American Film History 1930-60

The chief technological innovation during the 1930s was the development of deep focus cinematography. Deep focus involved the expansion of depth of field, resulting in images that maintained sharp focus from objects in the extreme foreground to those in the distant background. Deep focus was achieved by filming with extremely wideangled lenses whose apertures had been stopped down. This sort of cinematography was made possible by a variety of developments in related fields of film technology.In 1939 the introduction of lens coatings, which permitted 75 per cent more light to pass through the lens to the film inside the camera, enabled cinematographers to decrease the lens aperture an additional stop, facilitating greater image definition. The results of these developments can be seen in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941). This and other films which were shot in exteriors took advantage of relatively short focal-length lenses and abundant sunlight to produce ‘deep' images. According to this new code, the film stock's greater sensitivity to the full range of colours signified a greater realism.On Citizen Kane the Toland style is most pronounced, most systematically and effectively employed, and most widely recognized. Although he had been refining his methods in the films with Wyler and Ford, Toland had yet satisfactorily to combine his technical and stylistic interests within a single picture. He saw Citizen Kane as a chance to experiment on a large scale. In a June 1941 article in Popular Photography entitled â€Å"How I Broke the Rules on Citizen Kane†, Toland related that ‘the photographic approach †¦was planned and considered long before the first camera turned', which was itself ‘most unconventional in Hollywood', where cinematographers generally have only a few days to prepare to shoot a film. Robert L. Carringer, in his indepth sudy of the production, writes that Welles and Toland ‘approached the film together in a spirit of revolutionary fervor', and that ‘Welles not only encouraged Toland to experiment and tinker, he positively insisted on it' (Nowell-Smith 45). The work indicated something of a shift to a more documentary-style realism.Citizen Kane was, then, an opportunity for Toland to make flamboyant deep focus identified with his own work. Welles had come to Hollywood with no professional film experience, and (according to Welles) Toland had sought out the Kane assignment. After the filming was completed, Toland was at pains to claim several innovations. For greater realism, he explained, many sets were designed with ceilings, which required him to light from the floor. Since the sets were also deep, he relied on the carrying power of arc lamps.Furthermore, since Welles and Toland had decided to stage action in depth, Toland sought great depth of focus by using Super XX film, increasing the lighting levels, and using optically coated wide-angle lenses (Bordwell 45). The result s hifted the traditional limits of deep space. In yielding a depth of field that extended from about eighteen inches to infinity, Toland's ‘pan-focus' made it possible to have a sharp foreground plane in medium shot or even close-up and still keep very distant background planes in focus. Fifty years on, Kane remains contentious.French critic Andre Bazin, who saw it in 1946 at the same time as Italian neo-realism, argued that its extensive use of deep focus promoted the reality of the phenomenal world of the film, but subsequent critics have noted that the film is also highly self-conscious, artificial, and even baroque. The use of deep focus was not unique, and director of photography Gregg Toland had already experimented with it on other productions. Welles's role as ‘author' of the film has also been hotly contested, notably by Pauline Kael (1974), who argued, probably incorrectly, that the script was solely the work of Herman J.Mankiewicz. But even if Kane was not compl etely novel in its structures or techniques, it remains the fact that these techniques are masterfully integrated in the film's complex texture. Bazin, for example, argued that Citizen Kane was a film of high quality in that it was a film of realism. Realism was an axiom of his aesthetic position. But the statement which links this axiom with the specific aesthetic judgement of Citizen Kane raises problems. The realism of the film, Bazin argues, derives from its use of deep-focus photography and minimal cutting.Such techniques minimize fragmentation of the real world. The trouble is that this could be a definition of realism as nonfragmentation, or an assertion that films employing such techniques are perceived as more real. The latter, unlike the former, is open to empirical test, although Bazin uses it as a selfevident aesthetic judgement. Thus, although there is nothing inherently wrong with the argument, it does involve different sorts of statements with consequent different cri teria of adequacy.Bazin does share a considerable admiration for the achievements of Italian neo-realism; in particular. And yet Bazin rarely falls into the trap of seeming to formulate a puritan aesthetic which will include neo-realism at the expense of all else. Unlike Kracauer (formally, at least) he admits to different forms of realism. Thus, for example, the distinction he draws between the ‘documentary' realism of Scarface and the ‘aesthetic' realism of Citizen Kane, both forms allegedly finding their unification in La Terra Trema (Bordwell 90).This willingness to speak of different types of realism can lead to problems in interpreting his position. In Signs and Meaning in the Cinema, Wollen takes to task two contemporary inheritors of Bazin's views (Barr and Metz) over their opposition of Rossellini and Eisenstein. The villain for Bazin, he points out, was not Eisenstein, but German Expressionism. But the real problem is that at different times, and in different w ays, Bazin occupies both positions. He starts life invoking a case similar to Kracauer's in favour of a ‘purist' realism.But this proves too limiting for his much more catholic tastes, and so he also develops a second case as spatial realism. Unfortunately, he never really brings the two conceptions face to face; never really resolves the strains between them. It seems useful here to take a closer look at these basics of his argument: The realism of the cinema follows directly from its photographic nature. Not only does some marvel or some fantastic thing on the screen not undermine the reality of the image, on the contrary, it is its most valid justification.Illusion in the cinema is not based as it is in the theatre on convention tacitly accepted by the general public; rather, contrariwise, it is based on the inalienable realism of that which is shown. All trick work must be perfect in all material respects on the screen. The `invisible man' must wear pyjamas and smoke a cig arette (Bazin 108). Andre Bazin puts Welles in his pantheon of realist directors, along with Renoir, Rossellini, De Sica, Stroheim, Flaherty, and even Murnau (whom he praises for choosing the moving camera over editing in the construction of many of his filmic scenes).Yet Citizen Kane is also a film in the tradition of German Expressionism. Like Murnau, Welles externalized the subjectivity of his characters (and especially of Kane) by means of psychologically charged settings, acute camera angles, distorting lenses, and disconcerting camera movements (Tudor 56). The demented architecture of Xanadu in the mist-enshrouded shots at the beginning of the film recalls Howard Hawks’ Scarface (1932). Near the end of the film both Susan and Kane are dwarfed by the oversized ornaments and statuary that furnish Xanadu, and serve as external projections of Kane's inner deadness and mindless materialism.The gargantuan rooms through which their voices echo—they nearly have to shout at each other to be heard—reflect the distance that has grown between them. When Kane steps into an enormous blazing fireplace and informs Susan that â€Å"Our home is here,† he metaphorically becomes the host of hell. After Susan leaves him, Kane, now utterly alone, wanders past a structure of double reflecting mirrors which reflect his image into infinity. As far as he looks, all he can see are images of himself, a perfect physical representation for a man trapped within his own narcissism.Welles also used extreme camera angles and strange camera movements in conjunction with his expressive mise-en-scene. In the year of its release, Citizen Kane was a radically experimental film—fully twenty years ahead of its time—and was widely recognized as such by American critics. Citizen Kane is surely the most celebrated and analyzed of all English language films and, arguably, the greatest – at least as measured by periodic surveys of critics and scholars . We saw that in the 1940s a realist aesthetic somewhat modified classical practice. This was conceived as partly an ‘objective' verisimilitude, especially of setting and lighting.Location shooting, taken in conjunction with low-key (‘mood') lighting, helped define one distinct postwar cinematographic practice. This practice did not fundamentally violate classical principles of causal and generic motivation. This conception of ‘realism' also owed something to a standardization of deep-focus shooting. Certain traits became common to many ‘realistic' films of the 1940s and 1950s. Finally, Bazin sees both forms of realism in spatial realism of Welles. Certainly Citizen Kane preserves the unity of space through Toland's deep-focus photography.Certainly the cuts are minimized by use of dissolves and joins across the soundtrack. But Welles is, nevertheless, the true inheritor of expressionism, the specialist in the distortion by camera angle, the mysterious shadows once painted but now created through lighting, the grotesque, and the baroque. Works Cited Bazin, Andre, What is Cinema? op. cit. Bordwell, David, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960. Routledge: London, 1988. Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey The Oxford History of World Cinema. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1997. Tudor, Andrew, Theories of Film. Viking Press: New York, 1974.

Miss Havisham

My beloved sweetheart bastard. Jilted me, destroyed me and crushed me into broken red pieces. I stink and remember the day we were waiting for so long, but you then decide to run away. Why? Why did you do this to me? Was it because of me? Or was there something wrong? The wedding gown that I wore is decaying, rotting and disintegrating away as days past from that heart breaking day. Don't think it's the only the heart that b-b-b-breaks, the soul also b-b-b-breaks. I waited and waited and waited, but no sign from you. Where were you?You malevolent, wicked and corrupt man sent me through hell and allowed me to burn on that day and onwards. Do you really, really love me? I guess you don't pretty much since you incinerated me into sorrowful ashes and now I have nothing. It was you who did this to me; a red balloon bursting in my face. Bang. I stabbed at a wedding cake, hoping not to remember the day you Jilted me. Was it on purpose? I can change for you to come back my love. Please, plea se. I spend whole days in bed cawing Noon at the wall but not a day since then I haven't wished you dead.Prayed for it so hard Vive dark green pebbles for eyes, ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with. Just give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon, better if the corpse was you. There are so much permanent marks on my body that even a whole year wouldn't be enough to count all of it. My mouth is getting drier and drier each day when I think of you, thirsty for your blood. Some nights better, dreaming that you would come back for me, I Just beg you to come back so I can release all the agony and pain you pierced Into my heart onto you.Puce curses that are sounds not words. Some nights better, the lost body over me, my fluent tongue In Its mouth In Its ear then down till I suddenly bite awake. Sometimes I ask myself who did this to me? You see I have so many questions In my mind to be answered but not a single one have been answered for 20 years. My love, all I want to do is to Just strangle you till you feel my agonizing pain and It will soon be your turn but beware there's a burning ember scorching In my heart, waiting to be unleashed and trust me It will be more devastating than what you have done to me.Miss Having By Kent to come back so I can release all the agony and pain you pierced into my heart onto me, my fluent tongue in its mouth in its ear then down till I suddenly bite awake. Sometimes I ask myself who did this to me? You see I have so many questions in my all I want to do is to Just strangle you till you feel my agonizing pain and it will soon be your turn but beware there's a burning ember scorching in my heart, waiting to be unleashed and trust me it will be more devastating than what you have done to me.

The Possible Problems of Balkan Accession to the European Un essays

The Possible Problems of Balkan Accession to the European Un essays Though this paper is meant to address a current event pertaining to the European Union, it is difficult to explain some things without delving into the past. This paper deals not with a single concrete event, but rather a process that could have deep implications for the European Union. This process involves one of the most ethnically diverse, and unfortunately, most volatile regions of the globe: the Balkans. This paper will briefly address the past histories of the Balkans and the European Union. It will also attempt to explain the possibilities for internal conflict once the Balkan states, particularly the Yugoslav successor states, attain EU membership. Finally, it will evaluate the pros and cons of EU expansion into the Balkans, as well as ways to evade the potential problems of expansion into such an unstable region. The modern European Union was created in 1952 in an attempt to deter war through economic interdependence. Over the next few decades, the original 6 states gradually expanded into a 15-member bloc. Expansion was expressly encouraged in the various treaties governing the administration and functioning of the Union. The collapse of Soviet-style communism in Eastern Europe from 1989-1991 created a vast new pool of potential applicants determined to enter the European mainstream in order to escape their dark Soviet past. Indeed, for many of these states acceptance in the West was considered more urgent and more important than cooperation in the East, (Brown 266). The prevailing Western orientation of many of these states made acceptance easier than previously thought. Ironically, the state most accepted in the West prior to the collapse of communism, Yugoslavia, became a pariah even before the Iron Curtain lifted. As other East European states applied to join the European Union , Yugoslavia descended into ethnic chaos reminiscent of the late 19th Century. Had Yugoslavia remained whole and ...

Asserting Ethnic Identity and Power Through Language Essay Example for Free

Asserting Ethnic Identity and Power Through Language Essay Week-1 The linguistic ideology at work here is founded both on the concept of the ‘mother tongue’ as well as on the ‘one nation, one language’ principle. Communities on the western side of the border are not interested in learning the language of their eastern neighbors. Eastern communities, on the other hand, are strongly motivated to learn western languages. The importance attributed to English as the ‘language of globalization’ is common to both sides. We can actually say that ‘language’ is a very hot and recurrent issue for some communities: namely the German-speaking community in Bernstein (D), the Czech-speaking community in Vejprty (CS), the German-speaking and Slovenian-speaking communities in Eisenkappel/Z? elezna Kapla (A),etc. The term ‘mother tongue’ is often used – forms the ‘way of thinking’ of its speakers, and thus the different ‘mentalities’ and ‘national characters’ are connected with the use of different languages. Many informants are convinced that it is the ‘mother tongue’ which determines thought, social behavior, and exhibition or control of affection and emotions. Thus the confrontation between languages automatically becomes a clash of mentalities. For example, the German-speaking community in Ba? renstein finds there is a relation between the insurmountable difficulty in pronouncing and learning the Czech language and the incomprehensibility of the words Czech-speaking people produce. People in western communities explain this widespread knowledge by saying that ‘the Others’ need to know my language, because my language is the superior One. We can also find indices of implicit prestige in many interview quotes, like ‘my language is useful to find a job’, ‘my language is more international than theirs’, ‘it represents a symbol of upward social mobility’; ‘the importance of my language forces them to learn it, and in this way they show practical sense, intelligence and cleverness, because they well know that the knowledge of the languages spoken on both sides of the border offers more professional and economic opportunities’. People are not generally interested in learning the language of the ‘Other’, and the reason is, as we have already seen, its ‘uselessness’, or its low value on the ‘language market’. They only learn what they need in their commercial transactions. Europe is a multilingual continent in which the tension between linguistic pluralism and assimilation is quite evident at present. Week-2 The topic for this week was â€Å"Creation of a Sense of Belonging through Language†, which we found very much interesting as we have to present our own explanation, views and thoughts. The topic is about Finland, Iceland and Latvia. Firstly we discussed about Finland that Swedish-speaking people along the coastlines, spoke a non-Scandinavian language, namely Finnish. The Finnish language was to become the most effective medium in the nation-building process as well as the most important criterion in creating an awareness of a collective identity. Language became a defining characteristic towards the ‘outside’ and a communicative driving force on the ‘inside’ within the great diversity of local and regional cultures. We could say that for the process of nation-building in Finland during the 19th century two main deficits had to be overcome: sovereign state structures had to be developed and an individual Finnish national consciousness had to be formed. In the process of spreading a Finnish national consciousness – a development often associated with the term ‘awakening’ as in a religious experience – the main focus was directed towards the common people, their language and culture. Finland’s modest cultural life, Finnish had gained the status of a modern cultural and scientific language. The civil servants, scholars, and many artists, continued to use Swedish as their language of communication and publication. But Finnish steadily gained ground. Many people were already, or became, bilingual. The accusation that Finnish was ‘too primitive’ was defeated by generating new terms, which proved that the language was innovative and possessed the potential for development. In the discussion about Iceland by Halfdanarson. The text tells a story of Icelandic nationalism and the struggle for independence of Iceland under Danish rule. Halfdanarson points out the rare case of Icelandic nationalism, and it’s non-violent nature. In fact, according to the article, both Iceland’s struggle for independence and the Danish reactions to it were both surprisingly pacific in nature, partly because of the idea of shared past and cultural heritage between the two countries. There are certain elements in common with the case study of Iceland and Herder’s text, such as the idea of mystic, shared past of a nation, the role of the single language of a social group forming the nation and so on. I think especially in cases like Iceland, language and linguistic identity have essential role in formation of national identity. Iceland is isolated, both in geographical terms as an island in the middle of Atlantic ocean and in terms of language. Although Icelandic is a language related to scandinavian languages, it still differes from them quite a lot. And lastly There was a question that is it possible to have a single language in whole Europe? We think its not possible to have a single langage in the whole Europe as there are many different countries with their own languages from last hundreds of years. In Europe, People communicate with each other using the shared language of their group. The group might be as small as a couple (married or unmarried partners, twins, mother and daughter etc. who share a ‘private’ language where only they know the meaning of some words) or as large as a nation, where everyone understands the allusions in their shared language (often allusions to shared history, to contemporary events, to media people of fact or fiction etc). The ‘secret’ language of the smallest group and the ‘public’ language of the national group are two ‘varieties’ of the same language. Every social group, large or small, has its own language variety, (regional groups have varieties of the national language (as opposed to regional or minority languages) which are usually called ‘dialects’) and there is overlap among all the varieties. However there is a possibility to use English as a second language as use of English gives a considerable advantage to the 13 % of EU citizens who are native English speakers, and to speakers of closely related languages (German, Dutch, Danish and Swedish), over all other Europeans. Week-3 In the week 3, we learned about ‘Language and subjective identity’. The two articles were on Franz Kafka and Simone de Beauvoir. Franz Kafka was German though he never lived among the Germans. He was then living in Prague, Czech. Hence Kafka knew both Czech & German languages. But, he preferred Czech Language as he was of the view that one could express his/her feeling in a better way in a particular language. In this case, he thought that Czech was a better language than German to express his feelings. Franz Kafka was in love with Czech translator Milena Jesenka. He used to demand Milena to write him letters in Czech language than German. He belived in a approach â€Å"belongs to a language†. When Milena replied his letters in Czech, he believed that Czech was much more affectionate, which removes all the uncertainties, he could see his lover more clearly, the movements of her body, her hands quickly which almost resembled as they both are meeting. This shows how Kafka prefered Czech more than German. Kafka encouraged his favourite sister Ottla in her marriage to Josef David, a Czech Catholic, against the opposition of parents and relatives, and wrote affectionately to his new brother-in-law in fluent Czech. For Prague Jews of Kafka’s generation, language and identity could be painfully dissonant. In Kafka’s case, this dissonance reached deep into his own family, conferring an alien quality on the most intimate of human relationships. Franz Kafka died of tuberculosis in 1924. He is buried beside his parents in the family plot in Prague’s New Jewish Cemetery. Simone de Beauvoir is a French Women. She was French writer, political activist, feminist, and social theorist. She gave her whole life for feminine rights and equality with men in Society. Beauvoir was an outstanding student. She did her postgraduate work at the Ecole Normale Superieure, the top postgraduate program in France, where she met Jean Paul Sartre. When World War II broke out in September 1939, Sartre was called for military service. He became a prisoner of war when the French army surrendered, but he was released and both Beauvoir and Sartre participated in the resistance, and after the Vichy Regime dismissed Beauvoir from her teaching position, she began a novel about the resistance. When the war ended, Beauvoir and Sartre became part of a group of leading French intellectuals, who concerned themselves with the perceived failures of modern French society. they founded Les Temps modernes as a means to explain their social and cultural views. At the same time, Sartre suggested to Beauvoir that she undertake a book on the status of women, and she published, La deuxieme sexe (The Second Sex). This was her most famous, and influential book. It became a sourcebook of modern feminism, particularly in the United States for later feminist thinkers such as Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. De Beauvoir used very specific and effective and powerful words to underline her matter. She is willing to deploy language and words towards others, because she knows about â€Å"a manner in which her body and her relation to the world are modified through the action of others than herself†. Asserting Ethnic Identity and Power Through Language. (2016, Oct 22). 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Reaction paper 2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Reaction paper 2 - Essay Example In the letter, King attempts to convince the ministers of the rationality of his actions and points out why they are necessary if natural ‘human goodness’ and morality were to be given a chance. Arguing that everyone, white and black, possessed natural ‘human goodness’, King points out that most white people, particularly in the north, had not heard or were perhaps not noticed the desperate condition of the black people of the South following the Emancipation Proclamation. Although they were free, they had to try to support themselves in a world that legally segregated them from the means of doing this. Only by forcing attention on the issues, through non-violent protest, would the black people be able to gain the attention of the white people and still illustrate that there was no justification for this oppression. Only by appealing to white people, who held all the power, could change be forced through the political process. Adhering to St. Augustine’s contention that â€Å"an unjust law is no law at all†, King insisted that non-violent protests such as those he was organizing were not breaking the law but were instead adhering to a higher moral and ethical law. The segregation laws were directly counter to the Supreme Court ruling regarding equality to people of color because they were applied only to black people. He argued that to break an unjust and immoral law is thus acting in a moral and just manner for the good of the community, especially if this can be completed in a peaceful, kindly manner. This, he argued, was a necessary action because the tension in the black community was continuing to build and would soon rage out of control into violent action. Peaceful protest provided both the necessary outlet for these emotions as well as brought positive attention to the plight of his community. At the end of his letter, King criticizes the church leaders

Media Bias in War Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

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