Fischer Film at Mt. Ararat

Is this the definitive film noir? This website says YES.

And Roger Ebert writes enthusiastically about it in his Great Movies series.

and, by the way, here’s somebody writing about Who Framed Roger Rabbit as film noir.

You need to complete 2 of these 3 projects for your 4th quarter Understanding Film grade.

1. The Western (see post below)
2. Genre Study: Pick Your Own (see post below)
3. Make a short film, either…

• a trailer for a non-existent feature film (1-2 minutes)
• a public service announcement (for a real cause) (60 seconds)

If you have a different idea for a film project, consult with me before you go for it. I’ll probably say yes.

We’ll set some dates for this.

Here’s a fake trailer from a former student:

And here’s a PSA NOT from a former student:

Make a keynote presentation (or write a 4-6 page paper), which explores commonalities of form and content in 3 or more films in a film genre of your choosing. At least one of the films should be a classic of its genre, and at least one should be a modern or postmodern remaking of that genre.

In order to understand the workings of a particular genre, you will need to do some background research:

• read about all the genres in your text book and then choose one of the genres to study. Use the text book as a guide to choosing films for your project.
• You can also consult filmsite.org for more suggestions of genres and subgenres. It’s a good site for suggesting both genres and movies that fit those genres.
• if your chosen genre is Western, Film Noir, The Combat Film, or Romantic comedy, then watch the 55-minute documentary on that genre from 100 Years of American Cinema. I can loan you a copy.
• read reviews of the films you plan to watch by searching “external reviews” for those films on the Internet Movie Database (imdb) or at metacritic.com
• find out about that genre through independent research on the web. Start with two website which are often good sources for film: Wikipedia.org and filmsite.org. They both have articles on each film genre. And explore from there.
• read one or more articles chosen or approved by me to supplement your genre study.

Your presentation or paper should:

1. Define the genre, and discuss what is typical of it.

2.  discuss (with clips) your three films as examples of the genre.

3. Make connections with your readings by using at least 3 different quotations.

High Noon & Unforgiven: 2 versions of the Western

Compare and contrast the “classic” Western High Noon with the “revisionist” Western Unforgiven, in terms of:

• the gunfighter heroes (Will Kane vs. William Munny)
• the women
• the depiction of communities in the Wild West

The purpose of the paper is not to say why you liked or didn’t like each film, but rather to show similarities and differences between them.

*

Your paper should also draw on background sources (listed below) to inform your thinking. You need to show that you’ve read and made use of these sources by including at least 4 direct quotations in your paper. Quote them, identify the source of the quote, and then use each quote as a jumping point for you to explore in High Noon and Unforgiven the issues the quotations raise.

*

I consider High Noon to be a classic, or what Bernard Dick calls a mythic Western. That is, it follows and accepts many of the characters and themes that are typical of the Western genre (as discussed, for example, in the documentary we saw about Westerns and in Dick.) Bernard Dick calls Unforgiven an antimythic Western. That is, it challenges those classic themes, and asks the audience to question them. Bernard’s discussion of Unforgiven will be particularly useful.

Your paper should be typed, double-spaced, and 3-5  pages long.

Readings and Resources:

The Western (documentary film from 100 Years of American Cinema)

Anatomy of Film: pages 124-132 (section on the Western genre)
A video by A.O. Scott, New York Times film critic, American Character and the Western

Quotes from various sources that I cobbled together into a pdf, including readings from Warshow, filmsite.org, Berardinelli, Ebert, Rolling Stone, and Saunders)

A piece especially about the relationship between Will and Helen Ramirez, from a Mexican point of view, the one that translates the Spanish dialogue.

Deborah Allison, “Do Not Forsake Me: The Ballad of High Noon” and the Rise of the Movie Theme Song”, a genuine piece of Film Studies Scholarship from Senses of Cinema journal about the theme song of High Noon.

An article by Manfred Weinhorn “High Noon: Liberal Classic? Conservative Screed” that puts the film in the context of politics of the 1950’s and since.

An extensive article from filmsite.org about the western genre.

Reviews of High Noon: James Bernardinelli and Bosley Crowther‘s original New York Times review in 1952.

Reviews of Unforgiven: Roger Ebert, James Bernardinelli,  and Rolling Stone.

A.O. Scott’s New York Times Article on the western genre, “How the Western Was Won”

Script of Unforgiven is here.

Make a video essay in the style of A. O. Scott’s Critics Picks or Jeff Fischer’s “Captain Renault: Decidedly Bi” based on a film of your choice.

Due March 24 & 25 Red and Blue

Here’s a quick how-to:

1. Pick a movie that you have something to say about. The “something” should be thesis-like, examining a theme in the film, or looking closely as a character, or analyzing style. That is, more than just pointing out stuff you like.
2. Watch it carefully and choose “quotes”  – that is, clips that illustrate what you have to say.
3. Handbrake the whole movie or else the individual chapters in which these clips are located into “normal” mp4 files. I’ll show you how to use this and the other needed programs if you don’t know yet. (And don’t forget to throw this all out after you’ve extracted the clips you need.)
4. Using MPeg Streamclip, extract the clips from the chapters, making sure you give each clip a unique name.
5. Write your script and practice so you won’t look as lame as I did reading (so lame that I re-edited the movie to get rid of my own image).
6. Record your script onto video with the Mac’s built-in camera. You can just do it in iMovie, or in Garage band, or  use  a video camcorder and then import the footage.
7. Import each of these pieces into iMovie and edit it into a 3-8 minute videopodcast.
8. I suggest the less of your face the better (that was my mistake), since most people would rather see a film clip than a talking head. Plan your clips so that parts can have the sound lowered to hear your voiceovers.

Here’s my video about Captain Renault of Casablanca:

A.O. Scott of the New York Times does this professionally. You can find his podcast, Critics’ Picks with A.O. Scott, free at the iTunes store.

Take a look at some other Mt. Ararat student work from previous years (but — spoiler alert — we may be watching some of these movies later on in class)

Erin Fitzsimmons’s “A Pawn No More” — an analysis of the character of Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront:

Erin Weathers’s “The Holly Golightly Style” — about the appeal of the Audrey Hepburn character in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

And Matt Graeff’s analysis of the “creatures” in the film Pan’s Labyrinth:

Documentaries are hot now, and here’s why: technology has become available in such a way that, armed with a decent camera and a laptop, anyone with a good sense of story-telling and the patience to shoot and edit it well can make a decent documentary film that could go national. (Not so true of yr blockbuster adventure film.)

Third quarter film project is a documentary, 3 to 10 minutes long, that tells a story, rich with visual information, about

• an event

• an issue

• a place

• a person

• a process

• a phenomenon

Takes a lot of planning, so start thinking right away of what you want to make and how you’d go about doing it.

Meanwhile, you might try watching a lot of documentaries and reading about them to get yourselves some ideas. True films is a good place to look, at Kevin Kelly’s website. By the way, this year’s Oscar nominations for best feature doc are:

• Exit through the Gift Shop, Banksy and Jaimie D’Cruz
• Gasland, Josh Fox and Trish Adlesic
• Inside Job, Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs
• Restrepo, Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger
• Waste Land, Lucy Walker and Angus Aynsley

“Reality” on film

vs.

“Reality” in reality

Assignment

Write an essay which reflects on Billy The Kid, our class discussion of Billy the Kid, and the reviews of the film linked below. Your essay should consider such things as:

• how the film portrays Billy
• how the film portrays the school and the community in which Billy lives
• differences between the film and the reality you have experienced as a student in this community (and, if it applies, as a schoolmate of Billy’s)
• whether the film exploits Billy, even if to put him in a positive light
• how your experience of the film compares to those of critics from outside the Mt. Ararat community.

For this last bullet point, please read the four reviews linked below. Find and copy 3 quotes (from at least two reviews) that you have something to say about – because you agree, or disagree, or see something in the film which relates to it, or know something about the subject of the film which relates to it. Copy each quote and write a paragraph for each one which connects the quote to the film to your perception of the film and the reality that the film is based on.

A link to the New York Times review, another New York Times review, a review in the Onion AV Club, and one in the Village Voice.

By the way, it’s really interesting to watch an independent filmmaker’s publicity. Here’s the MySpace site for Billy the Kid.

Here’s a PDF of the auteur assignment. In simplest form:

1. pick a director
2. watch 3 or more films by that director
3. research the director and the films
4. write a paper (or make a clip-ful Keynote presentation): what makes this director’s work recognizable as his or hers — in form and in content?

Seeing some good examples might help you out:

NEW: Here is Carolyn Glaude’s Keynote of Clint Eastwood and Eileen Streeter’s paper on Joseph Wright. Both are PDFs (to save space), so you can’t really watch the clips or operate the Keynote, but you sure can get the idea.

This one comes from a Mt. Ararat student (class of 2007) who picked an ambitious and unusual auteur for a high school senior — the Italian film director Federico Fellini.

This one comes from a pro: David Denby of the New Yorker magazine, writing about the Coen Brothers at the time that No Country for Old Men was coming out.

Read the chapter in your textbook on auteur theory, and the four pdf’s below:

1. Hitchcock as an auteur
2. Hitchcock on the art of suspense
3. Shadow of a Doubt as a film noir
4. Roger Ebert’s review of Stranger on a Train
5. “Auteurism in North by Northwest”

Paper topic is here.

Lots of Hitchcock on youtube. Try his short explanation of the Kuleshov Effect, the basic idea of how editing affects perception:

Looking at Girl, Interrupted through the lens of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest:

The assignment (choose one of the three topics)

Reviews of Girl, Interrupted

Reviews of Cuckoo’s Nest

a link to information about Borderline Personality Disorder and the DSM IV

transcript of the dialogue of Girl, Interrupted (sort of a film script) is here.

script of Cuckoo’s Nest is here.