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?
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?
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?
One
of
the
most
famous
shots
in the film (and perhaps in film history) is
the extended tracking shot alongside a line of cars on the side of a
road leading, presumably, to a vacation spot outside the city. What are
the primary activities and concerns of the people waiting in this
traffic jam? And the main characters in the film as they sneak forward?
If this sequence is intended as a kind of microcosm of French
civilization in the late 1960s, what is the film saying about that
society? Why convey this information in the form of a long, continuous
tracking shot?
In
Weekend we
encounter a number of characters who are, shall we say, extremely
unrealistic. We probably aren’t expected to think that Tom Thumb and
Emily Bronte somehow found their way to France in the 1960s, and we
probably shouldn’t believe that France was actually populated by people
who valued their Gucci handbags more than life itself. Why would Godard
construct a film where almost every single character is a caricature?
What is the relationship between these extreme characters and their
historical counterparts in France at the time? Earlier in the quarter
we focused on the arrival of the demographic new wave and the economic
miracle that France experienced in the 1950s and 1960s. What is the
relationship between this film, the baby boom generation, and the new
consumer society that seemed to offer so much promise a decade earlier?
In
Breathless we saw
a number of scenes where the linkage between the sound and image tracks
was broken (e.g., in the driving sequence when Michel describes what he
loves about Patricia in seemingly continuous sentences, while the
editing inserts a number of jump cuts that can’t possibly be continuous
since the background is constantly changing). Although there aren’t any
jump cups in this sequence, the connection between sound and image is
also broken in Weekend when
Corinne and Roland are picked up by a garbage truck, and one worker
delivers a political speech while we see the face of the other worker.
Why does one worker speak for the other? Does this become a more or
less effective political tract when it’s communicated in this
unorthodox fashion?
What
is
the
function
of
the
intertitles that appear throughout the film? Why
break up the narrative with these brightly colored and blinking words?
Some of these titles comment on the film itself, as do characters in
the film. What is the effect on our viewing experience when we break
away from the action for a non-diegetic intertitle (i.e., a title that
comes from outside the world of the film) that tells us the film was
found on a scrap heap? What about when a diegetic character (i.e., one
who comes from inside the world of the film) comments on the quality of
the movie itself? How do these porous borders between the inside and
outside of the story world alter your relationship to the film you’re
watching?
The
concluding
title
says
“End
of
Story. End of Cinema.” In what sense does
cinema come to an end in Weekend?
For
the
decade
before
Tokyo Drifter
one of the most prominent genres in popular Japanese literature and
film was the so-called “sun tribe” story, which focuses on the lives of
pleasure-seeking youth who maintain very few connections to Japanese
traditions and clash with older generations. Does this “sun tribe,”
this group of hedonistic young people, make an appearance in Tokyo Drifter? Is this film a
celebration of youthful energy and vitality? A condemnation of the
values of “kids today”? Where does Tetsu fit into this generational
conflict? Is he aligned with the younger generation of gangsters and
the people seen dancing at the clubs? Or with the older generation
embodied in his boss? How is the fight over real estate (remember that
the action centers on ownership of a building) related to these
generational conflicts?
Suzuki
was
an
unusually
prolific
filmmaker
within the Japanese studio system
(at his peak he churned out several films each year), but he often
earned the wrath of his bosses at the Nikkatsu studio by making movies
like Tokyo Drifter. In what
sense is Tokyo Drifter a
standard studio or genre picture? What about the film would be unusual
and provocative enough to anger the studio heads? (Suzuki made two more
films for Nikkatsu before being fired for making movies that didn’t
“play it straight.” He then sued the studio, was subsequently
blacklisted by the industry, and worked only sporadically until the
1980s.)
The
most
striking
formal
feature
in
the film is probably its outrageous use
of color. Was there anything systematic about the color scheme in the
film? Were particular characters associated with particular colors? If
so, what was the significance of those colors? Were there any scenes
that appeared to “paint” the image in garish light without much regard
for the significance of these colors within the plot? Is this
supersaturated color just eye candy? Or does it serve some other
function in the film?
Think
about
the
many
references
in
Tokyo
Drifter to the American presence in Japan (especially in the bar
fight towards the end). Think also about the many allusions to American
cinema (especially in the shootout at the very end). Is this film a
critique of American cultural imperialism? If so, what form does that
criticism take? Or is this a celebration of American genre movies? Or
both? But how can a movie both attack certain aspects of American
culture and embrace Hollywood? Is it possible to think of American
movies as separate from the United States itself? How?
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?
Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomás
Gutiérrez Alea, 1968)
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?
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer
Werner Fassbinder, 1974)
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?
The first scenes
of the film involve distant
ancestors of homo sapiens being hunted, hunting, waging battle,
learning to use
tools, and using them in battle. And then, in the most famous graphic
match in
film history, we skip over millions of years of history and find
ourselves
floating through space in 2001. What connects those two moments in
time? What
theory of history allows Kubrick to skip over everything else as though
it didn’t
matter at all?
As you know,
since the year 2001 we have lived in an
era when computers control every aspect of ours lives, dictating what
we can
and can’t do, reading our lips, and cutting off our air supplies if we
make
them angry. At least that was the way the future looked from 1968…. Is
Kubrick’s
picture of the new millennium different from the caricatured version I
just
wrote? How? What are the differences between our own relationship with
technology and the one envisioned in the film? Does 2001 still
help
us
understand
the interaction between humans and
computers? If you don’t believe that HAL 9000 2.0 rules the world, why
didn’t
this science fiction scenario come true?
How does world of
2001 differ from the technological dystopia
(in other words, a
nightmarish vision of the future, or the opposite of a utopia) seen in The Matrix trilogy? Is the simulated
world of the Matrix equivalent to the spaceship controlled by HAL?
Which
elements of The Matrix films overlap
with and depart from the vision of society glimpsed in 2001?
How are the
environments in the space ship and outer
space represented in the film? What color schemes predominate? Do the
spaces
seem claustrophobic or vast? How is that effect achieved? How does is
the
vision of space presented in the film different from the ones you had
growing
up or the ones you see in movies or other media today?
The film was shot
in 70mm and often released in
super widescreen Cinerama theaters. The image is big and detailed
(though that
may not come across in the DVD version). How does Kubrick use that
extra space
on the screen? How does it contribute to the themes explored in the
movie?
What does Dave
find at the end of the universe? What
does he find there literally (e.g., what does it look like physically,
who is
there, etc.)? And how does this conclude the narrative centered on
obelisks and
intelligent life forms somewhere out in the heavens?
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?
Think
about
the
opening
credit
sequence
where Benjamin travels forward on a
moving sidewalk. What does the image present explicitly (i.e., what
specific people, objects, colors, etc.)? What do these relatively
simple images communicate beyond that basic information? What do we
know about Benjamin before we hear him say a word in the film? Does the
framing and mise-en-scene on the plane and in the airport remind you of
any other moments in the film? What information about Benjamin or the
film as a whole is conveyed through the soundtrack in this credit
sequence?
Benjamin
seems
to
have
everything
going
for him: he’s a track star, the managing
editor of the school newspaper, the winner of some kind of scholarship,
and the owner of a brand new Alfa Romeo. A lot of people would be
thrilled to trade places with him. So why is he so disenchanted? Do we
learn anything about the sources of that disenchantment in the cocktail
party sequence early in the film? Is this a welcoming home environment?
A repulsive one? What specifically makes this return home so
unpleasant, horrifying, and alienating?
Describe
Benjamin’s
manner
of
speaking.
When
he’s asked a question, how does he
usually respond? Why does he talk the way he does?
Describe
the
neighborhood
and
the
home
where Benjamin and the Robinsons live.
Which elements of that environment are emphasized? What changes when
Benjamin hits the road and travels north to Berkeley? What is different
about the landscape that surrounds him on that drive and the
landscaping that surrounds his house?
Why
does
Mrs.
Robinson
decide
to
have an affair with Benjamin? Why does
Benjamin decide to have an affair with Mrs. Robinson? In the films
we’ve seen this quarter, the theme of generational conflict has been
especially prominent. Is that conflict apparent in the relationship
between the recent college graduate Benjamin and the “most attractive
of all [his] parents’ friends”? Do they have different reasons for
ending up in that hotel room together? Why is Mrs. Robinson so adamant
that Benjamin not date her daughter? Why does Benjamin fall for Elaine
so quickly?
Is
this
a
radical
or
rebellious
movie? Does Benjamin embody the
counterculture of the late 1960s? Which elements of his character
appear to challenge the status quo? Which are conventional? What
elements of the plot does this have in common with standard Hollywood
melodramas and love stories? Is his relationship with Elaine an act of
rebellion or just another Hollywood happy ending? Why does Elaine agree
to go with Benjamin at the end (especially given his somewhat odd and
erratic behavior)? What are her motivations?
Think
about
the
sound
track
in
The Graduate
(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 these Simon and Garfunkel songs? Is this the kind of
film where the movie itself serves as an ad for an album sold at a
record store 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?
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 orare. What
does Taxi Driver say about
the people? Whoare the people in the
United States in the 1970s?
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?
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?
The Chinese title of the film
translates directly into English as “Two Blood-Spattered Heroes.” How
does the
film establish and develop the parallels between the two heroes? How
does the
editing contribute to this parallelism? And the mise-en-scène?
What are the main features of John
Woo’s style of camerawork and
editing, particularly in the action sequences? From what points of view
does he
depict the action? What rhythms are established by Woo’s editing? What
are the
effects of the other devices he frequently uses, like slow motion and
close-ups? Does this editing ever violate the “rules” of the classical
continuity system? Are these departures from the standards of classical
Hollywood cinema jarring and disruptive? What effect do they have?
How does this movie work as a genre
film? How does the film bring
together the conventions of the gangster film and the melodrama? Does
this
combination of genres dilute the action and emotion? Or are the
spattered blood
and tear drops, the bullets and the doves, mutually reinforcing? Do the
genre
references allow Woo to portray, in all sincerity, actions that are
operatic,
exaggerated, self-consciously “over the top”?
Many of John Woo’s films explore the
“essence of the hero” (A Better Tomorrow’s original
title).
What are the qualities of the hero in The
Killer, and how do the action film and melodrama lend themselves to
the
study of heroism? How are these genre elements related to the
stereotyping of
gender roles in the film?
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?