Friday, October 30

We watched a couple of the classic horror clips on cinemassacre.com (courtesy of Ryan), then watched the first twenty minutes or so of Freaks (1934).

Thursday, October 29

Students took a quizlet (5 questions) over the handout on German Expressionism distributed Wednesday, after which we watched more scenes from Murnau's Nosferatu and the very beginning of Lang's Metropolis.

Mr. P distributed a second handout on Expressionism, this time from Brittanica Online.
The two handouts and information from class sessions will be the material tested in a quiz next Wednesday.

Wednesday, October 28

In response to the class's request on Tuesday that we watch films appropriate to Halloween, we turned our attention to German post-WWI Expressionism and the films which launched the horror genre.

We learned a bit about conditions in Germany in the wake of the Great War which gave birth to Expressionism in the arts, then watched the first twenty-five minutes of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, followed by a few minutes of Murnau's Nosferatu.

Students received a multi-page handout on German Expressionism

HW due Thursday:
Read the handout and prepare to answer questions about it.

Tuesday, October 27

We watched the opening of a "media awareness" video ("Reading Between the Frames") from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Entitled "Time is not what it seems," the segment discusses the distortion of time in film for emotional effect and uses a clip from The Fast and the Furious. We then compared that scene to the Odessa Steps sequence in Battleship Potemkin with its time distortions.

After that we discussed questions of realism (or illusionism) and propaganda in films ranging from Birth of a Nation to Potemkin to 300.

Monday, October 26

We continued our study of montage in the 1920's, first by looking at some of the static photomontages by the German socialist (Communist) John Heartfield, then by re-viewing (again) and discussing the Odessa Steps sequence in Battleship Potemkin, and comparing it with Marcel Duchamps' famous painting Nude Descending a Staircase.

Friday, October 23

We continued our analysis of Battleship Potemkin, looking at the stone cherubs and at both montage and motif in the famous Odessa Steps sequence.

Thursday, October 22

Students having finished watching Battleship Potemkin in Mr. P's absence Wednesday, we discussed juxtaposition, montage, and imagery in the early parts of the film. We focused especially on montage of association and its opposite, montage of contrast, and on sexual imagery in the scene leading up to the mutiny, which some students dismissed as a mere product of the teacher's overheated brain.

Tuesday, October 20

Mr. P introduced certain terms and concepts central to montage in avant-garde Soviet film of the 1920's, after which we began watching Battleship Potemkin.

Friday, October 16

Intro to Early Soviet Film

Mr. P announced Battleship Potemkin as the next film we will study in class, and we made the transition from Birth of a Nation partly by glancing at the decisive influence which Griffith's films had upon Eisenstein and other Soviet filmmakers around the time of the Russian Revolution. We also showed how the appeal of film's propaganda potential linked Griffith with the Russians.

Another link we examined (using projected images) was the link between Russian Constructivism as an artistic style and developments in modern art in Western Europe at that time.

Thursday, October 15

We reviewed the lessons of Birth of a Nation (thank God for the KKK, white people unite and fight), then watched more of Lillian Gish, starting with the famous cross-cutting tour de force on the ice floes in Way Down East and including her final role in The Whales of August in 1987!

Wednesday, October 14

We went over the worksheet from Tuesday, supplying examples from Birth of various techniques pioneered or perfected by Griffith in that film.

Students turned in the worksheets at the end of class.

Tuesday, October 13

We finished watching Birth of a Nation while students checked off items on a list of pioneering techniques used in the film.

Monday, October 12

tudents received a handout ("Mr. Griffith Goes to Washington") about the Washington, D.C. premieres of Birth of a Nation, including one at the White House. We discussed the handout briefly, then returned to watching the film, as the carpetbaggers head pursue their insidious crusade to crush the white South and to (gasp) elevate black people to full social equality.

Friday, October 9

Students turned in single-scene analysis essays and returned films.

We examined briefy the mulatto characters in Birth of a Nation and looked at yesterday's news coverage of Michelle Obama's ancestry.

Thursday, October 8

We reviewed briefly what we learned Wednesday in the beginning of Birth of a Nation, then resumed watching it, skimming through and skipping over some passages, and finishing with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

HW due Friday:
Single-scene analysis essay.

Wednesday, October 7

Class was divided between watching parts of two films, namely:

(1) a few more secctions of the PBS Reconstruction documentary, sampled yesterday, and

(2) the antidote to that mendacious and subversive propaganda, the beginning of D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation.

HW due Friday:
Single-scene analysis

Tuesday, October 6

We turned our attention to the next film we will watch, D.W. Griffith's monumental Birth of a Nation, and discussed why it is the most influential film in American cinematic history (both for its influence on other filmmakers and for its influence on American racial attitudes).

Students received a handout on the film.

We then watched several minutes of a PBS documentary on Reconstruction for historical background (and for a very different perspective on the subject from Griffith's).

HW due Wednesday:
Read the handout.

HW due Friday:
Single-scene analysis.

Monday, October 5

Students turned in the first paragraphs of their single-scene analysis essays and we put several, chose at random, under the document camera and critiqued them.

Afterwards, we watched the beginning of "In the Beginning," the first film in a documentary series about the silent-film era.

HW due Friday:
Single-scene analysis essay.

Thursday, October 1

Senior meeting. No class.