Hu 300: Arts and Humanities 20th Century and BEYOND

Some Central Questions Tools for Critical Viewing

Cinema and Propaganda Cinema and Falsity: An Ethical

Matter?

Cinema is a collaborative effort, sometimes involving hundreds of

people.

Which art forms are collaborative and which are created by a single

artist?

What’s the difference between

a movie and a film?

1. Cinematography

2. Time bending3. Editing4. Genre-Bending

What can the camera tell us that nothing else can?

What is the camera’s point of view, throughout a film or in any given moment?

A film very rarely occurs in “real time”!

Aside from skipping time (creating lapses, which the viewer fills in mentally), what can a director do

with time?

Freeze FrameElongate, as with tracking shots

Compress, as with quick cutsConfuse Narrative Sequence

Standard film editing determines what shots we see and how often those shots change.

Very often it’s editing that tells us what’s going on in the story, rather than actor dialogue!

Consider “The Bourne Supremacy”. Did you find that film difficult to follow? It’s an editing “tour de force”, switching viewpoints at a speed that’s right at the edge of what human beings can visually understand!

Genres: • Older Films -

Slapstick Farce Film Noir

• Screen Musical• Western• Horror/Suspense• Documentary• Animation• Romantic Comedy• “Drama”?

Have you seen the movie “Fight Club”? What is its genre?

Have you seen the movie “Shelter Island”? What’s that genre?

The first full-length movie “Rebirth of a Nation” addressed reconstruction efforts after the civil war. It contained a positive depiction of the KKK!

Soon afterwards, a director named “Eisenstein” was asked by the new Soviet Union government to make a movie to make the old, overthrown government look bad. This movie included a graphic scene in which the former government slaughtered many innocent men, women and children. The scene was pure invention!

How much of our sense of history comes from movies? Should we trust what we learn about history from movies?

What do movies tell us about our bodies and our appearance? Should we trust these suggestions?

What do movies tell us about how to be happy? About how to be a good person? Should we trust these suggestions?

The faces of the actors in “Avatar” were largely “digitized”. Should these actors be eligible for Academy Awards?

Would it bother you to learn that the action scenes from your favorite movie were “digital” rather than real?

Are there ethical problems with movies that misrepresent computer generated images as real?