Notes – Episode 2

The following material is from Wikipedia.

1918-1928: The Triumph of American Film…

• Citizen Kane (1941) dir. Orson Welles
  • “Hollywood would work wonders with light”
• The Thief of Bagdad (1924) dir. Raoul Walsh
  • States its theme upfront
  • Soft lighting, shallow focus, makeup
  • Classical? No, romantic (Hollywood’s claim to fame in the 20s)
• Desire (1936) dir. Frank Borzage
  • Eyelashes cast shadows
• Gone with the Wind (1939) dir. Victor Fleming
  • Dolly’s for cameras (make the image glide)
• Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) dir. Mervyn LeRoy
• Singin’ in the Rain (1952) dir. Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen
  • Even the shadows have light in them
• The Maltese Falcon (1941) dir. John Huston
  • Harder lighting, shaper shadows, nighttime
  • Murder, melodrama, movie journalism
• The Scarlet Empress (1934) dir. Josef von Sternberg
  • Sparkling, “champagney”, romantic, feminine
• The Cameraman (1928) dir. Edward Sedgwick and Buster Keaton
  • Shows Keaton’s fascination with the camera
• One Week (1920) dir. Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton
  • Movies are about looking
• Sherlock Jr. (1924) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Buster Keaton
• Three Ages (1923) dir. Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline
  • Daredeviling (Looks much further up than he was, net just below the shot)
• Buster Keaton Rides Again (1965) dir. John Spotton
  • Made it look like he stopped and started the train himself (improvised)
• The General (1926) dir. Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton
  • Every visual joke and setup is repeated and amplified in the second half but done in reverse order
  • Real trainwreck (such scale was a key element in silent films, and studios were not yet afraid of director’s big dreams)
• Divine Intervention (2002) dir. Elia Suleiman
  • Filmed in deadpan, finds grumpiness funny
• Limelight (1952) dir. Charlie Chaplin
  • More into body movement, less into the camera
• City Lights (1931) dir. Charlie Chaplin
  • Thinks like a vaudevillian
• The Kid (1921) dir. Charlie Chaplin
• Bad Timing (1980) dir. Nicolas Roeg
  • Hands filmed in close-up shows twitchy energy
• The Great Dictator (1940) dir. Charlie Chaplin
  • Great metaphor, Hitler making the world his toy (kicking a balloon)
• Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953) dir. Jacques Tati
• Toto in Color (1953) dir. Steno
• Awaara (1951) dir. Raj Kapoor
  • Streetwise and plucky (like Chaplin)
• Sunset Boulevard (1950) dir. Billy Wilder
• Some Like It Hot (1959) dir. Billy Wilder
• Luke’s Movie Muddle (1916) dir. Hal Roach
  • Too similar to Chaplin
• Haunted Spooks (1920) dir. Alfred J. Goulding and Hal Roach
• Never Weaken (1921) dir. Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor
• Safety Last! (1923) dir. Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor
  • Vertical obstacle race
• I Flunked, But… (1930) dir. Yasujirō Ozu
  • Influenced by the “ballsy dreamer”
    • Confident silliness, charming boyishness

…And the First of its Rebels

• Nanook of the North (1922) dir. Robert Flaherty
  • Made the audience look more ethically
  • People saw a real man, a playful father, on the silver screen
  • Documentary as an art form, a viable genre, was born
• The House Is Black (1963) dir. Forough Farrokhzad
  • Beautiful tracking shots
• Sans Soleil (1983) dir. Chris Marker
  • Shot real places combines with a fictional women and letters
• The Not Dead (2007) dir. Brian Hill
  • Turned his words into poems and had him speak the poems (make the words magical)
• The Perfect Human (1967) (shown as part of The Five Obstructions) dir. Jørgen Leth
• The Five Obstructions (2003) dir. Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth
  • Innovative high point
• Blind Husbands (1919) dir. Erich von Stroheim
  • Filmed himself square on coming out of the dark
• The Lost Squadron (1932) dir. George Archainbaud and Paul Sloane
• Greed (1924) dir. Erich von Stroheim
  • Shows agony and smallness
  • Yellow, the color of money, has flooded the whole world (the whole story)
• Stroheim in Vienna (1948)
• Queen Kelly (1929) (shown as part of Sunset Boulevard) dir. Erich von Stroheim
  • Sublime and extravagant
    • Never saw the light of day
• The Crowd (1928) dir. King Vidor
  • Heartbreaking
  • Pushed realism beyond the Hollywood norm
  • Made seven endings
• The Apartment (1960) dir. Billy Wilder
  • A bittersweet reworking of Vidor’s film
• The Trial (1962) dir. Orson Welles
  • Forces perspective
• Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924) dir. Yakov Protazanov
• Posle Smerti (1915) dir. Yevgeni Bauer
• The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer
  • Actress filmed only in close up, wears no makeup, hair was cropped just before the scene was shot, and the scene was filmed in silence
• Ordet (1955) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer
  • “Simplified reality”
• The President (1919) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer
  • Simplifies and purifies images in a Protestant way
• Vampyr (1932) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer
  • Shadows against a white wall which have a life of their own
  • Spare use of whiteness
• Gertrud (1964) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer
  • Filmed through a white scrim, as if in heaven
• Dogville (2003) dir. Lars von Trier
  • Completely setless
  • Opposite of Hollywood’s romantic cinema
• Vivre sa vie (1962) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Jean-Luc Godard