Fall 2008 -- Paper #2 Due December 11:

Lit 442 Film Studies and Appreciation Fall 2008 Clay
Paper #2 due Thursday December 11
Please analyze details of the films you discuss. Don’t be tempted to slip into generalities about style or genres. Good detailed discussions of particular scenes will make a successful paper, and your paper must be based on your personal reading of the films.
Choose one of these topics:
I. Orson Welles was a huge influence of the films of the 1940’s and 50’s. Choose one of his movies and discuss its most distinctive stylistic elements. Discuss at least one scene in detail. Touch of Evil or Lady From Shanghai would be great choices here.
II. Watch another film by Frederico Fellini and compare it to La Strada or La Dolce Vita. 81/2 is a natural comparison, but anything else by Fellini will also yield good ideas for a paper. Think about the stylisitic characteristics of the films, but also discuss the themes of the films. How can you see Fellini’s development as a director in the films you discuss? You must be specific, and discuss one or two scenes from the films in detail. (There are amazing parallels between the flms.)
III. Watch another neo realist film and compare it to The Bicycle Thieves. There is a lot of good criticism of the new realists, and the ideas and goals of these films are interesting to discuss and write about.
IV. Rififi was the work of a blacklisted writer, Jules Dassin, and the ideas of loyalty and betrayal permeate the film. Watch another film created by Dassin, or a film by another one of the blacklisted writers or directors of the McCarthy era, and determine whether the political tensions and the blacklisting are reflected in the work. On the Waterfront would be a good choice here. Gerald Mast’s A Short Introduction To the Movies has a good introduction to this dark history -- the book is on reserve in the Cañada library. A little bit of additional research will take you to some fascinating material.
V. The Lives of Others is also a portrait of an era. The personal collides with the political in the last days of Eastern German communism. What scenes stand out for you? How about the technical stuff -- like color? Is the film convincing? It was disignated the “best film of 2006” -- is it that good?
Your paper should be about 750-1000 words in length. Type, double space, & use MLA style for citations. If you have questions about format, please catch me after class or in office hours. Don’t let problems of style stop you from enjoying the movies. And please cite your sources! Don’t borrow ideas or language from other writers without documentation. Besides - we want your ideas and insights

Lit 442 Film Studies and Appreciation Fall 2007 Clay
Paper #1 due Tuesday, October 30
Analyze one scene of a noir or neorealist film
For this paper please choose either a film noir or a neorealist film to write about. Your film should be from the period of 1940 to 1959.
1. Begin by creating a sequence list for the film (see an example on pp. 413-414 in our Bordwell & Thompson text.) Hand in your sequence list along with your paper.
2. Choose one scene or sequence to write about. Analyze the scene both in terms of its technique and its themes. Consider the elements of mis-en-scene discussed in chapter 4, and how these elements work in your scene. How do they come together to create the emotional impact of the scene? But also discuss how the scene that you are analyzing is typical of its genre (or not). That is, how is your scene part of the noir style or the neorealist style of the film as a whole?
Review the appendix of chapter 11 in Film Art for ideas about putting your paper together. We will do some exercises in class on organizing and developing a good paper also. Remember that your paper should have a strong thesis or argument -- one main idea that your paper develops and supports. Your paper should be about 750-1000 words in length. Type, double space, & use MLA style for citations. There is a good summary of MLA guidelines on the Cañada library web site. But don’t let problems of style stop you from enjoying the movies. And please cite your sources! Don’t borrow ideas or language from other writers without documentation. Besides - we want your ideas and insights.
dc October 8, 2007

Q

RIFIFI PRODUCTION NOTES From the Criterion Collection DVD (by Lenny Borger)
When Jules Dassin directed Du Rififi chez les hommes in Paris in 1954, he knew it was probably his last shot at making a film comeback after being named as a communist before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1952.
The long arm of McCarthyist America had successfully crushed several earlier attempts by Dassin to rebuild his shattered film career in Europe. The most notorious example of this transatlantic persecution came in 1953, when the producers of a new vehicle for comedian Fernandel, Public Enemy No. 1, fired Dassin as director just days before he was to begin shooting (1). The incident became a cause célèbre in France, where an industry support group was led by Jacques Becker (shortly to direct his own seminal gangster opus, Touchez pas au grisbi).
Months later, Dassin was in Rome, working on an adaptation of Giovanni Verga's Sicilian literary classic, Mastro don Gesualdo, but it was sabotaged via interference from the American Embassy. It was there that Dassin received a call from an agent asking him to return to Paris to meet producer Henri Bérard, who had acquired the rights to a best-selling crime novel by newcomer Auguste le Breton, Du Rififi chez les hommes. Dassin's Naked City had been a major success in France and Bérard flattered Dassin by saying no one else but Dassin could do Rififi.
But there was a major obstacle. "I got along in French, but the book's slang was a new language, " Dassin recalls. "So I called an agent friend, Claude Briac, and asked him to come over and translate it for me. It was a weekend, Friday or Saturday, and I had to give the agent my answer on Monday. But Briac had been courting the same dame for years and she'd finally promised to meet him that Sunday. But I said, 'No, come and read to me.' And the poor bastard did!"
Dassin admits he loathed the novel. He was repelled in particular by the story's inherent racism: the rival gangsters pitted against the story's heroes were Arabs and North Africans. "I was appalled. They were doing all kinds of horrible things, not stopping at necrophilia. On Monday I went to the agent intending to tell him, 'I can't do this!', and instead I heard myself saying, 'Oh, yeah, I want to do it!' I needed the work."
Working under pressure, Dassin wrote the screenplay in six days (veteran screenwriter René Wheeler then helped rework the material back into French). Dassin built up the friendship between Tony the Stephanois and his protégé Jo the Swede and downplayed the turpitude of the rival gangsters who became Europeans with the more Germanic-sounding name of Grutter.
More importantly, he devoted quasi-documentary attention to the actual jewel heist, which was a mere 10-page throwaway early in le Breton's 250-page source novel. "That was the only way to work my way out of a book that I couldn't do, wouldn't do." In the final film, the caper would take up a quarter of the film's two-hour running time and become a classic set piece which would spawn innumerable imitations.
As might be expected, Dassin's screenplay displeased Le Breton, whom the producer had hired to write the dialogue. "Le Breton was really a character. I believe he had done time in jail or reform schools. And he loved to play the gangster as he saw the gangster played in American movies, with the hat and the manner. I found him rather amusing. When he read my script he came to see me and said: "Where's my book?" I tried to explain that's how it is when you adapt a book, and he took out a gun and plunked it down on the table, and repeated, "Where's my book?" I looked at him, I looked at the gun and I began to laugh. And because I laughed he took me in his arms and we became friends." (2)
As he had done for San Francisco, New York and London, Dassin, with the aid of cinematographer Philippe Agostini, turned Rififi into a sort of cinematic city symphony, revealing a broodingly beautiful Paris most French directors had always overlooked. "I remember walking the streets of Paris and dictating to a secretary, 'We'll do this scene here and this one there, just really improvising as we walked. When you make a picture, and you do locations, you gotta walk.'"
Working with what he remembers to be a risible $200,000 budget, Dassin could not afford stars (as Becker could in Touchez pas au grisbi, which owed much of its success to Jean Gabin). He had to make do with second-best but the lack of major names above the title served the film's gritty realism. The tubercular and world-weary Tony the Stéphanois was memorably acted by the Belgian-born Jean Servais (1910-1976), who had been in pictures since the early talkies but whose career had gone into a slump due to drinking problems. Servais's ravaged looks and deep melancholic voice gave Tony a tragic grandeur that made one critic call Rififi a "Greek tragedy in Pigalle."
The high-spirited Italian gangster Mario Ferrati (a cynical pimp in Le Breton's novel) was played by Robert Manuel (1916-1995), a beloved member of the Comédie-FranÁaise, where Dassin saw him in one of his specialty comic roles. As Jo the Swede, Dassin, acting on a suggestion by the producer's wife, cast Carl Möhner, a young Austrian-born stage and screen actor. (Both Servais and Möhner would work again under Dassin's direction in his next film, He Who Must Die, again produced by Bérard).
Using the pseudonym Perlo Vita, Dassin himself stepped into the shoes of César the Milanese, the Italian safecracker whose weakness for women unleashes the tragic chain of bloodletting. "We had cast a very good actorin Italy, whose name escapes me, but he never got the contract! When I called him, on a Thursday, I think it was, and we were shooting on Monday, he said he was wrapped up in another film. So I had to put on the mustache and do the part myself."
Among the supporting cast were two young players whose careers were launched by Rififi. The slangy, parodical "Rififi" theme song was delivered by Magali No'l, one of the most popular sex kittens of French and Italian films of the 50s and 60s (she would later become a favorite Fellini icon in the maestro's La Dolce Vita, Satyricon and Amarcord). As for young stage actor-director Robert Hossein, who played the razor-wielding junkie Rémi Grutter, it was the beginning of a long line of violent sociopaths and brooding anti-hero roles, before he abandoned the cinema for the stage (3).
If Dassin's cast was not bankable box office, his technical collaborators were the cream of the crop. In addition to cameraman Agostini, he also had "one of the greatest men in the history of cinema": production designer Alexandre Trauner, whose credits had included everything from Buñuel's L'Age d'Or (which has an homage in Rififi as the name of the nightclub) to the staggering sets for Marcel Carné's The Children of Paradise. Because of his reputation as a perfectionist, says Dassin, Trauner had done little of real import locally since the costly fiasco of Carné's first postwar film, Les Portes de la nuit. Eager to demonstrate he was not a ruinous collaborator, and out of friendship for Dassin, Trauner did the sets for Rififi for "almost nothing." (Trauner later had an even more successful career in Hollywood, where he designed several films for Billy Wilder, including The Apartment.)
Dassin's other great artistic collaborator was composer Georges Auric, who had written one of the first great sound scores for René Clair's A Nous la liberté. But at first Dassin and Auric could not agree on the scoring of the famous caper scene. "Auric was a wonderful guy. When I said I didn't want any music during the big caper scene, he and Bérard went nuts. Auric said: "Look, I'll tell you what, I'm going to protect you, I'm going to write the music for the scene anyway, because you need to be protected." And he went and scored the entire sequence! When the film was all done, I called him and said, 'I'm going to run the film for you, once with the music and once without.' And afterwards, Auric came out and said: "Get rid of the music!"
Today Dassin admits he somewhat regrets the Rififi theme song, which parodies the underworld slang Le Breton helped introduce into French gangster movies of the 50s. Although nightclub numbers were a convention of film noir of the 40s and 50s, the song was really there to explain to audiences the meaning of the film's title, "Rififi," which ironically, is never uttered by any of the characters [4]. It was written in two days by lyricist Jacques Larue and composer Philippe-Gérard after Dassin nixed a proposal by Edith Piaf-collaborator Louiguy (the author of "La Vie en rose"). Dassin had also interviewed a young songwriter-singer who was struggling to overcome the handicaps of a sickly-looking appearance and strange voice. Bérard told Dassin not to bother with him, that he wouldn't come to anything. Dassin complied. The songwriter was Charles Aznavour.
Dassin remembers the film being made in "a marvelous atmosphere of friendship. My problem was that I hadn't made a film in such a long time I was terribly nervous in the beginning and I had to fight for people not tosee it. The only serious tensions came from the producer because I didn't want to shoot in sunlight, I waited for gray days, which may have extended shooting time. It drove him mad."
Amusingly, Bérard was also frustrated by the film's lack of "rififi!" The big man in French commercial pictures at the time was Yank expatriate singer-actor Eddie Constantine, who was then starring in a hugely successful series of comedy thrillers as Lemmy Caution, the quick-fisted, hard-drinking G-man imagined by British crime novelist Peter Chesney. "Bérard insisted that I throw in scenes of fist fights like in the Constantine pictures. He'd keep insisting, 'Where are the fights, where are the fights?' and I'd say, 'Well, next week, next week!'
Against all odds, Du Rififi chez les hommes was a smash hit from its Paris first-run in April 1955, a success ratified that same month when the jury at the Cannes Film Festival awarded Dassin the directing prize. Dassin's reputation was restored, along with his financial situation: with Bérard unwilling to give him anywhere near a decent salary, Dassin had agreed to a percentage of the box office take!
Despite the ignominious attempts from Hollywood to stop Dassin from working, Rififi enjoyed an enviable art house career in the United States, first in a subtitled version, then in a dubbed re-release (re-titled "Rififi Means Trouble!"). Typically, the film did draw fire from the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency, which slapped a C ("condemned") rating on it, but after three brief cuts and the addition of an opening title card consisting of a quote from the Book of Proverbs (6), Rififi was upgraded to the B category (morally objectionable in part for all). The Rialto Pictures re-release is of the original, uncensored version (minus the Biblical quotation, however).
The Rififi adventure had a curious minor coda years later, when Dassin ran into director Jean-Pierre Melville one day in Paris. "Melville virtually cold-shouldered me. It was only afterwards that I found out why: He had been promised Rififi chez les hommes but Bérard had double-crossed him!" [6]
Melville exorcised this early professional disappointment in 1969, when he directed his most successful film, Le Cercle Rouge (The Red Circle), a highly stylized makeover of the Rififi story, which included a long, silent caper centerpiece! Coincidentally, Le Cercle Rouge, which stars Yves Montand and Alain Delon, is a future Rialto Pictures release.

uiz Questions for Film Art, Chapter 4 (posted 10/28/08)

Answering these questions is a very good way to study chapter four of our text. (These are from the publisher's web site.)

CHAPTER FOUR: THE SHOT: MISE-EN-SCENE
Multiple-Choice Questions

1. Which of the following is NOT considered part of a shot’s mise-en-scene?
a. The actors’ movements.
b. The camera’s angle on the action.
c. Objects visible in the distance.
d. The shadows.

2. A major example of a nonrealistic and expressionistic set design is
a. Greed.
b. Intolerance.
c. The Outlaw and His Wife.
d. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

3. The system of lighting widely used in classical Hollywood filmmaking is known as
a. Three-point lighting.
b. Five-point lighting.
c. Cast-shadow lighting.
d. Omni directional lighting.

4. Which of the following is NOT a term for a type of directional lighting?
a. Top lighting
b. Under lighting
c. Over lighting
d. Backlighting

5. Which of the following is NOT a type of lighting in the three-point lighting system?
a. Rack
b. Back
c. Key
d. Fill

6. According to Film Art, film actor’s performance style is most affected by
a. the microphone placement.
b. the camera distance.
c. the aspect ratio.
d. the lighting.

7. “Frontality” of staging means that
a. a character is placed in the extreme foreground of the shot.
b. a character is facing toward the camera.
c. one character blocks our view of another.
d. a character is moving toward the foreground.

8. Which of the following is NOT a motif in the mise-en-scene in Buster Keaton’s Our Hospitality?
a. A sampler embroidered “Love Thy Neighbor”
b. A fish-on-a-line motif
c. A gun rack
d. A dog-on-a-leash motif

9. Georges Méliès was
a. an early director of fantasy films.
b. an important French set designer of the 1930s.
c. the director of Our Hospitality.
d. the first historian to study mise-en-scene in the cinema.

10. “Stop-action” involves
a. having actors stand in the same spot where they were at the end of one shot while the lighting is adjusted for the next shot.
b. halting the filming in one set and moving on to another while shooting out of continuity.
c. one actor in a scene refrains from any obvious movement after delivering a line so as not to call attention away from the actor who is responding.
d. animating an object by changing its position between each frame shot.

11. Aerial perspective suggests depth by
a. making more distant planes seem hazier than closer ones.
b. creating a high angle that makes parallel lines meet at the horizon.
c. composing a shot that makes the sky dominate the image.
d. filming from directly above a character or setting

12. Perspective diminution suggests depth by
a. making parallel lines seem to intersect.
b. creating false perspective by placing taller characters closer to the camera and shorter characters farther off.
c. implying that the elements which are smaller in the shot tend to be farther away.
d. reducing the cues for perspective so that the space appears relatively shallow.

True-false Questions
13. The two most basic types of light in a scene are the key and the rim.

14. Georges Méliès’s Star-Film studio had glass walls to allow sunlight to illuminate the mise-en-scene.

15. Animated films, like live-action films, have mise-en-scene.

16. Unplanned events that are filmed by accident are not part of the mise-en-scene of a shot.

17. Marlon Brando’s performance in On the Waterfront was a major example of realistic acting.

18. Films shot in the studio have mise-en-scene, while films made entirely on location do not.

19. “Fill” light is used to create deep shadows.

20. “Edge” lighting is a type of backlighting used to make characters stand out against a background.

21. In Hollywood studio filmmaking, the lights are kept in the same position throughout a scene, no matter where the camera is placed.
22. “High-key” lighting is typical of Hollywood filmmaking.

23. Soft, high-key lighting is associated with mystery stories, crime films, and films noirs.

24. According to Film Art, realism is the most useful standard for evaluating actors’ performances.

25. Since the advent of sound it is less important for actors to use their eyes, brow, and mouth to express character emotions.

26. German Expressionist films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari are characterized by realistic mise-en-scene and subtle, psychologically based acting.

27. “Warm” colors tend to attract the spectator’s eye more than “cool” colors do.

28. When balancing the shot filmmakers assume the viewer will concentrate on the lower half of the projected frame.

29. Most of the gags in Our Hospitality depend on shallow-space compositions.

Cañada College
Lit 442: Introduction to Film Studies and Appreciation
Summer 2007 Clay
Syllabus
This is a rough outline of reading assignments, and films that we will watch this session. Please remember that these assignments may change, and that we may adjust the viewing schedule according to our needs and interests. In addition, we will have study questions due for at least some of the films. I will have separate assignment sheets for the papers.
(The Supplemental DVD is included with your Bordwell and Thompson text.)

Week 1: June 18-21
Read: Bordwell & Thompson Chapter 1, “Film as Art: Creativity, Technology, and Business” pp 2-51
Chapter 12, “Film Art and Film History” pp 440-474
Supplemental DVD quizzes due
View: Double Indemnity

Week 2: June 25-28
Read: B&T Chapter 4, “The Shot: Mise-en-Scene” pp. 112-160
Chapter 11, “Film Criticism: Critical Analysis” (skim) pp 384- 431
Supplemental DVD quizzes due
View: The Bicycle Thieves, La Strada

Week 3: July 2-5 (HOLIDAY JULY 4)
Read: B&T, Chapter 5, “The Shot: Cinematography” pp 162-216
Supplemental DVD quizzes due
Paper #1 due
Mid term examination
View: The Wild One, Touch of Evil

Week 4: July 9-12
Read : B&T, Chapter 6, “The Relation of Shot to Shot: Editing” pp 218-263
Chapter 7 “Sound in the Cinema” pp. 264-303
Supplemental DVD quizzes due
View: La Dolce Vida, Rififi

Week 5: 16-19
View: The 400 Blows
Small group presentations

Week 6: July 23-26
Paper #2 due
Final examination
View: TBA
Small Group Presentations

dc July 2, ‘07

Spring, '06

Study Questions for Journal Entries From class discussion, 3/13
Casablanca:
1. What is the style of Casablanca?
a. What is over the top in the movie?
b. What is believable?
c. What makes this movie “Hollywood”?
2. What does Carrotblanca suggest about Casablanca?
a. Satirical references?
3. What ideas are portrayed in this film?
a. Propaganda?
b. Greater cause?
4. What is Rick’s past?
a. Spain?
b. Guerilla fighter? Maybe.
5. What about the role of women in the film?
6. What about race?
a. Sam’s role…
7. How does the Hollywood production code affect Casablanca?
a. Love scenes…
b. Violence
Once Upon a Time in the West:
1. Compare this film to Stagecoach?
a. Revivals of western?
b. Production codes…
c. The times (39’ vs. mid 60’s)
d. How are the close-ups different than in Stagecoach?
i. Plot-moving?
ii. What does it tell us about the characters?
2. What is the style?
a. Outrageous? Different?
b. Italian!
c. Leone: Sound, cinemascope, portraits
3. What about the censorship?
Stagecoach:
1. Racism in the film?
a. Apache wife
b. Indian portrayal