Cinema Studies 311

Watching the sheik this week made me think about the star in the historical sense. Valentino’s persona is a reflection of the culture he was a star in, and it is doubtful that he would be such a big star in today’s america. As one of the first romantic leads, i expected Valentino to be charming. But by today’s standards of romance his supposed charm would be grounds for a lengthy jail sentence or a restraining order. It provides an interesting glimpse at a culture whose values, and romantic ideals, differ so much from our own.

from watching the Adventures of Prince Achmed today in class, it is pretty clear to my why this film has remained worthy of note. The animation is hardly perfect–but remember this was made in 1926, two years before disney released Plane Crazy and Steamboat Willie. Much of its effects animation was clearly ahead of its time. I am thinking of the water reflection/riples in the bathing scene in particular. The film has for the most part a great mastery of understanding the importance of the silhouette in creating effective visual clarity in an image, and in terms of storyline, I thought the typical mythic structure used in the film serves its plot quite effectively. It is a fairy tale, after all.

but on the other hand, some of the animation is just terrible. There is a definite influence of puppetry in the motions of the characters in the film, but so much of the animation was so poorly carried out that I still have a hard time knowing what I actually think of the film overall. Take the walking movements attmepted in the film, foe example. They were for the most part very unsuccessful for me. I think they were just inadequately carried out.

What do you guys think? Was the quality of the animation good enough, especially considering that all of the animation “fields” of timing, cycles, inetweening, keyframes, etc. were really not invented yet? Or did the animation in Achmed leave something to be desired–especially considering that people had been doing great things (such as Gertie the Dinosaur) that were incredibly effective almost fifteen years before Achmed was even released?

-Alex

I watched Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on YouTube – admittedly, partly out of my own wish not to go to the library tonight in the cold, but also partly out of curiosity. How would it change my viewing experience to watch this film online? In a medium in which the visuals are incredibly pixelated and blurry? In a format where I have to switch windows every ten minutes, and I can scroll down to see user ratings and comments? But is this extreme format really any different than how I would have seen it had I gone to the screening in King today? Obviously the video quality would be better on a DVD, but beside that (important) factor, it’s essentially the same thing. This movie wasn’t made in 1920 to be seen in any possible format or situation any of us would be able to watch it today. None of the films we’ve seen in class would be. This point is exemplified through the idea of music in silent film, especially – the audience is not supposed to be able to pick from different score choices on the DVD menu, depending on their mood. It’s just not possible to be able to recreate the same viewing experience that an audience member would have had when the film was originally released. I was just thinking about the differences between films made in this time period and contemporary films that have the knowledge of exactly how they are going to be watched (in cineplexes, on DVDs, on laptop screens). I guess I don’t have any answers to any of this – I just started thinking about that for the first time this semester, and I think it’s an interesting issue to bring up.

-leah

that documentary we watched today really got me thinking about just how much went into these innovations in early cinema. I often associated new techniques in cinema either in the intellectual context of Eisenstein of the result of overcoming obstacles such as low funding in for the neo-realists, but the expressionist really seem to get there through labor and engineering. I mean they mapped out every shot and then worked there asses off getting the effects they desired. To me it feels like a really different paradigm then i am used to in other major movements.

I think screening A Story of Floating Weeds and The Crowd together made for a nice pairing. Both films explore some of the same themes – fatherhood, success, occupation as identity, performance as an occupation. But, The Crowd failed in every way that A Story of Floating Weeds succeeded. I think that maybe if the film were re-cut and the title cards were replaced, it could be a decent movie. As it is, The Crowd is too explicit about what it’s trying to do and what it wants the viewer to get out of it.

The film begins with the protagonist’s birth – on the fourth of July! A title card or two later, it says that John Sims plays piano… just like Lincoln and Washington! Then, at the age of 18, he moves to New York City to try to beat the crowd and achieve the American dream. At first, I thought these details were kind of funny – it’s so overdone that I thought there was some sense of irony in them. But, then the whole movie continues like this.

As the camera pans over his giant office with hundreds of paper-pushers, John Sims is just a speck at a desk. This is actually one of the most visually appealing moments in the film. This scene is preceded by probably my favorite one – the shots of the New York City streets imposed on top of one another.

The title cards are what kill me in this movie. Every card about “the crowd” ruin the movie a little more for me, as in “the crowd laughs with you always, but it will cry with you only for a day”. Come on. I thought the movie was strongest when the title cards where absent even when there was dialogue. For example, when the wife reveals to John that she’s pregnant.

I just saw this link, and it totally reminded me of last week’s Sunday movie, Strike. Eisenstein is rolling in his grave/beaming with joy.
 http://www.lowellcats.com/

Quick post–Watching Strike this week, I was struck by how fascinating the image of rain can be made to appear in black and white films, and now this causes me to wonder how directors and photographers can achieve a similar effect with color film. Any thoughts about this (and about the effects in general of lighting in black and white and silent films to achieve a thematic effect)?

In thinking about Nanook of the North and the Melies and Edison films (as well as the other short films we watched in class on Wednesday), I began to wonder about the line between simply an image or a moving image and “art”? It seems that candid shots, devoid of an intended mise-en-scene/composition/etc done during the advent of the moving picture can be identified as “art” (for they expose to us something new about reality, which may be attributed to the nascence of the medium). I feel like at that point in time, most films that were released had this mysterious (almost magical) quality about them because they were the first of their kind. It seems that now there are so many ways to make a film or take a photograph that there is no longer a need to contemplate the way the image will affect the viewer (I am not saying that this is true for all film, I am saying that this seems to be true for most amateur/casual photo-taking or film-making). I guess this can be applied to comparing silent film to modern film also, because in silent film the image is so essential to understanding that there has to be a very high level of attention to composition and mise-en-scene. Also, the availability of the medium is so widespread now that I think people take it for granted, whereas at the advent of the moving picture people were very careful with they way they shot their film (I’m assuming).

I seem to be getting caught up in a lot of thoughts, but I guess that my point is this: I think that the purpose of film is to expose parts of reality that were previously unknown by the viewer. To do this, the filmmaker must pay careful attention to the way each image relates to the other and what connotations the viewer might experience (I think that my belief here probably derives from the use of montage, especially in “Man with a Movie Camera”). Ultimately, my question is this: Are the short amateur films that were developed at the advent of the movie camera more like your definition of “art” or “cinema” than the amateur movies we see on say, youtube? If so, what makes the difference?

Also, another thought (related to my own answer of the above question): In my opinion, the staging and composition of a shot is essential to the artistic quality of film. We talked in class about how Nanook of the North was criticized for its staging and composition (thus compromising its historical integrity).. but without this staging and composition, without the editing and the careful choice of titlecards, would this still be “art”? because, really, what’s the point of watching “reality” played back to us? We want to experience reality and all of its underlying layers that we overlook in everyday life because everything we ordinarily see is linear, constant, mundane.. But Is it possible to still manipulate the image and maintain historical integrity?

Sorry for writing so much, and sorry if it doesn’t make much sense. This is just a stream-of-consciousness that developed during class on Wednesday.

Someone mentioned the movies of Tati the other week when we were talking about Chaplin so i watched took out Mon Oncle from the library and tried to watch it. Unfortunately the library’s copy is scratched so i only got half an hour in but i still noticed some cool stuff. What I saw of the movie contained almost no dialogue whatsoever, but the sound editing was very intense so that even though no one was speaking there was no way it would be mistaken for a silent film. It was a nice reminder that all sound we hear in a silent movie is totally non-diagetic.

hey guys. I guess I’m the first one to post anything on here (other than Brian). Anyway, check out this great animated short film that I came across. It’s not exactly the same as what we’ve been looking at in class, but it is a silent film, in its way.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ2An5BGg…