Critical Film Wk 1

150822 US

LECTURE
Film: Broken Blossoms

● 2 outcasts finding comfort in each other but end up in a tragedy (all of them died)
● Giving the Chinese man the label “The Yellow Man” strips them of their humanisation
● Marlon Brando
● Gesturing over-emotions works for silent films to project their emotions wtf?
● Cheng Huan and Lucy are both hunched over. Lucy beaten by her father, Cheng Huan
probably just a reserved man
● Allowing the father to linger in the scene after killing his daughter is dangerous as it could let
the audience suddenly feel for him, an abusive man

Where did this genre come from?

● Every film will showcase the mindset, social, and political context and views at the time
● 1919 is the time when many countries were still colonised -> white-power, white superiority
● Fear of immigrant, threatening, vilify them

1895 - 1919

● 1895 is when the first film came out (lumiere brothers? The train thing 28 Dec 1895) (life as it
is)
● 15cents for 25mins, just 10 short films of normal life
● Hugo, a love letter to film
● Cinema wasn’t always an art, rather it was just a toy when it first came out
● At the time, film was scarce. The amount of time they have was about a minute or less per
roll. They didn’t have the luxury to delete footage when they like it

● Film is a medium to immortalise life

INVEST IN THE TOPIC OR GENRE OF FILM

if you have smth niche in mind

Harris Nickelodeon

● created Nickelodeon (5cents per film)

● Changed the audience every 15mins to cater to thousands of audience

People to take note of:

● Lumiere Brothers
 ● Thomas A. Edison
● Edwin S. Porter (Edison’s employee)

The Squirter Squirted vs A Game of Cards

● both static, single shot/scene

● Squirter is a comedy, has a story
● Cards is just a sequence

● a good film has mis en scene to set the mood of the show, allowing audience to observe and
interpret what kind of day it was etc
●

George Melies (the cinemagician)

● A Trip to the Moon (8mins) brings audience to another time and space, the first science fiction
film
● accidentally invented stop motion
● Telling stories through staged and filmed pantomime

Edwin S. Porter
Life of an American Fireman (1903)

● discovered that a film scene does not need to be played to the end before being followed by
another (double line of action)
● Flawed in a way that the song does not match the urgency/tragic scene. The saving scene
was repeated: once from inside, once from the outside (this is why editing is needed)
●

David Wark (D.W) Griffith

● most important insight: the shot should be the basic unit of film language not scene
● Alternates tempo through the editing of detached shots: rapid/slow cutting
● One of the leaders who went against short length films imposed by the American industry of
the day

Long shot: to establish place

Medium shot: stress on relationships or interaction

Close up: draws audiences identification with character, to suggest through facial expression the
thoughts and emotions

Rapid cutting: create excitement

Slow cutting: allows audience to contemplate the emotions
In the earlier days of film, the actors came from theatre so their acting can be exaggerated

READINGS

Silent Films - Are They Worth the Watching?

General stance → silence films is not for everyone and those who despise them barely watched any

- Silent films have a dramatic style and primitive techniques

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