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Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
Imdb
entry on Breathless
Think about the many references to film in Breathless. Godard is constantly
alluding to other films and playing with Hollywood conventions (from
the opening frame dedicating the film to Monogram Pictures, a B-movie
production company in Los Angeles). What is the purpose of these
allusions, and what is Godard’s attitude toward Hollywood cinema? Is
this web of allusions just a game that rewards film buffs for
recognizing these references? Does he use and violate filmmaking
conventions just to shock and surprise the audience? Or is Breathless also using these
strategies productively? Is Breathless
able to communicate something that a more conventional film without the
jump cuts, violations of continuity, etc., would be unable to convey?
Are the characters
and the performances believable according to traditional standards of
characterization or acting? How does Jean-Paul Belmondo’s portrayal of
Michel depart from those standards? Are the character of Michel and the
performance of Belmondo able communicate something that a more
conventional approach would not? What is gained and lost when we leave
the world of realistic characters behind and enter the cinematic realm
of Breathless?
Italian neorealism
and the realist film theory of André Bazin were important influences on
the filmmakers of the French New Wave. But is there anything realistic
about Breathless? Which
moments of the film contain some documentary information and help us
learn about the people and environments of this particular time and
place?
While the editing
is the most immediately noticeable aspect of the film’s style, there
are also a number of unusually long sequences with improvised, rambling
dialogue and very little obvious connection to the narrative. What is
the purpose of these many digressions? What is the purpose of the
alternation between rapid-fire editing and long conversations?
Although it did
spark some criticism for its rough style and unpolished technique, Breathless was widely praised at
the time of its release because of its fast-paced and innovative
editing and its youthful energy. Does the film still seem innovative
and dynamic today? Here are two retrospective assessments of the film:
Wheeler Winston
Dixon: “Seen today A Bout de souffle
seems, primitive, classic, not at all the audacious ground-breaker it
seemed to be in 1959. The jump cuts which were so radical then are now
a staple of MTV.”
Dudley Andrew: “Breathless belongs to that very
short list of films that stunned audiences in their own time and
continue to stun us today.”
Which of these
critics do you agree with? How would you alter or elaborate on these
evaluations?
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Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais,
1959)
Imdb
entry on Hiroshima mon amour
Some notes on
Resnais . . . Alain Resnais is often grouped together with Agnès Varda
and Chris Marker under the rubric of the “Left Bank School” (after the
traditional university district in Paris along the left bank of the
Seine River) because of their work is often more academic,
philosophical, and literary than the New Wave filmmakers associated
with Cahiers du cinéma
(especially Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, and the early Godard). Resnais
often makes films modeled on the labyrinthine structures of memory, and
the results are unusually complicated narratives that switch from one
time or place to another without the cues familiar from classical
cinema. Resnais often collaborated with writers, including the most
prominent advocate of the “New Novel,” Alain Robbe-Grillet, on Last Year at Marienbad (1961), and
Marguerite Duras on Hiroshima mon amour. Many of the Left Bank projects
involved experiments that test the boundaries between media, as in
Robbe-Grillet’s detailed “ciné-roman”
(or cine-novel) that eventually became the film Last Year at Marienbad or Marker’s “photo-roman” (or photo-novel), La Jetée.
Hiroshima mon amour includes a
number of flashbacks, though it’s often unclear how each of the events
shown in the film would fit into a timeline. How would these flashbacks
be handled in a more conventional narrative film? Why does the film
refuse to use those conventions for introducing and framing memories?
What is the relationship between sound and image during these
flashbacks?
Why do the main
characters insist that the other “saw nothing” at Hiroshima or Nevers?
What do the place names “Hiroshima” and “Nevers” means in the context
of the film? Why do those characters remain nameless throughout the
film? Why do they assume the names of those places at the end of the
film?
In her notes to the
screenplay of Hiroshima,
Marguerite Duras writes, “We should count upon the equalitarian
function of the modern world. And even cheat in order to show it.
Otherwise, what would be the use of making a Franco-Japanese film? This
Franco-Japanese film should never seem Franco-Japanese, but anti-Franco-Japanese. That would be
a victory.” In the context of the film you’ve just seen, what do you
think Duras means by “anti-Franco-Japanese”?
What is the egalitarian “function” of the modern world, and why should
we feel obliged to “cheat” in order to achieve that equality?
In the Cahiers du cinéma roundtable in
this week’s reading, the critics refer to the connection between Hiroshima mon amour and literature,
and Godard says that the film is “totally devoid of any cinematic
references.” Do you agree with that assessment? What about the film
seems literary to the critics in that discussion and to you? Even if Hiroshima adopts a different
approach to film history than Breathless,
is it true that the film is devoid of cinematic references? Jacques
Rivette responds that the film seems to use some of the editing
techniques described by Sergei Eisenstein. Which sequences seem to use
an Eisenstein-like form of montage?
These critics also
insist that Hiroshima is more
“modern” than any film in years. What do they mean by “modern” in this
context?
The French film
critic Serge Daney writes about his own childhood experience of seeing Hiroshima mon amour: “I know of few
expressions more beautiful than the one coined by Jean-Louis Schefer
when, in L'homme ordinaire du cinéma,
he speaks about the ‘films that have watched our childhood’. Because it
is one thing to learn to watch movies as a ‘professional’ – only to
verify that movies concern us less and less – but it is another to live
with those movies that watched us grow and that have seen us, early
hostages of our future biographies, already entangled in the snare of
our history . . . The dead bodies of Nuit
et brouillard and two years later those in the first frames of Hiroshima mon amour are among those
‘things’ that have watched me more than I have seen them.” In what
sense can those opening shots be said to “watch” the viewer?
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Cléo from 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda,
1962)
Imdb
entry on Cléo from 5 to 7
As in Breathless the Paris of Cléo from 5 to 7 is a world where
mirrors and images are everywhere. Virtually every wall holds a device
that allows us to see ourselves as we are or a representation that
allows us to see ourselves as we might become. What is the difference
between Cléo’s relationship to the image (including her own image) and
Michel’s in Breathless? Does
she seem to revel in the act of role-playing? Or does playing a role
have more sinister overtones in Cléo?
Why? Does gender help explain the differences between the two films?
How?
Varda was
trained and worked as a photographer before becoming a filmmaker. Can
you see evidence of that in Cléo?
Which elements of the film seem most concerned with the culture of
images and publicity? Which shots in particular seem to have been
produced by a photographer?
What is the
purpose of the film’s “real time” structure (as the title suggests, the
entire story takes place within a single afternoon and early evening)?
Why limit the narrative to just two hours? What changes does the main
character undergo during that short period? What are her interests and
obsessions at the beginning? And at the end? What moments in the film
mark significant transitions? How are those transitions signaled?
Although Breathless is famous for its
innovative editing, there are also a number of dead spots in the
narrative, moments when nothing seems to happen and the story seem to
follow a series of digressions. Are there any equivalent moments in Cléo? When? What do we learn from
these uneventful periods in the film?
The film was
produced in the last year of the Algerian war of independence from
France. The revolution began in 1954, when the National Liberation
Front (FLN) and its military wing (ALN) launched a guerrilla war, and
ended in 1962, when the FLN forced the French army and colonial
settlers to withdraw. Cléo
makes several references to that historical context, especially through
the figure of the soldier on leave. What function do those references
to the Algerian War play in the film? In what ways is Cléo's fate
similar to that of the soldier? And in what ways is it different?
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Jules and Jim (François Truffaut,
1962)
Imdb entry on Jules and Jim
Martin Scorsese
said that he would have done anything to have directed the first 15
minutes of Jules and Jim, and
the film tries to set the stage, with all its historical detail and
relatively complex cast of characters, in an efficient and economical
manner. What techniques does Truffaut use to evoke the time and place
at this particular historical moment? How does he recreate the bohemian
atmosphere of France in the first decade of the 20th century? What role
do representations from the period—photographs, archival footage,
paintings—play in that process?
The case of
Truffaut is interesting because his criticism was often the most
critical of the old order in French cinema (the “tradition of quality”
and the “cinéma de papa”) but his films are often less formally
innovative than those of his contemporaries (including Godard, Resnais,
and Varda). Is Jules and Jim
the kind of historical costume drama and literary adaptation that
Truffaut condemns in his writing? How is it different from classical
modes of filmmaking and from that tradition of quality? Which specific
moments in the film seem to depart from a classical style (i.e., the
attempt to create a perfect illusion of the real world on screen and to
hide the filmmaking techniques that make the illusion possible)? When
does Truffaut draw attention to the fact that he’s creating art rather
than representing reality?
Think about
the freeze frames of Jeanne Moreau during the scene when she attempts
to distract Jules and Jim from their game of dominoes. What purpose
does that technique serve at that moment? How is this use of the freeze
frame similar to or different from the final shot of The 400 Blows? Cléo from 5 to 7 is also concerned
with the image that its title character projects and that she attempts
to reconstruct and control over the course of the film. How are the
character and the image of Catherine similar to and different from
Cléo? Does she undergo the same kind of transformation as Cléo?
While watching Jules and Jim
are you aware that you’re watching a film from the 1960s? What elements
of the film’s subject matter or its style remind you that you’re
watching a product of the French New Wave and the early 1960s rather
than a film from the 1930s?
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Pierrot
le fou (Jean-Luc Godard,
1965)
Imdb entry on Pierrot le fou
At one point in the
film, Marianne and Ferdinand begin to summarize the story in a
voice-over, and they cover the main elements of the narrative: the
escape from boring, everyday lives in Paris, the gunrunning, the
hitmen, and the romance. But they also insert the phrase “all mixed
up,” and that characterizes the film about as well as the summary of
the narrative. Think about all the ways the film is “mixed up.” Which
genres and other modes of filmmaking are included in this mix? Which
elements appear to be out of order? Which appear to be mismatched? At
which moments does the film most radically depart from conventional
approaches to narrative? At which moments do the sound and image tracks
seem most mismatched? What is the purpose of this strategy? What does
it deliver that wouldn’t be possible in a film with a straight
chronological narrative or sounds and images with a clear and direct
connection?
Just before she
sets their car on fire, Marianne says to Ferdinand, “this isn’t the
movies.” At another point, as he is driving, Ferdinand looks backwards
and addresses the camera; when Marianne asks what he is doing, he
replies that he is speaking to the audience. What happens when a film
refers to the fact that it’s a movie and characters directly address
the audience? Why isn’t this strategy used more often in classical
narrative film? What other strategies does the film use to break open
the diegesis and remind us that the world represented on screen isn’t
the real world? What function do the non-diegetic inserts (e.g., the
neon titles, the oil company mascot, etc.) serve?
Many films
rely on books, paintings, and photographs for inspiration or as sources
for adaptation. How is Pierrot le fou
different in its approach to these source materials? What is the
relationship between the art history book that Ferdinand reads and the
images we see on screen? And how does Ferdinand’s diary affect both the
sound and the image track?
The American
action director Samuel Fuller, appearing as himself in the party
sequence towards the beginning of the film, gives his view of “what the
cinema is.” He says, “The film is like a battleground. Love. Hate.
Action. Violence. Death. In one word, emotion.” How do these words
apply (if they do) to Godard's film?
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Cruel Story of Youth (Oshima
Nagisa, 1960)
Imdb entry
on Cruel Story of Youth
Because both
directors started their careers at almost exactly the same time,
because both were well-known critics before becoming directors, and
because both share a leftist political orientation, Oshima is often
referred to as the “Japanese Godard.” That phrase can be both
flattering (it’s better to be the Japanese Godard than the “Japanese
Harold Ramis”) and dismissive because it diminishes the individuality,
innovation, and cultural specificity of Oshima’s work. What parallels
are present between films like Breathless
and Cruel Story of Youth?
Which stylistic and narrative elements do the films have in common?
What does studying the French New Wave allow you to see in this film
that would otherwise remain obscure? Which elements of Cruel Story are impossible to
describe and understand in language borrowed from the French New Wave
and writing about Godard?
Cruel Story of Youth both belongs
and responds to a series of films called “sun tribe” movies, which
focus on the lives of pleasure-seeking youth with very little
connection to Japanese traditions. How does Oshima represent this “sun
tribe,” these hedonistic young people, in Cruel Story? Is this film a
celebration of youthful energy and vitality? What do the main
characters in Cruel Story gain
through their rebellion? Does the style of the film seem appropriate
for the subject matter? Is the film made with the dynamic editing of
some moments in Breathless?
Why represent the “youth of today” in the manner of Oshima in Cruel Story?
Oshima later became
known for a “cinema of cruelty” and transgression in films that exist
along the border between art and pornography (e.g., In the Realm of the Senses from
1976 and In the Realm of Passion
from 1978), and elements of that transgression and cruelty are apparent
in Cruel Story. Which moments
of the film seem designed to provoke political and moral condemnation?
What function does that provocation serve? What does it force you to
consider that a more subtle film would allow you to ignore?
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Closely Watched Trains (Jiří
Menzel, 1966)
Imdb entry for Closely Watched Trains
Some background . .
. The film takes place during World War II, at a moment when the Nazis
were still occupying Czechoslovakia but were suffering major losses
throughout Europe and in the Czech countryside at the hands of the
partisans, the domestic resistance movement. (The collaborator who
drives his car along the tracks, the map scene that mentions a series
of brilliant “strategic retreats” by the Germans, and the “closely
watched trains” full of ammunition and soldiers are the main references
to the war in the film.) While it concerns that historical period the
film was produced over 20 years later, during the beginnings of the
Prague Spring, a time of relative openness and political and cultural
experimentation. The Czech New Wave emerges in that atmosphere, though
it also ends with the political crackdown in 1968. Many of the
influential filmmakers of the period found it difficult to make films
after 1968; others (e.g., Milos Forman) emigrated to Western Europe and
the United States.
Closely Watched Trains earned an
Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Picture in 1967, and it remains
one of the most famous and beloved Czech films to audiences outside the
Czech Republic and Slovakia. What about this film allows it to travel
easily? How are the elements of that international success present in
the film itself?
The Czech film
industry had been nationalized after World War II, and the craftspeople
developed in that system and at FAMU (the Czech film school in Prague)
were among the best in the world. (That talent and skill are still on
display in American “runaway productions” that use the less expensive
but still world-class facilities and technical workers in Prague rather
than pay Hollywood prices. Barrandov Studios, where Closely Watched Trains was filmed,
was also the European location for Mission:
Impossible.) On the other hand this is a small budget film with
a handful of characters and locations. At which moments of the film was
that craftsmanship most apparent? And at which moments was it clear
that this was made according to a different set of standards and values
than a spectacular Hollywood (or a Hollywood-Mosfilm) production? Think
in particular about the conclusion of the film? What temptations would
a big-budget film find impossible to resist?
Like many of the
films we’ve seen so far, this film focuses on the life of a young
person and his conflicts with representatives of older generations.
Which elements of this youth film does Closely Watched Trains have in
common with the other films on the syllabus? What is unusual or unique
about this particular film? Think about the comic dimension of Menzel’s
film. How comedy fit into this generational struggle? Who is the object
of that satirical edge?
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Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomás
Gutiérrez Alea, 1968)
Imdb entry
on Memories of Underdevelopment
Some background . .
. Most of the film takes place in a roughly two-year period bookended
by the Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis (or
October Crisis) of 1962. Near the beginning of the film the main
character’s wife and parents leave Cuba for Miami, and his friend Pablo
follows them shortly thereafter. In the first years after the communist
revolution of 1959, during a particularly ominous period in the Cold
War, Sergio decides to stay in a Havana undergoing enormous political
and cultural transformations. Memories
of Underdevelopment and its director were themselves the subject
of international intrigue: the film was scheduled for a screening in
the United States as part of the New York Festival of Cuban Films and a
number of the prints bound for the Festival were seized by US Customs
officials enforcing the economic embargo of Cuba. After the film
received an award from the National Society of Film Critics in 1974,
Alea was denied a visa, sparking protests by a range of critics,
filmmakers, and newspapers (including a mocking New York Times
editorial titled “Celluloid Menace”).
Once again we
encounter a film that combines fiction filmmaking, location shooting of fiction film, still photography, and documentary
and newsreel footage (with television also added to the mix). What
function does this mixing and recombination of media serve in the film?
Does any particular medium provide a more direct access to the reality
of the situation in Cuba in the early 1960s? Do we learn different
kinds of information from each medium? Does the cumulative effect
create an understanding that would not have been possible in a single
medium? Why? The filmmaker (played by Alea) who shows the censored
footage says that he’s planning to use the material in a cinematic
collage. In what ways is Memories of
Underdevelopment (which, after all, does use that same footage)
also a collage?
Like Hiroshima mon amour and Cléo from 5 to 7, Memories of Underdevelopment shifts
repeatedly between a first-person form of filmmaking in which the
camera is closely linked to the main character and “objective” shots
that seem unattached to any character in the film. All of these films
also use a significant amount of voice-over narration by the character
whose POV is represented through the images. Does Alea use POV shots
and voice-over in the same way as Resnais and Varda? How would you
characterize the similarities and differences in the way these
directors use that first-person filmmaking strategy? Does Alea add to
or subtract anything significant from the approach used by Resnais or
Varda? At some points Alea provides what sounds like voice-over
narration or a POV shot only to reveal that the sound came from a
diegetic tape recorder (Sergio’s secret tape of the conversation with
his wife) or to show Sergio walking into the frame (I’ll show this in
class). In a sense these shots are liminal, in-between, neither inside
nor outside the world of the film. What does that unusual strategy have
to do with the film as a whole, on Sergio’s relationship to the
revolution, the many meditations on underdevelopment, etc.?
Think about the
various uses of the word “underdevelopment” in the film. When do the
narrator and other characters use that phrase? What is the standard of
development they employ? What would it mean to be fully developed
according to this standard? When Sergio is in the gallery with Elena,
he remarks that she doesn’t seem interested in the artwork and that her
indifference to this high art reminds him of the underdevelopment of
the island. How is the question of underdevelopment related to his
relationship with Elena? What happens to Sergio in the intervening
years between his victory in the court case and the making of the film
in 1968? Does the film seem optimistic about the prospect for future
development in his life and in the society around him?
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Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer
Werner Fassbinder, 1974)
Imdb
entry on Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
Fassbinder
was one of the youngest and most prolific of the directors in the New
German Cinema. Between 1966 and his death in 1982 (of suicide by drug
overdose at age 37), he directed over 40 films, including seven in 1973
and 1974. Fassbinder wrote most of his own screenplays and acted in
over 40 films (he’s Emmi’s loutish son-in-law, Eugen, in Ali:Fear Eats the Soul). Before
moving into cinema, he was trained in theater and helped found an
avant-garde theater company; he continued to write, direct, and act in
stage productions throughout the 1960s and 1970s. With other members of
the New Cinema, he also helped found the independent film cooperative
Filmverlag der Autoren, which was responsible for the production and
distribution of many of the most important films in Germany during this
period.
Filmverlag
der Autoren was started in order to oppose what its founders called
“grandpa’s cinema,” the popular major studio productions of the time.
Again we see an emphasis on generational conflict and a search for a
“new” cinema. Is this generational struggle apparent in Fassbinder’s
film? What are the characteristics of the older and younger
generations? How does the spring-autumn romance factor into this
equation? Are Emmi and Ali like other people of their generations? Are
they able to break out of the habits that characterize people with
their experience? When and how?
A
more literal translation of the film’s title would be something like
“Fear Eat Soul”: it’s written in the kind of broken German that Ali
speaks. Ali’s speech marks him as an outsider in Germany, but how else
do people in the film know who belongs inside a particular group and
who is an outsider? How does Fassbinder represent that dynamic in this
film, that negotiation between the members of a group and strangers?
When
discussing Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7,
we talked about the various gazes that Cléo is forced to confront
(including the look of the camera and her own gaze at herself). One of
the most interesting formal aspects of that film is Cléo’s transition
from the object of the gaze, the person that the camera looks at, to
the subject of the gaze, the person who appears to control and direct
the camera. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
is also a film structured around a network of looks. How does the power
of the gaze function in this film? What happens in the opening sequence
when the crowd at the bar stares at Emmi? What other situations in the
film are constructed in a similar way? Is there a difference between
Fassbinder’s examination of the look and Varda’s? Is there a
consistency to the POV in Ali, or does it shift around? Does it remain
tied to any racial, ethnic, gender, or generational group? What rules
or logic govern any changes in perspective? What do you make of the
frequent use of long shots and stilled, tableau-like arrangements of
figures in this context?
In
1971 Fassbinder saw six Douglas Sirk films during a retrospective at a
museum in Germany. (Sirk was an exile from Nazi Germany who moved to
Hollywood and became one of the masters of melodrama. He has since
become one of the most prominent examples of a filmmaker who worked
within relatively rigid and formulaic genres and under commercial
studio conditions but still managed to develop his own personal vision
and style.) What function does the melodramatic plot serve in the film?
What do the unbelievable, exaggerated, and excessive elements of the
film allow Fassbinder to explore in ways that a more measured and
reasonable approach would not?
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Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni,
1966)
Imdb
entry for Blow-Up
Recall
the process that the main character goes through to discover the trace
of a dead body in his photographs of a nearly empty park. What allows
him to find the gun and the body? What distracts him from the task of
reconstructing what happened that day? What kind of evidence is the
photograph? Is it convincing to you and to him? Does it lead to justice
in the end? What do you make of the fact that the crime is virtually
forgotten and unpunished by the end of the film?
What
is the relationship between the film’s swinging 1960s environment and
this meditation on photography? What different kinds of photography are
presented in the film? Is there a difference between fashion
photography and documentary-like photojournalism in the context of the
film?
What
do you make of the presence of the mimes in the film? The last scene
with the tennis match seems to be closer to an allegory than a
representation of an event that would actually take place, and if
that’s the case, what do the various elements of this allegory stand
for? What is the significance of the fact that everyone in the park
pretends that a tennis match is actually taking place? What about the
decision by the main character to retrieve the tennis ball? And the
suggestion that he hears the ball hitting the rackets and bouncing on
the ground? What does this say about our relationship to reality,
especially the reality recorded in photographic images?
Some
film theorists have suggested that films most often allude to other
arts in order to demonstrate the superiority of film (e.g., the
stillness of a painting or photograph is contrasted with the dynamic
movement of a film). Is that happening in Blow-Up?
This
film won several awards when it was released, but it’s also one of the
most copied and parodied 1960s art films. Beyond the fashions and
Austin Powers atmosphere, what aspects of the filmmaking style date Blow-Up as a film from that moment
in art cinema?
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Bonnie
and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967)
Imdb entry for Bonnie and Clyde
During the 1960s films from outside the United
States, and especially from Western Europe, were very popular on the
art cinema circuit. They were also very influential in Hollywood,
perhaps more than at any time in the past half-century. Does Bonnie and Clyde demonstrate any of
those influences? At which moments does it appear to depart from the
stylistic standards and practices of classical Hollywood cinema and
begin to experiment with more provocative forms and contents?
When
does Bonnie and Clyde appear
to violate the moral standards of CHC and its “production code”? Which
elements of the film seem relatively tame and restrained in comparison
with the films we’ve seen so far this quarter?
What
is the film’s genre? How does it update and test the boundaries of that
genre? What are the major differences between Clyde and the typical
movie gangster? Think about Michel in Breathless
and Bob in Bob the Gambler.
Both are imitating the kind of American gangster made famous by
Hollywood B-movies. Arthur Penn and Warren Beatty then come along and
make Bonnie and Clyde, an
American movie about Depression-era gangsters, but also a movie made
partially under the influence of the French New Wave. How is Clyde
different from characters like Michel and Bob, French tough guys of the
1950s and 1960s?
Take
a look at the imdb entry on the film. Who is the producer? What does
that information tell you about the “New Hollywood” that brought us Bonnie and Clyde?
What
role does violence play in the film? And, in particular, how is the
violence at the end of the film presented? Does it convey any lessons
or mete out punishments to people deserving of brutal justice? Whose
side are you on at the end of the film? And whose side are the guns on?
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Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969)
Imdb entry
for Easy Rider
Several
of the artists behind Easy Rider
(Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson) worked at American
International Pictures, Roger Corman’s low-budget movie factory, during
the 1960s. At the time Corman’s studio was famous for cheap protest
movies and “motorcycle flicks” aimed at a youth market. Begun in that
spirit, Easy Rider was
produced on a budget of $300,000 through principle photography. Does Easy Rider still bear some of the
hallmarks of a sensationalist B-movie? Which elements of the film
appear unpolished? Which appear sensationalist?
Peter
Fonda says that he arrived at a clear vision of the film in a Toronto
motel room when he began to think about the relationship between the
biker film and John Ford’s The
Searchers, in which John Wayne spends five years searching for a
girl kidnapped by Indians. The main difference, he says, is that the
characters in Easy Rider aren’t looking on horses for young Natalie
Wood, “they’re looking for America and they’re on choppers.” What is
the relationship between this film and the western as a genre? Which
genre conventions does it utilize? Which does it discard or transform?
What other genres does it allude to? What vision of America does the
film present? Does Easy Rider
differ from or rehash postcard stereotypes of the American landscape
and the heartland?
This
film became one of the major documents of the counterculture of the
late 1960s, and it’s famous in part for the usual reasons: sex, drugs,
and rock and roll. It both alludes to and becomes part of the culture
wars over dress, hair, music, drug use, and dropping out. But is there
a broader political significance in relatively superficial matters of
appearance and in the more profound decision to leave mainstream values
behind and embrace the sixties counterculture? Recall the many moral
pronouncements about out-of-control youth in the trailer to the “sun
tribe” film Crazed Fruit and
the more general moral panic that accompanies the rise of a youth film
culture in various locations around the world. Does Easy Rider respond preemptively to
potential criticism of the counterculture as represented in the film?
Think
about the sound track in Easy Rider
(and hum it in your head—a lot of the songs will be familiar). What is
the relationship between the music and the images in the extended
segments featuring popular rock songs? Is this the kind of film where
the movie itself serves as an ad for an album sold at a record story
near you? Are the musical sequences just music videos before the MTV
age? Or is there a more constructive relationship between the sounds
and images?
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Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese,
1976)
Imdb entry for Taxi Driver
Think about the images that begin and end the film (after the
conclusion of the closing credits). What are the most remarkable
features of the New York presented by Scorsese and described by Travis
Bickle at the outset of Taxi Driver?
Which details does Travis Bickle seize upon and offer as representative
aspects of the city? From a more formal perspective, which visual
details does Scorsese use to represent the city? And at the end of the
film, what does the boulevard full of headlights signify?
There
are several instances of characters watching movies or passing by movie
marquees in the film. What movies or genres are shown in the film? What
do those films suggest about the cinematic environment in the U.S.
during the 1970s?
Over
the course of Taxi Driver
Travis Bickle sees a couple of women in his rear view mirror. How does
he see his relationship to these two women (Betsy and Iris)? What is
the relationship between these two women and two of the main male
characters (Senator Palantine and Sport)? What is the connection
between the assassination/murder plots and the relationships between
Travis and these two women? What does he hope to accomplish by killing
these two men?
Several
films this quarter have focused in part on the increasingly important
role of mass media in contemporary American and European societies.
What does the media reaction to the shootings say about the link
between media reports, popular perception, and reality itself? Why do
people consider Travis a hero? If he’s not a hero, what is he? What are
the underlying problems that allow a society to make a hero out of
Travis Bickle?
Senator
Palantine’s campaign slogan is “We Are the People,” and at the
beginning of the film the Albert Brooks character has a discussion with
the button makers about which word should be underlined, we or are. What
does Taxi Driver say about
the people? Who are the people in the
United States in the 1970s?
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Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
Imdb entry for Raging Bull
For a variety of reasons (including the spread of color television and
the need to make movies with the television market in mind) color
almost entirely replaced black and white film during the 1960s. What
function does the B&W cinematography serve in Raging Bull? All other factors
being equal, what assumptions do you make about a contemporary B&W
movie? What does the black and white image allow Raging Bull to communicate that a
color film would be unable to express? What function does the one color
sequence in the film serve? What are the subjects and thematic concerns
of the color section, and how do these home movies differ from the rest
of the film?
The boxing
sequences occupy less than 20 minutes of screen time but they were one
of the most time-consuming aspects of the shooting and received some of
the most glowing praise from critics. How does the representation of
the boxing ring and the fight differ from more standard boxing movies?
What role does the camera play in the choreography of the fight
sequences? Does the camera coincide with anyone’s perspective in these
sequences? Many of the most violent exchanges are extremely
disorienting and logically incoherent. What is the effect of that
disorientation in the film?
What spaces does
the film gravitate towards? In which areas of New York does the film
take place? What are the most salient features of this environment?
Think about the early scene when Jake yells out his window and
threatens to kill of dog of a neighbor or passerby on the street; this
invisible speaker then calls Jake an animal. What does this scene say
about the relationship between public and private space in the film?
Think about the
narrative structure of Raging Bull.
After the credit sequence we see an overweight and aging Jake La Motta
reciting lines from his stage routine and quickly cut to a fight
sequence with a much younger La Motta. The narrative then progresses
through a series of events, some of which are presented in great detail
and slow motion, some of which fly by. Which elements of the La Motta
story does the narrative focus on? Why does the film lavish so much
attention on Jake’s marriage and intense jealousy? DeNiro gained 60
pounds during the production to undergo a metamorphosis from the thin
and muscular fighter to an older, heavier, out-of-shape nightclub
entertainer. Why does the film focus so often on the body of Jake La
Motta? How is that body related to traditional notions of masculinity?
From some perspectives a boxing champion would be a paragon of
masculinity. Is that the case with Jake? Why or why not? Some critics
have commented on the misogyny expressed by Jake and so many other
characters in the film. Is this a misogynistic film? When it comes to
the consideration of women, is the perspective of the film different
from the perspective of Jake La Motta?
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Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973)
Imdb entry for Badlands
Some background . . . Badlands
was based roughly on a 1958 murder spree by Charles Starkweather and
his young girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate. (Starkweather was 19 and Fugate
just 14 when he killed her parents and strangled her sister. After
those murders the two lived in her house for a week before fleeing
across Nebraska and killing a total of 11 people. Starkweather was
eventually executed, while Fugate was paroled after 18 years in
prison.)
Badlands is also remarkably similar to Bonnie and Clyde, which was
produced just five years before. Beyond the fact that both are about
the murderous rampages of a young couple, what do these two films have
in common? Think in particular about the relationship between the films
and the legendary figures that “inspire” them. Think also about their
relationship to the cult of the killer in American movies.
When the film was
released some critics found fault with its inability to explain the
motives of the main characters. Think about the dialogue that each of
them engages in, both with each other and with the other people in the
film. What does a conversation with Kit sound like? And Holly? What is
Kit’s motivation for committing the crimes in the film? For giving
himself up? Why does Holly go with Kit and stay with him as they head
west on the lam? Given the way they talk and interact with each other,
how are we supposed to know why they do what they do? If those
questions are hard to answer, what is the significance of the fact that
a film refuses to explain things like the motivation of its characters?
Before becoming a filmmaker Malick was a Rhodes Scholar from Harvard
and a philosophy student and teacher. Are there any sequences in Badlands that seem to reflect the
director’s background in philosophy? Think about Holly’s long
voice-over reflecting on the images in her father’s stereoscope. What
is the connection between those soliloquies and the narrative about
fugitive killers?
Malick’s films pay an extraordinary level of attention to natural
environments: to bugs, trees, landscapes, clouds. Malick famously
insisted that most of the outdoor sequence in his next film, Days of Heaven, be filmed during
the previous few minutes of magic hour, when the light lingers just
after sunset. What do the connection between these beautiful images of
nature and the narrative about murderers on the run?
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Yellow Earth (Chen Kaige, 1984)
Imdb entry for Yellow Earth
Yellow Earth was one of the first
films produced by China’s “fifth generation” of directors, it brought
together some of the most important figures of this period (including
Chen and Zhang Yimou, the film’s cinematographer), and it is therefore
considered a landmark in recent Chinese film history. What’s unusual or
unique about the film? From a purely formal perspective, what elements
of Yellow Earth set it apart
from whatever Chinese or international standards of comparison seem to
apply?
Think
about the representation of the landscape in Yellow Earth. What role do hills,
earth, and rivers play in the film? What is the relationship between
the characters and their environment? How is that relationship depicted
on the screen?
In
an important book on these fifth generation filmmakers, Rey Chow argued
that their films are characterized by an excessive interest in peculiar
customs and often fictionalized rituals. She suggest that these films
create a image of an exotic, backward, feudal China, and present it to
the gaze of a primarily non-Chinese audience abroad. What is the
purpose of the local customs and rituals (e.g., the marriage ceremonies
and rain dance) in the film? Do they only convey information about the
feudalism of the people participating in them? What else do they
signify?
The
main character in Yellow Earth
is a soldier in China’s famous Eighth Route Army during the war against
Japan, and the film contains a number of positive references to the
Communist Party and its alliance with the poor and the peasantry. Is
this a nostalgic look back to the heroic days of the Communist Party?
Or are some aspects of the film critical of this older generation of
political leadership?
On
one level the film seems to beg for an allegorical reading: soldier
hero is on the way to rescue them when the young girl drowns in the
river and the young boy rushes against the tide of humanity performing
a feudal ritual. What does each figure in this allegory stand for: the
sacrificed girl? the boy fighting against the grain? the communist
soldier unable to save them?
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The Story
of Qiu Ju (Zhang Yimou,
1992)
Imdb entry for The Story of Qiu Ju
Before Qiu Ju Zhang Yimou was
known primarily as the cinematographer or director for the most
colorful and visually extravagant films of the fifth generation. For Qiu Ju he abandoned that polished
look and adopted a much less spectacular style. The film was made
primarily with non-professional actors (though Gong Li and three others
are actors by trade), it was shot in 16mm and blown up for theatrical
exhibition, and roughly 50% of the footage was shot in public spaces
with hidden cameras and microphones.
What information is contained in those documentary moments, especially
the shots of street scenes and public spaces? What do we learn from the
long, lingering shots of street life, traffic, and the stalls the line
the roads? What do we learn from the images of the people walking
through those spaces?
The narrative follows a clear trajectory that takes Qiu Ju to ever
larger and more politically significant towns and cities. What does she
learn about her country during this journey? What are the differences
between the place she comes from and the places she visits? What
characteristics and values are attributed to each of those spaces?
Early in the film Qiu Ju says that she only wants justice to be done.
What would a just resolution of this situation be? She is obviously
disturbed by the actual result, and the film ends with an ambiguous,
stilled image of her face. How do you interpret that expression? Does
this ending contain an implicit criticism of the Chinese justice and
political system? Does it appear to endorse Qiu Ju’s pursuit of
justice? Or does that expression on her face suggest that she should
never have started this campaign in the first place?
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jtweedie@u.washington.edu
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