When “Working class realism” emerged within British cinema in 1956, it became acknowledged as a break of determination to tackle certain social and real issues. This was presented as a “New Wave” within British film and offered an opposition to the original procedures and approaches to British Cinema. “Working class realism” an analytical piece by John Hill, reveals to us how, coinciding with the 'new Britain' that was stabilizing and evolving after the war, was a 'New wave' of British social problem films. They were acknowledged for the fact that they were 'realist' films with a purpose to reveal the reality of Britain onto the film screen without disguising it with the 'Hollywood style' facades. This new concept involved the revolutionary move to include the industrial working class within it and diverse from the social groups previously portrayed through film. These British 'new wave' films began to include youthful protagonists, absorbed in the period's thriving society, which seemed to portray the relevant themes and the social issues at this time. Although, it is suggested that “New Wave” films were mostly about interpersonal relationships in Working class and industrial settings, and that although it is believe that many of these inspirational movement pieces were to portray forms of social injustice, it may not have been their intention to explore and portray through film the economic system and question its ethics. It may well have been, as John Hill suggested that the many social problem films that can be found throughout this movement, could have obscured as much as they enlightened the potential for social change and reconstruction. It is known that many of the great Directors of the time will have grown up in Working class positions and have personal experiences that they’d have wished to portray through the use of film. We can see that a characteristic of many New Wave films are poetic shots and montages of the northern industrial landscape as it was the Working class in the North of England that suffered greatly post-war.
November 1998, written for FILM 220: Aspects of Criticism. This is a 24-week course for second-year students, examining methods of critical analysis, interpretation and evaluation. The final assignment was simply to write a 1000-word critical essay on a film seen in class during the final six-weeks of the course. Students were expected to draw on concepts they had studied over the length of the course.
Grainge, P., Jancovich, M., & Monteith, S. (2012). Film Histories; An introduction and reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Film making has gone through quite the substantial change since it’s initial coining just before the turn of the 19th century, and one would tend argue that the largest amount of this change has come quite recently or more so in the latter part of film’s history as a whole. One of the more prominent changes having taken place being the role of women in film. Once upon a time having a very set role in the industry, such as editing for example. To mention briefly the likes of Dede Allen, Verna Fields, Thelma Schoonmaker and so forth. Our female counterparts now occupy virtually every aspect of the film making industry that males do; and in many instances excel past us. Quite clearly this change has taken place behind the lens, but has it taken
In this essay I will be looking at the topic of the countercultural movement of the 1960’s through counterculture film. The 1960’s were an extremely interesting time in history not only in the United States but all over the western world, as we saw the rise of the counterculture generation. The counter was a group of movements focused on achieving personal and cultural liberation and was embraced in many different ways by the decade’s young people. I have chosen this topic as the 60’s stand out for me as a revolutionary and often misrepresented period in history. The films I have chosen to look at are The Baader Meinhof Complex from director Uli Edel, Woodstock from Michael Wadleigh, Pirate Radio from Richard Curtis, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas from director Terry Gilliam. I chose to analyse these films as I believe they clearly demonstrate the social and political issues of the 1960’s and societies response to them.
BIBLIOGRAPHY An Introduction to Film Studies Jill Nelmes (ed.) Routledge 1996 Anatomy of Film Bernard H. Dick St. Martins Press 1998 Key Concepts in Cinema Studies Susan Hayward Routledge 1996 Teach Yourself Film Studies Warren Buckland Hodder & Stoughton 1998 Interpreting the Moving Image Noel Carroll Cambridge University Press 1998 The Cinema Book Pam Cook (ed.) BFI 1985 FILMOGRAPHY All That Heaven Allows Dir. Douglas Sirk Universal 1955 Being There Dir. Hal Ashby 1979
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...
It is evident that Western Cultural values are diffused worldwide through the movie industry. The films are controlled by western funding and reflect Western perspectives vividly. Between the lines in the scripts, filmgoers are urged to link the Western culture and “whiteness” with positive-hence legitimate-values and accept whites dominant position. Film is a powerful medium, thus movies were created with emotional designs on the individual audience in order to control his or her mind hence Hollywood serve as the functional means for establishing the concept of white supremacy. Hollywood movies are therefore the main instruments for establishing the whit supremacy mind-set that automatically triggers the message that whites are far superior than any other race. Ideological hegemony theorizes the way in which relationships of domination and exploitation are embedded in the dominant ideas of society. To the extent that dominant ideas are internalized, they induce consent to these relationships on the part of the dominated and exploited. Blood Diamond and In the Heat of the Night are two distinct movies where the movie makers present us with two different ideological concepts, Both films portrayed the white and non white consciousness. Blood Diamond they attacked their own race as In the Heat of the Night the whites attacked the non whites . Blood Diamond showed this in a more violent way then In the Heat of the Night did. The conscious of both films were power and authority. The blacks in each of these films are seen as secondary characters which is usually a way of promoting the supremacy of whites . The movie Blood Diamond discusses the complexity of conflicts with bringing western group intt Sierra Leone. This concept also trie...
During the course of this essay it is my intention to discuss the differences between Classical Hollywood and post-Classical Hollywood. Although these terms refer to theoretical movements of which they are not definitive it is my goal to show that they are applicable in a broad way to a cinema tradition that dominated Hollywood production between 1916 and 1960 and which also pervaded Western Mainstream Cinema (Classical Hollywood or Classic Narrative Cinema) and to the movement and changes that came about following this time period (Post-Classical or New Hollywood). I intend to do this by first analysing and defining aspects of Classical Hollywood and having done that, examining post classical at which time the relationship between them will become evident. It is my intention to reference films from both movements and also published texts relative to the subject matter. In order to illustrate the structures involved I will be writing about the subjects of genre and genre transformation, the representation of gender, postmodernism and the relationship between style, form and content.
The new introduces ideas this video on "How TV Frames the Working Class" is how TV is not meant to educate, but instead is to entrain. Most TV shows attack the poor with the simple fact that you have to work to pay bills. I truly believe if a person wants to succeed they are able to accomplish that here in America the land of opportunities. We shouldn't not take into consideration on how TV makes us feel of being the working poor to work hard and still not have enough to live a decent life. It is a personal responsibility that we have to want ouselfs or our children to be better to create a better future. The ideas that come to my mind when watching this video of how televation revel who we are is trying to be a better person not to be labeled
The 1920s was a time of the great success and thrive of the film industry. It was the beginning of the studio era, as the main eight studios emerged (The Big Five: Warner Brother Pictures, Metro Golden Meyer, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, RKO; The Little Three: United Artists, Universal, Columbia Picture). Especially in 1920s the market started to grow rapidly. First of all it was because of technology progress, (such as the ability to create longer movies; starting from 1910s there were experiments for sound creation), growing interest from the audience and growing popularity of actors. Also one of the main reasons was commercial side, as lots of people saw a great opportunity to raise money from the film making.
Sunset Boulevard directed by Billy Wilder in 1950 is based on how Norma Desmond, a huge Hollywood star, deals with her fall from fame. The film explores the fantasy world in which Norma is living in and the complex relationship between her and small time writer Joe Gillis, which leads to his death. Sunset Boulevard is seen as lifting the ‘face’ of the Hollywood Studio System to reveal the truth behind the organisation. During the time the film was released in the 1950s and 60s, audiences started to see the demise of Hollywood as cinema going began to decline and the fierce competition of television almost proved too much for the well established system. Throughout this essay I will discuss how Sunset Boulevard represents the Hollywood Studio System, as well as exploring post war literature giving reasons as to why the system began to crumble.
In recent times, such stereotyped categorizations of films are becoming inapplicable. ‘Blockbusters’ with celebrity-studded casts may have plots in which characters explore the depths of the human psyche, or avant-garde film techniques. Titles like ‘American Beauty’ (1999), ‘Fight Club’ (1999) and ‘Kill Bill 2’ (2004) come readily into mind. Hollywood perhaps could be gradually losing its stigma as a money-hungry machine churning out predictable, unintelligent flicks for mass consumption. While whether this image of Hollywood is justified remains open to debate, earlier films in the 60’s and 70’s like ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ (1967) and ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976) already revealed signs of depth and avant-garde film techniques. These films were successful as not only did they appeal to the mass audience, but they managed to communicate alternate messages to select groups who understood subtleties within them.
The jacket blurb on Robert Coover’s creative compilation A Night at the Movies reads: “From Hollywood B-movies to Hollywood classics, A Night at the Movies invents what ‘might have happened’ in these Saturday afternoon matinees. Mad scientists, vampires, cowboys, dance-men, Chaplin, and Bogart, all flit across Robert Coover’s riotously funny screen, doing things and uttering lines that are as shocking to them as they are funny to the reader. As Coover’s Program announces, you will get Coming Attractions, The Weekly Serial, Adventure, Comedy, Romance, and more, but turned upside-down and inside-out.” It is perhaps more appropriate to call Coover’s work a creative compilation as opposed to a novel or even a collection of short stories. A single theme of “what might have happened” runs throughout each of the inclusions, each inclusion being devoted to a particular Hollywood movie. Thus, the text as a whole is united by means of this common thread, but the thread is thin and stretched tightly, resulting in each inclusion having the ability to stand alone as a complete and independent work, related to the others, yet individual. The complete collection may be examined as a work, or conversely, each individual “story” may be considered a finished work to be studied.
Eliminative Materialism tackles the subject of consciousness. It is defined by the Stanford Encyclopedia as "the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist". According to the required films, Eliminative Materialism if cannot be explained fully or comprehensively by mathematics, physics, chemistry, and so on it is okay to say "Well, God did it". The films also state, "when we scientifically advance we replace the old and outdated concepts with new and more accurate terminology which reflects new understanding of our universe". Thus, instead of talking about Thor we talk about electrical magnetic currents. Thus,
In the early 1950s the films of Douglas Sirk led the way in defining the emerging genre of the Hollywood melodrama. "Melodrama" strictly means the combination of music (melos) and drama, but the term is used to refer to the "popular romances that depicted a virtuous individual (usually a woman) or couple (usually lovers) victimized by repressive and inequitable social circumstances" (Schatz 222). Sirk's films were commercially successful and boosted the careers of stars like Lauren Bacall, Jane Wyman, and Rock Hudson, who was in seven of Sirk's thirteen American films (Halliday 162-171). Although critics in the fifties called the films "trivial" and "campy" and dismissed them as "tearjerkers" or "female weepies" (Schatz 224), critics in the seventies re-examined Sirk's work and developed an "academic respect for the genre" and declared that the films actually had "subversive relationship to the dominant ideology" (Klinger xii). Douglas Sirk's Magnificent Obsession (1954) and Imitation of Life (1959) are representative of the techniques melodramas used to address relevant fifties issues like class, gender, and race.