MEDIA HISTORIES 1850-2050 Winter 2017 DESMA 8 Media Histories Dr. Peter Lunenfeld [lunenfeld@ucla.edu] Second Wave: Cinema (1900-1950)
Plato, The Allegory of the Cave
The Cave (2008), written, produced and directed by Michael Ramsey Claymation by John Grigsby, narration by Kristopher Hutson http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69F7GhASOdM
Behold! human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marioneCe players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets. ...And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent. You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners. Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave? True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads? And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows? Yes, he said. And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them? Very true. And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow? No quesNon, he replied. To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images. That is certain.
Second Wave: Cinema (1900-1950)
By the Nme the film industry had seCled down, it had seCled for narraNve, and it took its task to be primarily one of story-telling -- through pictures and Ntle-cards -- and then through pictures and sound. In this mode, the possibiliNes of the new medium as an art-form in itself, a game with an inquiry into vision … got rather short shriP with the general public. If it is important to remember that ‘ film ” for many people means the narraNve feature film, it is important too to remember how much else is going on. Michael Wood, Film: A Very Short Introduc5on
Proto and Early Cinema (1863-1903) The Development of the Classical Hollywood Cinema (1908-1927) German Expressionism (1919 – 1926) French Impressionism and Surrealism (1918-1930) Soviet Montage (1924-1930) The Classical Hollywood Cinema aPer the Coming of Sound Italian Neo-Realism (1942-1951) The French New Wave (1959-1964) The New Hollywood and Independent Filmmaking
+ + Perspectival Realism Mechanical Reproducibility Advances in Optics & An environment rife with new Yield Proto-Photographic technologies, markets and desires Camera Obscura
+ + = Perspectival Realism Mechanical Reproducibility Advances in Optics Photography & An environment rife with new Yield Proto-Photographic technologies, markets and desires Camera Obscura
+ = Photography Motion ? What Exactly
Proto Cinema (1863-1903)
ProtocinemaNc Media– Magic Lanterns
ProtocinemaNc Media– Magic Lanterns Flipbooks Mutascopes Zootropes Phenakistoscopes Praxinoscopes
Étienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904), Chronophotography
Chronophotography
Marey, Pole Vaulter
Marey, Pole
Eadweard J. Muybridge (1830 – 1904) Do a horse ’ s hooves all leave the ground at the same Nme?
Edison and the Kinetoscope
Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) and the invenNon of the Kinetoscope [among other things including light bulbs & the phonograph]
Edison, Fred OC ’ s Sneeze (1894) ]
Edison Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895) Edison Studios, Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895)
The Lumière Brothers Auguste Marie (1862 – 1954) Louis Jean (1864 – 1948) ActualiNes – The Films of ACracNon
The Lumiere Brothers Auguste Marie (1862 – 1954) Louis Jean (1864 – 1948) ActualiNes – The Films of ACracNon
Young man, you should thank me. This invenNon will ruin you. It can be exploited for a while as a scienNfic curiosity; beyond that it had no commercial future. Auguste Lumière refusing Georges Méliès permission to use the Cinématographe, 1896
Georges Méliès 1861 -1938 Méliès the Magician
Early Cinema (1863-1903) The Development of the Classical Hollywood Cinema (1908-1927)
MEDIA HISTORIES 1850-2050 Winter 2018 DESMA 8 Dr. Peter Lunenfeld [lunenfeld@ucla.edu] How to Talk about Movies
Early Cinema (1863-1903) The Development of the Classical Hollywood Cinema (1908-1927)
But first…. Modernism
Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase no. 2 (1912) Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye (1928-1931) Proctor Automatic Pop-up Toaster, designed by Donald Earl Daily (c. 1947)
“ We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty - the beauty of speed. A racing car with its bonnet draped with exhaust pipes like fire-breathing serpents - a roaring racing car, rattling along like a machine gun, is more beautiful than the winged victory of Samothrace. ” From The First Manifesto of Futurism , 1909 The Victory of Samothrace 1909 Ettore Bugatti Deutz (2nd Century BC)
The Future of the Futurists, or Be Careful What You Wish For Marinetti, Boccioni and Sant ’ Elia in uniform Boccioni and Sant ’ Elia were killed in WW1, Marinetti wounded.
We know that the cinema is modern. Fritz Lang, the robot from Metropolis (1927)
Fritz Lang, the robot from Metropolis (1927)
There are many definiNons of modernism. Here is a succinct one: “The essence of Modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of characterisNc methods of a discipline to criNcize the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence.” Clement Greenberg, “Modernist PainNng” (1960) Jackson Pollock , Number 8 , 1948
Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon , 1907
Piet Mondrian, Composi5on with Red, Yellow, Blue and Black , 1921
Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917
Le Corbusier, Villa Savoy, 1929
El Lissitzky, “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge” (1920)
Vladimir Tatlin, Model for the Monument to the Third InternaNonal (1919-20)
Cinema and Mechanization Charlie Chaplin, Modern Times (1936)
Early Cinema (1863-1903) The Development of the Classical Hollywood Cinema (1908-1927) German Expressionism (1919 – 1926)
Robert Wiene, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Early Cinema (1863-1903) The Development of the Classical Hollywood Cinema (1908-1927) German Expressionism (1919 – 1926) French Impressionism and Surrealism (1918-1930)
Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí An Andalusian Dog (1929)
Early Cinema (1863-1903) The Development of the Classical Hollywood Cinema German Expressionism (1919 – 1926) French Impressionism and Surrealism (1918-1930) Soviet Montage (1924-1930)
The Kuleshov Effect: Ivan Mozzhukhin, the most famous actor of pre-revoluNonary Tsarist Russia
Russian psychologist turned director Lev Kuleshov used three idenNcal clips of the actor cut against three different images to test the audience’s reacNon
The Kuleshov Effect
The Kuleshov Effect One More Time, But By Hitchcock, and with a Bikini
Sergie Eisenstein (1898-1948) “ …the idea saNaNon of the author, his subjecNon to prejudice by the idea, must determine actually the whole course of the art-work, and if the art- work does not represent an embodiment of the original idea, we shall never have as result an art- work realized to its utmost fullness. ” Film Form
BaHleship Potemkin (1925) Odessa Steps Sequence
“ A DialecNc Approach to Film Form ” (1929) The Potemkin Lions For art is always conflict: (1) according to its social mission, (2) according to its nature, (3) according to its methodology p. 46 Now why should the cinema follow the forms of theater and painting rather than the methodology of language, which allows wholly new concepts of ideas to arise from the combination of two concrete objects? Language is much closer to film than painting is. For example, in painting the form arises from abstract elements of line and color, while in cinema the material concreteness of the image within the frame presents-as an element-the greatest di ffi culty in manipulation. So why not lean towards the system of language, which is forced to use the same mechanics in inventing words and word-complexes? p. 60
The Potemkin Lions
The Potemkin Lions
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