Story of Film – Episode 4 The Arrival of Sound

The 1930s: The Great American Movie Genres…

• Her Dilemma (a.k.a. Confessions of a Co-Ed) (1931) dir. Dudley Murphy
  • Sound is the focus of this film and prioritized over the shots
  • Has awkward cinematic shots
• Love Me Tonight (1932) dir. Rouben Mamoulian
  • Very musically inventive
  • Depicts waking paris as an emerging symphony using sounds
  • Was all singing
  • substituted real sound for metaphorical sound
• The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920) dir. Carl Boese and Paul Wegener
  • has diagonal compositions
• Frankenstein (1931) dir. James Whale
  • borrowed heavily from the golem
  • was about prestigious
• Eyes Without a Face (1960) dir. Georges Franju
  • cinema is about the dread of the unseen
• Audition (1999) dir. Takashi Miike
• The Public Enemy (1931) dir. William A. Wellman
  • one of the first great gangster pictures
  • main character has no grief when his friend dies
  • Scarface (1932) dir. Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson
• Scarface (1983) dir. Brian De Palma
  • a remake with cold brilliance
  • used flashy pop music
• Seven Samurai (1954) dir. Akira Kurosawa
  • mixed gangster themes with Japanese themes
• Once Upon a Time in America (1984) dir. Sergio Leone
  • was the best gansgter film of the lot
• The Iron Horse (1924) dir. John Ford
  • used a train as a dolly
• My Darling Clementine (1946) dir. John Ford
  • westerns are almost the opposite of gangster films
• Twentieth Century (1934) dir. Howard Hawks
  • is feminized
• Bringing Up Baby (1938) dir. Howard Hawks
  • has speed and mayhem
  • feminized
  • has fast dialogue
• The Men Who Made the Movies: Howard Hawks (1973) dir. Richard Schickel
  • Hawks was very gruff and didn’t follow contracts
• Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Mervyn LeRoy
  • was a musical
  • has soldiers march in the rain
  • used bathroom geometry as motivation for choreography
• Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) dir. Winsor McCay
  • one of the first animated pictures
• The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) dir. Lotte Reiniger
• Plane Crazy (1928) dir. Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks
  • The fist Micky mouse film
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) dir. David Hand, William
  • Disney’s first worldwide hit
  • kind of used motion capture
• Cottrell, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, and Ben Sharpsteen
• One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) dir. Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske, and Wolfgang Reitherman
  • used a cheaper form of animation

…And the Brilliance of European Film

• The Blood of a Poet (1931) dir. Jean Cocteau
  • a guy walks through a mirror, uses voices to make audience uneasy
• Inception (2010) dir. Christopher Nolan
• Zéro de conduite (1933) dir. Jean Vigo
  • made political films about youth
• If…. (1968) dir. Lindsay Anderson
• L’Atalante (1934) dir. Jean Vigo
  • a romance movie, the man was like an innocent child
  • vigo wan’t interested in plot
• Le Quai des brumes (1938) dir. Marcel Carné
  • film was shot with diffusion on the lense
• Les Enfants du Paradis (1945) dir. Marcel Carné
  • story contains many people
  • turns a street scene into theater
• La Règle du jeu (1939) (a.k.a. The Rules of the Game) dir. Jean Renoir
  • Thought that film was all about humanity
• La Grande Illusion (1937) dir. Jean Renoir
  • all about human balance
• Limite (1931) dir. Mário Peixoto
• The Adventures of a Good Citizen (1937) dir. Stefan Themerson
• Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958) dir. Roman Polanski
  • an experimental short
• Das Blaue Licht (1932) dir. Leni Riefenstahl
  • was made after Jewish people were banned from making films by Hitler
• Triumph of the Will (1935) dir. Leni Riefenstahl
  • A film of a Nazi party rally
  • Pictured Hitler in mythic terms
• Behind the Scenes of the Filming of the Olympic Games (1937) dir. Leni Riefenstahl
  • Changed shot of someone jumping in the water to make it look like they were flying
• Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty (1938) dir. Leni Riefenstahl
• Tiefland (1954) dir. Leni Riefenstahl\
  • Used people from concentration camps as extras in this film
• The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (1993) dir. Ray Müller
• Vertigo (1958) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
  • loves phantom shots
• Saboteur (1942) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
  • Hitchcock said that movies should not be about life, but greater than life
  • this film was about shock
  • a boys bag blows up and kills him
  • was revealed early on the film
  • fear comes from knowing that the shock is coming
• Sabotage (1936) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
  • hitchcock uses no music in some intense scenes
  • lots of noise would take away from the tension
• The 39 Steps (1935) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
  • all about hands
• Marnie (1964) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
  • opening just shows the ground and no faces
  • eventually widens out
• Ninotchka (1939) dir. Ernst Lubitsch
  • cuts to a high angle to represent a shriek
• The Wizard of Oz (1939) dir. Victor Fleming
  • is about escapsim
• Gone with the Wind (1939) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Victor Fleming
  • one of the most escapism films ever made