SILENT FILMS
Our last unit is on films out of the “Hollywood Standard.” Film scholars Thomas and Vivian Sobchack ascribe a number of characteristics to the “Hollywood Standard” which includes film as we’re used to seeing it at the multiplex theater at the mall.
Films within in the “Hollywood Standard” tend to
1) be “a product made in the context of American capitalism,” produced primarily to make a profit;
2) be narrative, that is they tell a story;
3) have a narrative that “absorbs us…Thus, a good film is seen as the one best able to take us in, to create the conditions that most appeal to our credulity—to our willingness to believe in the visible, in what we see, as true;
4) not draw attention to the “signs… of labor and technology used in their production.”
5) follow “standards or general rules and conventions of visual and aural representation [that] tend over time…to seem not only normal, but natural.” That is, it seems that the Hollywood style is the only way to make a “good” film.
The last four weeks of our class we devote to films that are made outside of the standard of the Hollywood Studio system. We begin this week with several short and one feature length silent films. These films are out of the Hollywood Standard simply because they predate the studio system. They come before the time when films existed primarily to make money for large corporations.
The first short films we’ll see are among the first films projected before an audience on December 28, 1895, in Paris by the Lumiere brothers. Here are a couple of things to look for as we see a few of these short films, which last about 30 seconds each.
LUMIERE BROTHERS SHORT FILMS: ACTUALITIES (1895-7)
--Kinds of SUBJECTS chosen (mise en scene)?
(Why might they have chosen these subjects?)
--CAMERA--How is the camera work (cinematography) different from today's Hollywood films?
The Lumieres called their films “actualities,” which should give you some idea of the documentary nature of the films. Their goal seems to have been in part to hold a mirror up to reality. Audiences, of course, were stunned by this new technology. In fact, when the brothers projected the their first film, which was the one of the train pulling into the depot for its first audience in a Paris cafe, some of the people in the audience screamed and hid under their tables. They thought they were going to be run over! So can there be any doubt in your mind that watching films is a learned activity, something cultural and not natural.
show: Exiting the Factory, Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, Baby’s Lunch, The Sprinkler Sprinkled, Demonlition of a Wall (and reverse), Card Party.
Why might they have chosen to shoot the film of this locomotive? Perhaps simply because there was motion in the subject: this is the kind of thing that motion pictures could do that still photography couldn’t. The other film, of the child eating, was perhaps the first in what has been a one hundred year tradition in film: the home movie!
How is the camera work different from today’s films? Well, these first filmmakers were greatly limited by the technology available to them. Besides the length of the film, you’ll note that the film is all one take, and that the camera doesn’t move.
By the time of Georges Melies a few years later, film had changed into something more of a vehicle to entertain its audiences. Melies was a originally a magician (you’ll see how this affects the kind of films he made). Melies became the most popular filmmaker in the world of his day. A Trip to the Moon is considered his masterpiece.
Here are a few things to look for:
MELIES: A TRIP TO THE MOON (1902)
--MISE EN SCENE--How is it like a staged play?
--CAMERA--How is the cinematography different from today's Hollywood films?
--How is Melies' work DIFFERENT from the Lumieres'?
You’ll note that the action in this little film all occurs as if it were taking place on a stage. Everything is in two dimensions, with very little depth. The camera seems to be placed about ten rows back in a theater: as if the film audience were given the best seat in the house for a Paris stageplay!
Once again we have a camera that doesn’t move, but we do have editing…even though all the shots keep their same distance from the action: there are no close ups, no medium shots, etc. It’s all still as if on a stage, with different backdrops. (Your text on pages 116-117 gives a breakdown of the scenes in this film, discussing the editing).
The one time the camera appears to move, when the rocket is heading towards the moon, Melies actually kept the camera still and moved the set construction of the face of the moon closer to the camera to give the impression of movement.
Melies started his career as a magician. One change in his film from the Lumiere, not surprisingly, is the use of special effects: the characters who disappear (Melies merely stopped his hand cranked cameras, removed the actor from the stage, then started cranking again: no editing took place!). And in some of his films, color, which came about not through color stock film, which didn’t exist, but through Melies himself hand painting each frame!
One important advance from Lumiere to Melies is the fact that the latter’s films tell a story, something that we’ve come to expect in our days.
Our last silent film is a feature length, 76 minute comedy from 1926 by American filmmaker Buster Keaton. It’s called The General. I think you’ll be able to see how far film advanced between the turn of the century and the era right before sound films (which began in 1927—by 1929 virtually all films had sound). I also think you’ll enjoy The General much more than the short films we saw, and you might want to ask yourself why. This could help you understand how films advanced in their first thirty years. But in The General you’ll have to watch very closely to notice the subtleties of the film. We’re used to depending on sight and sound to enjoy movies, which means in part that we can be somewhat careless. Depending only on sight means we must work a little harder.
We can surely consider Buster Keaton a film auteur. In 1920 he founded the Keaton Film Company, of which he had total artistic control. Between 1923 and 1928 he made nine films, each of which was very successful financially. The General is considered his masterpiece. You’ll notice that the film has a fairly complex narrative, but you’ll also notice that on anther level it’s a series of gags, of comic situations. One of the amazing things is that most of these gags were improvised by Keaton. They weren’t planned out ahead of time! Keaton’s films never used written scripts or shooting schedules. The filmakers knew only the premise of the film and its conclusion. The rest was improvised. Keaton did all his own gags, never using a stunt man, even for the ones that are dangerous. Keaton never smiles in the films, and he often appears as a mere speck in the mise en scene, surrounded by large machines. You’ll notice despite Keaton’s serious-little-man persona, he is almost like an acrobat or an athlete. His movements are almost balletic at times, which adds to the comedy (which is often physical humor).
One of Keaton’s associates tells us that Keaton came up with the ideas himself for 90% of the gags in the films. He also chose every camera set up, and was responsible for the final cut of the film, which means he was in charge of editing. He was usually able to execute these gags successfully on the first take, without so much as a rehearsal. Keaton believed that rehearsing the gags produced an effect that looked calculated and mechanical.
Keaton’s typical method was to shoot five or six times the amount of film he needed, edit together the footage that was funniest and leave out the rest. The films were played before audiences in sneak previews, reedited based on audience response, then released to the general public.
Some other things to look for in The General
--The Gags: a series of “theme and variations.” They have multiple parts
--Editing
--Realistic acting, costuming, settings (not melodramatic as in some early films)
--Action takes place on several planes at once (depth in the mise en scene)
--Keaton’s character in the film
--the depiction of “the girl”
AFTER THE FILM
I’m going to play through a few scenes from The General to illustrate for you some of the things I asked you to look for in the film, elements that mark Keaton’s artistry. I’ll try not to stand up here and “explain the jokes” to you, since nothing is worse than that! And I’m not going to claim some deep “hidden meaning” exists in the film. My point is to show how Keaton was skillful enough to recognize the potential of the film medium for his audiences. That’s probably why he was so popular in his day and so heralded as an important filmmaker to this day.
1. OPENING SHOTS (1:28 – 3:15)
Note how the opening shot gives us the characteristic action on several levels simultaneously, in this case three levels. Note that we have realistic acting in the film even though it’s a comedy. We don’t have handwringing and exaggerated gestures as we see in some early melodramas or comedies. Note too the degree of editing which exists in the film: “He had two loves…his train…and” and then we get a cut from the titles to a shot of “the girl,” the love interest, and then a cut to Keaton taking down her picture.
Note next the characteristic small protagonist (Keaton) against the large set, shot in a long shot, here of the girl’s family’s house. In this scene we get the first simple “gag” of the film, when Keaton discovers the girl behind him rather than inside the house, as he expects her to be. Keaton described his character’s persona as that of the classic slow thinker, who has a delayed reaction to the complications life presents him. In that delay is some of the humor, I think.
2. SITTING ON THE WHEEL OF THE LOCOMOTIVE (chapter 3, 10:35)
Here’s one of the most well known shots in Keaton’s films. Look at how the little man is so deep in thought that he doesn’t notice the train is moving. Note the expression on his face. Great comic timing!
3. CANNON GAG (19:11 - 22:33)
(read before we see the clip).
First note the use of crosscutting, (or “parallel editing” as your text calls it on page 140) in which “the film shifts back and forth between two or more actions, often suggesting tha the actions are occurring simultaneously.”
We see in a lot of the shots in this gag that Keaton the little man hero is small in the mise en scene (as he is when he’s sitting on the locomotive wheel, or running down the track chasing after the General after the Yankees have stolen it, or left alone on the empty street at the end of the film after all the Confederate soldiers have gone off to battle).
Notice too the skillful editing in this scene, how it adds to the humor. First we get a tracking shot of the locomotive hauling the cannon. This isn’t some kind of gimmick or studio shot. It probably would have been technically fairly difficult to produce this shot at the time.
The gag here, as always, is set up in a series of parts. First the cannonball comes up short, then there’s an explosion behind the train when the cannonball is pushed over the side. Then the car uncouples and the cannon lowers. Note the editing at this point: we have a long shot to show the uncoupling, then we cut to the point of view of the cannon (look at the depth in this shot). Then we get a shot from the front of the engine looking back, when Keaton uselessly throws a little piece of wood at the cannon
The gag is completed when the trains randomly come to a curve in the the track and the exploding cannonball accidentally comes close to hitting the Yankees
4. LOG ON TRACK (chapter 6 24:57)
Here’s another famous moment in The General. Again here we have the little man pictured small against the giant machine in the mise en scene. Notice the cut to tracking shot, then cut to a long shot as Keaton cleverly (and luckily) hits one log with another to clear the track. Here is a fine example of Keaton’s athleticism—Keaton as a performer, an acrobat, and a physical comedian. Imagine pulling off this “gag” in one take, without special effects!
5. ARMY RETREAT chapter 7, 28:23 - 30:28)
One last very famous scene in the film. Here’s a great example of action going on on more than one plane in the mise en scene. In the foreground, Keaton stokes the fire unaware, while behind him the Confederate Army retreats, and later the Yankee army advances. The contrary movement, the locomotive going one direction and the soldiers going the opposite direction, is visually interesting for us. And this gag is not just for laughs, but its irony is tied to the conflict and maybe the theme of the film: who after all is the real hero? Is it the supposedly gallant soldiers? Or the officers, who later in the film can’t figure out how to straighten out the track that Keaton has bent. They stand around and discuss it as if in a committee meeting, until an enlisted man with an axe finally fixes it. The hero, in The General, and in life perhaps the film is saying, is the little guy, the Keatonesque figure who by luck and by pluck comes out on to at the end.
A few last words. First, consider the shot of the train falling off the bridge into the river: tame by the standards of today’s action movies, but a pretty remarkable piece of filmmaking for 1926
Second: Some of the comedy of The General revolves around the figure of “the girl.” She’s the butt of a lot of the jokes, including the physical humor when Keaton puts her in the bag, or when he’s trying to protect her decency (by not touching her an “improper” way!) at the same time she’s crawling out of the boxcar and onto the tender. But it’s worth noting that this minor character changes somewhat! I love the stereotypical humor when she sweeps the cab of the locomotive during the chase, and throws away one big piece of wood because it has a hole in it! But later, she is the one who thinks up the trick of tying the two spruce trees together so it slows down the Yankees. And by the end of the film, she’s running the engine quite well without him. When he puts down his hand to help her up to the cab, she doesn’t need his help, but bounds up on her own instead.
And finally: what became of Buster Keaton? In 1928 he signed a contract with a major studio, MGM, a move which Keaton later referred to as “the biggest mistake of my life.” The studio system ate up Keaton. They insisted that he work from a script instead of improvising. They insisted that there be more storyline to his films. And they demanded final control over his output. His scripts got worse and worse, his films worse and worse, and by 1933 he was fired. As it does so many times, the conformity demanded by the Hollywood Standard, the conservative nature of the American corporate system, destroyed the work and the spirit of the creative individual Keaton.
But his early funny films remain.
LUMIERE BROTHERS SHORT FILMS: ACTUALITIES (1895-7)
the first films projected before an audience on December 28, 1895, in Paris
--Kinds of SUBJECTS chosen (mise en scene)?
(Why might they have chosen these subjects?)
--CAMERA--How is the camera work (cinematography) different from today's Hollywood films?
MELIES: ATrip to the Moon (1902)
--MISE EN SCENE--How is it like a staged play?
--CAMERA--How is the cinematography different from today's Hollywood films?
--How is Melies' work DIFFERENT from the Lumieres'?
The General (Buster Keaton, 1926)
Some things to look for in The General
--The film is a series of Gags: “theme and variations.” (The gags have multiple parts)
--Editing
--Realistic acting, costuming, settings (not melodramatic as in some early films)
--Action takes place on several planes at once (depth in the mise en scene)
--Keaton’s character in the film
--the depiction of “the girl”
Experimental Films
In our last unit we’re viewing films outside of the Hollywood tradition, the Hollywood Standard—specifically, a number of short and one feature length silent film last week, tonight two short and one feature length experimental films, a documentary, and a foreign language film. My purpose in showing you these films is simply to give you a chance to see films you wouldn’t have a chance to see otherwise (none of these films will be playing at Cinemark). Some of these films also make us ask some very basic questions about what film is and what film can do. This week’s films, especially, may question your assumptions, enculturated in you by the Hollywood Standard that you’re used to, that in order to be a “good film,” a film must be a narrative film, that it must be realistic, and that it must be “entertaining” in a light way that doesn’t challenge your intellect too much. The films we will see tonight are none of these. Yet I will argue that they are very good films.
The ideas and concepts we will cover in this unit will be easier than in our past units. But the films themselves will be more challenging. Therefore you must watch the films very closely, especially this week, and consider a second viewing of the films on reserve in the library.
Your text on page 367 describes characteristics of experimental films. They “may explore the possibilities of the film medium, may have been ahead of their time, are out of the mainstream, rely heavily on self-expression, and remain largely free of the limitations placed on commercial movies.”
And on page 368:
“Experimental films…tend to question the dominant ideology, including a society’s political assumptions and sexual mores.”
They…”frustrate the expectations of viewers brought up on classical Hollywood cinema and often aim to startle, if not shock.”
Keep in mind that ALL film originally was experimental and independent. Film was at first a technological experiment (think of the Lumieres), later it was a commercial experiment. Before the rise of the major Hollywood studios film was produced by individual entrepreneurs (Lumieres, Melies, Keaton), not by corporations. So what you accept now as the “natural” state of film—that it be narrative, realistic, and entertaining to large numbers of people, a mass audience—isn’t natural at all. It’s a construction of our culture and our economic system.
However, it’s also true that a lot of imagery currently IN our popular and commercial culture could be said to have ORIGINATED with the avant garde. People imagined images and pioneered film techniques for artistic purposes before the techniques were coopted for commercial ones. I’m thinking of primarily tv advertising and music videos—perhaps in the way they are edited, in what appears in the mise en scene, and the way they seem to eschew traditional narrative. You might ask yourself how these short films we’ll see tonight are similar to ads and videos. How do these art films predate the commercial films (ads and videos) that came after them?
I’ll introduce the first two, fifteen minute films to you, and then show them back to back
INTRODUCTION TO
UN CHIEN ANDALOU (Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, 1929)
MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON (Maya Deren, 1943)
“Occasionally” writes Thomas Sobchack, “a filmmaker will create a dream without a dreamer. In a sense, it is the film that dreams or remembers.” This is the case with Un Chien Andaolou. The film comes out of the artistic and literary movement at the beginning of the century called Surrealism, which believed in the liberating qualities of illogic and shock. But the surrealists were also interested in Freud’s idea that in dreams and in the unconscious mind, and in the shocking, sometimes sexual images that appear in dreams, lay a key to understanding human behavior. Surrealist films are structured by free association of images—that is, there seems to be some kind of connection between one image and the next, one scene and the next, but it’s not a strictly logical connection. We’ve all had dreams like this, which seem illogical yet in a strange way make sense. Say for instance that you dream you’re in your apartment talking to a friend, but then for no reason you're outside with him in the backyard of your childhood home. You look again and it's no longer your friend with you, but your family dog. Your grandfather comes out the door, who's been dead for ten years, and then suddenly where your house was there is now a spaceship or a prison or a giant piece of cheese or . . .well, you get the idea.
This European surrealist movement in art, literature, and cinema was also in part a reaction to the senseless slaughter of WWI. The surrealists actually hoped to promote world revolution by releasing untrapped forces of the unconscious mind! This probably seems pretty idealistic to us now—a mark perhaps of how naive the surrealists were, but equally of how jaded politically we are in this day and age, living in a time when most people feel, even in democracies, that they can do little to bring about political or economic change.
As you watch this short film, look for
1) how it shocks you
2) how it uses free association
3) how it violates your expectation of what film should be
4) experimental cinematography
The second film short film I will show, “Meshes of the Afternoon” is credited with being the first experimental film made in America. Maya Deren was the primary figure in the new American avant garde movement in film in the 1940's
Before this film, about the only film that we could call purely experimental done in the States, believe it or not, was the animation of Walt Disney!
In this film, look for
1) where it goes against your expectations
2) experimental cinematographic techniques
3) symbols --objects that seem to have an importance beyond their everyday function in the world or in this film
AFTER THE FILMS
Chien
Director Luis Bunuel describes Un Chien Andalou this way:
“The sources from which the film draws inspiration are those of poetry, freed from the ballast of reason and tradition….This film has no intention of attracting or pleasing the spectator; indeed, on the contrary, it attacks him, to thet degree that he belongs to a society with which surrealism is at war….The motivation of the images… was meant to be purely irrational! They are as mysterious and inexplicable to the two collaborators as to the spectator. NOTHING in this film SYMBOLIZES ANYTHING.”
Perhaps you did indeed feel attacked by this short film. The title, by the way, translates from the Spanish as “An Andalusion Dog,” which the director said was also completely meaningless.
But despite the avowed lack of meaning, what effects did this very early, technologically primitive film produce on you, and how did it produce them?
1) how it shocks you (or how it at least intended to shock the audience of its day)
--opening image of eyeball being sliced by razor is one of the most famous in all of cinema history.
--man dragging a piano with 2 priests by the neck to get at woman is overtly sexual as a dream can sometimes be. We can see the new European interest in Freud.
--I find the woman poking the severed hand with a stick to be the most shocking image, along with the ants coming out of the hand in another shot
2) how it uses free association
--cloud cuts across moon, razor cuts across eye
--hair in a woman’s armpit dissolves to a man’s beard
--a book in a man’s hand turns into a gun
--a man is fondling breasts, then buttocks
There seems to be a kind of logic to the free association of these images, but it is more the logic of dreams than our waking logic. One thing suggests the next.
3) how it violates your expectation of what film should be
--not "realistsic": The man wears the clothes of a maid for no reason. There is no plot; the film is not narrative. A man is killed in one scene, then reappears in the next. The various special effects are not in the interest of creating an illusion of realism.
--violates unity of time. The titles seem to make a mockery of narrative in film: “once upon a time” “eight years later” “towards three in the morning” “sixteen years before” and finally “in the spring.”
--violates unity of place (woman leaves apartment and is directly on the seacoast, man falls in the apartment but lands in the woods)
4) experimental cinematography
--the trick dissolves mentioned above, superimposition, slow motion
Meshes
1) where it goes against your expectations
--the same character appears on screen in two, three different places
--violates unity of time (same piece of film footage repeats in the film, suggesting that time is elastic, that film does not represent an event happening only once)
--violates unity of place (towards the end, when we see the close ups of the woman walking, each footstep lands in a different place)
These last two points are what your text calls a “lack of narrative” in the film (379). We expect stories to take place in one identifiable time and place, and while there may be flashbacks, we don’t expect film to be edited in such a way as there are continual jumps in time and place not motivated by the story.
2) cinematographic techniques
--jump cuts in one scene place the woman in different places on the stairs
--slow motion: we’ll accept it now in realistic narrative films, but at one point audiences would have considered it unrealistic, dreamlike. It would have called attention to itself.
--the rocking image as woman climbs the stairs.. In the days before hand held cameras, to move the camera this way must have been disorienting or at least something new to the viewer.
3) symbols --objects that seem to have an importance beyond their everyday function in the world or in this film
key, flower, knife, mirror: these objects repeat in the film so that they seem to have a special meaning. But in keeping with the mysterious, dreamlike vision of the film, it would be difficult for us to say just what that meaning is.
Baraka (1992, Ron Fricke) 96 minutes
The making of this film involved a 13 month shoot, in 24 different countries. The filmmakers went around the world 3 times, shooting in a different culture every week or two for a year.
The film is nonverbal. there are no main characters. “The main characters are the locations and the essence that comes out of those images” said director Ron Fricke.
This from a DVD review by Larisa Lomacky Moore on amazon.com
The word Baraka means "blessing" in several languages; watching this film, the viewer is blessed with a dazzling barrage of images that transcend language. Filmed in 24 countries and set to an ever-changing global soundtrack, the movie draws some surprising connections between various peoples and the spaces they inhabit, whether that space is a lonely mountaintop or a crowded cigarette factory. Some of these attempts at connection are more successful than others: for instance, an early sequence segues between the daily devotions of Tibetan monks, Orthodox Jews, and whirling dervishes, finding more similarity among these rituals than one might expect. And there are other amazing moments, as when sped-up footage of a busy Hong Kong intersection reveals a beautiful symmetry to urban life that could only be appreciated from the perspective of film. The lack of context is occasionally frustrating--not knowing where a section was filmed, or the meaning of the ritual taking place--and some of the transitions are puzzling. However… cinematographer Ron Fricke (Koyaanisqatsi) explains that the effect was intentional: "The film is not about where you are or why you’re there; it's what's there."
Perhaps this is a film about seeing and noticing the world. Judge for yourself…
After the film:
*Why doesn’t the filmmaker provide subtitles or voice over telling us where in the world these pictures are taken?
--not necessary. Producer Mark Magidson: “it’s not about where is this and where is that. It’s not a travelogue, but a moving emotional experience.” Or perhaps the film is a comment on our need to locate. My wife every time the film switched to a new scene asked, “Where was that?? Where was that?” And sometimes when the film changed locations, I remarked out loud, “I was there!”
Perhaps just as we try to impose a narrative on Meshes of the Afternoon (has the woman killed herself? Been murdered by the man? Is this all a dream?), we try to locate the exotic images in Baraka, instead of just experiencing them.
Director Ron Fricke:
“It’s like doing a painting, really. There’s a concept in the beginning. You go out and gather up all this data, you shoot on all these occasions, then you bring it back and look at it. You make a structure based on what works with the concept.”
The director’s initial controlling idea was that the film be about “humanities relationship to the eternal.”
*What recurring themes or subjects do you see running through the images depicted?
--the sacred (whirling dervishes, budhist monks, the River Ganges, Hassidic Jews, orthodox Christianity, hieroglyphics, incredible natural beauty)
--“humanties relationship to the eternal” (terra cotta warriors, pyramids)
--poverty (people on garbage dump looking for…food?)
--fast pace of modern life (Hong Kong time lapse. Chinese factory, chicks down slot)
--environmental degradation: garbage dump, cityscapes, cutting of rain forest in Brazil, ape in hot spring in early sequence
--movement: of clouds and stars, traffic (time lapse)—like Lumeire brothers’
*also note
-world music in musical score (pan flute, bag pipes, chant, asian instruments)
--the scene of the men in a crowd (perhaps in Indonesia) waving their hands: some of the only on screen sound in the whole film! The message/effect in this scene is conveyed as much through sound as through visuals. The scene makes us ask, what are they doing? Is this sport? religious ritual? entertainment? a competition? We don’t know; we’re left only to enjoy the picture, color and movement for its own sake; to draw inferences as to its significance or purpose. Perhaps the film is about that process of active viewing, of trying to make sense of what we see.
*Why is the film edited with sequences in this particular order? Can you find connections between some back to back sequences?
--shapes: back of monk’s head, to similar rock formations
--subject: religious devotion or practice
*note cinematography:
-time lapse cinematography
-slow motion (men in steel factory)
-camera movement: slow dolly in or dolly out
-aerial shots
-symmetrical and asymetrical compositions (like a series of moving paitings) that drawa attention to composition.
-use of light and shadow
-color
-people looking directly at the camera (obviously this has been staged, arranged. The subjects are not doing something as they would in everyday life, not “natural,” so is this true, natural documentary? The filmmakers’ purpose, it seems, is to show the people as icons, as images, rather than characters. We make some kind of connection with the people through their gaze).
While this film is challenging, and I find my attention lagging at points, I hope you see the benefit in viewing a film that you clearly could not see at the local mall, a film clearly outside of the Hollywood Standard that suggests that a film can be something very different from what you’re used to and still be “a good movie.”
EXPERIMENTAL FILMS
UN CHIEN ANDALOU--Luis Bunuel &Salvador Dali, 1929
--English title: An Andalusian Dog
--Surrealism: “a movement in 1920s and 1930s European art, drama, literature, and film in which an attempt was made to portray or interpret the workings of the subconscious mind as manifested in dream.” (Phillips 369)
--structured by free association
--"uses the material of the everyday world as we normally perceive it, but puts it to incomprehensible, shocking, and funny use." (Sobchack 389)
look for
1) how it shocks you
2) how it uses free association
3) how it violates expectations of what film should be
4) experimental cinematographic techniques
MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON--Maya Deren, 1943
--Deren was the primary figure in the new American avant garde movement in film in the 1940's
look for
1) how it violates expectation of what film should be
2) experimental cinematographic techniques
3) symbols --objects that seem to have an importance beyond their everyday function in the world or in this film
BARAKA (1992, Ron Fricke) 96 minutes
Look for
*Why doesn’t the filmmaker provide subtitles or voice over telling us where in the world these pictures are taken?
*What recurring themes or subjects do you see running through the images depicted?
*Why is the film edited with sequences in this particular order? Can you find connections between some back to back sequences?
*note techniques of cinematography:
-time lapse cinematography
-slow motion
-camera movement: slow dolly in or dolly out
-aerial shots
-symmetrical and asymetrical compositions (like a series of
moving paitings)
-use of light and shadow
-color
-people looking directly at the camera
*world music in musical score
Characteristics of Experimental Films
(Phillips 367)
--may explore the possibilities of the film medium
--may have been ahead of their time,
--are out of the mainstream
-- rely heavily on self-expression
--free of the limitations placed on commercial
movies.
--tend to question the dominant ideology, including a
society’s political assumptions and sexual mores.
--frustrate the expectations of viewers and often aim
to startle, if not shock.”
Baraka -- Recurring Themes or Subjects
--the sacred (whirling dervishes, budhist monks, the River Ganges, Hassidic Jews, orthodox Christianity, hieroglyphics, incredible natural beauty)
--“humanity’s relationship to the eternal” (terra cotta warriors, pyramids)
--poverty (people on garbage dump looking for…food?)
--fast pace of modern life (Hong Kong time lapse. Chinese factory, chicks down slot)
--environmental degradation: garbage dump, cityscapes, cutting of rain forest in Brazil, ape in hot spring in early sequence
--movement: of clouds and stars, traffic (time lapse)—like Lumeire brothers’
TROUBLESOME CREEK LECTURE
TROUBLESOME CREEK LECTURE
GOALS:
inform: we learn about farm and rural life. But primarily we learn that the farm crisis is supposed to be over, but it’s not.
entertain: we like all the people in the family, especially Russ and Mary Jean. Since this is a narrative documentary, we’re caught up in their lives and their conflicts.
criticize: the bank and corporate role in the continuing farm crisis
celebrate: the family farm and…
--The American myth that individual initiative is preferable to group cooperation.
--The American myth of farm as simple life, which is undermined by the complexities of the story, and at the same time reinforced by what’s depicted in the mise en scene: kids playing carefree, the Town Talk Diner, the old house simple but solid--and by the portrayal of the characters as simple, likable people, the farm landscape.
SUBJECTS …
the filmmaker as subject (“personal documentary”)
(to what extent should the filmmaker be involved? Is it right for the filmmaker to influence the subject’s life?)
Not so much an issue here because this is “personal documentary.” The filmmaker is making the film about her own family, so we don’t suspect that her presence on location is really going to change much. Russ and Mary Jane would have sold the farm anyway, the auction would have gone, the brother would have taken over.
… AND SOURCES
new material – mostly. almost none of it staged,
But two scenes seem to me like they could be considered staged or more accurately, “set up”:
-Daddy date night
-scene in which Jeanne Jordan does her mother’s hair and they talk about the farm. 44:00 fixing her mother’s hair while the two talk about the upcoming auction. This scene was likely set up. I can imagine Jeanne Jordan saying, “Mom, let’s film me doing your hair and you talk about how you feel about the auction.”
existing footage: the westerns (obviously this is important in the way that the filmmakers play off the concept of a “Midwestern” in the title against the “Westerns” that Russ and Mary Jean like to watch. Lingo of the western also turns up in dialogue: the outside man the bank calls in is a “hired gun” according to Russ. Jim says the meeting with the banker was “the shootout at OK Corral.” The tall bank buildings are visually likened to canyons, and so on.
other sources (radio broadcasts--twice, audio recordings,
still photos—lots of them,
signs:
Albert the world’s largest anatomically correct bull!,
narration (voiceover) -- a lot of it in this film. Crucial for giving us the background information we need to understand the conflict. The story is far too complex to be told solely with pictures.
title cards: once, towards the end of the film we get “six months later,” again for the filmmaker’s convenience and to speed up the film for the audience.
added music or sound effects – guitar music on occasion. Kind of a countrified twang of an electric guitar on some occasions, a folk guitar on others.
NONNARRATIVE
VS NARRATIVE (“someone with a goal who has trouble reaching it”)
--may not represent events chronologically
the first shot after the opening credits is the cat on the roof (images of cats recur later when the family decides to hold the sale (43) on the couch w/ R and MJ watching a western (46), later still running across the yard, and elsewhere in the film).
It was Jordan’s choice to edit the film so that the scene with the cat comes first. It certainly wasn’t the first thing filmed. She could have started elsewhere, could have left the cat out of the film completely. So there must have been some reason (perhaps cat as symbol) for the choice she made.
Is the cat a symbol: the younger generation comes to the rescue? the cat has the faith to jump into the hands of Jim, just as R and MJ must make a leap of faith of selling out and moving into town??
then backstory about the family history, then current generation,
Then start of act II: 18:50: film of “The Gunfighter” “when did you get this idea Jim?” “It came over me the way getting older comes over you” (here the plan to pass the ownership of the farm is told in voice over)
So just as in a fictional film, we get a plot point in this narrative at 18:50 into an 87 minutes film, or 22% of the way through the film (Field says the first plot point is at 27 minutes out of a 120 minute film, or 22% of the way)
then narrative time slows down as we lead up to the auction,
2340-2800 early one morning we made a trip to the Rolf farm: but when did this sentimental journey happen, exactly? We don’t know, but you can bet that it didn’t necessarily happen at this point in real time. Instead, this is a convenient point in the narrative structure for the filmmaker to include this flashback. In other words, the events in the film are not strictly chronological; they’re arranged to make a good story. The filmmaker makes choices. Still the film qualifies quite clearly as a documentary.
I would argue that the old farm is a symbol in the film of what’s happened to the family farm in America.
then 28:00-29;41 Daddy daughter date night narrated over tracking shot of driving to town, which is another flashback
Much later: the plot climaxes at auction, as if in a fictional film:
We hear the following:
“everything would depend on what happens tomorrow”
“we worried we were on the wrong side of history, that time for a small farm like this had passed.”
“it starts to snow” before the auction. would anyone show up??
This voice occurs at 55:30, which marks the beginning of act III according to Syd Field’s theory)
56 out of an 88 minute film is 64% of the way through the film; Field’s theory is that the second plot point occurs at 87 minutes out of a 120 film, or 72%--pretty close!
So this narrative documentary is structured very much like a fictional, Hollywood film. Can there be any doubt, then, that through the choices the documentary filmmaker makes he or she is “mediating,” or changing, reality? It’s not that the filmmaker is lying or even distorting the truth, just that the documentary film is not reality so much as it is a representation of reality, shaped into a story, albeit one that tries to be consistent with real events, characters, places, emotions, ideas, etc.
“Whether narrative or not, a documentary has most or all
of the following characteristics”:
Mediated Reality (“selected, filmed, and edited representations”—the filmmaker makes choices about what to include, what to leave out, and in what order to present material)
“Troublesome creek twists and turns with no wqarning, kind of like my family’s story”
kitten on the roof—“incredible luck, incredible timing, and teetering on the brink of disaster”
inclusion of western films (corporate banker from Des Moines is “hired gun.” A clear contrast of good and evil, and good always triumphs in the conventional western.
2139-2240: summer came; montage: cattle, windmill, spider/ladybug closeups. tilt shot of corn, all over guitar music. tight close up of snapping turtle, then Jim playing with it till it grabs stick
“lighting and color that are dramatic rather than strictly functional”=
consider decision NOT to show husband and fellow filmmaker Steven Ashcer, even though primary filmmaker Jean is depicted as character in much of the film.
Real People instead of actors – yes. including even “bad guys”: the man at the bank who attempts to explain the situation to the camera.
Location Shooting – landscape is a character in the story. consider cutaway shots to Iowa farm landscape
Artifacts and Informative Language (tv shows, photos, objects a person has made or owned, narration (voice over), title cards, interviews)
--photos of great grandparents (later, Russ grows a beard that makes him look like ggpa)
--old photo of town of Wiota, Iowa
--photos of Russel as child, young man. Mary Jane courting pictures “at 22 they got married”
--1983 magazine article about Jim and farmers’ tough times.
--snapshots of filmmakers (Jeanne’s) childhood. they’re playing “olden days” she’s not sure if she’s a cowboy or a farmer
4445: radio ad for russ and mary jane’s auction.
5700 radio of town happenings on the morning of the auction
10000: poster: norvegian auction. IM Sunk, owner
Wide Range of Techniques
direct cinema: “a type of documentary filmmaking in which the film is shot on location with minimal planning.” (long take, zoom lens)
--We see the influence of direct cinema in the scene at the auction, at thanksgiving dinner scene, and in the scene of rescuing the cat (note that she even missed the cat jumping). A difference is that in Troublesome Creek there is more editing than in true direct cinema. And elsewhere in the film, events are set up or staged, which is out of the spirit of direct cinema: a number of interviews, shots of parents watching westerns, etc.
CLIP ONE: MEDIATED REALITY
2139-2240: summer came; montage: cattle, windmill, spider/ladybug closeups. tilt shot of corn, all over guitar music. tight close up of snapping turtle, then Jim playing with it till it grabs stick. There is no reason as far as the story is concerned that this scene absolutely must be included in the film. Rather it is, as the textbook says, that in documentasry, “lighting and color” can be “dramatic rather than strictly functional”
It is true that seasons play a role in the story, which seems appropriate for a farm story.
CLIP TWO: STAGED OR “SET UP” SCENE
28:00-29:41 tracking shot while Jeanne tells the story of daddy date night and going to town to meet boys. This one is a very gentle recreation of the scene by having us see the passing landscape from the farm to the town.
CLIP THREE SET UP SCENE/”DIRECT CINEMA”/MONTAGE
44:00-52:00 fixing her mother’s hair while the two talk about the upcoming auction. This scene was likely arranged. I can imagine Jeanne Jordan saying, “Mom, let’s film me doing your hair and you talk about how you feel about the auction.” (I’d even maintain that the filmmaker looks attractive in this scene because she knows she’s going to be depicted in this scene. Notice too how appealing the lighting is, coming in through the window and backlighting Jeanne and Mary Jean. All of this is not accidental, but arranged.
parallel editing – Russ’s heard intercut with Red River cattle drive, Midwestern vs. western, documentary vs. Hollywood fantasy
cutaway shot of Russ – shot at another time
sound bridge to Russ’s cattle drive
cow doesn’t want to get on the truck: symbolic of the family’s own reluctance to “accept the inevitable”
auction: note the lack of voiceover here. more editing here than in direct cinema or cinema verite, but something closer to that style with the lack of narration
MJ cries, other reaction shots at auction: did these reactions happen at precisely the moment the auctioneer was saying these words? Almost certainly not. The filmmaker instead pairs her best pictures of the auction and edits them together over the most interesting soundtrack. In this respect the scene is not characteristic of direct cinema or cinema verite, but of the structuring of reality to tell an effective story.
52:00 leads into music louder than the sound from on screen sources, to build emotion
then montage of five Iowa landscape shots.
Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern (Jeanne Jordan, 1995)
DOCUMENTARY
“A film or video representation of actual (not imaginary) subjects” (346)
GOALS:
inform
entertain
criticize
celebrate
SUBJECTS …
can be about any subject
sometimes: the filmmaker as subject (“personal documentary”)
(“to what extent should the filmmaker be involved? Is it right for the filmmaker to influence the subject’s life?” 348)
… AND SOURCES
new material (staged or not)
existing footage
other sources (radio broadcasts, audio recordings, still photos, paintings, signs,
maps)
narration
title cards
added music or sound effects
NONNARRATIVE VS
NARRATIVE (“someone with a goal who has trouble reaching it” 352)
--may not represent events chronologically
--also may include supporting artifacts and informative language
--use editing to criticize or praise a person or idea
--may have multiple plot lines
--if it’s narrative, do you find evidence of Syd Field’s Three Act Structure, with plot points??
Whether narrative or not, a documentary has most or all of the following characteristics:
*Mediated Reality (“selected, filmed, and edited representations” 355)
*Real People instead of actors
*Location Shooting
*Artifacts and Informative Language (tv shows, photos, objects a person has made or owned, narration (voice over), title cards, interviews)
*Wide Range of Techniques
direct cinema: “a type of documentary filmmaking in which the film is shot on location with minimal planning.” (361) (characterized by long takes, zoom lens, as we saw in Good Night, and Good Luck)
cinema verite: like direct cinema except that the filmmaker is likely to interact with the subjects.
sometimes self reflexive: “to refer or to comment on itself as a medium” (365) drawing attention to the process of filmmaking
TROUBLESOME CREEK – NARRATIVE STRUCTURE
3:19 first shot after opening credits: the cat on the roof
(which recurs later when the family decides to hold the sale (43),
on the couch w/ R and MJ watching a western (46),
and later still running across the yard.
Cat as symbol of the need to trust the help of others?
*backstory family history,
*backstory: current generation,
First Plot Point/Start of Act II
18:50: film of “The Gunfighter”/announcing of plan to pass the ownership of the farm
22% of the way through the film
(Field’s theory” 27 minutes out of 120 minutes = 22%)
*narrative slows down as we lead up to the auction,
*2300-2800 trip to the Rolf farm
(Jordan chooses to include at this point in the film)
Rolf farm is a symbol in the film of what’s happened to the family farm in America.
*28:00 Daddy daughter date night narrated over tracking shot of driving to town
(a flashback that (Jordan chooses to include at this point in the film)
second plot point, beginning of act III
55:30. Auction
64% of the way through the film
Field’s theory:
87 minutes out of a 120 film, or 72%--pretty close!
My Life as a Dog (Directed by Lasse Hallstrom, 1985)
We have learned how to watch films by watching films. From this experience we’ve come to expect certain things. In genre films like the musical or the western, we’ve come to expect conventions like the music man and the playing out of courtship ritual in the musical, or the conflict between civilization and savagery played out in the Western between the sheriff and the gunslinger.
More generally, we’ve come to expect that films be Hollywood films, that they follow what I’ve called Hollywood Standard. This standard holds that “a good film is seen as the one best able to take us in, to create conditions that most appeal to our credulity—to our willingness to believe in the visible, in what we see, as true” ( Sobchack 8). I’ve further defined the Hollywood Standard for you as comprising three requirements: the film should be narrative, the film should be realistic, and the film should be entertaining (in a way that doesn’t too strongly challenge our intellect). Note that films like “Un Chien Andalou” or Baraka ignore this Hollywood Standard.
Your text on page 292 offers seven characteristics of what it calls “Classical Hollywood Cinema”; by this term, the text means pretty much the same thing as I mean by the Hollywood Standard.
Tonight’s film Lasse Hallstrom’s My Life as a Dog, while I think it’s been influenced by Hollywood film, is not made quite to the Hollywood Standard. The film is realistic and narrative, but the shape of the story and the kind of story it tells are both different from the typical Hollywood film. While the film is entertaining in a way, it demands more participation from the audience than, say, a Hollywood action film. It demands thought. While the film was popular in major cities on its American release, including Minneapolis, it certainly didn’t make it to Mankato or similar smaller cities. That’s because audiences in Mankato are so steeped in the Hollywood Standard that they would be bewildered by a film like My Life as a Dog. Or even more likely, they wouldn’t go to the film because they hadn’t seen any advertising on it and didn’t recognize the names of any of the actors, or they had decided they couldn’t watch a film with subtitles, even though they’d never tried to. I’ve found that some people, including some students in this class, not only dislike these films out of the Hollywood Standard, but they actually get mad for being made to watch them. So tightly do they cling to the way they’ve been conditioned by the film industry as to what a “good” film should be, that they resent being shown that other ideas of “good” film exist.
My Life as a Dog is different to us in part because it comes out of a different film culture—European, specifically Swedish. While people all over the world have come to love Hollywood style movies, it’s also true that European audiences have different expectations from us about what a “good” film should be. Your text on page 324 has a list of eight characteristics of “European Independent Films” which we’ll look at after class in regard to My Life as a Dog.
And that’s what I want you to ask yourself as you view My Life as a Dog. Simply, how is this film different from a film in the Hollywood Standard?
Explain: Laika the Russian Space Dog, Sputnik, Ingemar Johannsen
After the film
Foreign language films: Dubbed or Subtitled?
--in dubbed films mouths don’t move to the words, creating sometimes an unintended comic effect
--actors are chosen for their voices as well as their looks, and how they use their voices, their inflection, etc. We lose this with dubbing
-- in dubbed films often the other sound, passing cars, music, etc. sometimes sound “canned,” unnatural or unrealistic
--If film is art, or can be art, we need to see the film the way the filmmakers intended it, not the way some businessperson thought it could sell in America because some people are afraid to see subtitled films.
How is My Life as a Dog similar to or different from American films in the Hollywood Standard?
See textbook, p 324
Subject
-No violence. There is sexual content, but the film displays a different attitude toward sex. It's not prurient, not intended to be arousing or erotic, "cool." Instead the attitude is humorous and gentle, as if sex is a natural part of life, and of growing up
-about kids, compare this to the Home Alone series in Hollywood. Life as a Dog is taking the issues of children seriously. Kids are psychologically complex characters
Plot
-there isn’t a conventional plot per se, with rising action moving toward some kind of climax. It's more a series of events. The “climax” as it were, seems to be the last scene in the summer house, the rescue of Frannson, and the Johannsen/Patterson title fight. This is a lot different from a shoot out or a marriage or a winning shot in a basketball game, as we might see in a film in the Hollywood Standard
Characters
Not necessarily more realistic than Hollywood (at least the minors characters may not be), but they are 1) less heroic and 2) more fallible, that is their faults are apparent.
Style
--more poetic, lyrical. Consider the nature of Ingmar’s voiceover.
--is this film comedy or is it drama? It seems to fall somewhere in between,
--note that the material is not presented in chronological order (starts at end—whenever we get the shots of Ingemar looking at the stars, that’s taken from the scene near thet end of the chronological story, when he’s alone in the summer house at night)
note too that we get the scene at the beach between Ingemar and his mother four times (in that something like the experimental film “Meshes of the Afternoon”—the same piece of footage repeated again and again), this a flashback in his memory to a time before the “story” of the film has started.
Your text says that European Independent Film is sometimes referred to as “art cinema.” So if this film means to be art, we should be able to approach it the way we do novels, short stories, poems, or plays. Specifically, we should be able to ask questions to which there may be more than one possible answer based on a careful viewing of the film. In other words, we can interpret the action and content of the film more than one way, and that ambiguity in its meaning is one of the things that makes it artful.
For instance, 1. Why is Ingemar so concerned about Laika and the other unfortunates he mentions in the voiceover?
possible answers: 1) he’s trying to convince himself that his own sad situation isn’t really that bad, that there are creatures in the world worse off than he is (or than his dog is), or 2) he has a naturally morbid curiosity, or 3) he wants to make things better in the world the same way he would like to make things better for his sick mother. But of course he can’t and from that comes some of the pathos of the film
2. Why does Ingemar bark like a dog at the party, in the boxing ring, and in the summer house?
possible answers: 1) he saw his uncle do it, 2) he blames himself for his mother’s death, and his dog's death (note that the uncle confuses the two at the end of the film. He thinks Ingemar is crying about the death of his dog—and maybe he is at first, but by the end of the scene he's crying about the death of his mother); he thinks he was too much trouble for her; his brother told him “it was your fault.” The barking is a way to hide his pain, like putting his hands over his ears, 3) He wants to be his dog so that he can pretend his dog (if not his mother) is still alive—consider the title of the film!
These two questions explore the depth of Ingemar’s character. If he’s a psychologically complex and fully developed character, we shouldn’t be able to answer these questions one way and one way only. As humans, our motivations are more complex and ambiguous than that, and it’s that depth and ambiguity that art sets out to explore.
We can also ask these questions about the motives of the filmmakers. We can do this by asking about the structure or content or techniques of the film.
3.Why do the filmmakers end the film with Ingemar Johannson's victory over Floyd Patterson for the world heavyweight championship?
possible answers: 1) Ingemar Johannson’s victory runs parallel to little Ingemar’s “victory” in the film, his recovery from grief and self blame. 2) “Hurrah for Sweden” one villager says in the streets. The fight shows the sense of community in this little village and in all of Sweden at a time that Swedes perhaps think of as more innocent and wholesome than the present, a time before tv. A nostalgia film much like our nostalgic Hollywood films perhaps.
Finally, if a film is fully realized all the details in the film will be there for a reason and no detail will be included in the film without a good reason. So we can ask interpretive questions about details in a film, since even those details will be important.
4. Why do the filmmakers include the scene in which the neighbors rescue Franksson from the icy river?
possible answers 1) perhaps this too shows the sense of community in the village and in Sweden, that even this grumpy character (“leave him in peace” “go away”) is considered part of the community. In this film people help each other, just as the village and the family helped Ingemar. 2) Perhaps through this event Ingemar learns of a larger family and this helps him to become more secure in the world. He also learns that not everything turns out badly in life. The crash of the "space capsule" into the pasture, Ingemar falling through the skylight, Ingemar falling out of the hay loft, and the unicyclist falling off his wire: after each event the individual gets up and life goes on, often with a smile. So Ingemar learns to go on, to persevere. Things are not as dark as the events he worries about: Laika, the man trying to jump over 31 busses, etc.
Conclusion:
My goal in this class is to make you a better audience. By showing you films you wouldn’t have a chance to see otherwise, I hope to have opened your minds to different film experiences you can have. Maybe if I’m successful, someday we’ll be able to see films like My Life as a Dog in Mankato. I’m hoping that after this experience you’ll keep an eye out for foreign films. You can catch them in the Twin Cities, along with independent American productions, any night of the week, at the Uptown Theater, the Lagoon Cinema, the Edina Theater, and the Oak Street Cinema. In April and May every year there is a huge film festival in Minneapolis screening international and American independent films. Our library has a very good and steadily improving collection of foreign language films in the ERC. And you can rent foreign films at video stores even in Mankato. Perhaps a good place to start is with the list of foreign films that I included on your syllabus for insurance papers. Most of these films are not terribly hard to follow.
So challenge yourself. Look for good foreign and independent films. And happy viewing.
HOLLYWOOD STANDARD holds that “a good film is seen as the one best able to take us in, to create conditions that most appeal to our credulity—to our willingness to believe in the visible, in what we see, as true” (Sobchack 8).
-the film should be narrative,
-the film should be realistic,
-the film should be “entertaining”
MY LIFE AS A DOG (Lasse Hallstrom, 1985--Sweden)
Foreign language films: Dubbed or Subtitled?
How is My Life as a Dog similar to or different from American films in the Hollywood Standard?
textbook, p. 324
Subject
Plot
Characters
Style
European Independent Films (or “art cinema”)
Interpretive Questions (questions to which there may be more than one possible answer based on a careful viewing of the film)
1. Why is Ingemar so concerned about Laika and the other unfortunates he mentions in the voiceover?
2. Why does Ingemar bark like a dog at the party, in the boxing ring, and in the summer house?
3.Why do the filmmakers end the film with Ingemar Johannson's victory over Floyd Patterson for the world heavyweight championship?
4. Why do the filmmakers include the scene in which the neighbors rescue Franksson from the icy river?