Films

Question 1

Die Strasse (Dir. Karl Grune, Germany, 1923, 95’) [opening 8:30]

Answer 1

Week 6 German Expressionism. The first of German street films. Woman w/ bun cleaning, man laying on couch. shadows of men on ceiling. View of the street and cars/modernity through a circle, similar to a spotlight fades into a clown. Roller coaster fades into woman smiling. Geyser. Woman not interested in the outdoors, man is. The street luring man away from home. City woman catching his eye, she her with a skull face demonstrating how she could lead to his demise. Pimp child hugging guy’s leg, hoping to find father.

Question 2

Japanese Kabuki Performance

Answer 2

Exaggerated make-up, all characters have a definitive pose for their characters, live music performance.

Question 3

The Big Swallow James Williamson 1901

Answer 3

Week 1. Three-shot trick film. Man advancing towards the camera, remaining in more or less perfect focus until his mouth appears to swallow the lens.

Question 4

Ingeborg Holm. Victor Sjostrom.

Answer 4

Week 2. Film and Modernity. Fence and mom and child in garden. Sven Holm and his wife Ingeborg are happily married with three children, and are about to open a shop in Stockholm. Social commentary social security and poorhouse laws, based on true story. They open the shop, but Sven contracts tuberculosis, and dies. Ingeborg initially tries to run the shop by herself, but when she fails, and develops a debilitating ulcer, she turns to the poorhouse for help. The poorhouse board does not grant her enough assistance to survive outside the workhouse. She has to sell the shop and her house, and board the three children out to foster families.

Question 5

Rhythmus 21 Hans Richter Gemany 1921.

Answer 5

Week 6. Abstract Animation. A bunch of squares and rectangles.

Question 6

Inflation Hans Richter Germany 1928

Answer 6

Week 6. shots of different forms of money and the increased production of money. People asking for money and people hoarding money.

Question 7

Filmstudie 1926 Hans Richter

Answer 7

A bunch of eyes. Return of the square shapes.

Question 8

Gus Visser and his Singing Duck 1925

Answer 8

Beginning to show signs of sound on film. Early sound short. Theodore Case sound test.

Question 9

A Page of Madness. Teinosuke Kinugasa, Japan, 1926

Answer 9

Week 8. Japanese Cinema
Opening scenes depict motion and a rain storm. Water running, car moving, man walking, dark alleyway, rain outside window, and the cuts get faster and faster demonstrating the chaos of the setting. Woman dancing in front of moving thing, behind bars. We realize its a woman in an insane asylum thinking she’s performing. Rythmitic cutting. Falls from exhaustion. Closing 6 minutes depicts man putting on masks on the patients. Return to shot of patient dancing but with mask on this time. This time everyone is happy with the performance. We realize its a fantasy once we return to see the janitor cleaning the floors.

Question 10

Metropolis. Frtiz Lang, Germany. 1926

Answer 10

Week 6. German Expressionism. In a futuristic city sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, the son of the city’s mastermind falls in love with a working-class prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.

Question 11

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City. Walter Ruttman, Germany, 1929.

Answer 11

Week 5. City Symphony. Train arriving to Berlin. Depictions of people living in Berlin. Machinery, streets, storefronts. Act 2, people opening windows of their homes.

Question 12

Decasia. Bill Morrison. US. 2002.

Answer 12

Week 1. Opening is Man analyzing film reel. one of those fair rides like the dumbo one and burned film. Man giving cotton candy. The film is a meditation on old, decaying silent films, featuring segments of earlier movies re-edited and integrated into a new narrative. Bookended with old footage showing how film is processed.

Question 13

By Right of Birth. Harry Grant, 1921.

Answer 13

Week 3. Race films. This film was one of the few surviving films of the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, which is known as the first producer of race films and of such silent films as By Right of Birth. Man is detective, helps girl who falls off horse, issues with girl’s signature for land.

Question 14

Deforest 1923 Bard and Pearl

Answer 14

1st Sound on Film Phonofilm. Men talking in suits, supposedly comedic.

Question 15

Buster Keaton Films

Answer 15

Week 4. Hollywood films, slapstick humor
One week 1920- he builds a house
The Cook- Arbuckle film starring Buster Keaton, he’s a waiter
The Electric House- Graduating college, Buster Keaton fixes electricity in guy’s house. He isn’t actually an electrician. Does a bunch of quirky little things to the house that don’t work.
Motorcycle clip- he’s on a motorcycle that avoids accidents without realizing no one is driving it.

Question 16

de forest sissle blake phonofilm

Answer 16

Week 9. one man on piano, other guy singing. sound

Question 17

Alice Guy Blanche Films

Answer 17

Week 1. Cinema of Attractions.

Question 18

A Few Moments with Eddie Cantor

Answer 18

Stand up comedian doing his routine without audience because of the emergence of sound film.

Question 19

The Lodger. Hitchcock. 1927

Answer 19

Week 9. Late Silent film. Dissemination of news of serial killer. Girls in blonde show scared and pretending to be brunettes. Man with scarf covering.

Question 20

Secrets of a Soul. G.W. Pabst. Germany. 1926.

Answer 20

Week 6: Kammerspiel. Cutting woman’s hair with razor someone across the street cries for help. Dream sequence with intricate sets. and effects.a nameless hotel doorman loses his job”.[1] It is a cinematic example of the Kammerspielfilm or “chamber-drama” genre, which follows the style of short, sparse plays of lower middle-class life that emphasized the psychology of the characters rather than the sets and action. The genre tried to avoid the intertitles (title cards) of spoken dialogue or description that characterize most silent films, in the belief that the visuals themselves should carry most of the meaning. is manager decides that the doorman is getting too old and feeble to present the image of the hotel, and so demotes him to a less demanding job, of washroom attendant. He tries to conceal his demotion from his friends and family but, to his shame, he is discovered. His friends, thinking he has lied to them all along about his prestigious job, taunt him mercilessly while his family rejects him out of shame. The doorman, shocked and in incredible grief, returns to the hotel to sleep in the washroom where he works. The only person to be kind towards him is the night watchman, who covers him with his coat as he falls asleep.

Question 21

The Last Laugh

Answer 21

Week 6: Kammerspiel.
a nameless hotel doorman loses his job”.[1] It is a cinematic example of the Kammerspielfilm or “chamber-drama” genre, which follows the style of short, sparse plays of lower middle-class life that emphasized the psychology of the characters rather than the sets and action. The genre tried to avoid the intertitles (title cards) of spoken dialogue or description that characterize most silent films, in the belief that the visuals themselves should carry most of the meaning. is manager decides that the doorman is getting too old and feeble to present the image of the hotel, and so demotes him to a less demanding job, of washroom attendant. He tries to conceal his demotion from his friends and family but, to his shame, he is discovered. His friends, thinking he has lied to them all along about his prestigious job, taunt him mercilessly while his family rejects him out of shame. The doorman, shocked and in incredible grief, returns to the hotel to sleep in the washroom where he works. The only person to be kind towards him is the night watchman, who covers him with his coat as he falls asleep. Here our story should really end, for in actual life, the forlorn old man would have little to look forward to but death. The author took pity on him, however, and provided quite an improbable epilogue. He gets a hefty inheritance.

Question 22

Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show. Edison Co. Films. 1902

Answer 22

Week 1. Effects in films. No plot yet. Guy in balcony is watching screen and thinks the videos projected are real. Accidentally takes down projector.

Question 23

The Seashell and the Clergyman

Answer 23

Week 5: surrealism/experimental
The film follows the erotic hallucinations of a priest lusting after the wife of a general.

Question 24

Strike Eisenstein

Answer 24

Week 7: Soviet Cinema
Montage of Attractions
A group of oppressed factory workers go on strike in pre-revolutionary Russia.
Fleeing crowds, bull being slaughtered. Undercover agents, false accusing of crimes.

Question 25

The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty. 1927 Esfir Shub

Answer 25

Week 7: Soviet Cinema
Compilation Documentary
Archival footage of government at the time.

Question 26

The Jazz Singer. Alan Crosland. 1927.

Answer 26

Week 9: Transition to Sound
First sound film. The scenes where the dad show sup it returns to silent film.

Question 27

Nanook of the North. Robert J Flaherty. 1922

Answer 27

Week 3: Ethnography/Documentary
Alaska

Question 28

Le Braisier Ardent. 1923. France

Answer 28

Week 5: French Impressionism, Photogenie, and the Close Up.
Tinted. Focus on character’s faces. A magician. A church.

Question 29

Safety Last! 1923

Answer 29

Week 4: Hollywood Cinema
Guy climbing up building not being able to get into window, things keep going wrong like clock breaking and not holding him up.

Question 30

Revenge of the Kinematograph Cameraman

Answer 30

Week 1: Attractions to Narrative Integration
Mr. and Mrs. Beetle are cheaters. Grasshopper record Mr. Beetle with Dragonfly.

Question 31

Rough Sea at Dover

Answer 31

Week 1: Origins of Cinema
Rough waves against ship

Question 32

Pass the Gravy 1928

Answer 32

Thanksgiving Film:
They eat the prize-winning chicken on accident. Poor Brigham

Question 33

The Adventures of Prince Achmed 1926 Lotte Reiniger

Answer 33

Week 6: Weimar expressionism
Tales of 101 Arabian Nights
Cutout silhouettes to make the animation.

Question 34

Hiawawtha Edgar Lewis 1913

Answer 34

Week 3: Documentary, Ethnography, and Indigeneity
based upon Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem The Song of Hiawatha. First feature film to use cast of Native Americans. Ends with Hiawawtha telling the natives that the man in the black robe, a priest, is the true prophet and riding off into the sunset.

Question 35

L’Inhumaine. France. 1924

Answer 35

Week 5: French Impressionism
ooo cool geometric lab as setting. Chaos as they’re trying to figure out how to awaken the woman.

Question 36

Menilmontant. Dimitri Kirsanoff. France. 1926

Answer 36

Week 5: French Impressionism
People aggressively trying to get out of cabin. one guy killing people with axe. The film is silent and contains no intertitles. It begins with a flurry of quick shots depicting the axe murder of the parents of the protagonists, two sisters. Innovative with double exposure.