Notes:

1918-1928: The Triumph of American Film…

• Citizen Kane (1941) dir. Orson Welles – Utilized lighting in a cinematic way. “The beams make the library look like a sepulcher.”
• The Thief of Bagdad (1924) dir. Raoul Walsh – Directors can imagine what things would look like, as in this instance, what Menzies thought Baghdad might look like. Theme is stated upfront. “Happiness must be earned”. Utilized soft lighting, more feminine. Made Hollywood a major export industry for America. Yet made it vulnerable.
• Desire (1936) dir. Frank Borzage – Utilized new technologies, where lights can illuminate hair, eyelashes cast shadows, etc.
• Gone with the Wind (1939) dir. Victor Fleming – Utilized dollies for cameras, to make the image glide.
• Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) dir. Mervyn LeRoy – Utilized people for patterns that became increasingly abstract.
• Singin’ in the Rain (1952) dir. Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen – Even the shadows had light in them. The stars were elegant. Everything was soft, and had color.
• The Maltese Falcon (1941) dir. John Huston – Warner Bros. stars were more streetwise, they were “angels with dirty faces”. Utilized harder lighting, sharper shadows, nighttime settings, etc.
• The Scarlet Empress (1934) dir. Josef von Sternberg – Sparkly, extravagant, etc. costumes. They were more romantic.
• The Cameraman (1928) dir. Edward Sedgwick and Buster Keaton – Shows fascination.
• One Week (1920) dir. Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton – “Thought like an architect.” Makes a house in progress to being built into a playpen. Also, he understood that movies are about looking.
• Sherlock Jr. (1924) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Buster Keaton – Utilized editing for comedic effect. In editing, a cut replaces one space with another.
• Three Ages (1923) dir. Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline – Utilized camera placement to give a different look. i.e. Placing a camera high up, but with a net just out of frame of a building, to make it look taller.
• Buster Keaton Rides Again (1965) dir. John Spotton – Keaton’s inventiveness was highly planned, but also, spontaneous. He improvised a lot.
• The General (1926) dir. Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton – Every visual joke that was in the first setup, is repeated in the second, and is amplified, but in reverse order. The audience knows this. He literally burned a bridge and derailed a train into a river for comedic effect.
• Divine Intervention (2002) dir. Elia Suleiman – Filmed in deadpan, away from the action. Found grumpiness funny.
• Limelight (1952) dir. Charlie Chaplin – Less into the camera, more into body movement for comedic effect.
• City Lights (1931) dir. Charlie Chaplin – Rehearses a comic movement before filming. Showed how Chaplin’s mind worked.
• The Kid (1921) dir. Charlie Chaplin – Recreated the rooms, and relationships of Chaplin’s childhood. Showed empathy.
• Bad Timing (1980) dir. Nicolas Roeg – Showed the unconscious lives of characters. The people acted cool with each other, but their hands showed twitchy mental energy.
• The Great Dictator (1940) dir. Charlie Chaplin – Included the metaphor of Adolf Hitler kicking the world as his toy.
• Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953) dir. Jacques Tati – Where Chaplin wore long trousers and leaned back, Tati wore short trousers, and leaned forewards.
• Toto in Color (1953) dir. Steno – Another person inspired by Chaplin. Wore Chaplin’s trademark hat.
• Awaara (1951) dir. Raj Kapoor – Utilized Chaplin’s streetwise manner.
• Sunset Boulevard (1950) dir. Billy Wilder – Saw Chaplin as his master, and impersonated him.
• Some Like It Hot (1959) dir. Billy Wilder – Recreated a scene from a past work from Chaplin.
• Luke’s Movie Muddle (1916) dir. Hal Roach – Directed by the Comedian who was most influenced by Chaplin was Harold Lloyd
• Haunted Spooks (1920) dir. Alfred J. Goulding and Hal Roach – Harold Lloyd sported a different fashion, known as the “nerdy look”, yet it added to his athleticism and courage.
• Never Weaken (1921) dir. Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor – Same as above.
• Safety Last! (1923) dir. Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor – Climbed a building with a lot of challenges. Includes a lot of action, and buildup.
• I Flunked, But… (1930) dir. Yasujirō Ozu – Influenced by the dreamer.

…And the First of its Rebels

• Nanook of the North (1922) dir. Robert Flaherty – Longest nonfiction film so far in film. Includes scenic shots, yet includes small, individual shots. It was about his psychology, and struggle against elements. Made the audience look more ethically. Nanook’s death in real life made headlines. This started the documentary genre.
• The House Is Black (1963) dir. Forough Farrokhzad – Utilized tracking shots to turn a home with people with leprosy into a home.
• Sans Soleil (1983) dir. Chris Marker – Filmed real places, and wrote a fictional commentary. Imagined word on top of nonfiction pictures.
• The Not Dead (2007) dir. Brian Hill – Interviewed a person about their war experiences, and turned those words into a poem, and had him speak those poems, to make them magical.
• The Perfect Human (1967) (shown as part of The Five Obstructions) dir. Jørgen Leth – Asked Leth to make him to remake it 5 times, with a new challenge each time.
• The Five Obstructions (2003) dir. Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth –
• Blind Husbands (1919) dir. Erich von Stroheim – Utilized realism to underline the Hollywood fantasy.
• The Lost Squadron (1932) dir. George Archainbaud and Paul Sloane – His drive to realism was more obsessive than flat hearty.
• Greed (1924) dir. Erich von Stroheim – Utilized color as a way of symbolism, as in showing money as yellow, and tinting the climax yellow, as if money has flooded the world of the story. It also ran for 7 hours.
• Stroheim in Vienna (1948) – Nothing came out of this film. Stating the film was dead.
• Queen Kelly (1929) (shown as part of Sunset Boulevard) dir. Erich von Stroheim – A part of Sunset Boulevard, where Norma Desmond watches one of her own movies.
• The Crowd (1928) dir. King Vidor – Another attempt of portraying America with realism. It became the greatest pre-wall-street crash picture of it’s time. Vidor also pushed realism and acting past the norm. Also utilized a crane shot to show a person out of many. Also utilized 7 endings, and picked one in the end. Utilized crowds.
• The Apartment (1960) dir. Billy Wilder – Also utilized a shot to show a person out of many, by placing the actor in the center of the frame.
• The Trial (1962) dir. Orson Welles – Exaggerated this shot of person out of many, by making the person of interest taller than everyone, and even using dolls, and small desks to force the perspective.
• Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924) dir. Yakov Protazanov – Played with the rebellious idea of realism and cities. Also utilized an idea similar to the Thief of Baghdad, by imaging a city with a specific style.
• Posle Smerti (1915) dir. Yevgeni Bauer – Utilizes an open door to make a slit similar to a painting. Also, utilized lighting. Where romantic cinema was optimistic, these early Russian films were pessimistic on the realism of grief, and loss.
• The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer – Films people in closeup, it was all ugly on purpose. It even made some of the electricians on set cry. The set was designed to give more attention toward the actors. The walls were blank.
• Ordet (1955) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer – Shows the simplicity of the image. Also shows the simplicity of white, given a simple white background, with a simple white dress, etc.
• The President (1919) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer – Wanted to simplify/purify his images in a Protestant way. Wanted to soften/whiten his image.
• Vampyr (1932) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer – Features shadows to represent people on a wall. The shadows move as if they have a life of their own. His symbolism of him wanting to whiten the image is utilized by having the antagonist dying in white flour.
• Gertrud (1964) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer – Dreyer’s last film. Showed how a woman’s belief in love was real by filming it through a white scrim, as if in heaven.
• Dogville (2003) dir. Lars von Trier – Opposite of romantic Hollywood cinema. Completely opposite of films like “The Thief of Baghdad”.
• Vivre sa vie (1962) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Jean-Luc Godard –