The Mended Lute (1909) dir. D. W. Griffith
  • Actress becomes famous (Florence Lawrence)
    • Sets pattern (hype, fame, tragedy)
• The Abyss (1910) dir. Urban Gad
• Stage Struck (1925) dir. Allan Dwan
  • Hollywood used luxury and costuming instead of sex
• The Mysterious X (1914) dir. Benjamin Christensen
  • A dream drawn on film, cross-cutting
• Häxan (1922) dir. Benjamin Christensen
  • Multiple light sources and complex effects
• Ingeborg Holm (1913) dir. Victor Sjöström
  • Naturalism and grace
• The Phantom Carriage (1921) dir. Victor Sjöström
  • Stories within stories, moods within moods
  • Double exposure used to show separation of body and soul
• Shanghai Express (1932) dir. Josef von Sternberg
  • Black feathers and latticed shadowing in a train window became believable
• The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) dir. Charles Tait
  • First feature length film
• The Squaw Man (1914) dir. Oscar Apfel and Cecil B. DeMille
  • First Hollywood feature
  • Eyes connect across the cut, making the audience feel a connection
• The Empire Strikes Back (1980) dir. Irvin Kershner
  • We believe characters are looking at each other thanks to the 180 degree rule
• Falling Leaves (1912) dir. Alice Guy-Blaché
  • Movie has an arc, not just individual actions
• Suspense (1913) dir. Phillips Smalley and Lois Weber
  • A split screen is used to show action in multiple locations at once
  • Camera position shows a threat
• The Wind (1928) dir. Victor Sjöström
  • Cut like a thriller, but shown like a dream
• Rescued from an Eagle’s Nest (1908) dir. J. Searle Dawley
• The House with Closed Shutters (1910) dir. D. W. Griffith
  • Cinema had been “stagey”
• Way Down East (1920) dir. D. W. Griffith
  • “Cinema needs to show the wind in the trees”
    • A sense of the outside world
• Orphans of the Storm (1921) dir. D. W. Griffith
  • Add vignette
  • Use visual softness and backlighting to make actors stand out from backgrounds
• The Birth of a Nation (1915) dir. D. W. Griffith
  • Looks like it was filmed in Kentucky, but was shot in LA
  • Portrays black people as the villains, KKK as heroes
• Rebirth of a Nation (2007) dir. DJ Spooky
• Cabiria (1914) dir. Giovanni Pastrone
  • Use elephants to suggest scale
• Intolerance (1916) dir. D. W. Griffith
  • Tint violent scenes in blue, others in sepia
  • Jump between storylines (show same human traits throughout time, editing as an intellectual signpost)
  • Used dollys, cranes, and even balloons
• Souls on the Road (a.k.a. Rojo No Reikan) (1921) dir. Minoru Murata
  • Pioneering use of parallel editing in Asia