Film 101: Introduction to Cinema
All the films shown in my FILM 101 class at Hunter College with Prof. Robert H. Stanley, some only partially, some in their entirety, some suggested in the assigned readings. Includes extracts from Stanley's textbook 'The Movie Idiom', and some comments he made in the lecture hall.
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- DirectorWilliam K.L. DicksonStarsFred OttA man (Thomas Edison's assistant) takes a pinch of snuff and sneezes. This is one of the earliest Thomas Edison films and was the first motion picture to be copyrighted in the United States.
- DirectorWilliam K.L. DicksonStarsEugen SandowStrong-man Eugene (Eugen) Sandow poses in a long shot on a bare stage against a black background, wearing only tight trunks and laced sandals. He begins with his arms folded against his chest, looking off screen left, then strikes a variety of poses that accentuate his muscular development. These positions include flexing his right arm with the fist to his head and face to shoulder; turning his back to the camera and flexing his upper arms and shoulder muscles; and, with his back still to the camera, stretching out and up with one arm at a time. Sandow then turns back to face the camera and performs a standing back flip. He closes in the same pose with which he opened From Biograph photo catalog: 24 feet. Still another picture of the great athlete displaying his muscles, and turning a somersault without touching hands to the floor."I think I heard some heavy breathing in the front row..."
- DirectorLouis LumièreWorkers leaving the Lumière factory for lunch in Lyon, France in 1895; a place of great photographic innovation and one of the birth places of cinema.
- DirectorAlfred ClarkStarsRobert ThomaeMrs. Robert L. ThomasThis short film, one of the first to use camera tricks, depicts the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.
- DirectorGeorges MélièsStarsGeorges MélièsVictor AndréBleuette BernonA group of astronomers go on an expedition to the Moon."The film is filled with such clever cinematic tricks as moon creatures that disappear into puffs of smoke when scientists whack them with their umbrellas. But each of its thirty separate scenes were captured in a single, uninterrupted run of a stationary camera from a fixed point of view, that of a theatregoer sitting in the orchestra center. In addition to the cuts used to achieve optical illusions, editing occurs between scenes rather than within them. The process of combining separately photographed scene fragments into a coherent whole remained for other filmmakers to realize."
- DirectorEdwin S. PorterStarsGilbert M. 'Broncho Billy' AndersonA.C. AbadieGeorge BarnesA group of bandits stage a brazen train hold-up, only to find a determined posse hot on their heels."This innovative little film, which runs just over twelve minutes, consists of fourteen separate shots - aspects of scenes that have been captured by the camera in a single, uninterrupted run. The actions contained in each shot were themselves dramatically incomplete. Porter's decision to cut between his scenes without playing them out was the beginning of a truly cinematic language. It established that the basic unit of meaning would be the shot rather than the scene. By taking scene fragments filed at different times and places and splicing them together, Porter was able to visually transport viewers back and forth from the train, to the telegraph office, to a dance hall, and then back to the outlaws on horseback. To keep the horsemen in view as they rode off, he broke with the usual fixed-angle position, moving the camera vertically and horizontally to follow the action. Porter himself seemed unaware of the importance of his own accomplishments, and he soon regressed to more primitively conceived productions."
- DirectorGeorge S. FlemingEdwin S. PorterStarsEdwin S. PorterVivian VaughanArthur WhiteA fireman rushes into a carriage to rescue a woman from a house fire. He breaks the windowpanes and carries the woman to safety; after dangerous and uncertain moments he also saves the woman's son.
- DirectorJames WilliamsonStarsSam DaltonA man, objecting to being filmed, comes closer and closer to the camera lens until his mouth is all we see. Then he opens wide and swallows camera and cinematographer. He steps back, chews, and grins."...perhaps the first...to discover the basics of how to create a subjective point of view, a combination of shots that suggests the angle of vision or psychological state of a character."
- DirectorLewin FitzhamonCecil M. HepworthStarsBlairMay ClarkBarbara HepworthA dog leads its master to his kidnapped baby."The shooting and editing of the sequence in which the canine hero seeks out the baby, and then guides the infant's distraught father back to where it's being held, shows remarkable inventiveness. To mark the dog's progress toward and away from the kidnapper's lair, Hepworth used the same camera positioning. He then combined the separate shots to map out a coherent dramatic flow."
- DirectorD.W. GriffithStarsLillian GishMae MarshHenry B. WalthallThe Stoneman family finds its friendship with the Camerons affected by the Civil War, both fighting in opposite armies. The development of the war in their lives plays through to Lincoln's assassination and the birth of the Ku Klux Klan."In terms of conceptual scale, acting, sets, and technical devices, there simply had never been a movie like this before. Griffith used no shooting script, creating all the details and nuances of the screen epic as he went along... The more than 1500 separate shots took three months to edit. The scene depicting the assassination of Abraham Lincoln alone comprises fifty-five shots, some lasting only a few seconds. The three-hour movie combines sweeping, epic events with intimate moments of joy and sorrow. The mixture of the private and sentimental with the remote and impersonal is especially effective in the war scenes."
- DirectorD.W. GriffithStarsLillian GishRobert HarronMae MarshThe story of a poor young woman separated by prejudice from her husband and baby is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.
- DirectorClarence BrownStarsGreta GarboJohn GilbertLewis StoneWhen two childhood sweethearts are kept from marrying, misery ensues.
- DirectorVsevolod PudovkinStarsVera BaranovskayaNikolay BatalovAleksandr ChistyakovA story about a family torn apart by a worker's strike. At first, the mother wants to protect her family from the troublemakers, but eventually she realizes that her son is right and the workers should strike."In the opening scene...the title mother during the time of the aborted 1905 revolution in Russia, the title character intercepts her nasty, drunken husband as he steps on a stool to grab a cherished old clock so he can pawn it. A flurry of quick cuts follows as she tries to wrest him away from his quarry. We see her weary but determined face, her hands gripping his thighs, his contorted expression as he struggles to free himself, their startled son sitting up in bed, the husband's snarling features, the stool tipping, the clock being ripped from the wall, and a piece of its inner mechanism rolling across the room. As the intense cutting ceases, the camera focuses on the husband stretched out on the floor."
- DirectorSergei EisensteinStarsAleksandr AntonovVladimir BarskiyGrigoriy AleksandrovIn the midst of the Russian Revolution of 1905, the crew of the battleship Potemkin mutiny against the brutal, tyrannical regime of the vessel's officers. The resulting street demonstration in Odessa brings on a police massacre."The cutting pattern [of the Odessa steps sequence] marks out every conceivable contrast: between light and dark, between rounded and angular shapes, between high and low angles, between close and full shots, and between the methodical descent of the militia and the chaotic flight of the panicked crowd. Virtually every angle and every element are exploited to heighten and prolong the sense of relentless terror. Subjective time, the way it must have felt to be there, replaces natural time."
- DirectorRobert WieneStarsWerner KraussConrad VeidtFriedrich FeherHypnotist Dr. Caligari uses a somnambulist, Cesare, to commit murders."Through acutely angled shapes and sharp geometric figures highlighted by bizarre shadows painted a deep black, they created a nightmarish atmosphere steeped in an ambience of anxiety and terror - malformed doors, windows and street lamps; jutting parapets, serpentine alleyways, and twisted house fronts that lean toward one another; and multilevel stages with platforms placed at peculiar angles. Costumes, props, and makeup are all similarly highly stylized. The extreme stylization of the mise-en-scène is echoed in the performances as well, with the actors often exhibiting jerky or dancelike movements. Most of the film was photographed in medium long shots that allow the surrounding decor to be fully seen and require the viewer's eye to study the entire frame. The warped and out-of-join images of the film's inner story about a sinister doctor who controls a somnambulist serial killer (Conrad Veidt, who later in his career played Casablanca's Major Strasser) turn out to be the product of the twisted mind of its narrator, a patient at an insane asylum. But the film offers no normal world to offset this paranoid vision. The opening and closing scenes that frame the inner story are set in a hallucinatory landscape as well."
- DirectorF.W. MurnauStarsEmil JanningsMaly DelschaftMax HillerAn aging doorman is forced to face the scorn of his friends, neighbors and society after being fired from his prestigious job at a luxurious hotel."...realistic elements assume darkly symbolic overtones as the action unfolds... The simple tale assumes a more complex narrative structure through innovative camera movements and subjective point-of-view shots. Working from a script by Carl Mayer, director F.W. Murnau begins the film with a striking shot of the bustling hotel lobby taken from a descending elevator. When the gates open, the camera glides across the floor to the revolving doors, where it pauses to focus on the rainy night... When he's [the main character] notified of his demotion to lavatory attendant, as hot from his established point of view shows the manager's letter. It then blurs so that the words can no longer be read. As he descends into dementia, the thrusting spires of the urban landscape dissolve into towers of light and movement that seem to mock his reduced stature. Throughout the film, the camera plays an integral role in suggesting the old man's shifting moods and emotions as it accompanies him through city streets, into the courtyard of his gloomy tenement dwelling, and down a long, dark corridor in the hotel where he works. In the absence of modern dollies and cranes, the film's Czech-born cinematographer, Karl Freund, achieved smooth camera movements through the use of bicycles, fire engine ladders, and overhead cables. To simulate the old man's point of view after consuming too much alcohol, Freund strapped a lightweight camera to his own chest and stumbled dizzily around the set of a bedroom...cinematographers were quick to emulate the way its innovative camerawork contributed to characterization."
- DirectorCharles ChaplinStarsCharles ChaplinMack SwainTom MurrayA prospector goes to the Klondike during the 1890s gold rush in hopes of making his fortune, and is smitten with a girl he sees in a dance hall.
- DirectorAlan CroslandStarsJane WintonJohn RocheWarner OlandIn 16th-century Italy, devil-may-care playboy Don Juan runs afoul of the despotic Borgias.
- DirectorAlan CroslandStarsAl JolsonMay McAvoyWarner OlandThe son of a Jewish Cantor must defy the traditions of his religious father in order to pursue his dream of becoming a jazz singer.
- DirectorJames WhaleStarsColin CliveMae ClarkeBoris KarloffDr Henry Frankenstein is obsessed with assembling a living being from parts of several exhumed corpses.
- DirectorMichael CurtizStarsHumphrey BogartIngrid BergmanPaul HenreidA cynical expatriate American cafe owner struggles to decide whether or not to help his former lover and her fugitive husband escape the Nazis in French Morocco."...the apotheosis of the Hollywood 'movie' idiom."
- DirectorRobert J. FlahertyStarsAllakariallakAlice NevalingaCunayouIn this silent predecessor to the modern documentary, film-maker Robert J. Flaherty spends one year following the lives of Nanook and his family, Inuits living in the Arctic Circle.
- DirectorFrances H. FlahertyRobert J. FlahertyStarsTa'avaleFa'amgaseT'ugaitaFilmmaker Robert J. Flaherty presents a docufictional account of a family living in a Samoan village in the early 1920s.
- DirectorRobert J. FlahertyStarsColman 'Tiger' KingMaggie DirraneMichael DirraneIn this blend of documentary and fictional narrative from pioneering filmmaker Robert Flaherty, the everyday trials of life on Ireland's unforgiving Aran Islands are captured with attention to naturalistic beauty and historical detail."Like Flaherty's earlier efforts...reflects a nostalgic yearning for some simpler, more physical, preindustrial world. The actual conditions of everyday life on aran had little relationship to the struggles against the forces of nature depicted in the film.
- DirectorOrson WellesStarsOrson WellesJoseph CottenDorothy ComingoreFollowing the death of publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane, reporters scramble to uncover the meaning of his final utterance: 'Rosebud.'
- DirectorAnatole LitvakStarsEdward G. RobinsonGeorge SandersFrancis LedererFBI agent Ed Renard investigates the pre-war espionage activities of the German-American Bund.
- DirectorCharles ChaplinStarsCharles ChaplinPaulette GoddardJack OakieDictator Adenoid Hynkel tries to expand his empire while a poor Jewish barber tries to avoid persecution from Hynkel's regime.
- DirectorJack KinneyBen SharpsteenStarsPinto ColvigCharles JudelsBilly BletcherDonald Duck has a nightmare that he lives in Germany slaving under the Nazi regime.
- DirectorJack KingStarsClarence NashFred ShieldsDonald Duck deals with income taxes and their benefit to the American war effort in this inspirational documentary short animated film.
- DirectorJules DassinStarsJean ServaisCarl MöhnerRobert ManuelFour men plan a technically perfect crime, but the human element intervenes...
- DirectorWilliam HeiseStarsMay IrwinJohn C. RiceIn a medium close-up shot of the first kiss ever recorded on screen, two fervent lovers cuddle and talk passionately at hair's breadth, just before the love-smitten gentleman decides to give his chosen one an innocent peck.
- DirectorEdwin S. PorterStarsAline BoydPhineas NairsJane StewartA well-dressed woman steals several items from a department store. Meanwhile, a poor woman with two small children steals a loaf of bread out of desperation, and she is quickly caught and arrested. In court, what penalty will each face?
- DirectorD.W. GriffithStarsFrank PowellGrace HendersonJames KirkwoodAn unscrupulous and greedy capitalist speculator decides to corner the wheat market for his own profit, establishing complete control over the markets.
- DirectorOscar MicheauxStarsEvelyn PreerFlo ClementsJames D. RuffinAbandoned by her fiancé, an educated black woman with a shocking past dedicates herself to helping a near bankrupt school for impoverished black youths.
- DirectorCecil B. DeMilleStarsTheodore RobertsCharles de RochefortEstelle TaylorAfter hearing the story of Moses, the sons of a devout Christian mother go their own ways, and the atheist brother's breaking of the Ten Commandments leads to tragedy.
- DirectorWilliam A. WellmanStarsJames CagneyJean HarlowEdward WoodsAn Irish-American street punk tries to make it big in the world of organized crime.
- DirectorAlfred E. GreenStarsBarbara StanwyckGeorge BrentDonald CookA young woman, sexually exploited all her life, decides to turn the tables and exploit the hapless men at a big city bank by gleefully seducing her way to the top.
- DirectorHoward HughesHoward HawksStarsJack BuetelThomas MitchellJane RussellWestern legends Pat Garrett, Doc Holliday and Billy the Kid are played against each other over the law and the attentions of vivacious country vixen Rio McDonald.
- DirectorRoberto RosselliniStarsAnna MagnaniFederico FelliniPeparuoloIn part one, a heartbroken woman talks to her ex-lover on the phone. In part two, a pregnant woman believes she is carrying the child of Saint Joseph.
- DirectorElia KazanStarsKarl MaldenCarroll BakerEli WallachAn immature, naive teenage bride holds her anxious husband at bay while flirting with an amorous Sicilian farmer.
- DirectorAlfred HitchcockStarsAnthony PerkinsJanet LeighVera MilesA Phoenix secretary embezzles $40,000 from her employer's client, goes on the run and checks into a remote motel run by a young man under the domination of his mother.
- DirectorRoman PolanskiStarsJack NicholsonFaye DunawayJohn HustonA private detective hired to expose an adulterer in 1930s Los Angeles finds himself caught up in a web of deceit, corruption, and murder.
- DirectorJacques TourneurStarsRobert MitchumJane GreerKirk DouglasA private eye escapes his past to run a gas station in a small town, but his past catches up with him. Now he must return to the big city world of danger, corruption, double crosses, and duplicitous dames.
- DirectorGeorge StevensStarsAlan LaddJean ArthurVan HeflinA weary gunfighter in 1880s Wyoming begins to envision a quieter life after befriending a homestead family with a young son who idolizes him, but a smoldering range war forces him to act.