CITIZEN KANE Orson Welles,1941.

American drama film

PLOT:

In a mansion in Xanadu, a vast palatial estate in Florida, the elderly Charles Foster Kane is on

his deathbed. Holding a snow globe, he utters a word, "Rosebud", and dies; the globe slips from

his hand and smashes on the floor. A newsreel obituary tells the life story of Kane, an

enormously wealthy newspaper publisher. Kane's death becomes sensational news around the

world, and the newsreel's producer tasks reporter Jerry Thompson with discovering the

meaning of "Rosebud."

Thompson sets out to interview Kane's friends and associates. He approaches Kane's second

wife, Susan Alexander Kane, now analcoholic who runs her own nightclub, but she refuses to talk

to him. Thompson goes to the private archive of the late banker Walter Parks Thatcher. Through

Thatcher's written memoirs, Thompson learns that Kane's childhood began in poverty in

Colorado.

In 1871, after a gold mine was discovered on her property, Kane's mother Mary Kane sends

Charles away to live with Thatcher so that he would be properly educated. The young Kane plays

happily with a sled in the snow at his parents' boarding-house and protests being sent to live

with Thatcher. After gaining full control over his trust fund at the age of 25, Kane enters the

newspaper business and embarks on a career of yellow journalism. He takes control of the New

York Inquirer and begins publishing scandalous articles that attack Thatcher's business interests.

After the stock market crash in 1929, Kane is forced to sell controlling interest of his newspaper

empire to Thatcher.

In the present, Thompson interviews Kane's personal business manager, Mr. Bernstein.

Bernstein recalls how Kane hired the best journalists available to build the Inquirer's circulation.

Kane rose to power by successfully manipulating public opinion regarding theSpanishAmerican

War and marrying Emily Norton, the niece of a President of the United States.

Thompson interviews Kane's estranged best friend, Jedediah Leland, in a retirement home.

Leland recalls Kane's marriage to Emily disintegrates over the years, and he begins an affair with
amateur singer Susan Alexander while he is running for Governor of New York. Both his wife

and his political opponent discover the affair and the public scandalends his political career.

Kane marries Susan and forces her into a humiliating operatic career for which she has neither

the talent nor the ambition. Susan consents to an interview with Thompson, and recalls her

failed opera career. Kane finally allows her to abandon her singing career after she attempts

suicide. After years spent dominated by Kane and living in isolation at Xanadu, Susan leaves

Kane. Kane's butler Raymond recounts that after Susan left him Kane began violently destroying

the contents of her bedroom. He suddenly calms down when he sees a snow globe and says,

"Rosebud".

Back at Xanadu, Kane's belongings are being cataloged or discarded. Thompson concludes that

he is unable to solve the mystery and that the meaning of Kane's last word will forever remain

an enigma. As the film ends, the camera reveals that "Rosebud" is the trade name of

the sled on which the eight-year-old Kane was playing on the day that he was taken from

his home in Colorado. Thought to be junk by Xanadu's staff, the sled is burned in a

furnace.

CINEMATOGRAPHY:

tells Kane's story entirely in flashback using different points of view, many of them from

Kane's aged and forgetful associates, the cinematic equivalent of the unreliable narrator in

literature. Welles also dispenses with the idea of a single storyteller and uses multiple

narrators to recount Kane's life.

Extreme close-up Kane's lips

Citizen Kane introduced Hollywood to the creative potential of other cinematic techniques as

well. One such innovation was a technique known as the "wipe," where one image is "wiped" off

the screen by another.

Lighting: chiaroscuro, backlighting and high-contrast lighting

VERTIGO Alfred Hitchcock, 1958 American psychological thriller film

PLOT:

After a rooftop chase, where his acrophobia and vertigo result in the death of a policeman, San

Francisco detective John "Scottie" Ferguson retires. Scottie tries to conquer his fear, but his

friend and ex-fiance Midge Wood suggests another severe emotional shock may be the only

cure.

An acquaintance from college, Gavin Elster, asks Scottie to follow his wife, Madeleine, claiming

she has been possessed. Scottie reluctantly agrees, and follows Madeleine to a florist where she

buys a bouquet of flowers, to the Mission San Francisco de Ass and the grave of Carlotta Valdes,

and to an art museum where she gazes at the Portrait of Carlotta. He watches her enter the

McKittrick Hotel but on investigation she does not seem to be there.

A local historian explains that Carlotta Valdes tragically committed suicide. Gavin reveals that

Carlotta (who he fears is possessing Madeleine) is Madeleine's great-grandmother, although

Madeleine has no knowledge of this, and does not remember where she has visited. Scottie tails

Madeleine to Fort Point and, when she leaps into the bay, rescues her.

The next day Scottie follows Madeleine; they meet and spend the day together. They travel

to Muir Woods and Cypress Point on 17-Mile Drive, where Madeleine runs down towards the

ocean. Scottie grabs her and they embrace. Scottie identifies the setting of Madeleine's

nightmare as Mission San Juan Bautista. He drives her there and they express their love for each

other. Madeleine suddenly runs into the church and up the bell tower. Scottie, halted on the

steps by his vertigo, sees Madeleine plunge to her death.

The death is declared a suicide. Gavin does not fault Scottie, but Scottie breaks down,

becomes clinically depressed and is in a sanatorium, almost catatonic. After release, Scottie

frequents the places that Madeleine visited, often imagining that he sees her. One day, he notices

a woman who reminds him of Madeleine, despite her different appearance. Scottie follows her

and she identifies herself as Judy Barton, from Salina, Kansas.

A flashback reveals that Judy was the person Scottie knew as "Madeleine Elster"; she was
impersonating Gavin's wife as part of a murder plot. Judy writes to Scottie explaining her

involvement with Gavin's murder of his wife. Gavin had deliberately taken advantage of Scottie's

acrophobia to substitute his wife's freshly killed body in the apparent "suicide jump". Judy rips

up the letter and decides to continue the charade, because she loves Scottie.

They begin seeing each other, but Scottie remains obsessed with "Madeleine" and asks Judy to

change her clothes and hair so that she resembles Madeleine. After Judy complies, hoping that

they may finally find happiness together, he notices her wearing the necklace portrayed in the

painting of Carlotta, and realizes the truth. He insists on driving her to the Mission.

There, he tells her he must re-enact the event that led to his madness, admitting he now

understands that "Madeleine" and Judy are the same person. Scottie forces her up the bell tower

and makes her admit her deceit. Scottie reaches the top, finally conquering his acrophobia. Judy

confesses that Gavin paid her to impersonate a "possessed" Madeleine; Gavin faked the suicide

by throwing the body of his wife from the bell tower.

Judy begs Scottie to forgive her, because she loves him. He embraces her, but a shadowed figure

rises from the trapdoor of the tower, startling Judy, who steps backward and falls to her death.

Scottie, bereft again, stands on the ledge, while the figure, a nun investigating the noise, rings the

mission bell.

CINEMATOGRAPHY:

depth of field shot is when a picture or video draws attention to one thing and the rest of it is

blurred. Its main focus is what specifically the creator wants the viewer to see and which

produces a very intriguing effect.

One of the best filming effects in the film is when the camera shows Johns phobia of heights. He

goes into a sort of vertigo and the camera movement make you feel as if you are there

feeling the same way. When the camera is capturing this experience it is zooming in and

out and is spinning and whirling causing the viewer to feel dizzy. This scene occurs when

Madeleine is running up the spiral stairs going to the bell tower at the Mission San Juan Batista.

John is trailing behind her trying to stop her. Step by step Johns phobia begins to come into
effect and slows him down. He looks down the all of the steps and realizes how high he is and his

vertigo begins. At this scene in the movie the camera shows the full effect of Johns vertigo. The

camera is steady looking down the steps and as it is locked in on this image it begins to get

blurry and move around. Scenes like this occur throughout the movie capturing Johns

acrophobia as it happens. Every time his vertigo kicks in this cinematic effect comes into play.

HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR Alain Resnais, 1959 Drama film

Hiroshima mon amour concerns a series of conversations (or one enormous conversation)

over a 36-hour long period between a French actress (Emmanuelle Riva), referred to as Her,

and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada), referred to as Him. They have had a brief relationship and

are now separating. The two debate memory and forgetfulness as She prepares to depart,

comparing failed relationships with the bombing of Hiroshima and the perspectives of people

inside and outside the incidents. The early part of the film recounts, in the style of a

documentary but narrated by the so far unidentified characters, the effects of the Hiroshima

bomb on August 6, 1945, in particular the loss of hair and the complete anonymity of the

remains of some victims. He had been conscriptedinto the Imperial Japanese Army, and his

family was in Hiroshima on that day.

The film uses highly structured repetitive dialogue, mostly consisting of Her narration, with

Him interjecting to say she is wrong, lying or confused, or to deny and contradict her statements

with the film's famous line "You are not endowed with memory." Although He disagrees and

rejects many of the things She says, he pursues her constantly. The film is peppered with

dozens of brief flashbacks to Her life; in her youth in the French town Nevers, she was

shamed and had her head shaved as punishment for having a love affair with a German soldier,

which she juxtaposes with the loss of the hair "which the women of Hiroshima will find has

fallen out in the morning."

Hiroshima mon amour is a film of bold contrasts. Its much-lauded opening

scene stands as a testament to Hiroshima, the city, rebuilt after the cataclysm
of the war, but unable to escape its past. But its also the story of two lovers

who face similarly inescapable histories, and its into their story that Resnais

immediately immerses us. Resnais presents a cropped image, a close-up of

two bodies, naked and locked in an embrace. Dust showers down, covering

them. Its an image of doom, both beautiful and shocking, intended to draw us

back in time, to remind us of the countless bodies like these, buried in the

rubble of war, covered in the deadly atomic dust that rained over Hiroshima

(and Nagasaki) at the close of World War II. And then the scene dissolves into

the present. Two lovers, naked and locked in embrace, dust replaced now by

less ominous beads of sweat.

Using multiple flashbacks, ellipses and voiceover narration, Resnais presented

a challenge to classical narrative cinema forms.

in the first 15 minutes of the film the disasters that Japan went

through at the end of World War II and the horrendous results that

several populations had are shown in a documented style.

Hiroshima mon Amour ends with the opening scene. That's why

Alain Resnais assured that time in his film is shattered and

randomly scattered throughout from beginning to end; it is not a

chronological story.

SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS David Hand, 1937

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated musical fantasy film produced by
Walt Disney Productions and originally released by RKO Radio Pictures. Based on the German fairy
tale by the Brothers Grimm, it is the first full-length cel animated feature film and the earliest Disney
animated feature film. The story was adapted by storyboard artists Dorothy Ann Blank, Richard
Creedon, Merrill De Maris, Otto Englander, Earl Hurd, Dick Rickard, Ted Sears and Webb Smith. David
Hand was the supervising director, while William Cottrell, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce,
and Ben Sharpsteen directed the film's individual sequences.

At the 11th Academy Awards, Walt Disney was awarded an honorary Oscar, and the film was
nominated for Best Musical Score the year before. In 1989, the United States Library of Congress
deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in
the National Film Registry and is ranked in the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest
American films, who also named the film as the greatest American animated film of all time in 2008.
Disney's take on the fairy tale has had a significant cultural impact, resulting in popular theme park
attractions, a video game, and a Broadway musical.

Traditional animation (or classical animation, cel animation or hand-drawn animation) is an animation
technique where each frame is drawn by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation in
cinema until the advent of computer animation. Animation productions begin by deciding on a story.
The oral or literary source material must then be converted into an animation film script, from which
the storyboard is derived. The storyboard has an appearance somewhat similar to a comic book, and
it shows the sequence of shots as consecutive sketches that also indicate transitions, camera angles,
and framing. The images allow the animation team to plan the flow of the plot and the composition
of the imagery. The storyboard artists will have regular meetings with the director and may have to
redraw or "re-board" a sequence many times before it meets final approval.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY Stanley Kubrick, 1968 science-fiction film

PLOT:

In an African desert millions of years ago, a tribe of man-apes is driven from their water hole by

a rival tribe. They wake to find a featureless black monolith has appeared before them. One

man-ape realizes how to use a bone as a tool and weapon; the tribe kills the leader of their rivals

and reclaims the water hole.

Millions of years later, a Pan Am space plane carries Dr. Heywood R. Floyd to a space station

orbiting Earth for a layover on his trip to Clavius Base, a United States outpost on the moon.

After a videophone call with his daughter, Floyd's Soviet scientist friend and her colleague ask

him about rumors of a mysterious epidemic at Clavius. Floyd declines to answer. At Clavius,

Floyd heads a meeting of base personnel, apologizing for the epidemic cover story but stressing

secrecy. His mission is to investigate a recently found artifact buried four million years ago.

Floyd and others ride in a Moonbus to the artifact, which is a monolith identical to the one

encountered by the man-apes. Sunlight strikes the monolith and a loud high-pitched radio signal

is heard.

Eighteen months later, the U.S. spacecraft Discovery One is bound for Jupiter. On board are

mission pilots and scientists Dr. David Bowman and Dr. Frank Poole with three other scientists
in cryogenic hibernation. Most of Discovery's operations are controlled by the ship's

computer, HAL 9000, referred to by the crew as "Hal". Bowman and Poole watch Hal and

themselves being interviewed on a BBC show about the mission, in which the computer states

that he is "foolproof and incapable of error." When asked by the host if Hal has genuine

emotions, Bowman replies that he appears to, but that the truth is unknown. Later, Hal questions

Dave on the mysterious purpose of the mission, then reports the imminent failure of an antenna

control device. The astronauts retrieve the component making use of an EVA Pod but find

nothing wrong with it. Hal suggests reinstalling the part and letting it fail so the problem can be

found. Mission Control advises the astronauts that results from their twin HAL 9000 backups

indicate that Hal is in error. Hal insists that the problem, like previous issues ascribed to HAL

series units, is due to human error. Concerned about Hal's behavior, Bowman and Poole enter an

EVA pod to talk without Hal overhearing, and agree to disconnect Hal if he is proven wrong. Hal

secretly follows their conversation by lip reading.

While Poole attempts to replace the unit during a space walk, his EVA pod, controlled by Hal,

rams him, severing his oxygen hose and setting him adrift. Bowman takes another pod to

attempt rescue, leaving his helmet behind. Meanwhile, Hal turns off the life support functions of

the crewmen in suspended animation. When Bowman returns to the ship with Poole's body, Hal

refuses to let him in, stating that the astronauts' plan to deactivate him jeopardizes the mission.

Bowman opens the ship's emergency airlock manually, enters the ship, and proceeds to Hal's

processor core. Hal tries to reassure Bowman, then pleads with him to stop, and finally

expresses fear. As Bowman deactivates the circuits controlling HAL's higher intellectual

functions, HAL regresses to his earliest programmed memory, the song "Daisy Bell", which he

sings for Bowman.

When Hal is finally disconnected, a pre-recorded video message from Floyd reveals the existence

of the monolith on the moon; its purpose and origin unknown. With the exception of one short,

but extremely powerful radio emission aimed at Jupiter, the object has been inert. At Jupiter,

Bowman leaves Discovery One in an EVA pod to investigate another monolith discovered in orbit
around the planet. The pod is pulled into a vortex of colored light, and Bowman races across vast

distances of space, viewing bizarre cosmological phenomena and strange landscapes of unusual

colors.

He finds himself, still in the pod, in a bedroom appointed in the neoclassical style. He sees older

versions of himself, his point of view switching each time, first standing in the bedroom, middleaged,

and still in his spacesuit, then formally dressed and eating dinner, and finally as an old man

lying in the bed. A black monolith appears at the foot of the bed, and as Bowman reaches for it,

he is transformed into a fetus enclosed in a transparent orb of light. The film ends as the new

being floats in space beside the Earth, gazing at it.

CINEMATOGRAPHY:

2001 pioneered the use of front projection with retroreflective matting. Kubrick used the

technique to produce the backdrops in the Africa scenes and the scene when astronauts walk on

the moon.

THE SEARCHERS John Ford, 1956 Western film

It is 1868. Ethan Edwards (Wayne) returns after an eight-year absence to the home of his

brother Aaron (Walter Coy) in the wilderness of West Texas. Ethan fought in the Civil War on

the side of the Confederacy, and in the three years since that war ended he apparently fought in

the Mexican revolutionary war as well. He has a large quantity of gold coins of uncertain origin

in his possession, and a medal from the Mexican campaign that he gives to his eight-year-old

niece, Debbie (played as a child by Lana Wood). As a former Confederate soldier, he is asked to

take an oath of allegiance to the Texas Rangers; he refuses. As Rev. Captain Samuel Clayton

(Ward Bond) remarks, Ethan "fits a lot of descriptions".

Shortly after Ethan's arrival, cattle belonging to his neighbor Lars Jorgensen (John Qualen) are

stolen, and when Captain Clayton leads Ethan and a group of Rangers to recover them, they

discover that the theft was a Comanche ploy to draw the men away from their families. When

they return they find the Edwards homestead in flames. Aaron, his wife Martha (Dorothy
Jordan), and their son Ben (Robert Lyden) are dead, and Debbie and her older sister Lucy (Pippa

Scott) have been abducted.

After a brief funeral the men set out in pursuit. They come upon a burial ground of Comanches

who were killed during the raid. Ethan mutilates one of the bodies. When they find the

Comanche camp, Ethan recommends a frontal attack, but Clayton insists on a stealth approach to

avoid killing the hostages. The camp is deserted, and further along the trail the men ride into an

ambush. Though they fend off the attack, the Rangers are left with too few men to fight the

Indians effectively. They return home, leaving Ethan to continue his search for the girls with only

Lucy's fianc, Brad Jorgensen (Harry Carey, Jr.) and Debbie's adopted brother, Martin Pawley

(Jeffrey Hunter). Ethan finds Lucy brutally murdered and presumably raped in a canyon near the

Comanche camp. In a blind rage, Brad rides directly into the Indian camp and is killed.

When winter arrives Ethan and Martin lose the trail and return to the Jorgensen ranch. Martin is

enthusiastically welcomed by the Jorgensens' daughter Laurie (Vera Miles), and Ethan finds a

letter waiting for him from a trader named Futterman (Peter Mamakos), who claims to have

information about Debbie. Ethan, who would rather travel alone, leaves without Martin the next

morning, but Laurie provides Martin with a horse to catch up. At Futterman's trading post, Ethan

and Martin learn that Debbie has been taken by Scar (Henry Brandon), the chief of

the Nawyecka band of Comanches. A year or more later, Laurie receives a letter from Martin

describing the ongoing search. In reading the letter aloud, Laurie narrates the next few scenes, in

which Ethan kills Futterman for trying to steal his money, Martin accidentally buys a Comanche

wife (Beulah Archuletta), and the two men find a portion of Scar's band killed by soldiers.

The search leads Ethan and Martin to a military fort, and then to New Mexico, where a Mexican

man leads them to Scar. They find Debbie after five years, now an adolescent (Natalie Wood),

living as one of Scar's wives. She tells the men that she has become a Comanche, and wishes to

remain with them. Ethan would rather see her dead than living as an Indian, and tries to shoot

her, but Martin shields her with his body and a Comanche wounds Ethan with an arrow as they

escape. Though Martin tends to Ethan's wound, he is furious with him for attempting to kill
Debbie, and wishes him dead. "That'll be the day," Ethan replies, as they return home.

Meanwhile, Charlie McCorry (Ken Curtis) has been courting Laurie in Martin's absence. Ethan

and Martin arrive home just as Charlie and Laurie's wedding is about to begin. After a fistfight

between Martin and Charlie, a nervous "Yankee" soldier, Lt. Greenhill (Patrick Wayne), arrives

with news that Ethan's half-crazy friend Mose Harper (Hank Worden) has located Scar. Clayton

leads his men to the Comanche camp, this time for a direct attack, but Martin is allowed to sneak

in ahead of the assault to find Debbie, who welcomes him. Martin kills Scar during the battle, and

Ethan scalps him. Ethan then locates Debbie, and pursues her on horseback. Martin fears that he

will shoot her as he has promised; but instead he sweeps her up onto his saddle. "Lets go home,"

he says. Debbie is reunited with her family, and Martin with Laurie. In an iconic closing scene,

Ethan departs the homestead as he arrivedaloneclutching his arm, the cabin door slowly

shutting on his receding image.

CINEMATOGRAPHY:

As part of its promotion of The Searchers, in 1956 Warner Bros. produced and broadcast one of the
very first behind-the-scenes, "making-of" programs in movie history which aired as an episode of its
Warner Bros. Presents TV series.

The Searchers (1956) is considered by many to be a true American masterpiece of filmmaking, and
the best, most influential, and perhaps most-admired film of director John Ford. It was his 115th
feature film, and he was already a four-time Best Director Oscar winner (The Informer (1935),

With dazzling on-location, gorgeous VistaVision cinematography (including the stunning red
sandstone rock formations of Monument Valley) by Winton C. Hoch in Ford's most beloved locale, the
film handsomely captures the beauty and isolating danger of the frontier. It was even a better film
than Ford's previous Best Picture-winning How Green Was My Valley (1941). However, at its time, the
sophisticated, modern, visually-striking film was unappreciated, misunderstood, and unrecognized by
critics. It did not receive a single Academy Award nomination, and was overwhelmed by the all-star
power and glamour of the Best Picture winner of the year, Around the World in 80 Days (1956).

The Searchers tells the emotionally complex story of a perilous, hate-ridden quest and Homeric-style
odyssey of self-discovery after a Comanche massacre, while also exploring the themes of racial
prejudice and sexism. Its meandering tale examines the inner psychological turmoil of a fiercely
independent, crusading man obsessed with revenge and hatred, who searches for his two nieces
(Pippa Scott and Natalie Wood) among the "savages" over a five-year period. The film's major tagline
echoed the search: "he had to find her...he had to find her."

John Ford was undoubtedly one of the greatest intuitive story-tellers either America or the world has
ever produced - a deeply conservative man hut, though he took pains to deny it, a poet too. The
Western was not his only forte but it was, perhaps, his greatest. This particular example allows John
Wayne to give his most considerable performance as the obsessive, enigmatic Ethan, riding in from
Monument Valley to his brothers homestead and then searching for his brothers daughter, abducted
by Indians. The contrast between the old, racist America and the new is simply expressed as much
through body language, facial expression and visual sensibility as through dialogue. While essentially
a tragedy, there is humour and irony too. The Searchers has all the best values of a good Western,
one of the most important genres Hollywood has ever invented and, when it is as good as this, one of
the most expressive too.

As well as the narrative threads running through the film there are visual threads which give a stylistic
unity. FRAMING The film opens with a framed image. This framing continues throughout the film.

Here are the framed images:

The opening of the film. The opened door.

Marty arrives on his horse.
Brad and Lucy kissing.
Ethan walks towards the bodies of the family. This is seen from the inside of the wrecked
building.
The first return of Marty and Ethan to the Jorgenssen house.
The cave where Ethan and Marty have the first battle with Scar after they meet Debbie.
Debbie runs to the cave followed by Ethan on his horse. This is seen from inside the cave.
Ethan leaving at the end of the film. The door shuts.

OUR HOSPITALITY

Our Hospitality is a silent comedy directed by and starring Buster Keaton. Released in 1923 by
Metro Pictures Corporation, the movie uses slapstick and situational comedy to tell the story of
Willie McKay, who gets caught in the middle of the infamous "Canfield""McKay" feud, an
obvious satire of the real-life HatfieldMcCoy feud.

It was a groundbreaking work for film comedy as Keaton included "careful integration of gags
into a dramatically coherent storyline", "meticulous attention to period detail" and "beautiful
cinematography and extensive location shooting". This was a contrast to the usual slapstick
comedies of this era. ( Slapstick is a style of humor involving exaggerated physical activity which
exceeds the boundaries of normal physical comedy, term arises from a device developed during
the broad, physical comedy style known as Commedia dell'arte in 16th Century Italy. The 'slap
stick' consists of two thin slats of wood made from splitting a single long stick, which make a
'slap' when striking another actor, with little force needed to make a loud - and comical - sound.)
Turner Classic Movies describes Our Hospitality as a "silent film for which no apologies need be
made to modern viewers" and Roger Ebert considered it Keaton's first masterpiece.

Although the original Hatfield-McCoy feud happened between 1878 and 1890, Keaton set his
film in the 1830s. Keaton had a passion for train history and wanted the story to coincide with
their invention. While shooting Roberts suffered a stroke on set. After a short hospital stay in
Reno, he returned to finish his role in the film but died of a subsequent stroke a few months
later. Keaton, who never used a stunt double, nearly drowned in the Truckee River while filming
one of his stunts. This is the only film to feature three generations of the Keaton family: Keaton
himself, his father Joe and his infant son. Keaton's wife Natalie was pregnant with their second
child during filming, and late in the production she had to be filmed to hide her growing size.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Buster Keaton's Our Hospitality (1923) remains one of his very funniest films, but it was also a
groundbreaking work of silent film comedy at the time of its release. Not the least of its
triumphs is its careful integration of gags into a dramatically coherent storyline. In that respect it
marked a significant advance over Three Ages (1923), which was essentially three two-reel
comedies stuck together to make a single feature. Another noteworthy aspect of Our Hospitality
is its meticulous attention to period detail, which in turn becomes an additional source of
comedy. As absurd as it appears onscreen, the train in the film is actually modeled after the
"Stephenson Rocket," one of the earliest locomotives; the bicycle Keaton rides at one point is an
exact replica of the very first bicycle, the "Gentleman's Hobby-Horse." And of course, Keaton
also makes clever use of old-style pistols, which must be reloaded with gunpowder and bullets
after each shot. The prologue, in its staging and lighting effects, resembles nothing so much as
the stage melodramas of the 19th century, such as those produced by Belasco; it is probably
intended as a parody, considering that the acting style in the rest of the film is more restrained
and the blocking of actors more fluid. The film also benefits from beautiful cinematography and
extensive location shooting in the Truckee River and Lake Tahoe region near the border of
California and Nevada--though the waterfall at the film's breathtaking climax is clearly
substituted for a studio mock-up. Thanks to the care and ingenuity with which it is made, this is
one silent film for which no apologies need be made to modern viewers.