Cinema Studies 110

by Joe Dilworth

After watching The Graduate and the film documentary in class, I completely understand why this film served as a springboard for Dustin Hoffman’s stellar film career.  Hoffman’s awkwardness in social settings and bizarre tendencies are absolutely perfect for his portrayal of a naive college graduate who gets seduced by a much older woman.  Furthermore, Hoffman simply looks the part.  Dustin is handsome but not too handsome, naive looking but not too young, short but not short enough to become a distraction.  All of these characteristics make Hoffman seem beautifully out of place, playing the part marvelously.  There are few actors who could make an audience pity a character who makes as many massive mistakes as Benjamin Braddock.

I just wanted to point out the irony in a line from Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. There is a scene between John, Sydney Poitier, and Matt, Spencer Tracy, where they discuss what will become of John and Joey’s children. Matt is worried, and justifiably so, that the children will experience difficulties because of their bi-racialism. He is concerned about society’s reaction and bigotry towards them. When he asks John about this, John replies that Joey thinks their children will all become President of the United States, but he would settle for Secretary of State. It’s an off-handed remark, a pseudo-joke that would hardly be remembered, except…

Barrack Obama’s mother and father met at the University of Hawaii, as did Sydney and Joey. They fell in love and got married .We can almost imagine his mother taking his father back to her parents and introducing them to her. If we stretch our imaginations a little, we can even imagine a dinner of the sort in Guess Who’s…

We can imagine the same conversation ensuing between her father, Obama’s grandfather, and Obama’s father with them talking about the children and the problems they would face. And then there is that line- “she thinks they will be Presidents of the United States, but I’d just settle for Secretary of State.” Fast- forward 47 years.  Barack Obama is President of the United States.

This just goes to show how much times have changed and how sometimes movies capture things eerily close to reality. Obama was six years old when Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was released.

While that line wasn’t meant as a prophecy of any sort in the movie, it still gets me thinking. The statement was made for two reasons,  first and foremost as a joke, thrown in to be laughed at because of its implausibility. It also served to cement the stereotype of Joey as the dreamer who believed in things that just weren’t practical. Except not really. The bi-racial kid did become the president, and in the biggest irony of all, Hilary Clinton was the one who had to settle for Secretary of State,

I’m no American, but I think I echo the sentiments of most when I say “Thank goodness for changing times!”

Olive Nwosu

No, I guess that isn’t quite true. It was more of a release of my pent up frustration and confusion with Godard and my inability to figure out what the hell exactly is going on in his films. The truth is that while I do love Godard for his spunk and daring, not to mention his delightful quotes, I cannot for the life of me get my head around his characters. And, for me, characters are such a big element in defining how much I enjoy a film.

I do appreciate the boldness of the French New Wave films and I recognize the gutsiness of the young, fresh directors who crusaded to upend the status quo. But quite frankly, and very unfortunately, I do not understand Godard. Pierrot Le Fou is a prime example of why.

While watching this movie, I felt no connection whatsoever with its characters. I think that in Godard’s effort to stylize his work, and to destabilize as many of the traditional methods of film-making as he possibly could (and boy, did he succeed), he lost a simple but necessary element of  ‘good film’. Pierrot Le Fou, in my opinion, just did not allow the audience to relate with its characters: to understand them, or believe in them, or simply know them so that ultimately it could come to empathize with them. Its style- the sharp colors, awkward angles, disjointed dialogue and narrative- seemed to serve to alienate them from us.

It could, of course, be argued that this was precisely Godard’s intention. Many critics seem to think that he was more concerned with the aesthetics of the film than with its story. While mise-en-scene and montage are usually the means to an end- the narrative itself- it seems Godard’s intent was to switch this around so that the story becomes the means of showing the beauty and art of filmmaking itself.

My problem though is that, for me, and this could possibly be an old-fashioned approach to appreciating cinema, characters make the biggest difference. I enjoy films with roles that captivate me. Captivate, in this sense doesn’t necessarily mean charm- I do not have to like characters, or even understand them completely- it means that these characters attract and hold my attention and interest. I empathize with people easily, and once the characters become people, I care about them. This is my biggest difficulty with Pierrot Le Fou. In his attempt to radicalize the way he tells his story, with the garish colors, jumps in time, unclear and rambling narrative and bizarre imagery, Godard tries to invert and redefine everything established about the elements of film. He wants to be the auteur of his film, and do as he pleases with it. Don’t get me wrong, I love style and appreciate innovative cinematography, but I also care about narrative, and Godard’s is very unclear.

This is why I loved Jules et Jim so much more when I watched it. The story is a poignant one filled with memorable characters. And still it has style. Truffaut is able to give a quirky and fresh take on a love story while keeping some structure to the scenes. There are clear markings of the French new wave in the film- the scene where Jules, Jim and Catherine run across the bridge being one of the more famous ones- yet there is some of the traditional structure of story telling. And most importantly, for me at least, there are plausible characters, whose lives I can actually follow and whom I can begin to relate with.

This brings me to what I think is the biggest difference between Pierrot Le Fou and Jules et Jim. I think that Godard’s work is a little, no, a lot, too stylized; its avant-gardism subtracts from its stories and draws attention away from its characters. In Jules et Jim on the other hand, this style complements the characters and lends to the story-telling process, as I think it should.

What I mean when I say I do not like the French New Wave is that some of its excesses, in the name of unconventionality, irk me a great deal. Call me old-fashioned, but I’d more easily sacrifice ‘style’ and unorthodoxy for strong characters and a thought provoking plot than I would the reverse. Thankfully with movies like Jules et Jim, I wouldn’t have to choose.

And that is that about that.

Olive Nwosu

Similarly to “In the Heat of the Night”, The Graduate also broke cultural barriers. But The Graduate wasn’t concerned with race, but with sexuality. Benjamin Braddock, the film’s main character, was involved in an affair with Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father’s law partner. In the time period of which this movie was filmed, 1967, affairs and infidelity was still a very touchy subject in American culture and especially one to be put on the movie screen. But to complicate matters even more, Benjamin ends up falling for Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, Elaine. This complicated love triangle seems bound to fall apart, and does when Elaine goes back to school and gets engaged to another man. At the end of the film, Benjamin leads a cross-state drive to try to stop the marriage. I was surprised that he actually succeeded and left with Elaine, but his face at the end of the movie was priceless. He had no idea what came next. Nonetheless, the film showed some of the ugly less talked about parts of American culture and sexuality. Benjamin engaged in an affair with his father’s law partner’s wife, and then fell in love with her daughter. He was unfaithful to both of them and still won the girl he wanted in the end. The concept was something that was new in American film.

-Marcus Johnson

I think alot of movies are made with a certain time period in mind that they are based in–some movies take place in ancient civilizations, some take place in contemporary times. When a movie is based in present, especially if it is supposed to take place in America, we have a certain idea of how the plot is going to move in the cultural context of the movie. I think it gives us a fresh perspective because the film is something that we could visualize happening in current times. In the Heat of the Night is a great example of a movie that was made around cultural issues of the time. At the time, it was almost impossible for most southerners to see a black man as a respected professional, even more so a detective with law enforcement. I think it captured the audiences imagination and even helped to break (at the time) contemporary barriers in the south. Sidney Poitier played the part of Detective Virgil Tibbs as a strong black man from the north who was to be respected. He was competent, intelligent, and a leader, something that had never been seen from a black actor on the screen before. I think the biggest moment exemplifying this is when Mr.Tibbs is questioning Eric Endicott and he slaps Tibbs. Tibbs shows he is not to be disrespected and slaps Endicott right back. This moment has huge cultural significance because this is the first time a black actor did this on screen. I think this is only one of the ways a movie can be culturally significant, but In the Heat of the Night achieved it in a big way.

-Marcus Johnson