CIN 3110 Study Guide - Summer 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Ford Focus, City, London
12 Oct 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
CIN 3110
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
The History of British Cinema Class 1:
Nation:
• Bounded spatial territory OR
• Laws and legal systems, delimiting a national space
National film industry:
• Benedict Anderson: Nations formed by creating imagined communities.
• Benedict Anderson: spread of wildly diffused popular print culture. Beginnings of daily
newspaper. Interesting from perspective of media with written word and oral speech, but
also important in sense of national identity – people orienting themselves from the same
sense of national community. They all have updates every day.
• Imagined communities are produced by popular media, and the new popular medium is
the cinema.
Cinema in Britain
• About Britain’s vexed position between Hollywood and the cultural prestige and avant-
garde value of European film tradition.
• Britain is late to the film party.
• 1924- Headline on Bioscope (British film): “Lights Out” no British funded and directed
film was being made at that point.
• 1909: 30% of all films were American, 1914: 60%. 1926: 95%.
• 1927: government legislation to protect British films.
o Introduces quotas for the amount of British films on British screens. Needs at
least 7.5% of output to be British-made. Slowly increased. 1936 it was 20%.
o Protectionist measure of national industry.
• 1920s-30s: quota quickies: produced in order to meet quotas without care or attention.
Why British film gets a slow start. It tries to stimulate production, but the quality is low.
• Britain is based on the literary, also very theatrical, so film isn’t deemed prestigious.
Cultural capital attached to cinema only after this one guy
Francois Truffaut w/ Alfred Hitchcock in 1962
• “There’s something about England that’s anti-cinematic… Is somehow a deterrent to
strong emotion.”
• Not sublime enough. Sense of reserve.
Stephen Frears, on Truffaut
• “The great French film-maker, FT,.. bollocks to Truffaut.”
o Sense of punk attitude that Truffaut didn’t understand.
Lens: Between characters and landscapes
• Relationship between individual characters and their environments. Enables us to zoom
in and look at underlying ideas
• To a large extent, the characters we see are shaped by their environment. Behaviours
aren’t caused by environments, but they’re shaped/elicited by them.
o Lay a series of possible pathways in front of them
• Tension between character and environment.
• Movement between environments is important, too.
British Hitchcock (Before he left for Hollywood in 1940)
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
• One of the most iconic British filmmakers. Pursued most of his career in Hollywood,
most of the ones we know by him are from there.
• BUT if we rewind to his British years, he had a lasting impact on British cinema in terms
of influence. Engages with British concerns of individual and environment.
The 39 steps
• One of the earliest of H’s films that demonstrates deft capacity to combine action
adventure and philosophical themes. It’s one of his signature styles.
• It’s a classic espionage tale, a story about mistaken identity and chance encounters.
• H bundles this with romance narrative (they become romantic by pure chance)
• Neither just espionage or romance plot. Makes us reflect upon individual identity and
desire while we follow that plot.
• Pure chance of ending up next to woman in a crowd makes Hannay someone completely
different.
o Identity and desires are utterly contingent. Not fixed, stable, essences.
• Giving us subtle philosophical analysis in the form of action romance plot.
• Hyper mobile film
Hannay in first scene in relation to environment:
• Different coloured outfit than others
• Part of the crowd – anyone could have been in this situation
• Rhythm with individual and crowd shots – part of a mass.
• Taller than everyone, popped collar, open coat.
• Hannay differentiated from the crowd.
o But not above or beyond everyday life.
• See is shadow, then his hand, then his feet, his back, first. All fragments of him. Glimpses
before the full thing.
o Shadows are negative space of identity – gesture of insubstantiality of all identity.
o Frustrates us but makes us want to see more. Drawing out our desire.
Hannay depicted in Scotland
• Long shots – you can’t see him. Mostly just a shadow, running on the mountains
o Silhouetted against the horizon, but then when he’s running almost camouflaged.
o Figures appear onto the horizon, and then Hannay himself.
o As they move, H comes beneath the horizon line, becomes less distinct
o Environment is both helping him (by camouflaging him a bit), but also hindering
him, because they always see him.
• Environment as a challenge (for him and for the police)
• Insecurity of his life
• Camera angles titled, to increase sense of instability of landscape and individuals
• The sign – something that could help him, but he doesn’t speak that language, so it
doesn’t do a lot for him.
Sabotage
• One of H’s crowning early British works
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Nation: bounded spatial territory or, laws and legal systems, delimiting a national space. National film industry: benedict anderson: nations formed by creating imagined communities, benedict anderson: spread of wildly diffused popular print culture. Interesting from perspective of media with written word and oral speech, but also important in sense of national identity people orienting themselves from the same sense of national community. Imagined communities are produced by popular media, and the new popular medium is the cinema. 1926: 95%: 1927: government legislation to protect british films, introduces quotas for the amount of british films on british screens. Needs at least 7. 5% of output to be british-made. 1936 it was 20%: protectionist measure of national industry, 1920s-30s: quota quickies: produced in order to meet quotas without care or attention. It tries to stimulate production, but the quality is low: britain is based on the literary, also very theatrical, so film isn"t deemed prestigious.
