Stanley Kubbrick Controversy

The paper discusses how the critical reception shifts over a period of time. The paper is mainly focused on the film "Sunrise", directed by F. Marnau in 1927. Initially the movie got mixed reviews from the critics; however this film became to be known as a cinematic masterpiece in future decades.

The audience, the industry, and the technology were all very different but what both films where aiming to achieve is very similar. They are trying to bring to life stories about America’s heart and soul using the best visual skill and capabilities they had available to them. They are also one of the stories of Film History. It is the historian’s contention that ‘understanding the past is useful in understanding the present’ (Allan and Gomery, 1985 p6). Indeed, It can be further argued that without the former it is very unlikely we would be enjoying the latter. They are so different visually but they are the same in their goals; depicting a great literal story, through the medium of film.

All films, regardless of their intended purposes, tend to capture a piece of history and culture within them. Film’s ability to capture images and produce a visual is truly unique, as other methods of storytelling, such as writing a book, fail to truly encapsulate the human experience. Using an aesthetic lens, film directors essentially preserve time, and bring us back to our roots. Through masterful manipulation of the aesthetic properties of film, Milos Forman succeeds in illuminating the historical and cultural significance of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, making it worthy of placement in the National Film Archive.

This essay is based on films of the same story, told in different ways, with emphasis, themes, meaning and interpretation shaped or shaded by the situation of the storyteller; the cinematic mise-en-scene. Based on the same story, the films reveal and reflect the film-maker’s social norms and views, emerging from their different national contexts. While exploring the two films, this essay will examine elements of film language or semiotics: color saturation (or black and white), sound, setting, type of camera angles used; repetition of visual motifs (Metz, 1985). The two films explored were made in the 1960s. Neither film is American, yet both reveal influences and reflections on American cinema and American power; the Western film, adherence or detracting from Hollywood Classical cinema tropes, i.e. close-ups, shot-reverse-shot, POV, depth of field (Bazin, 1985: 128-9). The two films are Kurasawa’s Yojimbo (1961) and Leone’s Fistful of Dollars (1964), from Japan and Italy, respectively. How are they different; how similar? Why do they use the same plot,

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is a feature length documentary which comprises of three acts. Therefore, it is evident that this documentary follows a classical film basis. This linear narrative structure helps the audience to understand, connect and engage with the story. Morgan Spurlock’s documentaries are quite stylised and can be identified through the use of archival footage, location shooting with a handheld camera; long takes and synchronous (direct) sound recording.

Just like in the essay “Z: The Movie That Changed My Life,” by Erdrich. Erdrich states that a movie was here first look at the world. “As it turned out, it was my first view of the world” (111

Born in Paris in the middle of World War I, Jean-Pierre Grumbach knew he wanted to be a filmmaker at a very early age. After receiving a “Pathé Baby ” camera at the age of seven, he went on to create the equivalent of thirty short movies in various formats for friends and family by the time he turned twenty. His burgeoning career and dreams of being a film director were interrupted by Nazi Germany and the Second World War, but instead of evacuating to the United Kingdom he stayed in his homeland and fought, wisely changing his last name to Melville after his favorite author. Now a veteran of the Resistance in Nazi-occupied France, Jean-Pierre Melville later used his love of filmmaking and American gangster movies, accompanied by his disdain for the domineering French cinema establishment, to invent an entire genre of films and inspire an army of young directors to ignore conventional methods and embrace their own creations in their own unique ways.

It is easy to look into the eyes of a motion picture and dissect it for its form, style, underlying meanings, and other characteristics that separate it from a film and a classic. There are concrete elements that can be found in all classics that make it such a powerful and remarkable work. One of these elements is undoubtedly the concept of the auteur theory. The Auteur theory is described as a filmmaker, usually a director, who exercises creative control over his or her works and has a strong personal style. Next to this definition should be the line “-for more help see Stanley Kubrick.” He exemplifies all the characteristics of not just a film director, but also a film auteur because of the intellect and

Early cinema is often referred to as a progression to narrative cinema, Tom Gunning would argue that it was not a progression but had its own purpose and coined the term The Cinema of Attractions in his essay ‘Now you see it, Now you don’t’. This is the concept that a large quantity of the first film makers produced films that were more about the spectacle, most of the films leading up to 1900 reflected the fascination with technology and how things happened rather than why. Gunning noted that there were three assumptions of film; the general ideas that people had about the timeline of film and where it would end up. There is the cinematic assumption, the idea that film was ‘restricted to the technological reproduction of theatre’ (Gunning T.1993) early cinema was primitive and only a practice for what was to come. The narrative assumption is that film is ‘only important as it is a predecessor to a more engaging and effective form of film,’ (Gunning T. 1993) this suggests that narrative cinema is the natural form of film. The final assumption is the idea that ‘cinema only truly appeared when it discovered its mission of telling stories.’ (Metz C. 1974) These assumptions all encompass the idea that narrative is the end form of film. In this essay I am going to discuss Tom Gunning’s theory of The Cinema of Attractions and the differences between them and narratively driven films.

The 1940’s and the years former were globally some of the hardest times to date. Emerging from the First World War, the Great Depression, and on the brink of another war, it’s no surprise that films of the time began reflecting the dark and troubled world of the 40’s. The rise of Film Noir and its consequential impact on Hollywood was no small feat, and there is no doubt to Film Noir’s importance in film history. But like any genre, it was developed slowly and surely from those beforehand. German Expressionism played a large role in forming Film Noir’s distinct styles, in particular the movements’ use of visuals to create emotional or psychological responses.

From 1924 to 1930, Soviet Russia experienced transformations that not only shaped the nation’s political perspective, but also cultivated a name for itself within the arts. War in combination with the demand for social justice and change encouraged people toward creative expression. Dziga Vertov was one of the prominent figures in Russia during this time. He was a documentarian that focused on depicting the highest form of reality in film. Vertov believed the only way to convey the highest form of reality and creativity in film was to never include a predetermined story, prearranged props, or actors.

Being that of a Classic Hollywood film, John Huston’s work “The Maltese Falcon” is an exemplar (and subsequently a subverter) of classical hollywood narrative. A film noir where the character’s motivations are as fluid and complex as the genre is known to be. A film whose narrative in of itself keeps the viewer guessing, and plot points are slowly pieced together by the viewer to discover the greater story at hand. It’s through these areas that “The Maltese Falcon” is a viewer’s guide to classical Hollywood narrative.

The rise in historically driven films in the last century and the introduction of films as educational films have led many have theorized the connection between film, history and the past. Film, whether fictional or non-fictional has an important impact on the society it is released in through the ideologies the production promotes or displays. These passive and active ideologies are the cornerstone of film studies and are important in the search for the true connection between film and the past. Alongside making distinctions for the terms film, history, and the past, this essay will be using three different films to illustrate how each of these terms connect together and form an important means of education in the twenty-first century. The

This paper was prepared for Introduction to Film History, Module 1 Homework Assignment, taught by Professor Stephanie Sandifer.

The Lumiere brothers debuted their first motion picture on their brand new invention, the Cinematographe, in 1895. Since then, the movie industry has soared on to become one of the most influential mediums of the 20th and 21st century. 100 years later, Sarah Moon’s documentary Lumiere and Company (1995) reflected on the impact of the Lumiere brothers’ first films using testimonies and cinematic tributes from multiple international directors. Focusing on two Lumiere films; Workers Leaving the Factory (1895), and Demolition of a Wall (1896), as well as two cinematic tributes from two different directors; David Lynch, and Merzak Allouache, the everlasting impact of the Lumiere films can be recognized in both a current context and the context of