Post by Capo on Feb 21, 2007 12:04:28 GMT
This relates specifically to one of the units I'm studying this term, titled, "Film History: Cinema 1930 - Present". I intend on E-mailing it to my tutor for the unit ahead of a meeting. It comes a day after receiving a choice of essay questions which left me physically fidgeting, sighing deeply, rolling my eyes and wondering if I have Attention Deficit Disorder, whereby I switch off entirely if something doesn't appeal to me. I'd appreciate some comments, whether you agree with me or not. (Am I wrong in being against this?)
Prior to yesterday’s screening of Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955), we were shown the original trailer for the film, and told to pay particular attention to it. Far more fragmented than today’s marketing ploys (in which snippets of scenes are edited together out of context to create a rhythmic, isolated experience in their own right), the trailer showed a pivotal scene in which James Dean tells his mother that a boy died earlier tonight; he is wearing an unforgettable red jacket and white T-shirt underneath.
When watching the film immediately afterward, then, during the scene in which Dean races against a rival in a game of “Chicken”, you already knew – due to Dean’s red jacket and white T-shirt – the ominous climax to the scene… i.e. somebody dies, and given the context of a motor race, you can guess who it is. Further to the inanity of showing the trailer first, the fact that what succeeded it was a memorable, feature length film meant that the trailer, which we were supposed to be paying attention to (for the lecture today), was dwarfed from memory… and rightly so. So, for starters, during today’s lecture, I could only remember the trailer in relation to its having completely ruined an otherwise tense scene in the film.
Whatever of absurd organisation, what is less trivial, and far more lamentable, is the fact that Rebel as a film itself has been placed into a secondary role, with more emphasis on how it might relate to Hollywood’s cultural status (i.e. historical context, social context) during the 1950s. In his lecture today, Peter Kramer, passionate as ever about how films might have been received at the time in which they were made, suggested that Ray’s film was brilliant in mobilising serious social concerns of the time.
I disagree with this. Rebel Without a Cause does not serve a great theme, nor one which is particularly specific to 1950s America. Instead, I would argue that it is brilliant, and of much interest, in how it serves its theme. The way its director evokes meaning and tension in the choice of shots he uses, the clever, succinct way he exposes his characters and their backgrounds (for instance, in the opening scene at the police station, while Natalie Woods is being questioned in one office, we see behind her Plato and Dean, all three protagonists in different spaces yet the same shot). But these are of little concern to Kramer and his company of “film” historians (the unit, I would argue, is not so much concerned with Cinema itself as it is with a society which has Cinema as its most convenient pastime – which is of course a convenient thing to study, as opposed to a relevant thing to study).
Rebel is not a brilliant film by default of the themes it tackles; it is a brilliant film for the way in which it tackles them… and that argument brings to prominence the film’s form, the director’s style, the way it is made and the way we may or may not appreciate its various aesthetic choices, such as the slanting camera in the domestic argument scene, or the use of Cinemascope in the knife fight early on. Rebel could have been screened with a number of films, in comparison, for example, to current Oscar nominated film Babel (2006), a film all about the frustrations of miscommunication across genders, class, generations and cultures. But this is irrelevant to the notion of “Film History”… which is in itself a misleading title, since we’re dealing specifically with Hollywood (and even then, not so much with Hollywood as the audience which pays to see its films). Film historians, it seems, do not trace films in relation to other films, but films in the social and historical vault of their production… which is both limiting and sad for such a unique and (let’s face it) terribly young art form.
It seems strange that in the first few weeks of this unit we were learning about technological advancement and the reasons behind it (the move to sound in the late 1920s), and, once beyond that, as if Cinema had shaped itself into a non-changing unity for seventy years plus (to the present), we move onto the “greater”, more “mature” things, such as how it might address society and how it might be marketed to society. (Because the common notion is that art and/or entertainment has form and content, and the content is more important than the way it is presented.) Let us all neglect things more specific to the medium, then, such as advancements in colour, prints, cameras, etc. And I find it infuriating that the only director whose name has been mentioned with more than a mere nod before any of the films has been John Ford, before Stagecoach (1939) two weeks ago. Why, as Film historians, can we not trace the development of the director, of the artist? Why not study individual films in relation to others which might be considered in the same breath (i.e. a director’s work)? Why not have a Michael Curtiz double bill, for example, from which we might study his Casablanca (1942) in relation to another of his films, say The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), and see what visual motifs or directorial flourishes might recur? Instead of why Casablanca might or might not be a political film, might or might not be propaganda, or might or might not be catered towards female audiences.
Why has the unit suddenly taken a nosedive from the cinematically relevant to the historically dull and academically conventional?
Prior to yesterday’s screening of Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955), we were shown the original trailer for the film, and told to pay particular attention to it. Far more fragmented than today’s marketing ploys (in which snippets of scenes are edited together out of context to create a rhythmic, isolated experience in their own right), the trailer showed a pivotal scene in which James Dean tells his mother that a boy died earlier tonight; he is wearing an unforgettable red jacket and white T-shirt underneath.
When watching the film immediately afterward, then, during the scene in which Dean races against a rival in a game of “Chicken”, you already knew – due to Dean’s red jacket and white T-shirt – the ominous climax to the scene… i.e. somebody dies, and given the context of a motor race, you can guess who it is. Further to the inanity of showing the trailer first, the fact that what succeeded it was a memorable, feature length film meant that the trailer, which we were supposed to be paying attention to (for the lecture today), was dwarfed from memory… and rightly so. So, for starters, during today’s lecture, I could only remember the trailer in relation to its having completely ruined an otherwise tense scene in the film.
Whatever of absurd organisation, what is less trivial, and far more lamentable, is the fact that Rebel as a film itself has been placed into a secondary role, with more emphasis on how it might relate to Hollywood’s cultural status (i.e. historical context, social context) during the 1950s. In his lecture today, Peter Kramer, passionate as ever about how films might have been received at the time in which they were made, suggested that Ray’s film was brilliant in mobilising serious social concerns of the time.
I disagree with this. Rebel Without a Cause does not serve a great theme, nor one which is particularly specific to 1950s America. Instead, I would argue that it is brilliant, and of much interest, in how it serves its theme. The way its director evokes meaning and tension in the choice of shots he uses, the clever, succinct way he exposes his characters and their backgrounds (for instance, in the opening scene at the police station, while Natalie Woods is being questioned in one office, we see behind her Plato and Dean, all three protagonists in different spaces yet the same shot). But these are of little concern to Kramer and his company of “film” historians (the unit, I would argue, is not so much concerned with Cinema itself as it is with a society which has Cinema as its most convenient pastime – which is of course a convenient thing to study, as opposed to a relevant thing to study).
Rebel is not a brilliant film by default of the themes it tackles; it is a brilliant film for the way in which it tackles them… and that argument brings to prominence the film’s form, the director’s style, the way it is made and the way we may or may not appreciate its various aesthetic choices, such as the slanting camera in the domestic argument scene, or the use of Cinemascope in the knife fight early on. Rebel could have been screened with a number of films, in comparison, for example, to current Oscar nominated film Babel (2006), a film all about the frustrations of miscommunication across genders, class, generations and cultures. But this is irrelevant to the notion of “Film History”… which is in itself a misleading title, since we’re dealing specifically with Hollywood (and even then, not so much with Hollywood as the audience which pays to see its films). Film historians, it seems, do not trace films in relation to other films, but films in the social and historical vault of their production… which is both limiting and sad for such a unique and (let’s face it) terribly young art form.
It seems strange that in the first few weeks of this unit we were learning about technological advancement and the reasons behind it (the move to sound in the late 1920s), and, once beyond that, as if Cinema had shaped itself into a non-changing unity for seventy years plus (to the present), we move onto the “greater”, more “mature” things, such as how it might address society and how it might be marketed to society. (Because the common notion is that art and/or entertainment has form and content, and the content is more important than the way it is presented.) Let us all neglect things more specific to the medium, then, such as advancements in colour, prints, cameras, etc. And I find it infuriating that the only director whose name has been mentioned with more than a mere nod before any of the films has been John Ford, before Stagecoach (1939) two weeks ago. Why, as Film historians, can we not trace the development of the director, of the artist? Why not study individual films in relation to others which might be considered in the same breath (i.e. a director’s work)? Why not have a Michael Curtiz double bill, for example, from which we might study his Casablanca (1942) in relation to another of his films, say The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), and see what visual motifs or directorial flourishes might recur? Instead of why Casablanca might or might not be a political film, might or might not be propaganda, or might or might not be catered towards female audiences.
Why has the unit suddenly taken a nosedive from the cinematically relevant to the historically dull and academically conventional?
