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This page is one the first of my film pages and was intended for the high-schoolers. A little bit of everything. Since that time I tought 200X Aesthetic: Theatre, Art & Music Through Film and you can find more about fundamentals of film in 200X course.
... from the old book: The History of Motion Pictures by Maurice Bardeche, Iris Barry, Iris Barry, Robert Brasillach; W W Norton & Company Inc, 1938
- Part Four: The Emergence of an Art 1919-1923 (Why do you think it took place after the WWI?)
- Part Five: The Classic Era of the Silent Film 1923-1929
- Part Six: The Talking Films 1929-1935... and forever.
"IN 1935 the film's fortieth birthday was celebrated. This seemed a good moment to examine the little-known history of this still embryonic art.
From Arrival of a Train to Kermesse Héroïque, from The Great Train Robbery to The Informer, from A Bicycle Ride in the Forest to Triumph of the Will the motion picture has progressed far. Contrary to the general opinion, however, it quickly discovered its own particular vocabulary and technique; its real difficulty was in becoming an independent art.
[...] Then followed a great period, a period of immense hopes. Outside the regular channels of production, individual experimentation was carried on from which the cinematographic art drew its most precious treasures. Favorable financial conditions made it possible to undertake experiments without regard for public taste--the results were always fruitful. There came into existence a small body of workers who had the support of a limited following--such as had recently rendered so great a service to literature and the drama. These men were boldly ambitious and sufficiently independent of the current accepted technique to endow it with a copious, new vocabulary, to extend the new art into realms which had seemed closed to it. The business of telling a story in pictures, which formed the basic material for all films, was relegated to a place of secondary importance by some of these men. Technique was made sufficiently flexible to translate into images, or into a sequence of images, subtle or delicate concepts which previously had been the exclusive domain of painters, musicians and poets. In this pioneering movement the French had the good fortune to win a place in the vanguard, side by side with the Russians, the Swedes and the Germans.
Only this had been lacking to give the film true dignity. Between 1920 and 1928 the most critical spirits paid it homage, considering it an art equal in promise to any. The film was in vogue among the intellectuals during this period. Similar excitement prevailed throughout the fertile era of the silent film. For some no doubt it was a snobbish enthusiasm, but for others this act of recognition had the value of a sincere act of faith in the destiny of a newcomer among the arts."
[ Maurice Bardèche, Iris Barry, Iris Barry, Robert Brasillach; W W Norton & Company Inc, 1938 ]
and
A History of Narrative Film by David A. Cook; W. W. Norton, 1996 : - 1: Origins
- 2: International Expansion, 1907-1918
- 3: D. W. Griffith and the Development of Narrative Form
- 4: German Cinema of the Weimar Period, 1919-1929
- 5: Soviet Silent Cinema and the Theory of Montage, 1917-1931
- 6: Hollywood in the Twenties
- 7: The Coming of Sound and Color, 1926-1935
- 8: The Sound Film and the American Studio System
- 9: Europe in the Thirties
- 10: Orson Welles and the Modern Sound Film
- 11: Wartime and Postwar Cinema: Italy and the United States, 1940-1951
- 12: Hollywood, 1952-1965
- 13: The French New Wave and Its Native Context
- 14: New Cinemas in Britain and the English-Speaking Commonwealth
- 15: European Renaissance: West
- 16: European Renaissance: East
- 17: The Former Soviet Union, 1945-Present
- 18: Wind from the East: Japan, India, and China
- 19: Third World Cinema
- 20: Hollywood, 1965—present
Read while the animation is downloading. Read more, if you want to make films. Even if you want to make movies. Do you know the difference? Take some film classes. Start right now. Do you have a favorite movie? Pick one and go to the bottom of this page, try answer a few questions. If you don't understand the terms, check them on Glossary page. The lists are for college film classes, but I marked the most essential ones with * -- go there! [ 2005 updated ]
[ [ ] = archives ]
Summer 1998. For the first time the UAF Summer Camp experimented with film majors. Kyle and Sean are my film students and also president and vice-president of the Film Club Go to Film Club page and become a member!
Jim Monaco. "How to Read a Film" Chapter 4. The Shape of Film History (thr334 textbook) *
The Elements of Film
[ There are two classes each afternoon in the TV Studio at the library. 2.20-3.30 & 3.40-4.50 First part is for both "critics" and "film-makers" -- we watch films (fragments), we talk, we learn how to READ films.
For film terminology go to the reference page Glossary
There are film screenings by the Film Club twice a week (TU & TR) at 7 pm. in the dorm. ]
There are many websites on film history (*), some links are @ Film & Movies links.
In case if some crazy kid would make it to this page, travel the adult pages. The Intro text is at the bottom -- Film History Overview (notes) & Basic "How-To" See What You Watch!
The cinema, wrote the documentarist Paul Rotha in the 1930s, 'is the great unresolved equation between art and industry'. It was the first, and is arguably still the greatest, of the industrialized art forms which have dominated the cultural life of the twentieth century. From the humble beginnings in the fairground it has risen to become a billion dollar industry and the most spectacular and original contemporary art. (Nowell-Smith xix)
First, think about 100 years of cinema in SEVEN stages
[ Art and Technology ]
Film History Overview
A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet. Orson Welles
FILM CHRONOLOGY
1. To 1895: Pre-history (Photography)
2. 1896 - 1915: The Birth of Film
3. 1916 - 1930: The Silent Film, Radio and Sound Film
4. 1931 - 1945: The Hollywood Era
5. 1946 - 1960: The Age of Television
6. 1961 - 1980: The Media World
7. 1981 - present: The Digital World
The history of the cinema in its first thirty years is one of unprecedented expansion and growth. Beginning as a novelty in a handful of big cities -- New York, Paris, London, and Berlin -- the new medium quickly found its way across the world, attracting larger and larger audiences wherever it was shown and displacing other forms of entertainment as it did so. As audiences grew, so did the places where films were shown, culminating in the great 'picture palaces' of the 1920s which rivalled theatres and opera-houses for opulence and splendour. Meanwhile films themselves developed from being short 'attractions', only a couple of minutes long, to the feature length that has dominated the world's screens up to the present day...
Part II. EYE LITERACY
Second -- our need for Visual and Video literacy. Knowledge of the Basic grammar of the screen. We need to understand what we see and do not notice. Sub-text paradigm is the most powerful phenomena in film. The meaning of the story is done on sub-conscious levels. Very helpful concept of counter-text (Meyerhold) -- very often the message on the screen is opposite to what is presented through spoken words and traditional dramatic storytelling. Don't we still debate the issue of violence on the screen, when none of the movies openly advocates the violence as principle of behavior?
Third -- The Exercise Screening: "Camera Speaks." Fragments (Video). What do they say, the Commercials? Screen statements. The favorites. What is this Taco Bell doggi? The secret in HOW it's shot. 30 seconds shot-by-shot. Print the questions to ask and to answer (see bellow).
The concept and attitude -- You need some Basic Semiotics: Everything is a text. We must READ the screen. (Monaco's book in the library) "Semiotics" is the science of signs. I make a special page on Film Semiotics. There are links to other sites on film theory. More links will be posted later in the Summer.
Can you see it? How much do you see when you watch? Do you know how to see movies? Do you think you were born with this ability to see?
from "The History of Motion Pictures" (1938)
[ see right table ]
"THE MUSIC OF IMAGES
Incurable as the ills that arise from this false situation may be, it is now necessary to take thought and, in concluding a study in which we have traced the slow evolution of this art-industry from a peep show, to consider what it may bring us in the future and on what, in spite of everything, its value and its magic lie.
This is no place to outline an aesthetic of the film, for every art by its very development traces out its own aesthetic, and the works of art themselves are infinitely more valuable than any discussion of them can be. In the output of the cinema during the past forty years, everything that has seemed to possess the characteristics of a work of art has exhibited one of two tendencies--one of which is to accentuate the most realistic properties of the photographic image, the other to escape as far as possible from reality.
To escape from reality and give it a figurative interpretation --sometimes poetic, sometimes comic or fantastic--this was the direction along which M¨¦li¨¨s impelled the budding film. In this he differed from his contemporaries. Influenced no doubt by circumstances as well as by his own instinctive preferences, rather than by any calculated plan, he inclined the film towards the unlikeliest impossibilities. He made us realize that this form of entertainment, since it is created in secret and remotely, is thus peculiarly capable of nurturing irreality and make-believe. What it is impossible for men to do, can be done and set before their eyes. The film sets no limits on the imagination of its creator, and the most rigid laws can be upset by it with impunity. This realm of utter freedom was limited only by the bounds of imagination. Yet M¨¦li¨¨s shared the predilection common to most pioneers for the bizarre rather than for the impressive. The unreal world which he created differed little from that of stage spectacle and illusion.
Later on others were to follow this same path, within the limitations imposed by the development of the film industry and the new obligations which this entailed. So Caligari and the other
fantastic German films came into existence. In France this tendency best adapted itself to the requirements of public and of producers alike in the work of Ren¨¦ Clair. When he began with Entr'acte, Clair clearly displayed his desire to achieve the purest fantasy, to create a sort of visual poetry. When he afterwards made use of plot or narrative he also made free use of the director's right to interpret them according to his own peculiar vision, to interpose between reality and himself tinted spectacles which lend it an unexpected and personal aspect, expressive of his individual mood and fancy. In the simplest and most conventional plots, he sets into motion characters which might have stepped out of a family photo album, real human beings to whom, however, some skillful touch has added the old-fashioned or awkward or romantic look they will have acquired in a faded snapshot twenty years hence. We are far from unreality, because these characters, and the backgrounds they inhabit, are pictures of something actual; yet they form part of an interpreted or transfigured reality, idealized as memory can idealize it by preserving the exact details, while utterly changing the general impression and atmosphere. He had abandoned the desire to apply the film's resources to free fantasy, but created instead a new aspect of the world in some subtle fashion which often makes us think of the paintings of Henri Rousseau, though it is less labored and careful. He discovered a penetrating and photographic vision of the world, which is the exact antithesis of the vision furnished by "artistic" photography. We can hardly say that it liberates the film from reality, but it certainly subjects reality to respectful obedience.
Chaplin's method was markedly different and followed a much simpler line. His interpretation was based on the creation of a character so palpably free from the common necessities that it created round itself a new and different reality, unlike that of the everyday world. Once you admit the existence of this character, there is no question of expecting him to adapt his behavior to common, human logic. Chaplin's films are, perhaps more than any others, completely independent of reality. This is because they stem from pantomime and not from a careful imitation of the theater. Their origins lie in a singularly abstract and imaginative interpretation of human impulses and gestures. The world in which Chaplin dwells can, if necessary, limit itself to the purely figurative world in which a dancer mimes. That explains why Chaplin avoids dialogue, which has no place in his technique." ...
1. What do you remember? Scene, image, line, sound? (Write it down)
2. What you didn't like?
3. Writer (story 1) -- director (story 2) -- actor (story 3)
Text -- Cinematography --- Performance
(Break down your evaluation in three major areas -- are they all together? Story -- Images -- Actors)
4. Perception and "my" opinion. (Don't try to avoid YOUR personal opinion, state your impression in order to evaluate yourself)
The Audience and Counterpoint. Write it down: What they say
and what you think they say. The public is the final creator and
the PRODUCT of every film. What was the message of this movie?
How to see: from screen to page = Back to the future.
Grading Films (A,B,C,D,F):
Five Points
Five Directions of Evaluation:
1. STORY
2. CHARACTERS
3. PLOT
4. DIALOGUE
5. SETTING
PRE-PRODUCTION: Conception and Film Pregnancy
Treatment: Idea, Vision and Concept.
First Age (Film Idea) takes years.
Second -- 10 months to a year.
Third -- a few months.
Four -- from one weekend (or none) to eternity
Fifth -- 90 min.
Text and Screen. Keep in mind, we consider everything on screen as "texts" (Semiotics), we measure visual statements in connection with verbal and dramatic.
11.11.2005. This is how the Film-North webpages were born in the summer of 1998. A little page for the kids in the summer camp... I never taught this class again, but continue the webpages building habit. Did some new pages for the film classes I teach from time to time. You can see the two directions, directing 101 and film analysis 101, the basics, the only two film classes I still teach... And more pages.
Theatre pages. On acting, plays... and more on film. On production issues? No, mostly on the aesthetics and simply art of film. Theory? What else?
A few great film directors and great films.
... I got used to webpages and web-existence. My calendar is on the internet. Why not? They know about me so much anyway, they got my number, they, the strangers...
You can see what I teach and how I teach. I even made "students" pages. I made "notes" pages -- what I need to learn about teaching.
You can see what I write, what I think...
What I read... Thanks to Amazon and recently, Questia, it became easy to link and redirect you to the courses (books).
* NEW TERM: accelerated montage A sequence made up of shots of increasingly shorter lengths that creates a psychological atmosphere of excitement and tension. See montage ; parallel action.
* associative editing The cutting together of shots to establish their metaphorical, or symbolic—as opposed to their narrative—relationship. The prehistoric bone that becomes a futuristic space station in Kubrick's 2001 (1968) is a prime example. See match cut. [ new Dictionary in film.vtheatre.net ]
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