The Story of Film Episode 6 – Sex & Melodrama

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.