Month: August 2020

2000 Onwards: Film Moves Full Circle – and the Future of Movies.

• Swiss Miss (1938) dir. John G. Blystone and Hal Roach – Utilizes a studio set and a painted background. Shows the one true question within film “Something is going to go wrong, but what?”. This films’ answer was a monkey.
• Blonde Venus (1932) dir. Josef von Sternberg – Utilizes a diffusion filter. A very absurd film.
• Employees Leaving the Lumiere Factory (1895) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Louis Lumière – Movies started with this documentary. Filmed square on.
• Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) dir. Michael Moore – Showed that reality can be dramatic. One of the first hit documentaries. Took over $250 million in the box office.
• The Bourne Supremacy (2004) dir. Paul Greengrass – Tries to be a documentary. Also made $250 million at the box office. Images were rough. Footage was heavily/speedily cut.
• Être et avoir (2002) dir. Nicolas Philibert – Observational. Camera at child’s height. Tilts up to capture sadness. Shows a vivid human being.
• Zidane – A Portrait in the 21st Century (2006) dir. Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno – Utilized extra long lenses to film a football match, but to capture the presence of one person. Thoughts were subtitled, even if not said out loud. Utilizes zooming.
• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) dir. Andrew Dominik – Wasn’t only in documentaries where reality bounced back. Utilizes Sepia, and defocuses the edge of the screen.
• Way Down East (1920) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. D. W. Griffith – Softly lit. Similar to that of a scene in “The Assassination of Jesse James”.
• Climates (2006) dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan – Shows an intimate scene. Shot digitally. Utilizes a shot of sad eyes, out of focus, half cut off. No dialogue, or music. Doesn’t directly display what’s happening.
• The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005) dir. Cristi Puiu – New Romanian cinema. Utilized camera as if it were handheld, fluorescent lighting, used to show indecency.
• The Headless Woman (2008) dir. Lucrecia Martel – Boldly confronted reality. Usually, car accidents are filmed very violently/action heavy, yet in this film, it’s all in one camera angle, in the interior, showing the person behind the wheel. Static camera, shallow focus. Shows it’s tone with one scene. One the driver leaves, the camera doesn’t follow, it just stays in the interior. Shows isolation.
• Battle in Heaven (2005) dir. Carlos Reygadas –
• Oasis (2002) dir. Lee Chang-Dong – Shows the man who’s talking out of focus.
• Memories of Murder (2003) dir. Bong Joon-ho – A true story. Flat, deserted yellow land. Also utilizes a POV camera. Shows a simply shot conversation.
• Oldboy (2003) dir. Park Chan-wook – More transgressive. Shows a dark stylized world. Based on another work of fiction. Shows an action scene in a unique camera angle, as if the wall in front of us has been removed, only showing what’s behind the long corridor. Shot is far back, as if shot like a cartoon.
• Le Voyage dans la lune (1902) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Georges Méliès(Although Mark Cousins and the title on the screen indicate that the scene being shown is from La lune à un mètre, the scene is actually from Le Voyage dans la lune. – One of the first science fiction movies. Extremely dream-like.
• Mulholland Dr. (2001) dir. David Lynch – Shows a dance scene, with a pure purple background, with shadows. Shows a moment of innocence. Shows layers. Shows a cafe scene. Has a shock, showing a monster of terror, as if handheld camera. Heavily plays with light. It was similar of that to the “Wizard of Oz”, with a noir layer attached to it.
• Requiem for a Dream (2000) dir. Darren Aronofsky – A great distortion movie about how drugs distort the world. The world is distorted by speeding it up, by applying a lens. Shows paranoia.
• Songs from the Second Floor (2000) dir. Roy Andersson – Color is a drab green, then turns heightened, as if a musical fantasy. Ending shows symbols of religion. All in one camera angle.
• Way Out West (1937) dir. James W. Horne – Andresson is a fan of this. The simplicity of shots, square on, symmetrical.
• Indiscreet (1958) (introduced in Episode 5) dir. Stanley Donen – Shows how a man utilized split screen to get around censorship.
• Rules of Attraction (2002) dir. Roger Avary – Also utilizes split screen. However, each screen is an actor, so the actors are looking into camera, as into each other.  Feels as if we’re in the middle of the situation. The cameras then pan, combining into one image, showing both actors. We go from inside the moment, into an outside perspective.
• Avatar (2009) dir. James Cameron – Shows how computer generation can be heavily utilized. Utilizes a flowing camera. Everything was animated in computers, except the most important thing. Facial expressions.
• Motion Capture Mirrors Emotion (2009) dir. Jorge Ribas – Shows how Avatar was made, shows how people create motion capture, and digital camera. Shows multiple camera angles. Especially split screens. Shows 21st century cinema.
• Tropical Malady (2004) dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul – Filmed in natural light, in long takes. Filmed in the summer. Backdrop is so still, it almost looks painted. However, halfway through, the film almost restarts. Scenes lit by moonlight. Films the spirit of animals. Shows life and death in the same image.
• Mother and Son (1997) dir. Alexander Sokurov – One of the defining movies in “Slow Cinema”. Derives from painting. Even stretches an image diagonally to change how the audience sees it.
• Russian Ark (2002) dir. Alexander Sokurov – The most inventive film “The Greatest Gorilla”. Camera is almost handheld, as if a person was the camera observing the people within the shot. Whole movie filmed in a single take. Not a single cut. Rehearsed for 6 months. Steadicam was so heavy, the cameraman almost collapsed.
• In One Breath: Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark (2003) dir. Knut Elstermann – Shows the ending after “Russian Ark” was filmed, shows how relieved everyone was, filmed with a handheld. Fully captures relief, and shows tears of joy.

Epilogue the Year 2046

• Inception (2010) (introduced in Episode 4) dir. Christopher Nolan – Innovative sci-fi, could be a metaphor about how film could be. Colors are greens and blue. Has shots with no sound. Relies on dreams within dreams. Cameras and film color gradings change throughout each sequence.
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) dir. Michel Gondry – Shows memories within the film. Camera turns into a horror-like film. With a flashlight attached to the camera.
• Even the documentary itself shifts into a horror-esque theme, with the chiming sounds in the background, “horror-like” sound effects, sharp cuts, tone of voice changes, etc. Ends the shot with a tribute to film.

The 1990s: The First Days of Digital – Reality Losing Its Realness in America and Australia.

• Gladiator (2000) dir. Ridley Scott – One of the first digital shots, everything isn’t real, it’s all digital, made/drawn on a computer. Wanted to film a scene as if the people were ants.
• Intolerance (1916) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. D. W. Griffith – Created a gliding shot by placing a camera on a crane.
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) dir. James Cameron – Liquid metal turns into a photographed actor. Utilizes this technique by scanning the actor, and digital placement. Also known as CGI (computer generated imagery). Image looked like it was actually real.
• Anchors Aweigh (1945) dir. George Sidney – An early form of CGI.
• Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) (introduced in Episode 4) dir. Winsor McCay – One of the first animations.
• Jurassic Park (1993) (introduced in Episode 11) dir. Steven Spielberg – Shows a hyper realistic dinosaur, compared to one of a drawing. Also shows reflections.
• Titanic (1997) (introduced in Episode 5) dir. James Cameron – Shows the audience the actual true scale/size of the titanic. About what we can see.
• Toy Story (1995) dir. John Lasseter – An inventive use of CGI. Made entirely of computer. Shows dynamic deep staging, and animated showers. However, very pricey.
• The Blair Witch Project (1999) dir. Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez – Shot on low tech digital video, and shows how marketing could change a movie. Had the look/sound of camcorder footage.
• House of Flying Daggers (2004) (introduced in Episode 12) dir. Zhang Yimou – Even more innovative than Western cinema. Utilizes a CGI image of a man throwing an object against drums, with the camera following it, utilizing motion blur. Also utilizes a CG action scene. All of the props are CG. Utilizes both CG and choreography.
• Goodfellas (1990) dir. Martin Scorsese – About gangsters, what’s different is that it’s postmodern. Copies that of “The Great Train Robbery”.
• The Great Train Robbery (1903) dir. Edwin S. Porter – Inspired that of Scorses in “Goodfellas”.
• The Killers (1946) dir. Robert Siodmak – Lighting dark, shadows of German expressionism, little dialogue.
• Pulp Fiction (1994) dir. Quentin Tarantino – Opposite to that of “The Killers”. However, lighting is much brighter, the killers have a lot of dialogue. Breathes new light. As if they were being out of character. To empathize dialogue, they placed the camera behind their heads, not showing their faces. Dialogue became known as “Tarantino-esque”
• Reservoir Dogs (1992) dir. Quentin Tarantino – Shows a scene of long lens, character with sunglasses shooting guns. Stationary camera. Similar to that of “City of Fire”. Also has a scene of a “Mexican Standoff”, or a “Death Triangle”. Wide shot, then closeup.
• City on Fire (1987) dir. Ringo Lam – Similar thing as “Reservoir Dogs” Shows a scene of long lens, character with sunglasses shooting guns. Also shows a “Mexican Standoff” . Wise Shot, the closeup.
• Bande à Part (1964) dir. Jean-Luc Godard – Title sequence is fast shots/cuts of the main characters. Inspired Tarantino.
• Natural Born Killers (1994) dir. Oliver Stone – Shot on film, graded green, on a wide film. POV shot. Turns to handheld video. A mashup of styles. A definition of post-modernism. Reality was multiple.
• Miller’s Crossing (1990) dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen – Started a shot with a hat falling into foreground, trees out of focus, and the focus follows it. Shows visual precision.
• The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen – Shows “the little man caught in events”.
• O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen – Imagery is golden. Actor is wide-eyed.
• The Big Lebowski (1998) dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen – Actor is wide-eyed. Shows a musical. Shows surrealism, shows a love for old Hollywood.
• My Own Private Idaho (1991) dir. Gus Van Sant – About a narcoleptic hustler. Shows what the actor feels. Full of empty landscape shots. Has a singular image similar to that of “The Shining”. One standalone special effect.
• The Shining (1980) dir. Stanley Kubrick – Has an iconic image of the blood coming out of the elevator.
• Elephant (2003) dir. Gus Van Sant – A response to Columbine. Little dialogue, violence was unexplained. Constant walking was inspired by Clarke. Walking was similar to that of walking in video games, with the camera directly behind.
• Elephant (1989) dir. Alan Clarke – Used steady cam to simulate the trance-like walking to that of armed men walking.
• Gerry (2002) dir. Gus Van Sant – Shows that similar to video games, you have to get from point A to B, and can’t just cut magically to there. Like in reality. Inspired by Sátántangó’s shot of blowing litter.
• Sátántangó (1994) (introduced in Episode 5) dir. Béla Tarr – Influenced Van Sant. Shows the expressionism of blowing litter.
• Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) dir. Chantal Akerman – Full of fixed shots. Filmed square on, in domestic settings. Inspired Van Sant in “Last Days”.
• Last Days (2005) dir. Gus Van Sant – Similar to that of “Jeanne Dielman”, square shots, filmed in domestic settings. Fixed shots.
• Psycho (1960) (introduced in Episode 8) dir. Alfred Hitchcock – Inspired that of Van Sant with his remake.
• Psycho (1998) dir. Gus Van Sant – Shot for shot remake of Hitchcock’s version. Departed from the original slightly, as in putting shots of clouds in between shots of the stabbing, and having the actress’ pupils dilate. Also showed more nudity. Became devoid of some of the most important things of the original.
• Cremaster 3 (2002) dir. Matthew Barney – Shows an indoor rock climbing scene, Barney rises, but other things fall. Overloaded with symbolism. Inspired by “Safety Last!”. Films in a great height.
• Safety Last! (1923) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor – Inspires “Cremaster 3”, A vertical storyline of incidents.
• RoboCop (1987) dir. Paul Verhoeven – A satire. A reaction to what was in the Reagan era. Steely blue colors. Shows the theory of violence for comedic effect. Shows the satirical talk of “Happy News Writing”.
• Starship Troopers (1997) dir. Paul Verhoeven – Even more satirical. About the threat of humans. Bugs were computer generated. Look was bright/shiny, soundtrack was explosive. Had a controversial decision about including a person with a Nazi uniform. Had to make sure the audience got the metaphor with the ending. Shows that science fiction could be utilized to place a political message, yet show entertainment to the audience.
• An Angel at My Table (1990) dir. Jane Campion – Shows how people don’t feel safe, even in the modern world. Focuses a scene on a piece of chalk.
• The Piano (1993) dir. Jane Campion – Utilized very subjective images and sound to show one growing up. Fingers like curtains.
• Romeo + Juliet (1996) dir. Baz Luhrmann – About the postmodernism of the 90’s. One of the key visions of the 90s. Flashy edits. A remake of a Shakespearean poet. Has a back lit, long lens shot of Romeo. Replaces buildings that were utilized in the time with modern ones. In high comedy style. Swords become guns. Knights have become street kids. Wanted to be different enough to shock the audience, even though they know the original source.
• Moulin Rouge! (2001) dir. Baz Luhrmann – Took the ideas of innovative cinema even further, shots were grey, and computer generated. Has a shot of postmodern space. Even including modern shots. Nobody else was mashing up this many styles into one. Reality lost it’s realism. Visually, pure romantic cinema. Yet, dialogue was a mashup of 90’s songs, as if remixed by a DJ.

1990-1998: The Last Days of Celluloid – Before the Coming of Digital.

• The Apple (1998) dir. Samira Makhmalbaf – Based on a true story, utilizes a handheld camera. What’s remarkable is that the actors play themselves.
• A Moment of Innocence (1996) dir. Mohsen Makhmalbaf – Made in the attacker’s point of view. Directed by two people for different scenes. Police officer utilizes a panning shot. Utilizes doubling back. Utilizes closeups, and haunting music. A work of autobiography.
• Where Is the Friend’s Home? (1987) dir. Abbas Kiarostami – Filmed like a football coach. Kept the camera on the sidelines. A film about childhood and friendship. However, when they were filming it, an earthquake shook, and the child was presumed dead (?). After that, they decided to make a film about that.
• And Life Goes On (1991) dir. Abbas Kiarostami – In a scene, utilized a static camera, and naturalistic dialogue.
• Through the Olive Trees (1994) dir. Abbas Kiarostami – Recreated a scene, about the feelings of an actor’s feelings during the film. Same actors, but the camera is further back. About how cameras could change lives.
• Days of Being Wild (1990) dir. Wong Kar-wai – Shows the melancholia of real life. Shows the beauty of sadness.
• In the Mood for Love (2000) dir. Wong Kar-wai – Sums up the nighttime celluloid vision of Wong’s team. One of the most striking personas in world cinema.
• Irma Vep (1996) dir. Olivier Assayas – Scribbled on the celluloid.
• A City of Sadness (1989) dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien – Utilized film to stare intensely at Taiwanese society. Utilizes long, static shots, they last for 40 seconds each. A long shot holds a certain type of tension. Hou shoots from the same camera angle.
• Tokyo Story (1953) (introduced in Episode 3) dir. Yasujirō Ozu – Frames within frames. No camera moves. Inspired Hou.
• Vive L’Amour (1994) dir. Tsai Ming-liang – About the loneliness of life in modern cities. Camera remains static, opposite of fantasy cinema. Had a crying scene that lasted 7 minutes long.
• Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) dir. Shinya Tsukamoto – Utilizes shaky cam, handheld cam. Captures fear, and disorientation.
• Videodrome (1983) (introduced in Episode 12) dir. David Cronenberg – Inspired the “Cyberpunk” genre.
• Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992) dir. Shinya Tsukamoto – Utilized 43 seconds of single frame biology rapidly changing. Similar to that of “La Roue”
• La Roue (1923) (introduced in Episode 3) dir. Abel Gance – Inspired “Tetsuo II”
• Ringu (1998) dir. Hideo Nakata – Most influential horror movie of it’s time. Imagery is colored navy blue. Industrial noise. An object of fear. Shows how something on the screen could be real. Utilizes distortion for horror effect. Real sound doubling back over it. Distinctly Asian. Main horror lead was a woman.
• The Exorcist (1973) (introduced in Episode 11) dir. William Friedkin – Inspired Hideo with it’s domestic setting. It’s sudden violence.
• Ugetsu Monogatari (1953) dir. Kenji Mizoguchi – Eerily calm, ghost with long black hair.
• Audition (1999) (introduced in Episode 4) dir. Takashi Miike – Also took place in a floating world. Echoes of “Ugetsu”. Utilizes stillness as a counter to violence.
• Breaking the Waves (1996) dir. Lars von Trier – Broke many of the dogma rules. Followed with handheld shots. Actors were free to move anywhere. Was fine with out of vision shots. Shows a static shot of heaven, with bells. Christian ending.
• Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-1999) dir. Tom Fontana – Lots of time cuts, no continuity.
• Dogville (2003) dir. Lars von Trier (introduced in Episode 2) – Almost no background. Extremely innovative. No sets, buildings, or props. Minimalist. Follows the suffering of a woman. Metaphor being that of leashing someone like a dog. Breaks the editing rules.
• La Haine (1995) dir. Mathieu Kassovitz – Shot in contrasty black/white. Characters were blank. Camera was still. Shows several points of view. Utilizes zooming shots, and craning. Utilizes old style filming techniques. Filmed a scene like in deep space. Utilized a shot of mirroring, but instead of an actual mirror, its 2 sets, so the camera doesn’t reflect.
• Do the Right Thing (1989) (introduced in Episode 12) dir. Spike Lee – Precise framing, and light color. The street itself is style.
• Humanité (1999) dir. Bruno Dumont – Shot in color, camera hardly moves, almost no craning. Film itself gives a cold stare. Shows a shot of framing far back. Almost no dialogue is said. Gives questions with just frames.
• Rosetta (1999) dir. Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne – Disenfranchised life in contemporary Europe. Filmed with a handheld camera. Always moving forward. Camera was almost always over the shoulder.
• Touki Bouki (1973) dir. Djibril Diop Mambéty – Shows old and new Africa within the same image. About hope, teenage hopes.
• Beau travail (1999) dir. Claire Denis – A woman photographing men, instead of the other way around. More interested in the choreography than the aggression. Filmed minimally. Without testosterone. Shows a dance sequence in the end. Shows the last days of disco. Shows an activity one would do with other people, alone.
• Late Spring (1949) dir. Yasujirō Ozu – Shows an activity one would do with other people, alone.
• Crows (1994) dir. Dorota Kędzierzawska – Utilized old fashioned, square styled framing.
• Wednesday (1997) dir. Victor Kossakovsky – Shows that just photographing human beings is one of film’s greatest ideas. Photographed naturally, documentary styled.
• 24 Realities a Second (2004) dir. Nina Kusturica and Eva Testor – Shows violence within work.
• Code Unknown (2000) (a.k.a. Code inconnu) (introduced in Episode 5) dir. Michael Haneke – First shot is 11 minutes, without a cut. Shows a scene of unsettling life within modern life. Even the shots don’t touch.
• Funny Games (1997) dir. Michael Haneke – Shows violence in a different way. Has the actors wink at the camera, at the audience. Unsettling. Has a groundbreaking scene. Has a shot where one hits a rewind button, but the scene itself rewinds, not the T.V.
• Persona (1966) (introduced in Episode 7) dir. Ingmar Bergman – As shocking as the rewinding scene, where the film melts.

The 1980s: Moviemaking and Protest – Around the World.

• The Horse Thief (1988) dir. Tian Zhuangzhuang – Spoke truth to power. Utilizes slow motion. Different from western traditions. Utilizes a vulture like metaphor, of vultures eating a body, then bringing the soul into the sky. Utilized widescreen, and cool colors.
• Yellow Earth (1985) dir. Chen Kaige – Greatest village film in the 80s in China. Far away from modernity/cities. A sense of scale. Women in Maoist cinema were supposed to be strutting, and heroic. This film differentiated from that tradition. Imagery was framed like Chinese painting, either heavily showing the sky, or the ground. Utilized emptiness as a component. Ideas associated with Taoism.
• Raise the Red Lantern (1991) dir. Zhang Yimou – Boldly symmetrical, and strikingly orange/red.
• House of Flying Daggers (2004) dir. Zhang Yimou – Utilized digital cinema. Utilizes ultra-widescreen, and slow motion to show grace.
• Repentance (1984) dir. Tengiz Abuladze – Created a sensation. It is a almost comic book manner. Inspired by “Arsenal”. Metaphor of “atrocities can’t be buried”.
• Arsenal (1929) (introduced in Episode 3) dir. Alexander Dovzhenko – Inspired a scene in “Repentance”, with a buried person.
• Come and See (1985) dir. Elem Klimov – Changes the camera so a person can look big to small, utilizing wide angle lens. Utilizes a ringing sensation to simulate tinnitus. Utilizes a scene in a bog, showing fear, and they’re screams were muted. Extremely physical.
• Long Goodbyes (1971) dir. Kira Muratova – Censored in the Soviet Union. Utilizes a jump cut to a train. Utilizes a shot where two actors talk to each other, but they don’t even face each other. They are in the same frame. Utilizes a jump cut on hands, also utilizes splinter cuts. Scene changes to an aerial shot. Later, a scene is filmed in a lens so long, it seemed paper thin. About psychological bondage. It’s camera angles were similar to that of surveillance, which was one presumed reason why the Soviet Union censored it.
• A Short Film About Killing (1988) dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski – Heavily utilizes yellow/green imagery. Shows how one person could cause damage in a regular life. About the dirt/sickness of fear. Utilizes a chocking scene. A single death lasts 3 minutes. Also shows the ugly fury in death, where the protagonist dies quickly, It changed the death penalty of Poland.
• Psycho (1960) (introduced in Episode 8) dir. Alfred Hitchcock – Similar shot to that of “A Short Film About Killing”. About fear/entertainment.
• Wend Kuuni (1983) dir. Gaston Kaboré – A landmark in African cinema. Camera is shot from a distance. Shows a flashback within a flashback.
• Yeelen (1987) dir. Souleymane Cissé – Means Brightness. Utilizes a tracking shot around an actor. Also utilizes a zooming shot to a character’s eyes. In a wild setting, yet utilizes a synth/futuristic soundtrack. Heavily utilizes depth of field. Shows characters transitioning similar to that of animals. A magic realist film.
• Video Killed the Radio Star (1979) (music video) dir. Russell Mulcahy – Broadcasted their first music video. Song was about video, utilized fast editing, pink lights, etc.
• Flashdance (1983) dir. Adrian Lyne – Heavily influenced by music videos, pure impressionism.
• Top Gun (1986) dir. Tony Scott – Rich color, a roller coaster in the sky. Utilizes shots of the pilot in the cockpit similar to that of Star Wars. Many shots are around 2 seconds.
• Blue Velvet (1986) (introduced in Episode 3) dir. David Lynch – Camera pans as if it were floating. White picket fence, children walking to school in slow motion, velvety textures. The eye of the duck scene was also important.
• The Elephant Man (1980) dir. David Lynch – Completely different to that of “Blue Velvet”. Shows the surrealism. The eye of the duck was always important.
• Do the Right Thing (1989) dir. Spike Lee – Built like a pressure cooker. Used heightened colors to use it’s balling (boring?) (boiling?) themes. Utilized tilted camera angles. Borrowed from “The Third Man”. Utilizes saturated color. Places a quote in the end.
• The Third Man (1949) dir. Carol Reed (introduced in Episode 5) – The non-horizontal camera shows the world of the story.
• Return of the Secaucus 7 (1980) dir. John Sayles – Felt truthful because the camera just observed, no fast cuts.
• Subway (1985) dir. Luc Besson – Filmed like a car chase on roller skates. Wide angle shots.
• Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991) dir. Leos Carax – Shows the outrage of modern life. Shows a modern dance, yet turns into a drunken scene. Glossy and wasteful, in a glossy and wasteful age.
• An American in Paris (1951) dir. Vincente Minnelli (introduced in Episode 5) – Color, splashed across the scene. Shows romantic ecstasy and agony.
• Labyrinth of Passion (1982) dir. Pedro Almodóvar – Utilizes the color purple to represent the 80s. Shows a porn shoot, with bright color. Challenged old fashion Spain with sex/style.
• A Hard Day’s Night (1964) (introduced in Episode 8) dir. Richard Lester – Shows the stylistic antics, and camerawork that makes you feel you’re there.
• The Quince Tree Sun (1992) dir. Víctor Erice – Shows a man painting, no camera moves, and uses natural light, to show the passage of time. A National Detox.
• My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) dir. Stephen Frears – In London, a high level shot like a musical, yet placed in a Launderette. Yet, cuts to a sex scene, with the dancing within the background.
• My Childhood (1972) dir. Bill Douglas – Bold. Shows poverty. An actor is always behind another character. Utilizes a low shot to show power. Spaces filmed tight. A simple scene.
• Gregory’s Girl (1981) dir. Bill Forsyth – Looked at young people in the ordinary places where they fall in love. For most of the film, it’s horizontal, yet it changes to become tilted.
• Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) dir. Terence Davies – Shows a family home terrorized by a brutal father. Shows a flashback/back in time cut without cutting the image. Utilizes audio to represent this. Utilizes a tracking shot through the hallway. Also uses a slow dissolve in the end. Always framed symmetrically. About stillness. Inspired by “Intolerance”. Shows pain within cinema. Makes a shot that transcends the pain. Speaks truth to power.
• Intolerance (1916) dir. D. W. Griffith (introduced in Episode 1) – Inspired “Distant Voices, Still Lives”, with it’s tracking shot.
• Young at Heart (1954) dir. Gordon Douglas – Also inspired Davies. Camera glides to a perfect world.
• A Zed & Two Noughts (1986) dir. Peter Greenaway – Frames perfectly symmetrical, taking it further, with twins on each side. Everything is symmetrical, except the woman in the center, she only has one leg.
• The Last of England (1988) dir. Derek Jarman – Shows a bleak landscape. Fast cutting 80’s style cuts. As if it were an ideological storm. Shows rage and values. Utilizes magic, dance, and fantasy.
• Videodrome (1983) dir. David Cronenberg – Utilizes lighting in one shot. Shows the idea of a machine being central. Shows how obsessed we are with screens.
• Crash (1996) dir. David Cronenberg – About the difference between materials, hard and soft.
• Neighbours (1952) dir. Norman McLaren – Stop framing animation. Utilized an innovative electronic score, and a white picket fence.
• Jesus of Montreal (1989) dir. Denys Arcand – Shows the brutalization of Christ. Made the audience feel uncomfortable. Speaks truth to power, yet the audience is the power.

1970s and Onwards: Innovation in Popular Culture – Around the World.

• The Kingdom and the Beauty (1959) dir. Li Han-hsiang – Feminine, perfectly set, colorful.
• A Touch of Zen (1971) dir. King Hu – Wider screen, more aggressive, faster paced. Every move designed. Graceful, exquisitely engineered cinema. No ordinary kung-fu movie, starts an action movie, then turns into a ghost story. Sunlight cuts like a sword, it sounds like steel. Action cinema at its most innovative. Still stylized and beautiful.
• Enter the Dragon (1973) dir. Robert Clouse – More masculine film, shows real anger, and hyper realism. Although Bruce Lee was fast/furious, the camera wasn’t. There wasn’t much editing, and it captured all the action calmly. A story about male bonding.
• A Better Tomorrow (1986) dir. John Woo – 80’s clothes, sex, hedonism. A story about male bonding. What was new was the style of the movie. Shootouts filmed with slow motion, and several angles. Even tracking shots.
• Iron Monkey (1993) dir. Yuen Woo-ping – Cutting is fast, and numerous, fights were very vertical, fights were in the air.
• The Matrix (1999) dir. Lilly Wachowski & Lana Wachowski – Inspired heavily by Yuen Woo-ping, with it’s very vertical fights, slow motion, etc. Heavily gravity-defying. Wires were used to help to film action scenes.
• Once Upon a Time in China (1991) dir. Tsui Hark – “The Steven Spielberg” of Hong Kong. Utilized a scene of a man falling off a roof for a different angle, and as a comedic effect. A simple shot was filmed/cut heavily.
• New Dragon Gate Inn (1992) dir. Raymond Lee – Fight was like there was a whirlwind in the room.
• Mughal-e-Azam (1960) dir. K. Asif – A sparkling scene, with mirrored sets. Wanted to be filmed in color, yet it wasn’t. Colorized version was heavily pink.
• Devi (1960) (introduced in Episode 6) dir. Satyajit Ray – Showed an actress using tiny head movements, and closeups, for comparison for the next scene.
• Mausam (1975) dir. Gulzar – Actress turned into the “Queen of Bollywood”. Modern look influenced a generation of Indian women. Showed a future version of characters. Songs were used for the narrative.
• Zanjeer (1973) dir. Prakash Mehra – Heavily utilizes closeups, dramatic fragments, and fear. The music crashes like waves.
• Sholay (1975) dir. Ramesh Sippy – Widescreen titles, and landscape was like a western. One of the most influential films in the history of film. Tried to capture the spirit of the 70’s. Utilizes freeze frames and slow motion. Heavily shifts in tone. One minute can go from a lightly musical, then suddenly turn into a heavily action/violent scene.
• The Message: The Story of Islam (1976) (a.k.a. Mohammad, Messenger of God) dir. Moustapha Akkad – Utilizes a lot of actors, took 4 months to build the sets. Looks like a biblical epic, utilizes a shot where an actor is talking to the actor, one would expect a shot showing who he is talking to, yet the camera just zooms in on the actor. Made 2 versions, an Arabic, and an English version.
• The Making of an Epic: Mohammad, Messenger of God (1976) dir. Geoffrey Helman & Christopher Penfold – Shows Akkad being calm/collective, and gives info about his personal life.
• The Sparrow (1972) dir. Youssef Chahine – Shows a terrible moment in Arab territory. Films the actors watching bad news. Used to capture the emotion, and the shock. Shows disparity, especially in the end.
• The Exorcist (1973) dir. William Friedkin – Shows middle class, and a believable setting. Wanted a realistic horror film. Showed a heavy, raspy voice, the actress messed up her own voice to make it sound raspier. “I have my finger on the pulse of America”.
• A Guy Named Joe (1943) dir. Victor Fleming – Spielberg more influenced by this film than European movies. Soft black/white, and shows unashamed emotions.
• Jaws (1975) dir. Steven Spielberg – Took 265 million dollars at the box office. Captures the swell of the sea. Shows visual unity.
• The Making of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1995) dir. Laurent Bouzereau – Utilizes a shot of people walking past the camera to cut between shots. Shows the point of views of people. Uses a shot of changing the field of view, and zoom, similar to that of Vertigo.
• Vertigo (1958) (introduced in Episode 4) dir. Alfred Hitchcock – Utilizes a shot of changing the field of view, and the zoom at the same time.
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) dir. Steven Spielberg – Shows the “awe” scene. Wide shot, and the camera dolleys, showing the reaction, building up, tracking and rising, and then finally showing what the actors were looking at.
• Jurassic Park (1993) dir. Steven Spielberg – Also shows the “awe” scene. Utilizes a shot of removing glasses to have a better look. Music is also important within these scenes.
• Star Wars (1977) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. George Lucas – Almost doubled Jaw’s box office takings. Starts like a fairy tail. Shows perspective. Shows the realm of myth. Shows how similar to that it is of a classic fairy tail. Draws richly from film history. Shows how to feel, and not to think.
• The Hidden Fortress (1958) dir. Akira Kurosawa – Shows an iconic duo, similar to that of Star Wars. Also similar to that of it’s soft edge screen wipes. Spears became lightsabers.
• Triumph of the Will (1935) (a.k.a. Triumph des Willens) (introduced in Episode 4) dir. Leni Riefenstahl – Inspired Star Wars by similar looking filming of evil characters.

Episode 10 – Movies to Change the World

1967-1979: New American Cinema.

Old Style, New Techniques.

• Duck Soup (1933) dir. Leo McCarey – Satirizes American culture.
• Artists and Models (1955) dir. Frank Tashlin – Tashlin found consumerism dumb, so he made his films look like a cartoon. Color, style, and happiness show that society is fake.
• Catch-22 (1970) dir. Mike Nichols – The film title is said within the movie. Shows how attention of the audience is shown. Shows how a single actor can change how a movie is made.
• Mash (1970) dir. Robert Altman – Fills the screens with actors, and records all dialogue at the same time, and mixes a complicated soundtrack of even more dialogue. Can make a tragic scene look light-hearted. Also utilized zooms, and long lenses.
• The Graduate (1967) dir. Mike Nichols – Shows/inspires other movies about satire. Based on the novel of the same name. Utilizes lights turning off/on as a set of pacing.
• The Fireman’s Ball (1967) (introduced in Episode 8) dir. Miloš Forman – Documentary-like.
• One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) dir. Miloš Forman – Forman had to change his style very little.
• The Last Movie (1971) dir. Dennis Hopper – Follow-up to “Easy Rider”. Filmed a documentary of a movie being filmed as a story. A story within a story. Shows anarchy within film. A hate letter to American film.
• McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) dir. Robert Altman – Anti-western. The camera roams, colors muted, lens is long, etc.  There are no heroes, just characters lost in the snow. Shows uncertainty.
• The Conversation (1974) dir. Francis Ford Coppola – About the new type of sound equipment. Utilizes audio, as some form of way of seeing the outside world. This can be shown with the way the camera moves.
• Mean Streets (1973) dir. Martin Scorsese – Utilizes tracking shots. Uses a metaphor of being a saint in a modern world.
• Taxi Driver (1976) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Martin Scorsese – Filmed a car in the fog in slow motion, like an iron coffin. Showed an ugly side of the world. About existentialism. Literally decides to not show a scene because it too embarrassing, so they move the camera to another position, yet keep the audio.
• Chikamatsu Monogatari (1954) (introduced in Episode 3) dir. Kenji Mizoguchi – Does not show the actors’ emotions directly.
• Raging Bull (1980) (introduced in Episode 5) dir. Martin Scorsese – Utilizes flat lighting, and staging. Shot like a documentary. Later, utilizes slow motion shots, then fast cutting. Shows reflection, in both a literal and metaphorical sense.
• Italianamerican (1974) dir. Martin Scorsese – Similar to that of a documentary.
• American Gigolo (1980) (introduced in Episode 7) dir. Paul Schrader – Shows a fascination of religious grace. Utilizes 80’s red lighting. Borrowed the ending of “Pickpocket”. Where a woman brings the protagonist back in the real world.
• Light Sleeper (1992) dir. Paul Schrader – Utilizes nighttime blues as it’s color palette. Schrader shows visual emptiness for the protagonists. Borrowed the ending of “Pickpocket”. Where a woman brings the protagonist back in the real world. Shot with the exact same camera angles.
• Pickpocket (1959) (introduced in Episode 7) dir. Robert Bresson – Scene later utilized in “Light Sleeper”
• The Walker (2007) dir. Paul Schrader – Very yellow color palette.
• The Birth of a Nation (1915) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. D. W. Griffith – One founding films, yet shows old ideas, such as blacks being portrayed as drunks.
• Killer of Sheep (1978) dir. Charles Burnett – Told from a kid’s point of view. Filmed in black/white. Utilizes black music. A lot of poetic moments.
• The Shop Around the Corner (1940) dir. Ernst Lubitsch – Shows a Jewish character. A character who’s logic/humor provide the film’s beauty.
• Annie Hall (1977) dir. Woody Allen – Similar to that of the character in “The Shop Around the Corner”, center of the frame, directed at the camera, even talking to the camera. The cooking scene is a single shot, there is no cut. Makes a woman believe in herself. Utilizes a montage scene.
• City Lights (1931) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Charlie Chaplin – Makes woman see.
• Manhattan (1979) dir. Woody Allen – A city symphony. Utilizes widescreen images. As again, Allen’s Jewish character is at the center of the story.
• The Last Picture Show (1971) dir. Peter Bogdanovich – Mixed old and new. An old style of filming with black/white, yet in a modern setting. Also utilizes a 16 second dissolve as a cut. Also utilizes a camera pan shot of a ghost town.
• The Wild Bunch (1969) dir. Sam Peckinpah – Utilizes a lot of cuts, stretched Leone’s neo-realist idea to slow down a scene, which showed it’s agony, and beauty. Also utilizes widescreen.
• Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) dir. Sam Peckinpah – Shows the wild west in a different light, shows the west in a beautiful way. Shows a character shooting their reflection in the mirror, as if they want to rid themselves.
• Badlands (1973) dir. Terrence Malick – Tested the myth of the outsider. Scenes shot like Vietnam-trap scenes, a sort of montage.
• Days of Heaven (1978) dir. Terrence Malick – Camera flows a lot. Shot with a camera attached to a man with a brace. One of the first times this method was used. Showed a cut between a man, and landscapes. Shot in a certain time of day, so there was always panic to capture it. Filmed a locust with peanuts falling in reverse. Plays heavily with lighting. Especially with the ending, of a burning field, and the only light of that shown is the fire, everything else as a silhouette.
• Mirror (1975) (introduced in Episode 8) dir. Andrei Tarkovsky – Film is similar to that of Malick. Heavily utilizes nature as a set piece.
• Cabaret (1972) dir. Bob Fosse – Mixed old techniques with new style. It was a musical, yet it was shot in closeup. Tilting up camera. Similar to that of Nazi Germany. Shows political messages within the film.
• The Godfather (1972) (introduced in Episode 6) dir. Francis Ford Coppola – Even more amoral. A re-visitation of the Gangster genre. Utilized North lighting. Low lighting levels limited actors to little movement. Showed a network of relationships.
• Chinatown (1974) dir. Roman Polanski – Almost film-noir. Based on a true story. Shot widescreen, had muted 30’s color. Filmed a shot with a side view mirror. Shows a sense of panic through a car horn. Also an example of a film story changing mid-production.
• The Maltese Falcon (1941) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. John Huston
• Jules et Jim (1962) dir. François Truffaut – Impressionistic lightness. Filmed in black/white.

1965-1969: New Waves – Sweep Around the World.

• Ashes and Diamonds (1958) dir. Andrzej Wajda – Made in Poland. Shows rebelling with a cause. Partly set in sewers. Expressionist. Full of symbols. Disguises meaning by encoding it in symbols.
• Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958) (introduced in Episode 4) dir. Roman Polanski – Cuts fast, to jazzy drummy bass.
• Hamlet (1948) dir. Laurence Olivier – Polanski loved this film. Loved the way the camera tracked through the mysterious spaces in the castle.
• Knife in the Water (1962) dir. Roman Polanski – One of the most claustrophobic films. Shows symbolism with a love triangle by having an arm form a triangle. Didn’t deal with war. “Art for art’s sake”.
• The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) dir. Roman Polanski – Set in a winter wonderland, shot in a studio. Widescreen.
• The Hand (1965) dir. Jiří Trnka – Czechoslovakian cinema in these times specialized in animation, and puppetry. Uses live action for the hand, and stop motion for the man. About a haunted life.
• The Fireman’s Ball (1967) dir. Miloš Forman – Forman saw life as comic, which could be seen in his films. Filmed without gloss, like a documentary.
• Daisies (1966) dir. Věra Chytilová – Shows women as dolls by making them squeak whenever they move, as if they are puppets. Shows sequences of a camera on a train. Timed cuts of the ticking of a clock.
• The Red and the White (1968) dir. Miklós Jancsó – Showed a man getting captured in one continuous 3 minute shot without cuts. Doesn’t get close, shows the whole scene. At the end of the film, it shows the closeup of a soldier looking at the camera. Showing humanity. Utilized long takes to show suffering.
• Une journée d’Andrei Arsenevitch (2000) dir. Chris Marker – Filmed with a tracking camera.
• Andrei Rublev (1966) dir. Andrei Tarkovsky – Crispy black/white photography. Utilized a wide angle lens on a balloon to make the image “plunge”. It was banned for 6 years for being religious.
• The Mirror (1975) dir. Andrei Tarkovsky – About the human spirit soaring. Shows religious ideas within death, such as a bird flying from a man’s hand.
• Stalker (1979) dir. Andrei Tarkovsky – Ending shows muted colors, slow panning back shot, then suddenly, a ghostly event. Combines the physical and the metaphysical.
• Nostalghia (1983) dir. Andrei Tarkovsky – Ending shows the camera pulling out, slightly showing the world of the story is contained within a cathedral. Shows a sense of scale.
• Shadows of our Forgotten Ancestors (1965) dir. Sergei Parajanov – Showed Parajanov enjoyed the poetic cinema Alexander Dovzhenko. Utilized a shot of a falling tree. Parajanov’s camera is seldom at eye level. Heavily utilized foreground. It was everything the Soviet Realists hated.
• Andrei Tarkovsky & Sergei Parajanov – Islands (1988) dir. Levon Grigoryan – Parajanov is seen conducting a set as if he were conducting an Orchestra.
• Boy (1969) dir. Nagisa Oshima – Utilized the full widescreen. Shows the cynicism of modern japan, which was it’s greed.
• In the Realm of the Senses (1976) dir. Nagisa Oshima
• Love and Crime (1969) dir. Teruo Ishii
• The Insect Woman (1963) dir. Shōhei Imamura – Films an insect as a metaphor of struggling over rough terrain. Utilized widescreen space exquisitely. Similar to that of the typewriter scene of Citizen Kane.
• Citizen Kane (1941) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Orson Welles – Inspired Shohei by framing a key character in the distance, yet still focusing on a closeup character.
• Nippon Sengoshi – Madamu Onboro No Seikatsu (1970) dir. Shōhei Imamura – Shows how frank Madamu Onboro was. Showed sex and class.
• Ajantrik (1958) dir. Ritwik Ghatak – Ghatak’s films showed heightened emotions. Shows the realization of how resources get used further on/recycled (?).
• The Cloud-Capped Star (1960) dir. Ritwik Ghatak – About India’s original sin. Filmed at dawn.
• Jukti Takko Aar Gappo (1975) dir. Ritwik Ghatak – Distorts sound as if it were a sci-fi movie.
• Uski Roti (1970) dir. Mani Kaul – An experimental film. Action is paced as if 1,2,3. 1,2,3,4. 1,2,3,4.
• Black God, White Devil (1964) dir. Glauber Rocha – Most innovative movie in Brazil at the time. Filmed in the intense heat of the North-East of Brazil. Scenes are edited like an Eisentein movie. A shooter is shown in front of a cross, as if it were a symbol of vengeance. “Violence is normal if people are starving”.
• I Am Cuba (1964) dir. Mikhail Kalatozov – Camera seems to levitate, utilizing slow motion, wide angle, crane shot, etc. Not cut used a scene. Believes the beauty of a shot will make the idea of a revolution beautiful itself.
• The House Is Black (1963) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Forugh Farrokhzad – Shot in black/white. Attempts to move beyond simple description. The people are thankful for their lives. Utilizes a scene cut with people. Squeaks of a wheel compel the scene the speed up.
• Black Girl (1966) dir. Ousmane Sembène – Shows the difference of luxury between societies. Work slowly turns into slavery. Some scenes filmed like a John Ford western. A mask of hope/gift turns into a symbolism of death.
• Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) dir. Karel Reisz – Shot in black/white on real streets, no exterior lights. Stylized with haircuts, ideas, T.V., etc.
• Kes (1969) dir. Ken Loach – Shows how Loach turned his sense of collective experience into an honest, and direct film style. Utilized a certain range of lenses. Edits to where an eye would naturally go.
• A Hard Day’s Night (1964) dir. Richard Lester – Starts conventionally, then speeds up. Shows how joyous the youth rebellion was. Filmed up high for some scenes.
• Primary (1960) dir. Robert Drew – A new type of documentary. Didn’t stage scenes. Didn’t use interviews, or hidden camera techniques. Utilized the “fly on the wall” technique. Always follows the character.
• Shadows (1959) dir. John Cassavetes – Followed 3 fictional African American siblings, as Drew followed Kennedy. Also inspired by Neo-realism. Known as “new American cinema”. Made Hollywood cinema look stale.
• Psycho (1960) dir. Alfred Hitchcock – Realized Hollywood looked stale. So Hitchcock decided to film it Psycho in black/white. Heavily utilizes cut, used 70 different camera angles for 45 seconds of film, for that one iconic scene.
• 66 Scenes from America (1982) dir. Jørgen Leth – Shows blankness, and no emotion, just a man eating a burger. Very Warhol-esque.
• Blow Job (1963) dir. Andy Warhol –
• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) dir. Mike Nichols – Utilized black/white, harsh lighting, etc.
• Medium Cool (1969) dir. Haskell Wexler – Pushed the relationship of documentary T.V. and American fictional cinema as far as it could go. No edit is more than 4 frames in the ending, even shots of just black. Utilized a zooming shot. Ends up shooting the shot as if it were filming the audience, asking the audience a question itself.
• Easy Rider (1969) dir. Dennis Hopper – Biker flick. Defined it’s era. Open road, long lenses, rock music, etc. Moved from one scene to the other by moving it back and forth.
• Making “The Shining” (1980) dir. Vivian Kubrick – Camera positioning was super important.
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Stanley Kubrick – Editing in film usually cuts out time, yet one edit in this cuts out more time than any other cut in history. Gave a sense of space of there being no up/down in it’s own space sequences. The scenes of abstract were inspired by that of Der Sieger.
• Der Sieger (1921) dir. Walter Ruttmann – Ended up inspiring Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

1957-1964: The Shock of the New – Modern Filmmaking in Western Europe.

• Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Louis Lumière -It’s been 60 years since this was made.
• Summer with Monika (1953) dir. Ingmar Bergman – Bergman’s films were more like theatre, than cinema. Films in these new times were more personal. One of the moist sensuous films of its time.
• The Seventh Seal (1957) dir. Ingmar Bergman – Bergman’s best known 50s film, and shows the evolution of his thinking. Set in the middle ages.
• Winter Light (1963) dir. Ingmar Bergman – Utilized religion within film.
• Persona (1966) dir. Ingmar Bergman – Not only used film as a confessional, but used it as a self aware medium. Just as artists made paintings.
• Pickpocket (1959) dir. Robert Bresson – Film about imprisonment. Utilizes a 50mm lens. Clothes are what ordinary people wear, the man has no expression, etc. Tries to show the invisible.
• Au hasard Balthazar (1966) dir. Robert Bresson – About a donkey. Shows cruelty, and utilizes simple framing. Similar to “Pickpocket”, showing no emotion, giving no style.
• Taxi Driver (1976) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Martin Scorsese – Uses interior monologue.
• Ratcatcher (1999) dir. Lynne Ramsay – Hauntingly attached to objects.
• Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Jacques Tati – A response to Charlie Chaplin. Hulot always bent forwards, while Chaplin bent backwards.
• Mon Oncle (1956) dir. Jacques Tati – Shows thoughts of modern life. Films the old world in warm sunlight, films the modern house in flat light. Never used closeups, always wanted to show the full picture.
• Fellini’s Casanova (1976) dir. Federico Fellini – Film was like a circus.
• Nights of Cabiria (1957) dir. Federico Fellini – Shows how modern Fellini was. Style changed throughout the movie.
• 8½ (1963) dir. Federico Fellini – Made an actress felt like she was flying.
• Stardust Memories (1980) dir. Woody Allen – Main characters seems to step out of his own life. Shows POV of actor in a scene.
• Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) dir. Agnès Varda – Captures the flow of thought, and it’s unpredictability.
• Last Year at Marienbad (1961) dir. Alain Resnais – Questions what is real within the film, shows how people misremember. Makes us question the building blocks of storytelling.
• The 400 Blows (1959) dir. François Truffaut – Shows the feeling of being alive.
• À bout de souffle (1959) dir. Jean-Luc Godard – Full of closeups. Uses short rolls of film. Heavily utilizes cuts, uses them not to show something else, but the same scene.
• Life of an American Fireman (1903) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Edwin S. Porter – A cut almost always took place to show something else.
• Arsenal (1929) (introduced in Episode 3) dir. Alexander Dovzhenko – Shows a man’s mental agitation through cuts.
• Une femme mariée (1964) dir. Jean-Luc Godard – Sex scene uses same framing, body parts, blank camera, blank background. Breaks up the scene by body parts.
• American Gigolo (1980) dir. Paul Schrader – Sex scene similar to that of “Une femme mariée”
• Accattone (1961) dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini -“A lighting rod in Italian cinema”. Captures Pasolini’s life experiences. Utilizes religious music to make everyday struggles spiritual.
• The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini – Boldly challenged how the Virgin Mary is pictured in art.
• The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer – Inspired Pasolini in how he portrayed the Virgin Mary.
• A Fistful of Dollars (1964) dir. Sergio Leone – Opted for the Western, when Italians were doing comedies at the time. Utilized an American genre. What was innovative was the visual style. Utilized deep staging to show both the foreground and background. Was the first director to utilize “Techno scope”.
• Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Sergio Leone – Channels the Italian neo-realism idea. Utilizes a crane shot to show a Western town. Also shows a first person POV, to show an actor walking through the streets. Utilizes music to make a scene more grand than it is, alongside with tracking shots.
• Johnny Guitar (1954) (introduced in Episode 6) dir. Nicholas Ray – A classic western. Inspired Leone with this idea of “waiting for the future”.
• Senso (1954) dir. Luchino Visconti – Shows the scale and emotion of Opera. Color, lighting show aristocracy, yet the common folk look down upon the aristocrats.
• Rocco and His Brothers (1960) dir. Luchino Visconti – Shows Visconti’s sympathy for the common folk. Shows the hard social details of such lives. Filmed some scenes in a working tram.
• L’eclisse (1962) dir. Michelangelo Antonioni – Framed more abstractly. Usually frames people abstractly, as in barely in frame, just out of edge, or blocked by something.
• The Passenger (1975) dir. Michelangelo Antonioni – Camera seems to “go for a walk”, and the film turns into this “walk”. Antonioni’s films spiral outwards, first time in film where films spiral out to space.
• The Travelling Players (1975) dir. Theodoros Angelopoulos – Camera slowly withdraws, shows both the street and people. In conventional cinema, it would zoom in, yet Angelpolous decides to not do this.
• The Wheelchair (1960) dir. Marco Ferreri – A comedy. Man gets a wheelchair, even though his legs work fine because he think’s it’ll be cool. It has a non-conformist tone. Mocked the living conditions of old men. Combines realism and irony.
• What Have I Done to Deserve This? (1984) dir. Pedro Almodóvar – Features the same kind of dysfunctional family as that of “The Wheelchair”.
• Viridiana (1961) dir. Luis Buñuel – Was Bunuel’s most banned film.
• I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967) dir. Vilgot Sjöman – Shows confrontation in life head on. Scene is shut as if actor was talking to Martin Luther King Jr.
• La Maman et la Putain (1973) dir. Jean Eustache – Shot in a cafe. Shows despair straight into the camera. Even the actor tries to cover his eyes, as if to cover emotions (?).

1953-1957: The Swollen Story: World Cinema Bursting at the Seams

• Rebel Without a Cause (1955) dir. Nicholas Ray – The 1950s, as the norm, showed widescreen, and color. Shows rage within film, and passion. Shows rebellion.
• Cairo Station (1958) dir. Youssef Chahine – Changed Film History. “First great African/Arab film”. Captured the tension of it’s times. It was melodramatic, sexual, and about social justice.
• Paper Flowers (1959) dir. Guru Dutt -One of the great Indian films. Utilizes a tracking camera. The lighting is the “opposite” of Hollywood (no hair light).
• Raja Harishchandra (1913) dir. Dadasaheb Phalke – A “mythological” movie. A silent movie.
• – Not relating to a specific movie: Sound was utilized in the 30s, and movies in that era utilized music heavily, planting the seeds of “Bollywood”.
• Sant Tukaram (1936) dir. Vishnupant Govind Damle and Sheikh Fattelal – Utilized sound.
• Pather Panchali (1955) dir. Satyajit Ray – Unprofessional actors, and most of them have never shot a film before. Yet, the imagery they made here changed film history. Cinematography had texture. The opposite of glossy cinema. Key scenes were shot in a studio. Made India central to the story of film.
• Devi (1960) dir. Satyajit Ray – Filmed as if by candlelight. All about the face.
• Mother India (1957) dir. Mehboob Khan – Bursting at the seams of emotion. Filmed in very earthy colors for different areas. Combined romance and struggle. Also has Soviet propaganda. A landmark in world cinema.
• Two Stage Sisters (1964) dir. Xie Jin – Xie Jin’s greatest film. A brilliant melodrama. Utilizes crane shots. “From a god’s eye view, to a peasant’s.” Accused of “Cinematic Confucianism”
• Ikiru (1952) dir. Akira Kurosawa – Looked at people with long lenses, shows one to be passive. Shows life in Japan. Most of Kurosawa’s movies are about ones of the individual.
• Stray Dog (1949) dir. Akira Kurosawa – Shows how much one tries individually.
• Seven Samurai (1954) (introduced in Episode 4) dir. Akira Kurosawa – Kurosawa’s epic film. A film set in the past, yet it echoes in the 50s. Heavily utilizes mud and rain.
• Throne of Blood (1957) dir. Akira Kurosawa – A Shakespearean adaption. Shows a person advancing as if it were a nightmare.
• The Godfather (1972) dir. Francis Ford Coppola – Influenced by a scene of Throne of Blood, where a character is shot like a million times or something like that.
• The Magnificent Seven (1960) dir. John Sturges – A remake of “Seven Samurai” by Kurosawa. Included widescreen, color, bright sunlight. The symbolism is still there.
• Limite (1931) (introduced in Episode 4) dir. Mário Peixoto – Super shaky camera, symbolizing a woman’s liberty.
• Rio 40 Graus (a.k.a. Rio 100 Degrees F.) (1955) dir. Nelson Pereira dos Santos – Brought Brazilian cinema back to the spotlight, starts with a cinematic, high up shot, then goes down to the ground. Utilizes tracking shots. Influenced by neorealism. Filmed in slums, but utilized advanced filming techniques. Utilizes a shot of telling multiple stories without a cut.
• The Life of General Villa (1914) dir. Christy Cabanne – Shots of a Mexican war.
• Doña Bárbara (1943) dir. Fernando de Fuentes and Miguel M. Delgado – Virtually invented Mexican national cinema. Shows feminine suffering, and display. Brilliantly controls melodrama. Men are photographed against the sky.
• The Wild Bunch (1969) dir. Sam Peckinpah – Introduced Emilio Fernández, who is iconic to the Mexican film industry. Who was an actor and director. He was macho and cocky.
• La perla (1947) dir. Emilio Fernández – Great at muscular storytelling. Shows gleaming light, and dark human themes. A landscape Mexican noir.
• Los Olvidados (1950) dir. Luis Buñuel – Bunuel walked around Mexican slums for a month to understand the Mexican slums, and filmed gangs, disabled people, etc. Also had a kinda scary sequence to it.
• All That Heaven Allows (1955) dir. Douglas Sirk – Reflects upon Eisenhower’s idealism. White picket fences, beautiful autumn days, clean cars, crane camera shots, etc. However, this film shows a different side to that of affairs, and being shunned from this society. They show consumerism, such as buying the protagonist a T.V., and showing it’s usefulness. Used the gloss of Hollywood to attack gloss. Shows social pressure.
• I’m a Stranger Here Myself (1975) dir. David Helpern – Brought the sexuality of 50s America to that of the most traditional genre, the Western.
• Johnny Guitar (1954) dir. Nicholas Ray – Utilizes color of costumes to represent characters. Shows political anger. Johnny Guitar showed that the lid could not be kept on the pressure cooker of sex in movies.
• Fireworks (1947) dir. Kenneth Anger – If Johnny Guitar showed that the lid could not be kept on the pressure cooker of sex in movie, Fireworks, the lid blew off. It was shot silent.
• Scorpio Rising (1964) dir. Kenneth Anger – Combined masculine costumes with bodily closeups, low level lighting, and fetishism.
• Marty (television show) (1953) dir. Delbert Mann – Shows low confidence. Camera is close up. Shows character, instead of gloss.
• Marty (1955) dir. Delbert Mann
• On the Waterfront (1954) dir. Elia Kazan – Shows fury within dialogue. Also shows suppressed emotions. Actors no longer displayed their characters, but now tried to hide them.
• Red River (1948) dir. Howard Hawks and Arthur Rosson – Old and new cinema is fought out.
• Touch of Evil (1958) dir. Orson Welles – Filmed in Venice, CA. Filmed with wide angles to make the imagery bulge. About a lonely man obsessed with a woman.
• The Searchers (1956) dir. John Ford – Also about a lonely man obsessed with a woman. Shows rage, and racism, in 50’s America, the biggest drama of them all.
• Vertigo (1958) (introduced in Episode 4) dir. Alfred Hitchcock – Filmed in first person point of view.
• Rio Bravo (1959) (introduced in Episode 5) dir. Howard Hawks – Filmed in warm colors. Shows men smoking, drinking coffee, and strumming. This is the closest mature American cinema that could show of a normal American family.
• Great Expectations (1946) dir. David Lean – Taught stories of his nation, England, on a human scale. Film is gothic, and erotic.
• Lawrence of Arabia (1962) dir. David Lean – Features landscape. Symbolism within a match, and the Sun. It hints that Lawrence’s attraction to Arabia was sexual, which makes it very 50s.
• O Dreamland (1953) dir. Lindsay Anderson – Shows working class people, believing in life, and optimism. Yet, the director believed human beings are all selfish. Full of pity, and admiration, even disappointment, and contempt.
• Battleship Potemkin (1925) (introduced in Episode 3) dir. Sergei Eisenstein – Working classes depicted as noble types.
• …And God Created Woman (1956) dir. Roger Vadim – Brigitte Bardot brought more money to the French economy than the motor car manufacturer Renault. Showed that sex was coming out in the open.