Development of the Film

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/movies/02godard.html

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Film language speaks not just between film maker and audience, but through time as well.  Knowing that language makes an understanding the history of film all the richer.

If you have ambitions to be a part of the film industry, of course, you will spend a lot of time watching and analyzing films, to learn what makes an engaging movie.  And you will inevitably echo what you have learned in your own films, whether consciously or not.  While we tend to emphasize the individual vision of a film maker as the primary influence on a film, all honest artists acknowledge their debt to past masters of their genre.  Listen to great directors talk about their work, and you will hear a litany of films and film makers that have inspired them.  Take, for example, Quentin Tarantino's love for Italian B movies, which he has reinterpreted for an American audience.

But even if your only involvement with film is as an audience member and fan, the history of film still speaks to you through today's movies, and being attuned to that message will enhance your understanding of a film maker's choices.  It's much like learning any foreign language; the better you grasp the connotations and underlying assumptions of the words, the richer the meaning of the speech.  And the only way to learn a language well is to immerse yourself in that language, letting it swirl around you as you slowly make sense of its parts, discovering the ideas and rules that organize it.  Aren't we lucky that to so so means we have to watch even more films?

No class this week, but I am moved to write anyway. Sunday night I watched the Royal Shakespeare Company's latest Hamlet¸ which was part of their 2008 season, and subsequently recreated for PBS in 2009. It's on DVD now, and is also being streamed on pbs.org. For my fellow sci-fi geeks out there, this is the production that stars David Tennant and Patrick Stewart.


So, why write in a film blog about is likely the most iconic and well-known play in the English language? Sure, Hamlet has been captured on film many times, and on occasion, quite successfully. But it is undoubtedly a play, one written at a time when no one had even conceived of moving pictures. Shakespeare wrote for the stage, a very particular and distinctive stage at that: the Elizabethan theatre. So a filmed Hamlet, no matter how well done, is still a play on film, a translation of the language of theater to the language of film.

And yet, and yet. The director, Gregory Doran, of both the play and the video production took that challenge head on and quite consciously made use of the fact that there were cameras on "the stage," as it were. Of course, he has at his disposal all the ordinary elements of film language that distinguish a film from a play: camera moves, close-ups and the like. And Doran deliberately uses this language, when it suits his purpose. During the first soliloquy, the camera starts from a distance, as Hamlet, alone, weeps for his father and for his own misery, but slowly circles and moves closer, encouraging Hamlet, as Doran says in the commentary, “to open up” to the audience. In the second soliloquy, as Hamlet reveals his plan to act mad, there is a single startling jump cut, a dislocation on the screen that suggests that Hamlet’s madness might not be pure play-acting. Jump-cuts are impossible on the stage, they are a purely film technique, so this is a good example of how Doran uses the language of film to tell the story of the play.

The audience becomes the camera as Hamlet breaks the fourth wall to speak directly to those watching by gazing directly into the camera. The soliloquies of this play are famous, of course. Even those who know nothing of Shakespeare know the phrase “to be or not to be,” the most famous lines in English literature. This speech is the anguished musing of a desperate young man who can’t decide which is worse, to live or to die. On the stage, the audience is necessarily separated from the actor, somewhat disengaged from his pain. But film allows for a closer interaction, and indeed, in the RSC production, this scene is filmed entirely in the tightest close-up shot of the entire production, as the actor, David Tennant, looks directly at the viewers, or rather, directly at EACH viewer, including him or her in the consideration of suicide.

But what I find so interesting is that Doran and his team don’t simply use cameras to film their play, or even just to translate their play into a film. Instead, they considered the meaning that we modern folks place on cameras and use that significance to bring new interpretations to the play. The theme of spying is well-developed in the play as Shakespeare wrote it, as various characters try to discover each other’s secrets. So the director makes that theme explicit in his filmed version of the play. Elsinore Castle is equipped with security cameras which impassively record the drama and suggest that someone is always watching the action, even during the most intimate soliloquies. And of course, someone always is: the audience. The security cameras emphasize the role of the audience as unseen watcher of the action. These cameras were a part of the stage design as well, but in the filmed version, their point of view is actually incorporated into the audience’s view. Black and white security footage is simply spliced into the rest of the film, making it perfectly obvious that the audience and camera are one.

Hamlet, too, carries a camera and turns the “play-in-a-play” in act three into a “film-in-a-film.” He records the action of the actors and the reaction of his uncle to “catch the conscience of a king.” Again, the audience becomes the camera, seeing what Hamlet sees, and by extension, knowing just what Hamlet thinks is important, without a word. And we know that we, as the audience, are the camera, NOT the character, because later on, Hamlet uses the same camera to record some of his own thoughts, which we see through the camera’s lens, as he points it at his own face. Hamlet as video blogger. Now THERE’S an interpretation that couldn’t be imagined even a couple years ago!

Movie cameras and Shakespeare have been paired since at least 1899, so the development of film and the portrayal of Shakespeare ON film have progressed together for as long as movies have existed. While Shakespeare himself could never have conceived of how his ideas and words could be translated into film, I, for one, am grateful that his creativity and insight can not only be transferred to film, but even, in the hands of the right people, enhanced by it.

As promised, I am going to post a weekly essay/musing on the previous night's class, to try to sum up what I thought were the most important issues we touch upon in our discussion, and how they relate to that night's film.  My classes tend to get a little rambly, so this way I can reflect on what we talked about in class, compare it to what I INTENDED to talk about in class, and reconcile the two.

As we look at the early development of film, the most important thing to be thinking about is how movies developed from pictures that moved (they are "movies," after all) and simple spectacle (salacious dancing girls and boxing cats) to one of the most influential and pervasive elements of 20th-century culture.  This wasn't inevitable, though it seems that way in hindsight.  One of the pioneers in cinema, Louis Lumiere, famously stated, "Cinema is an invention without a future."  (Though, of course, he said it in French.)  And if films had remained as simply "moving pictures," he may have been right.  But they didn't.  Innovators and artists like George Melies ("Trip to the Moon," Edwin Porter ("The Great Train Robbery,") and D.W. Griffith ("Birth of a Nation,") began to develop a language of film that not only made visual storytelling possible, but also exploited the cinema's ability to grip viewers' emotions and make them care about the characters on the screen.

This is surely why silent comedey stars so often played put-upon fellows who finally triumph over an escalating cascade of problems, such as Chaplin's "The Little Tramp," and Harold Lloyd's "Harold."  They are underdogs that the audience wants to root for.  Take Johnnie Gray in The General.  He seems to live in a world where the universe is against him.  Rescuing his beloved from Union soldiers, he faces torrential rain, lightning, bears, bear traps, a cannon with a mind of its own, as well as the efforts of Union soliders to thwart his escape.  But all the while, we see the humanity through the comedy.  Calling Keaton "The Great Stone Face" is something of a misnomer.  While Keaton's impassive face does contrast with the more emotional acting of other great silent movie stars, we are never unsure about Johnnie Gray's feelings throughout The General.  The new language of film, so masterfully crafted by the director (also Buster Keaton) gives us shots that not only present visual information but also clue the audience in to the characters' thoughts and feelings, makes sure that we experience the ups and downs of the story right along with those in the film.  Think of the close-up of Johnnie's beloved, Annabelle, through the burnt hole in the tablecloth.  We see only her face, which is just what Johnnie would focus on, discovering that the girl he loves is a captive of the Union army.

We take this emotional connection for granted, raised as we were as native readers of film language.  But we have the film makers of the early decades of the 20th century to thank for envisioning what we accept so naturally.  In our next class (not next week, but on September 13), we'll see how this language was "spoken" with a German accent, in the deliberately "arty" genre of German Expressionism, as exemplified by Metropolis.

Welcome to the main class blog for HUM/THR 243.  There is where we will collect all the cool and interesting links relating to the development of world cinema, including all the student blogs.  Check in often to see what is new.  I'll be posting here on occassion, when I think of something important I want to pontificate (or rant) about, and I want to encourage you to use your own individual blogs for the same purpose.  Update your own blogs on new movies you've seen, upload pictures of favorite actors, or include links to websites you find particular valuable.  And keep an eye on your fellow classmates' blogs as well, and check out their new posts as they appear.  Movie lovers like nothing better than talking about films (unless it is actually WATCHING films!), so lets make these blogs an extension of our class discussions.