Elaine Billiris Professor Robak HUM 4938-005 (83341) World Film Postwar November 8, 2014 The Czech New Wave From the Devetsil movement in the 1930s, evolved a movement within filmmakers called The Czechoslovak New Wave in response to the communist regime who took over the country in the late 1940s. Instead of following the traditional style of film communist countries abided by, the filmmakers of the Czech New Wave decided to stray from censorship and truly express their feelings toward communism. The films presented more dark themes and portrayed a more peculiar sense of humor which wasn’t favored by all viewers. To say the least, the films were considered graphic, surreal, and sometimes morbid. In the Communist Government’s eyes, the films …show more content…
Jireš attended FAMU (similar to the other two directors) and the Industrial Film School in Cimelice. Jireš struggled with the idea of censorship because he wanted to freely express his opinion of Communism. He followed the ideals of the dark, twisted themes of the Czech New Wave. Jireš most popular film, The Joke, was an idea taken from a novel written by Milan Kundera in 1967 after the Warsaw Pact invasion. This film is about a forbidden man from Communism and his girlfriend that he plans to plant revenge amongst her. The Joke explains the idea of the story entirely “a political joke” on one man. The Joke was considered the last film of the Czech New Wave. He produced the film in 1968 which was a time in which the Czechoslovakian’s were politically liberated. (The Joke, Jireš). The film was first allowed to be premiered in theatres, but because it was after the invasion, it was later banned for the next twenty years. When the Soviets started to takeover Czechoslovakia, Jireš still produced film; however, he made the films less controversial. Jireš won several awards. For example, his film My Love to the Swallows, a film about a Czech resistance fighter from the War. In fact, his film The Young Man and Moby Dick was considered in the 11th Moscow International Film Festival for a recognition (DiPaolo,
The focus of this investigation is the ability of leaders to appeal to human emotion through propaganda. Propaganda became especially prevalent in the United States of America during the Second Red Scare between 1947 and 1954. Propaganda assisted in the infiltration of anti-communist ideals. This examination specifically focuses on the extent to which film propaganda during this time period influenced anti-communist hysteria. The movies produced during the Cold War glorified American democracy and an evaluation is completed discussing the impact of this glorification on society. The analysis emphasizes how these beliefs infiltrated all genres of moviemaking, according to researchers of film propaganda and American politics. Several secondary sources are used to look at film propaganda produced during the era of McCarthyism and the anti-communist hysteria existing exclusively in this time period.
The Bolshevik Revolution was a defining turning point in Russian history. This overall revolution consisted of two individual revolutions in 1917 which resulted in the overthrow of the Tsarist government and the formation of a socialist society led by Vladimir Lenin’s radical Bolsheviks. For a moment with such enormous weight like the Bolshevik Revolution, there will be various interpretations on the true results of that moment and the meaning and value of these results. The film Man with a Movie Camera deals with the results of the Bolshevik Revolution and the early Soviet Society it birthed as it utilizes footage of one day in this early Soviet Union, thus making it worthy of examination. In the film Man With a Movie Camera, Vertov impressively
White, Kenneth. “Forget Your Desire: The Cinema of Guy Maddin.” Millenium Film Journal 45/46 (2006): 133-139.
Classic film noir originated after World War II. This is the time where post World War II pessimism, anxiety, and suspicion was taking the world by storm. Many films that were released in the U.S. Between 1939s and 1940s were considered propaganda films that were designed for entertainment during the Depression and World War II. During the 1930s many German and Europeans immigrated to the U.S. and helped the American film industry with powerf...
...e American Dream. Larry Ceplair and Englund stated in the book The Inquistion in Hollywood, “The destruction of the motion picture Left not only transformed the political atmosphere in Hollywood, but also adversely affected the kind of product which the studios turned out. “ In the early 20th century Hollywood reframed from producing politically controversial films in fear of becoming a target of McCarthy or the HUAC. Anti-communism influences the films produced, films portrayed communism as evil and immoral. The films during the cold war certainly portrayed the political storm between the progressive left and the conservative right. Films such as Ninotchka in 1939, showed anti-communism, guilty of Treason 1949, showed an attack against communism, exploiting the evils of communism was shown in Docudrama. The Red Menace in 1949 showed the immense threat f communism.
Fred Wright, Lauren's instructor for EN 132 (Life, Language, Literature), comments, "English 132 is an introduction to English studies, in which students learn about various areas in the discipline from linguistics to the study of popular culture. For the literature and literary criticism section of the course, students read a canonical work of literature and what scholars have said about the work over the years. This year, students read One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey, a classic of American literature which dates from the 1960s counterculture. Popularized in a film version starring Jack Nicholson, which the class also watched in order to discuss film studies and adaptation, the novel became notable for its sympathetic portrayal of the mentally ill. For an essay about the novel, students were asked to choose a critical approach (such as feminist, formalist, psychological, and so forth) and interpret the novel using that approach, while also considering how their interpretation fit into the ongoing scholarly dialogue about the work. Lauren chose the challenge of applying a Marxist approach to One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Not only did she learn about critical approaches and how to apply one to a text, she wrote an excellent essay, which will help other readers understand the text better. In fact, if John Clark Pratt or another editor ever want to update the 1996 Viking Critical Library edition of the novel, then he or she might want to include Lauren's essay in the next edition!"
In 1959- early 1960 five directors released debut feature length films that are widely regarded as heralding the start of the French nouvelle vague or French New Wave. Claude Chabrols Le Beau Serge (The Good Serge, 1959) and Les Cousins (The Cousins, 1959) were released, along with Francois Truffauts Les Quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows, 1959), Jean-Luc Godards A bout de souffle (Breathless, 1960) and Alain Resnais Hiroshima mon amour (Hiroshima my love, 1959). These films were the beginning of a revolution in French cinema. In the following years these directors were to follow up their debuts, while other young directors made their first features, in fact between 1959-63 over 170 French directors made their debut films. These films were very different to anything French and American cinema had ever produced both in film style and film form and would change the shape of cinema to come for years. To understand how and why this nouvelle vague happened we must first look at the historical, social, economical and political aspects of France and the French film industry leading up to the onset of the nouvelle vague.
As normalization continued, the Communist leaders and television writers became better at peaking the interest of the public in Czechoslovakia. Bren discusses many television serials that arose in Czechoslovakia during the 1970’s, and many of them were extremely popular. Two television serials that stuck out most to me were The Youngest in the Hamr Dynasty and A Hospital on the Edge of Town. Both of these serials had strong communist themes and reached over 80 percent of Czechoslovakian television owners (Bren 136 and 145). Many people were watching and loving these portrayals of ideological communist
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
...s appeared not so much to matter as the fact that he developed new techniques, devised camera approaches and sought always to bring out the potential of a still developing form. That he forgot--or overlooked--to bring the Marxist message to one of his films two years ago brought him that fatal kiss of all--the accusation from the authoritative Soviet magazine, Culture and Life, that his productions had been short on the prescribed Soviet requirement of art and interpretation of history” ("Sergei Eisenstein is Dead in Moscow”, New York Times, 1948) . In film, Eisenstein was known for his development of the montage sequence, his unusual juxtapositions, and his life-like imagery. In life he was known for his propaganda and belief in the plight of the working class. Eisenstein left an inevitable mark on his community, his time, the shape of a sub-culture, and his art.
An obvious difference in these films is that the 1931 version played to a Depression audience and that the Coppola version played to a modern audience. (I am being extremely careful because, obviously, the 1931 audience was modern in 1931; however, we like to think of ourselves as being more modern than past generations. There are differences in the audiences which viewed the respective versions in their time, and I hope to prove this point as the paper unfolds.)
During the mid and late 1970’s, the mood of American films shifted sharply. People needed to get away from such negative memories as the Vietnam War, long gas lines, the resignation of President Nixon, and ...
However, in stark contrast to The General, other films were being made around the world that did not follow a simple Hollywood structure, but rather were more experimental with what a movie could be. Man With a Movie Camera (1929), a very ahead of its time, utilized a completely different style of filmmaking that resonated strongly with the ideals of the Soviet Union. Thus, Man With a Movie Camera sought out to make the everyday people of the Soviet Union the stars of the film. This idea was completely revolutionary as well, and almost by necessity, introduced a new style of editing to fit the story—or rather the documentation—that director Dziga Vertov was trying to tell.
It was not until the mid 1930s that the brutish dictator truly recognized the potential power of media, where in 1935 a special funding was given to the production of Italian films which was used to open up film institutions like the ‘Centro Sperimenale di Cinematografia’ (CSC) film school, and ‘Cinecitta’ (Cinema City) studios in 1937 (Ruberto and Wilson, 2007). The development of these institutions sparked the appearance of early sound cinema, specializing in genres such as comedies, melodramas, musicals and historical films, but were all categorized as ‘propaganda’ and ‘white telephone’ films by many critics due...
David Bordwell. The Idea of Montage in Soviet Art and Film. – Cinema Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1972, 9-17.